April 1931 Read online

  * * * *

  *"Could you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted. "No. Just a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes!--I remember now--I could not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that there were tremendous things to see! The monster spoke again and told me to be careful; that we were going to stop. Its iron hands pulled at levers. Then the humming grew fainter; died away; and I felt a shock.

  "I thought I had fainted again. I could just remember being pulled through the cage door. The monster left me on the ground. It said, 'Lie there, for I will return very soon.'

  "The cage vanished. I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the side of a pyramid--"

  "The back yard of that house on Patton Place!" Larry exclaimed. He looked at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"

  "How should I know?" I retorted. "Probably has."

  "Go on," Alten was prompting.

  "That is nearly all. I found a doorway leading to a dark room. I crawled through it toward a glow of light. I passed through another room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this was my home. I remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched. Just trembled; vibrated.

  "But this was not my home. The rooms were small and dark. Then I peered through a window on a strange stone street. And saw these strange-looking young men. And that is all--all I can tell you."

  She had evidently held herself calm by a desperate effort. She broke down now, sobbing without restraint.

  CHAPTER III - Tugh, the Cripple

  The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny bits of cork and whirled away.

  But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!

  Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood. But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"

  He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific. And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."

  Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at least I am trying to realize it."

  What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very wonderful--"

  Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."

  Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year 1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So much is obvious. But why--"

  "Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct this girl?"

  "And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary. "And it told you it would return?"

  "Yes."

  * * * *

  *Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course.... Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"

  "No."

  "Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"

  "No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms, omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony, not so many years ago--"

  "I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."

  "There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with crystals to gaze into the future."

  "We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more than you do about this thing."

  I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"

  She thought a moment. "No--yes, there was one." She shuddered at the memory. "A man--a cripple--a horribly repulsive man of about one score and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.

  "Tell us about him," Larry urged.

  She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it. But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our cause well. He is rich.

  "But you don't want to hear all this. He--he made love to me, and I repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He vowed then that some day he--he would have me; and get revenge on Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."

  * * * *

  *We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was on his face.

  He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"

  "Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard any Christian name."

  Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"

  "Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"

  Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place? Did you happen to notice?"

  I had, and wondering I told him.

  "Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."

  He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought. Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying to have his crippled body made whole?"

  "Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."

  Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with astonished questions. He said:

  "Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human master of that Robot."

  Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him. He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a young man."

  Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....

  * * * *

  *Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.

  "And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Wh
atever it was, there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."

  Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither of us had been in New York at the time.

  Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."

  "Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.

  But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he murdered the girl.

  "The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him trapped in his house; had the house surrounded--this same one on Patton Place--but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably vanished. He was never heard from again."

  Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard from--until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with the police guarding every exit to that house--well, it's obvious, isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."

  Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you. Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there was a world in the future--he mentioned 1934 or 1935--which he hated. A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was demented, raving...."

  * * * *

  *Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.

  A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of coming disaster to this great city?

  Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do--tell the authorities? Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful, there will be an attack upon New York?"

  "No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.

  "No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do? You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl. Heaven knows you need to be."

  "I--I want to get back home," she stammered.

  A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.

  "That mechanism said it would return!"

  "Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."

  "Just what do you mean?" I demanded.

  "I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place. Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"

  Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement. "Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"

  Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we thought we were acting for the best.

  Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to Patton Place.

  CHAPTER IV - The Fight With the Robot

  Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window. The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken basement window yawned with its wide black opening.

  "I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out here."

  We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.

  I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.

  "No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I want to go back to my own world, to my Father."

  "Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."

  I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is so easy to look back upon what one might have done!

  We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room. There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.

  "Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"

  "Yes. This way, I think."

  We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a dismantled kitchen.

  "You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on, Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."

  I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.

  "It may have come and gone," I whispered.

  "Yes." She was trembling against me.

  * * * *

  *It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet; then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird unearthly sound.

  Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered. "Let's go into the back yard."

  The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there was a faded grass plot in the center.

  We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room. She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the yard, with its door facing this way....

  Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.

  "It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess that this--"

  And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle ready.

  "There!" whispered Alten.

  We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.

  Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there; then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.

  And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage, in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago had been empty.

  * * * *

&nb
sp; *The cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow, which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.

  The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly, as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank of metal, and the door slid open.

  I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.

  I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.

  It stepped forward--toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against its sides.

  "Now!" Alten whispered.

  I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.

  "Aim at its face," I murmured.

  We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then came Larry's shot. And then chaos.

  * * * *

  *I recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging to me. I cast her off.

  "Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.

  Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the Robot:

  "Look out! It sees us!"

  He fired again, into the light--and murmured, "Why--why--"

  A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was muttering something.

  All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the ground!