May 1931 Read online

  Simultaneously, from the house on Patton Place, in June of 1935, Robots began appearing. A hundred of them, or a thousand, no one knew. With swords and flashing red and violet light-beams they spread over the city in the never-to-be-forgotten Massacre of New York! It was the beginning of the vengeance Tugh had threatened! Nothing could stop the monstrous mechanical men. For three days and nights New York City was in chaos. The red beams were frigid. They brought a mid-summer snowstorm! Then the violet beams turned the weather suddenly hot. A crazy wild storm swept the wrecked city. Torrential hot rain poured down. Then, one dawn, the beams vanished; the Robots retreated into the house on Patton Place and disappeared; and New York was left a horror of death and desolation.

  The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was complete.

  CHAPTER VIII - The Murder of Major Atwood

  "We are late," Tina whispered. It was that night in 1777 when she, Larry and Harl stepped from their Time-traveling cage; and again I am picturing the events as Larry afterward described them to me. "Migul, in the other cage, was here," Tina added. "But it's gone now. Exactly where was it, I wonder?"

  "Mary Atwood said it appeared in the garden."

  They crept down the length of the field, just inside the picket fence. In a moment the trees and an intervening hillock of ground hid the dimly shining outline of their own cage from their sight. The dirt road leading to Major Atwood's home was on the other side of the fence.

  "Wait," murmured Tina. "There is a light in the house. Someone is awake."

  "When was Migul here, do you think?" Larry whispered.

  "Last night, perhaps. Or to-night. It may be only an hour--or a few minutes ago."

  The faint thud of horses' hoofs on the roadway made Tina and Larry drop to the ground. They crouched in the shadows of a tree. Galloping horses were approaching along the road. The moon went under a cloud.

  From around a bend in the road a group of horsemen came. They were galloping; then they slowed to a trot; a walk. They reined up in the road not more than twenty feet from Larry and Tina. In the starlight they showed clearly--men in the red and white uniform of the army of the King. Some of them wore short, dark cloaks. They dismounted with a clanking of swords and spurs.

  * * * * *

  Their voices were audible. "Leave the steeds with Jake. Egad, we've made enough noise already."

  "Here, Jake, you scoundrel. Stay safely here with the mounts."

  "Come on, Tony. You and I will circle. We have him, this time. By the King's garter, what a fool he is to come into New York at such a time!"

  "He wants to see his daughter, I venture."

  "Right, Tony. And have you seen her? As saucy a little minx as there it in the Colonies. I was quartered here last month. I do not blame the major for wanting to come."

  "Here, take my bridle, Jake. Tie them to the fence."

  There was a swift confusion of voices; laughter. "If you should hear a pistol shot, Jake, ride quickly back and tell My Lord there was a fracas and you did not dare remain."

  "I only hope he is garbed in the rebel white and blue--eh, Tony? Then he will yield like an officer and a gentleman; which he is, rebel or no."

  They were moving away to surround the house. Two were left.

  "Come on, Tony. We will pound the front knocker in the name of the King. A feather in our cap when we ride him down to the Bowling Green and present him to My Lord...."

  The voices faded.

  Larry gripped the girl beside him. "They are British soldiers going to capture Major Atwood! What can we--"

  * * * * *

  He never finished. A scream echoed over the somnolent night--a voice from the rear of the house. A man's voice.

  The red-coated soldiers ran forward. In the field, close against the fence, Tina and Larry were running.

  From the garden of the house a man was screaming. Then there were other voices; servants were awakening in the upper rooms. The screaming, shouting man rushed through the house. He appeared at the front door, standing between the high white colonial pillars which supported the overhead porch. A yellow light fell upon him through the opened doorway. An old, white-headed negro appeared. Larry and Tina, in the nearby field, stood stricken by the scene.

  "The marster--the marster--" He shouted this wildly.

  The British officers ran at him.

  "You, Thomas, tell us where the major is. We've come for him; we know he's here! Don't lie!"

