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. Whatever it was, there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had a.s.saulted 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 a.s.sault. 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 impa.s.sible 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 pa.s.sed 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 bas.e.m.e.nt window yawned with its wide black opening.
"I"ll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly we pa.s.sed 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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.