THE SCI-FI COLLECTION OF EDGAR WALLACE. Edgar Wallace
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out his hand, and, catching hold of the hood, let the motor-bicycle slip from between his knees.
For a second he held on desperately, his feet swinging in the air, and then, with an effort, he threw his leg over the edge of the hood and dropped breathlessly on to the seat behind the driver. At first the man at the wheel did not realise what had happened, and then, with a yell of rage, he turned and struck blindly at the unauthorised passenger.
The blow missed him by a fraction of an inch, and in another second his arm was around the driver’s neck. The car swayed and slowed, and then an involuntary movement of the man revealed the whereabouts of the manuscript. Tim thrust into the inside-pocket and his fingers touched a heavy roll of paper. In a flash the packet was in his hand, and then he saw the moonlight gleam on something which the man held.
The car was now almost at a standstill, and, leaping over the side, Tim plunged into the hedge by the side of the road. As he did so, he heard the “zip!” of a bullet and the patter of leaves. He ran on wildly, his breath coming in short gasps. To his ears came the blundering feet of his pursuer. He was out of breath and in no condition to meet the murderous onrush of his enemy.
And then, as he felt he could not go a step farther, the ground opened underneath his feet and he went down, down, down. For a second he lost consciousness. All that remained of his breath was knocked from his body, and he could only lie and gape at the starlit sky.
Chapter VII
Looking up, he saw a head and shoulders come over the edge of the quarry into which he had fallen. Apparently the man was not prepared to take the risk of following, for presently the sound of his footsteps died away and there was silence.
He lay for half-an-hour motionless, recovering his breath. Although his arm was bruised he could move it and no bones were broken. At the end of his rest he rose cautiously to his knees and explored the position so far as it was revealed by the moonlight.
He had fallen twenty or thirty feet down a steep, chalky slope; but he was by no means at the bottom of the quarry face, and he had to move with the greatest care and circumspection. Presently, however, he found a rough path, which seemed to run interminably upwards. It was nearly half-an-hour later when he came to the road. The car was gone, and he walked back the way he had come, hoping that he would be able to retrieve his motor-bicycle intact, though he had his doubts whether it would be usable. To his delight, when he came upon the machine, he discovered it had suffered little damage other than twisted handlebars. His run home was without event.
Apparently his hasty exit had been heard, for the house was aroused and two manservants were searching the grounds when he came in.
“I heard the gate go smash, sir,” said the butler, explaining his wakefulness. “Lord! I’m glad to see you back. Somebody’s thrown over that stone in the courtyard…”
He babbled on, and Tim was so glad to hear the sound of a human voice that he did not interrupt him.
There was no sleep for him that night. With successive cups of strong coffee, brought at intervals, he sat poring over the manuscript, page by page, almost incredulous of his own eyes and senses. The sunlight poured in through the windows of the little study and found him still sitting, his chin on his palms, the manuscript before him. He had read it again and again until he knew almost every word. Then, locking the papers away in the safe, he walked slowly to the instrument room, and gazed in awe at this evidence of the dead man’s genius.
Something within him told him that never in future would human speech pulsate through this network of wires; never again would that queer little amplifier bring within human hearing the thin sounds of space. Even the code was gone: that vocabulary, reduced with such labour to a dictionary of six thousand words.
He turned the switch and set the little machine working; saw the multicoloured lights gleam and glow. This much the mechanics had succeeded in doing. But the words that filtered through light and charcoal would, he thought, be dead for everlasting. He turned another switch and set something working which Sir Charles had described as a miniature air pump, and stood watching absentmindedly as the piston thrust in and out. If he only had one tenth of Colson’s genius!
His hand had gone out to turn the switch that stopped the machine, when:
“Oh, Colson, why do you not speak to me?”
The voice came from the very centre of the machine. There was no visible microphone. It was as though the lights and the whirling wheels had become endowed with a voice. Tim’s heart nearly stopped beating.
“Oh, Colson,” wailed the voice, “they are breaking the machines. I have come to tell you this before they arrive. He is dead — he, the master, the wizard, the wonderful man…”
The servant! Mr. Colson had told him that it was the servant who had spoken. The astral Colson was dead. How should he reply?
“Where are you?” he asked hoarsely, but there was no answer, and soon he understood why. Presently:
“I will wait for you to speak. When I hear you I will answer. Speak to me, Colson! In a thousand seconds….”
A thousand seconds! Colson had told him once that wireless waves travel at the same speed as light. Then he was a hundred and eighty million miles away, and a thousand seconds must pass — nearly seventeen minutes — before his voice could reach through space to the man who was listening.
How had he made the machine work? Perhaps the mechanism had succeeded before, but there had been nobody at the other end — wherever the other end might be. And then:
“Oh, Colson, they are here…goodbye!”
There came to him the sound of a queer tap-tap-tap and then a crackle as though of splintered glass, and then a scream, so shrill, so full of pain and horror, that involuntarily he stepped back. Then came a crash, and silence. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, but no sound came. At the end of an hour he turned off the switch and went slowly up to his room.
He awoke to find a youth sitting on the edge of his bed. He was so weary and dulled that he did not recognize Chap, even after he spoke.
“Wake up: I’ve got some news for you, dear old bird,” said Chap, staring owlishly through his thick, heavy glasses. “There’s a Nemesis in this business — you may have heard of the lady — Miss Nemesis of Nowhere. First the burglar man is killed and then his boss is smashed to smithereens.”
Tim struggled up. “Who?” he asked. “Not Hildreth?”
Chap nodded.
“He was found just outside Maidenhead, his car broken to bits — they think his steering-wheel went wrong when he was doing sixty an hour. At any rate, he smashed into a tree, and all that’s left of his machine is hot iron!”
“Hildreth! Was he killed?” Chap nodded.
“Completely,” he said callously. “And perhaps it’s as well for him, for Bennett was waiting at his house to arrest him. They’ve got proof that he employed that wretched burglar. Do you know what time it is? It’s two o’clock, you lazy devil, and Sir Charles and Stamford are waiting to see you. Sir Charles has a theory—”
Tim swung out of bed and walked to the window, blinking into the sunlit garden.
“All the theories in the world are going to evaporate before the facts,” he said. Putting his hand under his pillow, he took out the Professor’s manuscript. “I’ll read something to you this afternoon. Is Elsie here?”
Chap nodded. “I’ll be down in half-an-hour,” he said.
His breakfast was also his luncheon, but it was not until after the meal was over, and they had adjourned to the library, that he told them what had happened in the night. Bennett, who arrived soon after, was able to fill in