  "But the marster--" He choked over it.

  "A trick, Tony! Egad, if he is trying to trick us--"

  They leaped to the porch and seized the old negro.

  "Speak, you devil!" They shook him. "The house is surrounded. He cannot escape!"

  "But the marster is--is dead! My girl Tollie saw it and then she swooned." He steadied himself. "He--the major's in the garden, Marster Tony. Lying there dead! Murdered! By a ghost, Tollie says. A great, white, shining ghost that came to the garden and murdered him!"

  * * * * *

  If you were to delve very closely into certain old records of Revolutionary New York City during the year 1777, you doubtless would find mention of the strange murder of Major Atwood, who, coming from New Jersey, is thought to have crossed the river well to the north of the city, mounted his horse--which, by pre-arrangement, one of his retainers had left for him somewhere to the south of Dykeman's farm--and ridden to his home. He came, not as a spy, but in full uniform. And no sooner had he reached his home when he was strangely murdered. There was only a negro tale of an apparition which had appeared in the garden and murdered the master.

  Larry and I have found cursory mention of that. But I doubt if the group of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north to capture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. The old Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry the homecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony Green and his fellow officers, sent to apprehend the colonial major, found him inexplicably murdered; and by dawn they were back at the Bowling Green, white-faced and shaken.

  They told some of what had happened to them, but not all. They could not expect to be believed, for instance, if they said that though they were unafraid of a negro's tale of a ghost, they had themselves encountered two ghosts, and had fled the premises!

  Those two ghosts were only Larry and Tina!

  The negro babbled of a shining cage appearing in the garden. That, of course, was undoubtedly set down as nonsense. Tony Green and his friends went to the garden and examined the body of Major Atwood. What had killed him no one could say. No bullet had struck him. There were no wounds, no knife thrust, no sword slash. Tony held the lantern with its swaying yellow glow close to the murdered man's body. The August night was warm; the garden, banked by trees and shrubbery, was breathless and oppressively hot; yet the body of Atwood seemed frozen! He had been dead but a short while, and already the body was stiff. More than that, it was ice cold. The face, the brows were wet as though frost had been there and now was melted!

  Tony Green's hand shook as he held the lantern. He tried to tell his comrades that Atwood had died from failure of the heart. Undoubtedly it was that. He had seen what he supposed was an apparition; something had frightened him; and a weak heart had brought his death.

  * * * * *

  Then, in another part of the garden, one of the searching officers found a sheet of parchment scroll with writing on it. Yet it was not parchment, either. Some strange, white, smooth fabric which crumpled and tore very easily, the like of which this young British officer of Howe's staff had never seen before. It was found lying in a flower bed forty or fifty feet from Atwood's body. They gathered in a group to examine it by the light of the lantern. Writing! The delicate script of Mary Atwood! A missive addressed to her father. It was strangely written, evidently not with a quill.

  Tony read it with an awed, frightened voice:

  "Father, beware of Tugh! Beware of Tugh! And, my dear Father, good-by. I am departing, I think, to the y
ear of our Lord, 2930. Cannot explain--a captive--good-by--nothing you can do--

  Mary."

  Strange! I can imagine how strange they thought it was. Tugh--why he was the cripple who had lived down by the Bowling Green, and had lately vanished!

  They were reading this singularly unexplainable missive, when as though to climax their own fears of the supernatural they saw themselves a ghost! And not only one ghost, but two!

  Plain as a pikestaff, peering from a nearby tree, in a shaft of moonlight, a ghost was standing. It was the figure of a young girl, with jacket and breeches of black and gleaming white. An apparition fantastic! And a young man was with her, in a long dark jacket and dark tubular pipes, for legs.

  * * * * *

  The two ghosts with dead white faces stood peering. Then the man moved forward. His dead, strange voice called:

  "Drop that paper!"

  My Lord Howe's red-coated officers dropped the parchment and fled.

