Lord of the Silent Death
Date: 2021-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Archaeologists -- Fiction; Weapons -- Fiction; Museums -- Fiction

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Title: Lord of the Silent Death

Author: Robert Moore Williams

Release date: March 11, 2021 [eBook #64790]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64790

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORD OF THE SILENT DEATH ***

LORD of the SILENT DEATH

by ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet December 40.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Death came out of a box and stalked through the streets of Chicago.

Samuel Morton found the box in Asia Minor, in a niche in the tomb of a forgotten Sumerian king, and not being able to open it, brought it back to this country with him. Morton was an archeologist, on the staff of the Asia Museum, located in South Chicago.

After months of effort, he succeeded, one hot August afternoon, in opening the box. But the death that lurked in it did not strike then. It waited.

Morton was alone that night, in the basement of the museum, trying to decipher the hieroglyphics engraved on the lid of the box—hieroglyphics written in no known language—when the silence came. The first sound to disappear was the rattle of the street cars on the surface line a block distant.

Morton was too engrossed in his work to notice that he could no longer hear the cars.

Then the soft rustle of the blower fan pushing cool air into the hot basement went into silence.

He still didn't notice the cessation of sound, did not realize that incredible death was creeping closer to him every second.

Even when the energetic tick of the alarm clock sitting on a mummy case was no longer audible, Morton did not sense that death was near. He was lost in his work.

But when he could no longer hear the scratch of his pen on the paper, he realized that something was happening. He looked up.

Morton was a solidly built, craggy giant. His face burned a deep brown by the sun of the Arabian desert, a shock of white hair that for days was undisturbed by brush or comb, he sat in his chair, every sense suddenly alert. His eyes raced over the room, seeking the cause of the uncanny silence.

He saw nothing.

But he recognized the presence of danger and reached for the telephone. It was the last move he ever made. As his fingers closed around the instrument, the silence hit him.

It had the effect of a physical blow. The smack of a prizefighter's fist would not have rocked him more. As he gasped one word into the telephone, his body seemed to be lifted clear out of the chair. His muscles, tensing involuntarily, hurled him upward, like a grotesque jack-in-the-box that has been suddenly released. He hit the chair as he fell, crashing it to the floor with him.

His body writhed, a slow, tortuous twisting. Muscles swelled in his throat as he screamed in pain. But no sound came.

The threshing of his heavy body on the concrete floor produced no sound. The scream was blotted into utter silence.

Before the muscular writhing had ceased, his flesh began to change color. The tan of his face, stamped with lines of torture, became a reddish pink. Thousands of microscopic pinpoints of color spread in a creeping tide over his body.

The silence held. Viciously, as though making certain no more life was left in his body, the silence held.

When it lifted, went into nothingness, vanished, not more than a minute had passed.

But in that minute Samuel Morton had died.

The Lord of the Silent Death had emerged from the cell which had held him imprisoned for ages.

"Rocks" Malone—the name "Rocks" came from his calling—lived two blocks from the Asian Museum. But that wasn't his fault. He would have lived nearer if he could have found a room. In fact, for one deliriously happy month, he had slept on a cot in the basement of the museum. Then Sharp, the thin-faced business manager who had charge of the property and the finances, had caught him and given him the bounce.

"Malone, get the hell out of here," Sharp said. "Of all the damned fools we have around here, you are probably the worst. I should think you would get enough archeology just by spending fourteen hours a day here."

"Aw, hell, I'm not hurting anything. Why can't I sleep here if I want to?" Rocks had answered.

"Because it is against the regulations, and you know it. Go on, now, before I report you to the Board."

Grumbling, Rocks had taken his cot and left. And Sharp had reported him to the board anyhow, but that august body, in view of his youth and the pathetic interest he had in archeology, had not reprimanded him. They were archeologists themselves and they knew how the science gets into the blood and bones of a man. Secretly, they had rather approved of Rocks trying to sleep in the basement, so he could be near his beloved relics of dead and gone civilizations. They were grooming him for a place with the next expedition. "As likely a lad as I have ever seen," old Andreas McCumber had said about him. In his day McCumber had dug into half the buried cities in Asia Minor and it was his boast that he knew a man who had the makings of an archeologist when he saw one. "Of course he's young yet. But a little seasoning will cure that." Rocks was twenty-three, but to McCumber, who was past seventy, twenty-three was only late boyhood. "Besides," McCumber had rumbled in his beard at the board meeting. "Penny will—ah—comb my whiskers—if she—ah—discovers that I have permitted him to sleep in the basement."

Penny was McCumber's grand-daughter.

But Rocks had already located a room about two blocks from the museum and had moved in.

That was why the police found him so quickly.

It was an August night, as hot as hades, and Rocks was sleeping with both feet practically out the window, to take advantage of the late breeze. He awakened to the sound of his landlady's protesting voice.

"But I tell you, Officer, you can't want Mr. Malone. He's a fine boy and I will vouch for him personally. I'm sure he hasn't done anything wrong."

"I'm not saying he's done anything wrong, madam," a bass rumble answered. "But the officer on the beat said he lived here."

