“Open it.”
Buck obeyed and the lights came up. He sighed within himself at beholding everything orderly, the bed coverlet drawn up and giving a ‘not-slept-in’ appearance. The guard looked under the bed, then straightened and went to the wardrobe and slid back the door. The rails were empty.
“Very well,” he said, turning. “I’ll take a look at the other appointments in the house and then go — and I think you are a very foolish man, Mister Cardew. You will have to do a lot of thinking to explain away this!” and he held up the plastic bag significantly.
Buck did not answer. A glint of fury in his eyes he kept beside the guard until he had finally satisfied himself — so far as he could tell — that the girl he sought was nowhere in the house. Only then did he depart, and even then Buck waited until the noise of the official car died away in the distance.
“Blast!” he muttered to himself, and then at a sudden clangor from the kitchen he hurried in to find Lucy just disentangling herself from the washing-machine.
“Nice cold thing to hide in,” she panted as he helped her free.
“You — you were in there?” Buck gasped. “Sweet cosmos, thank heaven he saw your old clothes, just as he was about to look in this washer.”
“My clothes?” Lucy’s face tautened visibly.
“He took them, I’m afraid — and trouble will be bound to follow. We’d better go up and tell Eva just how we’re fixed. Come along.”
They hurried upstairs together, in time to discover Eva just emerging from the bedroom.
“How’s things?” she asked anxiously. “I managed to get Lucy’s room straight in time, but—”
“We’re in trouble,” Buck broke in. “Serious trouble — and I don’t know how long it’ll be before the storm breaks. I’d ring Clem and ask his advice only the lines might be tapped. Better sit tight till morning if we can.”
Meantime Clem was just being aroused by the zealous guard, and much the same routine was followed as at Buck’s house. Clem, a far more wary man than Buck, made no statements at all. He had nothing to fear since his bachelor home was entirely deserted except for himself.
“Can you explain clothes belonging to a period many hundreds of years old being found in Mister Cardew’s kitchen?” the guard asked, as he was about to leave. He jerked at the bag he was carrying.
“How can I?” Clem asked quietly. “Buck Cardew may be my business partner but I don’t know what he does with his private life. You’re wasting your time asking, officer.”
“I never waste my time, Mister Bradley: I’m not allowed to. I am simply giving you the opportunity to explain away a woman with no index-card with whom you and Mister Cardew are definitely connected.”
“If I have anything to explain it will not be to you.”
The guard hesitated, then with a shrug he went on his way. He finished up at the Headquarters Building where he made out his report. There was nothing more he could do now until he could see the Master, and that would not be until morning.
When morning came he presented himself in the great and isolated sanctuary far above the town, clutching his plastic bag. The Master, looking not in the least refreshed after a night’s sleep, eyed him questioningly,
“Reporting investigation into mystery of Worker Ten, Master, as instructed,” the guard explained.
“Ah, yes. I would remark that guards are supposed to be spruce and freshly-shaved. You are a disgrace to your uniform!”
“I apologize, Master. This matter is so very urgent. I have not located the woman we’re seeking, but I did find these articles of feminine apparel in Mister Cardew’s home, pushed into a clothes-basket. The significant thing is that the clothes belong to a period of many centuries ago, so I am at a loss to understand it. See for yourself, Master.”
Eagerly the guard opened the hermetically self-sealed bag top and tipped it upside down over a clear space on the desk. Shaking vigorously he watched for the clothes to tumble out…instead there was a sigh of escaping air — which had caused the bag to retain its shape overnight — and what appeared to be a cloud of dust, which dissipated as the air escaped from the bag. Otherwise the bag was completely empty.
“Well?” The Master raised his eyebrows.
“I–I just don’t understand it, Master! This bag has never left me all night. There was a dress and — and other things, a pair of ancient shoes too, and a belt.…”
Silence. Then the Master sat back in his chair. “I would suggest you shave,” he said, “and then, when you have thoroughly cleared your mind, come back and explain. This kind of work will not do you any good, Officer Sixty-Seven. That is all.”
“But, Master, I tell you—”
“That — is all!”
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PAST IS PRESENT
In the east of the great city the experts in the analytical laboratory were at work. Under intensely powerful lights and surrounded with instruments, they had sections of the steel which had proved faulty in the great Mid-City Bridge, and the more they examined the metal the more puzzled they became.
Barnes, leading technician of the group, finally summed the whole analysis up in one word.
“Age!” he said, and gave a bewildered glance at the men around him.
“That’s what it looks like, but it’s incredible,” declared Forsythe. “This sort of steel, the same as we use on our cannon-ball express train tracks, is tested to the limit and it certainly wasn’t cast more than a hundred-and-fifty years ago. Then there’s been regular overhauling—”
“The fact remains,” Barnes interrupted irritably, “that age is the cause of this trouble. The metal itself has corroded away. It’s like a rotten biscuit inside. Honeycombed and crawling with advanced ferrous oxide decay. That means age no matter how you look at it.”
“And the same thing can be said of that flywheel which burst apart in the power house,” remarked Dawlish, head of the metallurgy branch. “Take a look at this sample: it’s from the flywheel.”
The puzzled but interested men peered at it as it lay in the scientist’s hand, and there was no gainsaying the fact that it had the same ‘honeycomb’ texture as the steel from the bridge. It looked exactly like wood that has been eaten through by white ants.
“Well,” Barnes said at length, “we’ve found the reason even if we can’t explain how it occurred. Only answer I can think of is sabotage. Maybe the Eastern agents are using some kind of electronic device, which rots the composition of metals. We’d better report it to the Master and let him take the responsibility. After all, we’re not magicians.…”
So the Master was informed and brooded, definitely perplexed, over the problem. He had good reason for being worried, for the case of the flywheel and the Mid-City Bridge was not the only one before him for consideration. In more than a dozen places steel had behaved contrary to law. In fact, several buildings had been endangered by the mysterious collapse of some of their supporting girders. The railroads too had experienced two disasters caused by the rotting of certain sections of the rails.
Finally the Master called a conference, in mid-morning, and attending it were all the men charged with keeping law and order throughout the city and the western hemisphere generally. They waited for the tired man at the desk to speak. After surveying his reports, he spoke quietly. “Gentlemen, we have in our midst a group of ruthless saboteurs who are doing their best to wreck our utilities and our morale. What is more, if they keep on successfully practicing their diabolical art, they will succeed in their object. The people, not un-naturally, are raising a storm of protest over these mysterious and dangerous happenings. Somehow we have got to get to the root of this insidious attack and smash the perpetrators!”