  And later, when Atwood's body was taken away to be given burial as befitted an enemy officer and a gentleman, that missive from Mary Atwood had disappeared. It was never found.

  Tony Green and his fellows said nothing of this latter incident. One cannot with grace explain being routed by a ghost. Not an officer of His Majesty's army!

  Unrecorded history! A supernatural incident of the year 1777!

  Undoubtedly in the past ages there have been many such affairs: some never recorded, others interwoven in written history and called supernatural.

  Yet why must they be that? There was nothing supernatural in the events of that night in Major Atwood's garden.

  Is this perchance an explanation of why the pages of history are so thronged with tales of ghosts? There must, indeed, be many future ages down the corridors of Time where the genius of man will invent devices to fling him back into his past. And the impressions upon the past which he makes are called supernatural.

  Whether this be so or not, it was so in the case of these two Time-traveling vehicles from 2930. Larry and I think that the world of 1935 is just now shaking off the shackles of superstition, and coming to realize that what is called the supernatural is only the Unknown. Who can say, up to 1935, how many Time-traveling humans have come briefly back? Is this, perchance, what we call the phenomena of the supernatural?

  * * * * *

  Larry and Tina--anything but ghosts, very much alive and very much perturbed--were standing back of that tree. They saw the British officers reading the scrap of paper. They could hear only the words, "Mary," and "from Mistress Atwood."

  "A message!" Larry whispered. "She and George must have found a chance to write it, and dropped it here while the Robot murdered Major Atwood!"

  Larry and Tina vehemently wanted to read the note. Tina whispered:

  "If we show ourselves, they will be frightened and run. It is nearly always so where Harl and I have become visible in earlier Times."

  "Yes. I'll try it."

  Larry stepped from the tree, and shouted, "Drop that paper!"

  And a moment later, with Mary's torn little note scribbled on a scrap of paper thrust in his pocket, Larry ran with Tina from the Atwood garden. Unseen they scurried back through the field. Under a distant tree they stopped and read the note.

  "2930!" Larry exclaimed. "The Robot is taking them back to your world, Tina!"

  "Then we will go there. Let us get back to Harl, now."

  But when they reached the place where they had left the cage, it was not there! The corner of the field behind the clump of shadowing trees was empty.

  "Harl! Harl!" Larry called impulsively. And then he laughed grimly. What nonsense to try and call into the past or the future to their vanished vehicle!

  "Why--why, Tina--" he said in final realization.

  They stared at each other, pale as ghosts in the moonlight.

  "Tina, he's gone. And we are left here!"

  They were marooned in the year 1777!

  CHAPTER IX - Migul--Mechanism Almost Human

  Mary Atwood and I lay on the metal grid floor of the largest Time-cage. The giant mechanism which had captured us sat at the instrument table. Outside the bars of the cage was a dim vista of shadowy movement. The cage-room was humming, and glowing like a wraith; things seemed imponderable, unsubstantial.

  But as my head steadied from the shock of the vehicle's start into Time, my viewpoint shifted. This barred room, the metal figure of the Robot, Mary Atwood, myself--we were the substance. We were real, solid. I touched Mary and her arm which had seemed intangible as a ghost now looked and felt solid.

  The effects of the dull-red chilling ray were also wearing off. I was unharmed. I raised myself on one elbow.

  "You're all right, Mary?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  The Robot seemed not to be noticing us. I murmured, "He--it--that thing sitting there--is that the one which captured you and brought you to 1935?"

  "Yes. Quiet! It will hear us."

  It did hear us. It turned its head. In the pale light of the cage interior, I had a closer view now of its face. It was a metal mask, welded to a gruesome semblance of a man--a great broad face, with high, angular cheeks. On the high forehead, the corrugations were rigid as though it were permanently frowning. The nose was squarely solid, the mouth an orifice behind which there were no teeth but, it seemed, a series of tiny lateral wires.

