But she had already scurried away toward the house. Dear little Elza! I wished then, for the hundredth time, that I was a man of wealth--or at least, not as poor as a tower timekeeper. True, I made fair money--but the urge to spend it recklessly dominated me. I decided in that moment, to reform for good; and lay by enough to justify asking a woman to be my wife.
We reclined on a mossy bank in the grove of trees, so thick a grove that it hid the house from our sight.
The doctor extinguished the glowing lights with which the tree-branches were dotted. We were in the semi-darkness of a beautiful, moonlit night.
"Don"t go to sleep, Jac!"
I became aware that Georg and his father were smiling at me.
I sat up, snapping my wits into alertness. "No. Of course not. I guess I"m tired. You"ve no idea what the office was like tonight. Roaring."
"I can imagine," Georg said. "You were at Park Sixty when the President fell, weren"t you?"
"Yes. But I wasn"t supposed to be. I wasn"t a.s.signed to that. How did you guess?"
"Elza saw you. She had our finder on you--I couldn"t push her away from it." His slow smile was quizzical.
"On me? In all that crowd. She must have searched about very carefully to----"
I stopped; I could feel my cheeks burning, and was glad of the dimness there under the trees.
"She did," said Georg.
"I sent for you, Jac," Dr. Brende interjected abstractedly, "because----"
But Georg checked him. "Not now, father. Someone--anyone--might pick you up. Your words--or read your lips--there"s light enough here to register on a finder."
The doctor nodded. "He"s afraid--you see, Jac, it"s these Venus----"
"Father--please. It"s a long chance--but why take any? We can insulate in the house."
The chance that someone who shouldn"t be, was tuned to us as we sat there in that lonely grove! With the doctor"s widespread reputation--his more than national prominence--it did not seem to me to be such a long chance either, on this, of all nights.
"As you say, no use in putting private things into the public air," I remarked; and I felt then as though a thousand hostile eyes and ears were watching and listening. "We can talk of what everybody knows,"
Georg commented. "The Martian Ruler of the Little People was a.s.sa.s.sinated an hour ago. You heard that coming up?"
"No," I said; but I had imagined as much. "Did they say--"
"They said nothing," Dr. Brende put in. "The flash of a dozen helioed words--no more."
"It went dark, like Venus?"
"No. Just discontinued. I judge they"re excited up there--the Bureau disorganized perhaps--I don"t know. That was the last we got at the house, just before you came down. There may be something in there now--you Inter-Allied people are pretty reliable."
The ruler of the Venus Central State, the leading monarch of Mars, and our three chief executives of Earth--murdered almost simultaneously! It was incredible--any one of the murders would have been incredible--yet it was true.
There had been times--in the Inter-Allied Office, particularly--when I had been insulated from aerial eavesdropping. But never had I felt the need of it more than now. A constraint fell over me; I seemed afraid to say anything. I think we all three felt very much like that; and it was a relief when Elza arrived with my dainty little meal.
"Any word from Mars, Elza?" her father asked.
She sat down beside me, helping me to the food.
"I did not look," she answered.
She did not look, because she was busy preparing my meal! Dear little Elza! And because of my accursed extravagance--my poverty--no word of love had ever pa.s.sed between us!
I thought I had never seen Elza so beautiful as this moment. A slim little thing, perfectly formed and matured, and inches shorter than I.
Thick brown hair braided, and hanging below her waist. A face--pretty as her mother"s must have been--yet intellectual as her father"s.
I had taken Elza to the great music festivals of the city, and counted her the best dressed girl in all the vast throng. Tonight she was dressed simply. A grey-blue, tubular sort of skirt, clinging close to the lines of her figure and split at the side for walking; a tight-fitting bodice, light in color (a man knows little of the technicalities of such things); throat bare, with a flaring rolled collar behind--a throat like a rose-petal with the moonlight on it; arms bare, save for the upper, triangular sleeves.
It must suffice; I can only say she was adorable. Almost in silence I ate my meal, with her beside me.
Georg went into the house once, to consult the news-tape. It was crowded with Earth events--excitement, confusion everywhere--inconsequential reports, they seemed, by comparison with what had gone before. But of helios from Mars, or Venus, there were none reported. Of Venus, the tape said nothing save that each of our westward stations was vainly calling in turn, as the planet dropped toward its horizon.
I finished my meal--too leisurely for Georg and the doctor; and then we all went into the house, to the insulated room where at last we could talk openly.
As we entered the main corridor, we heard the low voice of the Inter-Allied news-announcer, coming from the disc in a room nearby.
_"And Venus----"_
The words caught our attention. We hurried in, and stood by the Inter-Allied equipment. Georg picked up the pile of tape whereon the announcer"s words were being printed. He ran back over it.
"Another helio from Venus!" he exclaimed. "Ten minutes ago."
And then I saw his lips go tight together. He made no move to hide the tape from Elza, but she was beside him and already reading it. Her fingers switched off the announcer"s droning voice.
_"Pacific Coastal Station,"_ Elza read. In the sudden silence of the room her voice was low, clear, and steady, though her hands were trembling. _"P.C.S. 10.42 Venus helio. "Defeat! Beware Tarrano! Notify your Dr. Brende in Eurasia, danger.""_
We men stared at each other. But Elza went on reading.
_"P.C.S. 10.44 Venus helio. "Lost! No more! Smashing apparatus!" The Venus sending station went dark at 10.44.30. Hawaiian station will call later, but have little hope of re-establishing connection. Tokyohama 10.46 Official, via Potomac National Headquarters. Excitement here continues. Levels crowded----"_
Elza dropped the tape. "That"s all of importance. Venus Central Station warning _you_, father."
A buzz across the room called the doctor to his personal receiver. It was a message in code from Potomac National Headquarters. We watched the queer-looking characters printing on the tape. Very softly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, Georg decoded it.
_"Dr. Brende, see P.C.S. 10.42, warning you, probably of Venus immigrants now here. Do you need guard? Or will you come to Washington at once for personal safety?"_
"Father!" cried Elza.
Georg burst out. "Enough of this. We cannot--dare not talk in here.
Father, come----"
We went out into the corridor again, across which was the small room insulated from all aerial vibrations. In the corridor a figure was standing--the one other member of the Brende household--the maid-servant, a girl about Elza"s age. I knew her well, of course, but this evening I had forgotten her existence. She was standing in the corridor. Did I imagine it, or had she been gazing up at the mechanism ten feet above the floor--the mechanism controlling the insulated room?
"You wish me, Miss Elza? I thought I heard you call."
"No, Ahla, not "til later."