The Avenger 32 - The Death Machine (2 page)

The station master lit a cigarette, saying, “Heard a rabbit crying a while ago.”

One of the other old men, the thinnest of the three, said, “Doubt it, Earl.”

“Truth, Len. Dogs must of run him down and he cried right out, just like a baby.”

The third old man said nothing.

Len said, “Well, that’s a bad sign if you did hear it.”

“Don’t know if it is or it ain’t.”

The bell at the nearby crossing began to ring, the red lights began to flash.

Len checked his pocket watch. “Six minutes behind.”

The stationmaster glanced over to make sure the mail bags were hanging properly. “Really made my hair stand on end, hearing that rabbit . . . Hey!” He jumped to his feet.

A car, a dark coupé, had gone rolling on through the stop and was now on the tracks.

“Hey, mister,” yelled Len through cupped hands, “get the hell off there! Train’s coming!”

The coupé stopped right on the tracks. The headlights were turned off.

“What the devil’s he trying to do?” The old stationmaster clomped down the wooden steps toward the street. “Hey, mister, move!”

You could hear the train now, howling off in the darkness.

“Maybe he had a fit,” suggested Len as he joined the stationmaster.

The two old men began to run, as best they could, across the three hundred yards between them and the car.

No one made any attempt to leave the vehicle.

The train would be passing on the middle set of tracks, the one the car was stalled on. “Hey, you sick in there?” called the stationmaster.

There was the light of the engine, sweeping at the night.

The station master’s foot touched the first rail.

“Get back, Earl!” warned Len. “You got no time left.”

The roar of the approaching train was all around. The stationmaster spun, went stumbling back toward the sidewalk. He tripped on the curb, went sprawling.

He didn’t see what happened next, but he heard.

The slamming impact of the huge train engine smashing into the tiny auto. The metallic shrieking as the body of the car was ripped and smashed and twisted. The awful crunch of the windshield glass being battered into a thousand blind fragments. And mingled with all that, only for an instant, a human cry. A voice screaming, “No!”

The rails cried out next. The train, brakes hissing, wound down to a stop.

Inside the train a giant of a man, broad in the shoulders and nearly seven feet high, was thrown across his compartment by the lurching stop.

Smitty got himself together, stepped out into the train corridor. “What’s up?” he asked of the conductor who was hurrying by.

“Looks like some poor fool got tired of living.”

The ancient bellhop tottered across the carpet, panting, and dropped the enormous suitcase. He tottered, fell over the suitcase and bonked his negligible chin on the foot of the hotel bed. He remained in that tilted position, right hand clutching at air.

Smitty jogged over, yanked him to his feet. “You okay, gramps?”

The old man wheezed, his wispy white whiskers fluttering. “What you got in that thing, lead weights?”

“A couple,” admitted Smitty. “Mostly it’s gadgets and stuff. See, I’m here in Frisco for a radio-electronic engineers’ conference.”

“Surely is a heavy devil, whatever’s in it.”

“Well, I offered to lug it up here myself.”

The old bellboy pressed a gnarled hand to his narrow chest. “Oh, like I told you, I couldn’t let you do that,” he said, pausing to suck in a wheezing breath. “Don’t want all the big mucky mucks here at the St. Mark Hotel to get the idea I’m over the hill.”

“What with the war, it can’t be too easy to get young bellhops.”

“Young ones, nope. But they don’t have to be as old as me. How old would you guess I am?”

Smitty dug a quarter out of his jangling coat pocket. “Oh, maybe sixty-five.” He flipped him the coin.

“Eighty-two, I am.” He made an attempt to slap his hands over the spinning quarter. He missed and the coin rolled across the wine-colored rug toward a window.

“I’ll fetch it.” Smitty chased the rolling quarter. From his tenth floor window he could see Union Square, dimly lit in the misty night. Farther off, on the unseen Bay, foghorns were hooting.

“If you’ll just place it gently in my hand.”

“Sure thing, grandpappy. Sorry I—”

Whump! Bam!