  * * * * *

  I stared; and the face for a moment stared back at me. The eyes were deep metal sockets with a round lens in each of them, behind which, it seemed, there was a dull-red light. The gaze, touching me, seemed to bring a physical chill. The ears were like tiny megaphones with a grid of thin wires strung across them.

  The neck was set with ball and socket as though the huge head were upon a universal joint. There were lateral depressions in the neck within which wire strands slid like muscles. I saw similar wire cables stretched at other points on the mailed body, and in the arms and legs. They were the network of its muscles!

  The top of the head was fashioned into a square cap as though this were the emblem of the thing's vocation. A similar device was moulded into its convex chest plate. And under the chest emblem was a row of tiny buttons, a dozen or more. I stared at them, fascinated. Were they controls? Some seemed higher, more protruding, than others. Had they been set into some combination to give this monster its orders? Had some human master set these controls?

  And I saw what seemed a closed door in the side of the huge metal body. A door which could be opened to make adjustments of the mechanisms within? What strange mechanisms were in there? I stared at the broad, corrugated forehead. What was in that head? Mechanisms? What mechanisms could make this thing think? Were thoughts lurking in that metal skull?

  From the head abruptly came a voice--a deep, hollow, queerly toneless voice, utterly, unmistakably mechanical. Yet it was sufficiently life-like to be the recreated, mechanically reproduced voice of a human. The thing was speaking to me! A machine was speaking its thoughts!

  Gruesome! The iron lips were unmoving. There were no muscles to give expression to the face: the lens eyes stared inscrutably unblinking.

  * * * * *

  It spoke: "You will know me again? Is that not true?"

  My head whirled. The thing reiterated, "Is that not true?"

  A mockery of a human man--but in the toneless voice there seemed irony! I felt Mary clutching at me.

  "Why--why, yes," I stammered. "I did not realize you could talk."

  "I can talk. And you can talk my language. That is very good."

  It turned away. I saw the small red beams from its eyes go to where the cage bars were less blurred, less luminous, as though there was a rectangle of window there, and the Robot was staring out.

  "Did it speak to you like that, Mary?" I asked.

  "Yes," she whispered. "A little. But pray do not anger it."

  "No."

  For a time--a nameless time in which I felt my thoughts floating off upon the hum of the room--I
lay with my fingers gripping Mary's arm. Then I roused myself. Time had passed; or had it? I was not sure.

  I whispered against her ear, "Those are controls on its chest. If only I knew--"

  The thing turned the red beams of its eyes upon me. Had it heard my words? Or were my thoughts intangible vibrations registering upon some infinitely sensitive mechanism within that metal head? Had it become aware of my thoughts? It said with slow measured syllables, "Do not try to control me. I am beyond control."

  * * * * *

  It turned away again; but I mastered the gruesome terror which was upon me.

  "Talk," I said. "Tell me why you abducted this girl from the year 1777."

  "I was ordered to."

  "By whom?"

  There was a pause.

  "By whom?" I demanded again.

  "That I will not tell."

  Will not? That implied volition. I felt that Mary shuddered.

  "George, please--"

  "Quiet, Mary."

  Again I asked the Robot, "Who commands you?"

  "I will not tell."

  "You mean you cannot? Your orders do not make it possible?"

  "No, I will not." And, as though it considered my understanding insufficient, it added, "I do not choose to tell."

  Acting of its own volition! This thing--this machinery--was so perfect it could do that!

  I steadied my voice. "Oh, but I think I know. Is it Tugh who controls you?"

  That expressionless metal face! How could I hope to surprise it?

  Mary was struggling to repress her terror. She raised herself upon an elbow. I met her gaze.

  "George, I'll try," she announced.

  She said firmly:

  "You will not hurt me?"

  "No."

  "Nor my friend here?"

  "What is his name?"

  "George Rankin." She stammered it. "You will not harm him?"

  "No. Not now."

  "Ever?"