The doctor, it seemed, was in, but would see no one that day. It would be necessary to make an appointment. Art Swift made an appointment for the latter part of the week, but insisted upon an immediate interview. The nurse withdrew to take the message to the inner office. She was gone for some time. Swift felt the uncomfortable feeling which he experienced at times when he felt people were talking about him.
While he was sitting there, twisting his fingers, his brain racing with thoughts and conjectures, he heard the telephone on the desk at his elbow give a series of clicks.
The desk, he saw, was one where the surgical nurse held forth when not busy elsewhere. He wondered if the telephone was merely an extension of the telephone in the private office and if the clicking of the bell clapper denoted a conversation starting by the removal of the other receiver.
Casually, he half turned in his chair. The girl at the desk was clacking out letters on the typewriter. Her eyes seemed to be entirely occupied. Stretching forth an arm, moving with the air of one who is bored and restless, Swift inserted his hand under the receiver, cupped the palm and gently lifted the receiver so that the spring tension on the hook caused a contact.
Instantly he heard the metallic raspings from the receiver which showed a conversation was being carried on over the line. Swift was sitting in a chair which brought his ear not very far from the level of the desk. He managed to work a book under the receiver, holding it up a half inch or more from the hook. Then he slumped down until his ear was but an inch or two from the edge of the desk.
The conversation became faintly audible.
“Send a messenger after it right away. We need some...”
“Can’t let you have it for half an hour.”
“All right. They’re raising hell, making a house-to-house search of the city. Better be careful about mentioning that ring. Somebody may ask you about it.”
“No chance of that. Send a messenger directly to room 920, knock once, then pause and knock twice. Will I know this messenger?”
“No, this will be a new one.”
“All right. G’by.”
“G’by.”
There was a series of clicks from the wire. Swift slipped the book out from under the receiver. The girl at the other desk continued tapping the keys of the typewriter.
The surgical nurse appeared, frowning, to communicate the doctor’s refusal to see any one except by appointment. Swift acknowledged defeat and left the office.
His mind fairly reeled with the information he had received. The telephone conversation doubtless referred to the search that was being made for the tall man with the odd ring. It was very possible that Dr. Cassius Zean was none other than the mysterious and sinister Zin Zandor.
Swift debated whether to call up Searle, finally decided to do so. He went to a public telephone, called the newspaper office, and found that Searle was out. He left a message for him.
“Tell him I’ve got something hot. I’ll call again in half an hour. If he comes in, have him wait.”
Chapter 3
Unchained Lightning
As he hung up the telephone, a daring thought possessed Swift.
Why not stroll up to room 920, knock once, pause, and then knock twice? The voice over the telephone had said the doctor wouldn’t know the messenger!
The thought had no sooner entered Swift’s mind than it crystallized into action. He sprinted for the elevator, was whisked to the ninth floor and walked the corridor upon nervously impatient feet.
At 920 he paused, contemplated the plain door for several seconds, was painfully conscious of the throbbing of his pulse, and knocked. He paused, knocked twice.
There was a vague shadow flitting over the ground glass square. Then the shadow took bulk and sharpness of outline. Swift had visions of a tall, sinister figure with a cold eye, and was absolutely unprepared for the short, stumpy man with fleshy jowls who glared at him.
“Well?”
“Messenger. Told to get somethin’ here,” said Swift, slurring his words together to disguise his nervousness.
The doctor glowered at him from eyes that were as twin chunks of polished ebony.
“Come in,” he said. “You’re early.”
“Am I?” asked Swift, striving to appear casually unconcerned. “I was told to come in half an hour. I walked around for a while, didn’t have my watch.”
The doctor grunted.
Swift noticed that he was slow and lagging in his movements, that his lips were a sickly blue, that the flesh sagged down in flabby pouches. There were pouches beneath the eyes, pouches below the cheek bones, a pouch below the chin, and a sagging pouch at the belt. The doctor was wheezing from the effort of walking toward the door.
He went to the door on his right, which Swift surmised must lead to the reception room, and locked it. Then he turned toward a door enameled a pure white.
“Just making a final test,” he said.
Art Swift got a glimpse of a long, well-lighted room. There were white tables, chairs, a long sink, a battery of test tubes, bottles, retorts, microscopes, and a cage full of canaries. These canaries sang in nervous, chirping voices, fluttering restlessly from perch to perch.
Dr. Zean left the door open as he entered the room.
“Sit down,” he wheezed over his right shoulder. “You must be the man that’s detailed to cover Washington.”
Swift resolved on a bold stroke.
“I am,” he said. “The chief sent me down here to get my stuff and get started.”
“Know how to use it?”
“Only generally. I understood you were to give me instructions.”
The doctor turned, frowned. His ebony black eyes bored into Swift’s features. The blued, flabby lips quivered.
“All damn foolishness trying to— Oh, well, you aren’t to blame.”
He reached in the cage. The birds fluttered their protests at the invading hand, flung themselves against the gilded bars. At length the fat fingers closed about a slim, yellow body. The bird gave a shrill cry of alarm, then was pulled from the cage, wings fluttering and flapping, occasional feathers drifting to the floor.
Dr. Zean raised a hypodermic, jabbed the needle into the fluttering bird. Almost instantly there came a rapid change. The fluttering wings began to move more rapidly. They gave forth a low humming sound.
“Watch,” said the doctor and liberated the bird.
The wings were moving so fast now that it was impossible to see them. They were like the wings of a humming bird, giving forth a low, droning sound. The canary hung for a split fraction of a second, poised in the air, then zipped into flight. Such a flight it was!
The bird seemed like a yellow streak, moving with incredible speed. Swift turned his head to follow the flight, turned it back again. Try as he would, he could not keep the bird in sight. Neither could he lose sight of it. The canary was merely a flash of yellow.
So rapidly did it move that the eye could see it only as a swift flicker of motion. Like an electric spark, it was impossible even to tell the direction of its flight. One time the bird seemed to be going in one direction, yet almost immediately it appeared in the opposite side of the room.
No direction in which Swift could direct his eyes but what that droning yellow streak zipped across his field of vision with such rapidity that it seemed there must be half a dozen of the birds in the air at once. In fact, there were several occasions when there seemed to be three different birds flying in opposite directions at the same time.