“Glory be!” gasped the old man.

Bam! Boom!

“What the heck’s going on?” Smitty wanted to know.

The strange bangs and minor explosions were emanating from the bathroom.

“We been having a little trouble with the plumbing . . .”

“That ain’t pipes making that noise.” Smitty strode to the bathroom door, grabbed it open.

“Close that door, halfwit.”

“Who you calling a . . . Holy Moley!”

A small man in an ill-fitting suit was kneeling on the floor beside the claw-footed white bathtub. His headgear, a wrinkled plaid cap, was on the floor between him and a large black satchel. He was sixty-one years old and his grey-brown hair stood straight up on his head.

“Go away, you bellowing oaf, and allow me to work in peace and quiet,” the little man ordered.

“Geeze,” exclaimed Smitty, mouth agape. “It’s Uncle Algernon.”

The kneeling man hunched his shoulders, glanced up at the giant. “Ah, it’s little Algy,” he said, with a nasal chuckle. “Good to see you again, my boy. Indeed I might go so far as to state—”

“Don’t call me Algy,” Smitty’s full and entire name was Algernon Heathcote Smith, but he didn’t like to be reminded of it. “What in blazes are you doing with my bathtub?”

“Algy, my boy, if I give you a nice glittering ten-cent piece, will you go out and treat yourself to an ice cream cone?”

The giant made a rumbling sound in his chest. “Hey, Uncle Algernon, I’m a grownup man now, remember?”

His rumpled uncle stood up, took a step back to study him. “So you are,” decided Dr. Algernon Heathcote. “It’s a shame you didn’t take more after your mother. Had I but known then what I know now about genetics I might—”

“What’s all that gunk in my bathtub?”

“What gunk?”

Smitty gestured at the tub, which was full almost to the brim with a purplish liquid. “That purple gunk.”

“It wasn’t supposed to turn purple.”

“Purple, green or tutti frutti . . . what is it?”

“I was suddenly struck with a great notion about how to construct a more efficient torpedo and since—”

“Ahem,” said the bellhop, clearing his throat. This brought on a fit of coughing.

Running out into the next room, Smitty slapped the old man on the back. “Take it easy, pops.”

“Will you be needing me any further, sir?”

“Naw you can take off.”

The old man lowered his voice. “Would you like me to whistle up the coppers to help you handle that screwball in there?”

Smitty shook his head. “That screwball is my uncle.”

“Well, there’s a black sheep in every family,” said the old bellboy as he shuffled toward the door. “My cousin Garret has been out of work since—”

The giant gave him a gentle shove into the hall and closed the door.

“Excelsior!” shouted his uncle in the bathroom.

“Now what?”

“I was merely exclaiming ‘excelsior’, as scientists are wont to do when in the throes of a magnificent discovery.”

“That’s ‘eureka’ they holler. And what’s that silver thing floating in the purple gunk?”

“Don’t be a twit, Algy. Have you ever actually heard a real man of science exclaim ‘eur—’ ”

Wap! Blam!

The silver object had risen up almost entirely out of the water, snapping into two parts and emitting a purplish smoke and small explosive sounds.

“Not supposed to do that,” said Dr. Algernon Heathcote, scowling at the model of his latest invention. “Of all the halfwit things . . . well, so much for that idea.” He turned his back on the tub, picked up his satchel and went shambling out into the living room-bedroom.

“I thought you were hollering ‘eureka’ a minute ago.”

“It was ‘excelsior’ and I was premature.” His rumpled uncle scanned the room, selected a plump armchair and dropped into it. “Too hard.” He got up, tried the sofa. “Too soft.”

“Hey, look, Unc, stop playing Goldilocks and tell me what the heck you’re doing here in my room.”

“I’m your uncle.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“That don’t explain why I got purple gunk in my tub,” Smitty pointed out, “nor why you’re in my room at all.”

“Love laughs at locksmiths.”

“Huh?”