A rap sounded on the door. Rocks took his feet out of the window and said, "Come in."

A blue-coated figure thrust his head in. "You Malone?" he inquired.

"Yes. What's wrong?"

"We want you over at the Museum."

Rocks was already grabbing for his clothes, jerking them on over his pajamas. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

The cop shook his head. He was still a little white around the gills. "We don't know what's happened. The sawbones wasn't there when I left. But we want you to identify a man."

"Why can't he identify himself?"

The officer wiped perspiration from his face. "Because he's dead."

"Dead!" The word leaped from Rocks' lips. The first shiver of fear knifed through him. He was not yet wide awake and he hadn't fully comprehended what the officer wanted. But that single word shocked him to instant wakefulness.

In the basement of the museum they found three men talking earnestly in a corner. They weren't in uniform but their bearing fairly shouted "Detective!" They looked scared. Rocks didn't know it then, but these three men belonged to the homicide squad. They were accustomed to looking at violent death in all its forms. Stiffs didn't scare them.

But they were scared.

They had the uneasy alertness of the man-hunter who senses danger.

His escort turned Rocks over to them.

"I'm Kennedy; homicide bureau," said one of them. He had a heavy, impassive face and eyes that were drills of jet. "Sorry to bother you, Malone. You work here?"

"I'm on the staff."

"Good. The doc is already here. We want you to identify a body, if you can. Come this way."

Kennedy led Rocks to the large basement room, the other two plain-clothesmen following behind.

This was the room where the specimens brought back from the four corners of Asia were uncrated and cleaned and prepared for display on the floors above. Loot from the tomb of forgotten kings, bits of pottery from Ephesus, a winged bull carved out of the stone of Nineveh, mummy cases from Egypt—for Egypt was included by the museum—beads from the valley of the Tigris-Euphrates, big and little, the relics of lost and dead centuries were piled here. Even in the daylight the place was ghostly.

Photographers were popping flashlight bulbs and taking pictures of the exact position of the body. As Rocks entered they took their last picture and stood aside and the doctor from the coroner's office bent over the body and began his examination.

Then Rocks saw the body on the floor. He recoiled. "My God! That's Samuel Morton."

His respect for Morton amounted almost to reverence. Morton was a world-wide figure in the field of archeology, and to Rocks Malone, he was little short of a god. Rocks had looked up to this man, had longed to be like him. On the next expedition, Rocks was to go along as Morton's assistant.

Now Morton was dead.

"What—what happened?" Rocks whispered.

The doctor stood up. His face was ashen.

"That's what I would like to know—what happened. This man has been dead less than an hour."

"At eleven-thirty Central phoned in there was a receiver off the hook here and said the operator thought somebody had tried to call the police," Kennedy interrupted.

"Heh?" the doctor queried. His professional aplomb had deserted him completely. "The important point is: what was the cause of death? To my knowledge there is no record in medical history of a death like this. Look."

"I've already looked," Kennedy said, turning away. "Once is enough."

Rocks looked again at the solid, craggy face he had known so well. The skin had always been tanned, but now it was red. Puffed and discolored. And red—like a chunk of raw beefsteak, like the carcass of a skinned animal. The first impression he got was that the skin had been removed. But he bent over, fighting against the sickness in his stomach, and saw that the skin had not been removed. It had been punctured, in literally thousands of places. Morton's face looked like thousands of pins had been stuck in it. When the pins had been removed, the blood oozed through.

A later report by the medical examiner disclosed that there was not a spot on Morton's body that was not full of microscopic holes—millions of them. Even the soles of his feet, protected by his shoes, showed the same horrible markings.

But it was the coat that held Rocks' eyes. Where the doctor had taken hold of it, the cloth had crumbled. Rocks tested it. The cloth fell away in his fingers, fell into a dark ash. The cloth looked all right, until it was touched. Then it crumbled into a dust as fine as powder.

The hottest fire would not leave so fine an ash.

"What do you think killed him, Doc?" Kennedy asked.

The doctor brushed perspiration from his face. "Really, I could not hazard an opinion. There is nothing like this in medical records. It's appalling. I trust—ah—that it is not some new kind of plague. No, it couldn't be that. No disease would destroy his clothing. I can't even begin to guess what happened, but the body must be removed for a complete examination."

Rocks was so sunk in grief that he scarcely noticed the men who lifted all that was mortal of the old archeologist on to a stretcher.

Kennedy came to him and said sympathetically. "Don't take it so hard, Malone. Morton, I guess, was a friend of yours."

Rocks told the detective what the archeologist had meant to him. Kennedy's eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Malone. We'll do everything we can to discover what happened, but frankly I don't know which way to turn. I've been talking on the phone to some of the men who are in charge of the museum. McCumber was one, Sharp was another. They're on their way over here."

The detective hesitated. "Malone, maybe you can help us."

"I'll do anything I can."

"Good. When I talked to Mr. Sharp, he said, 'I knew something like this was going to happen. I knew it!' When I asked him what he meant he said something about a box that Morton had brought back with him from Asia."

