Sid saw that she was at a telephone, placing a call.
Then he heard a humming noise from behind the door where Sands had barricaded himself. It was a high, buzzing note, such as is made by a high-frequency current meeting with resistance.
“Quick, Ruby! Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, and came to him. “I’ve called the police.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Just what you thought — absolute zero. Crome perfected the process by which any form of cell life could be made receptive to a certain peculiar etheric current. But there had to be a certain chemical affinity first.
“He achieved this by putting a powder in the hair of his victims. The powder irritated the scalp, but it did something to the nerve ends which made them receptive to the current.
“I mentioned your theory to Sands. At the time I didn’t know about the powder. But I had noticed that when the banker was talking with Captain Harder, Sands had flipped some ashes from the end of his cigarette so that they had lit on the hair on the back of Soloman’s head, and that Soloman had started to rub at his head shortly afterward as though he had been irritated by an itching of the scalp.
“Then Sands made the same gesture while he was talking with me. He left. I felt an itching, and wondered. So I washed my head thoroughly. Then I thought I would leave my clothes where Sands could find them, make him think he’d eliminated me. I was not certain my suspicions were correct, but I was willing to take a chance. I called you to tell you, and then I felt a most awful chill. It started at the roots of my hair and seemed to drain the very warmth right out of my nerves.
“I guess the washing hadn’t removed all of that powder, just enough to keep me from being killed. I became unconscious. When I came to, I was in Sands’s car. I supposed he had dropped in to make certain his machine had done the work.
“You know the rest... But how did you know where to look for me?”
Rodney shook his head dubiously.
“I guess my brains must have been dead, or I’d have known long before. You see, the man who wrote the letters seemed to know everything that had taken place in Captain Harder’s office when we were called in to identify that last letter from Dangerfield.
“Yet there was no dictograph found there. It might have been something connected with television, or, more likely, it might have been because some one who was there was the one who was writing those letters.
“If the story Sands had told had been true, the man who was writing the letters had listened in on what was going on in the captain’s office, had written the warning note, had known just where Sands was going to be in his automobile, and had tossed it in.
“That was pretty improbable. It was much more likely that Sands had slipped out long enough to have written the letter and then brought it in with that wild story about men crowding him to the curb.
“Then, again, Sands carefully managed to sneak away when Harder raided that loft building. He really did it to notify the crazy scientist that the hiding place had been discovered.
“Even before you telephoned, I should have known Sands was in with the scientist. Afterward, it was, of course, apparent. You had seen some powder placed in Soloman’s hair. That meant it must have been done when you were present. That narrowed the list of suspects to those who were also present.
“There were literally dozens of clues pointing to Sands. He was naturally sore at the banker for not coming through with the money. If they’d received it, they’d have killed Danger-field anyhow. And Sands was to deliver that money. Simple enough for him to have pretended to drop the package into the receptacle, and simply gone on...”
A siren wailed.
There was a pound of surging feet on the stairs, blue-coated figures swarming over the place.
“He’s behind that door, boys,” Rodney said, “and he’s armed.”
“No use getting killed, men,” said the officer in charge. “Shoot the door down.”
Guns boomed into action. The lock twisted. The wood splintered and shattered. The door quivered, then slowly swung open as the wood was literally torn away from the lock.
Guns at ready, the men moved into the room.
They found a machine, very similar to the machine which had been found in the laboratory of the scientist. It had been riddled with gunfire.
They found an empty suit of clothes.
Rodney identified them as being the clothes Sands had worn when he last saw the man. The clothes were empty, and were cold to the touch. Around the collar, where there had been a little moisture, there was a rim of frost.
There was no outlet from the room, no chance for escape.
Ruby looked at Sid Rodney, nodded.
“He’s gone,” she said.
Rodney took her hand.
“Anyhow, sister, I got here in time.”
She smiled at him.
“Gee, Sid, let’s tie a can to that brother-and-sister stuff. I thought I had to fight love to make a career, but when I heard your steps on the stairs, just when I’d given up hope...”
“Can you make a report on what happened?” asked the sergeant, still looking at the cold clothes on the floor.
There was no answer.
Sid Rodney answered in muffled tones.
“Not right now,” he said. “I’m busy.”
Monkey Eyes
Author’s Note
I guess all of us writers dabble in the occult more or less. I was fooling around with it twelve or fifteen years ago, and I had a funny experience with a man who claimed to be a priest of Hanuman.
When you come right down to it what is a monkey?
The priests of Hanuman claim he’s a man that got started downward in the chain of reincarnation. He was a man. Now he’s something less than a man, and we call him a monkey.
Science tells us he’s a creature that hasn’t evolved to the same extent as a man. Or rather that man has evolved from a “missing link” up from the monkey family.
Rob them of their differentiations in terminology and there’s not such a great deal of difference between the two schools of thought. It would be interesting to turn the clock back a few million years and see what the answer really is, or was.
This chap that I knew wouldn’t ever admit he worshiped monkeys. Rather he felt he had devoted his life to hastening the monkey karma which would bring them back to the estate of man.
I remembered his theories, and one time when l was watching a serious-faced monkey with moist, sad eyes do clowning at the bidding of the dirty organ grinder who “owned” him l tried to put some of his theories in practice. I don’t know exactly what happened. Call it hypnotism or animal magnetism or anything you want, but the monkey came to me and clung to me, Begged me for something. It broke up the show. I felt conspicuous and embarrassed, and got away. Thereby I probably turned away from what might have developed into something a little more significant than an adventure.
But some day when you get the eyes of a monkey, remember something of the theory of the priests of Hanuman. Will with all your deepest sympathy to help speed that monkey along the path of evolution, or of reincarnation.
And if you’re really thinking of what you’re trying to think about, instead of being conscious of the ego that’s thinking the thoughts — well, something may happen. It’s worth trying.
And I’ve heard stories of what goes on in the jungle — little still whispers, they are. They can’t be authenticated, and they can’t be repeated; but they’re persistent whispers. Fictionized they make good stories. Perhaps some reader can tell us something about those whispers. Perhaps “Monkey Eyes” isn’t quite as much fiction as it might appear. All I can say is it’s founded, not on fact, but on whispers.