“My boy, you don’t think your technical skills were a gift of the gods, do you? You inherited them, from your respected uncle. I picked the lock.”

Smitty took that in. “Okay. Why?”

“Ah, what an unsentimental age this is. Does an old man need a reason to pay his best loved nephew a visit?”

“You didn’t have to break in.”

“Your train was two hours late,” replied his uncle. “And as I cooled my heels in the St. Mark’s palatial lobby I suddenly got the idea for the new torpedo. I needed a place to work immediately. Ergo—”

“I’m late because the train hit some poor sap.”

Uncle Algernon scowled, rubbing a hand over his not quite shaved chin. “On foot, was he?”

“In his car. The train really clobbered the guy. Going to take them a week to put him together again.”

“Do you have any details about the . . . accident?”

“Yeah, I got out and nosed around when the train stopped,” said the giant. “Thing’s kind of screwy, Unc. The witnesses say the guy deliberately stopped right on the tracks. I mean, it wasn’t like he was trying to beat the train to the crossing. He stopped his crate smackdab on the track and waited for the train to demolish him. Leastways, that’s how it looked to the old boys who saw it.”

“Heart attack?”

“Funny coincidence that he’d have it exactly on that spot. A few feet either way and the train’d have missed him,” said Smitty. “And one of the old guys says he saw the driver turn off his headlights. You know, like he maybe wanted to get hit.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I know what killed that man, Algy,” said his uncle. “It was a machine, about the size of a portable typewriter case. When it’s turned on and directed at a subject, that subject must do exactly as bidden. Even if it means killing himself.”

“Sounds pretty goofy to me,” said Smitty. “How come you know so much about this gadget?”

“Because, my boy,” said Uncle Algernon, “I invented it.”

At first he thought it was only fog. A streamer of fog twisting around the red-orange metal strut of the bridge. It couldn’t be a scarf.

Then a wind gust lifted a patch of fog and Don Early saw the car stopped up ahead. Slamming on the brakes, he turned off the motor, slid across the seat, and jumped out onto the traffic lane.

He could feel the Golden Gate Bridge shaking beneath his feet, throbbing with the motion of the cars.

“Miss,” he called, “is something wrong?”

A stupid opening maybe. But how do you start a conversation with somebody who’s about to throw herself into San Francisco Bay?

The girl was tall, her long blond hair fluttering, tangled with the white scarf around her neck. She was wearing only a simple black dress. No coat and, Early noticed, no shoes.

“Miss . . .”

She was on the pedestrain catwalk, one hand resting on the railing. “Stop the car . . . get out . . .” she was saying to herself. She pulled herself up until she was standing on the railing. Her hair fluttered more wildly. The scarf broke free, went spinning away into the bridge cables. “. . . climb over the rail and . . .”

Early ran. He reached out, grabbed her slim legs with both arms.

“. . . jump . . . jump into the water below . . . jump into . . .” She struggled against him, striking at his face with her fisted hands. Yet she never really looked at him.

Early pulled hard. “Come down. Damn it!”

Then they both toppled.

Back onto the catwalk.

“. . . climb over the rail . . .” said the blond girl as she tried to claw his eyes.

The fog circling them was growing brighter, glowing a sparkling yellow. More cars were stopping.

“Hey, what gives?”

“He’s trying to murder that girl.”

Early grasped the girl’s left arm, got it twisted behind her.

“. . . jump into the water below . . .”

He hesitated a second, then slapped her across the face.

“Hey, he slugged her.”

“Let’s go, Phil, it’s only a family quarrel.”

The blond girl blinked. She opened her mouth slightly, ran her tongue across her upper lip. “I don’t . . .”

“Take it easy,” Early told her. “You’re okay now.”

She had that frightened, puzzled look of a suddenly wakened child. “I . . . I can’t quite . . . where is this?”

“Middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“My god,” she said, putting her bare arms around him. “I’m afraid of high places.”

A car door slammed. “Okay, buddy, what’s the ruckus about?” asked the thickset uniformed patrolman who came trotting up.