"Box?" The touch of an eerie chill raced down Rocks' spine. "Yes. There it is, sitting on the scale we use to weigh specimens."

The lid was open.

"He—he must have opened it this afternoon," Rocks said.

He wondered what Morton had found in that box. Treasure—or something else? It was empty now, the lid back, the cunning combination lock visible.

But what had been in the box they did not know, until Sharp got there and told his story.

CHAPTER II

Sharp, the business manager, was a prim-faced nervous individual. He had an eye tick. It was working overtime now. He spoke rapidly, the words running over each other.

"Yes, yes, I'll tell you exactly what happened. It was horrible, terrible." He mopped his face. "Mr. Morton had just succeeded in opening this box when I entered."

"How long had the box been here?" Kennedy interrupted.

"I—ah—about three months have elapsed since Mr. Morton returned from his last expedition. He brought it back with him."

"Three months to open it?" Kennedy said doubtfully. "Why didn't he use a torch on it?"

"I think I can answer that," McCumber said. The old archeologist had arrived a few minutes after the business manager. He had received the news of the death of his associate calmly but it was obvious that he was deeply affected. He and Morton had been fellow workers for more than forty years. Now Morton was dead, and McCumber's sorrow was too deep for expression. It didn't show on his face. But when he entered the basement, he leaned rather heavily on his granddaughter's arm. Penny, who always drove his car for him, had driven him down. Now she stood, pale and silent, beside his chair.

"There were several reasons why we didn't use a cutting torch," McCumber said. "Foremost was the fact that, whatever the contents of the box were, we did not wish to damage them. Secondly, we felt that in time we would discover the secret of opening it. And in the third place, force would have ruined the delicate hieroglyphics inscribed on it. We especially did not want to do that."

The detective turned again to Sharp. "Will you tell us what was in the box, sir?"

The business manager moistened his lips. A hush fell over the group. The officer in uniform twisted uneasily. The two detectives tried to show nothing, but then forced expressions showed the fear that gnawed at them. Kennedy's black eyes were lances of apprehension.

Rocks Malone moved across the room and stood beside Penny, a gesture purely protective. His mind was in a turmoil as he waited for Sharp to speak. Was there a connection between that box and Morton's death? What kind of a connection? His eyes strayed toward it. Under the lights he could see the hieroglyphics delicately carved on it.

What was the message that the unknown writer had tried to convey with those wavy lines? Had he cut a warning sign, a—Hands Off—Danger—symbol to warn against opening it? Had—But Sharp was speaking.

"I had come down to the basement to discuss with Mr. Morton certain items in the budget for his next expedition. He had just opened the box. He said, 'Oh, I say, Sharp, come here, will you? I want you to tell me what you see in this box.'

"To be frank, I was curious about the contents myself. I, and I imagine everyone connected with the museum, had been of the opinion that perhaps the box contained treasure, possibly jewels, which in the present state of our finances, would be of great help to us."

Sharp hesitated, seeking words. From the night came the rattle of a street car and the clang of the motor-man's bell. The blower fan rustled as it pushed air into the basement. On the mummy case the alarm clock—set to remind Morton when it was time to quit work and go home—ticked noisily.

"What was in it?" Kennedy husked.

Sharp took a deep breath. "At first, I saw nothing, and the immediate impression I gained was that it was empty. Then, as I bent over to peer into the box, I caught a glimpse of its contents."

Everyone in the room leaned forward as Sharp hesitated. He said,

"I don't know what that thing in the box was. I can't ever hazard a guess. But a beam of light leaped at me from the box, and the light originated at a spot that was several inches above the bottom. In other words, it came from nothingness.

"As I straightened up, the light vanished. Morton said, 'Did you see that damned thing?' I asked him what it was. He didn't know but he seemed puzzled and perturbed and he asked me to look again.

"Then I began to see more clearly. There was something in the box, something that was almost invisible."

"Invisible?" Kennedy breathed huskily.

"Yes. Almost invisible. From certain positions we could see the contents of the receptacle—a smoky, misty mass. That's the only way I can describe it. A smoky mass. It was unreal, and just trying to look at it strained the eyes."

"What happened then?" Kennedy said.

"Morton thrust his hand into the box. And his hand disappeared!"

"What!"

"His fingers, up to the knuckles, simply disappeared. No, they weren't cut off. The effect was similar to thrusting the hand into a basin of murky water. Morton instantly jerked his hand out, and it was uninjured, except that the fingers were stained a faint red. The point is—there was something in the box that was almost invisible, and an object thrust into it was rendered invisible, too.

"Morton was tremendously puzzled. I can't recall his exact words, but he seemed to be of the opinion that the contents of the box were extra-dimensional."

"Extra-dimensional?" Kennedy interrogated.

"Something like that," Sharp admitted. "Oh I know it sounds utterly fantastic. I was of the opinion that Morton did not know what he was talking about, but later events showed me that I was wrong."

"What happened next?" the detective queried.

"This happened," Sharp answered. The man was trembling. The handkerchief with which he tried to mop his face fluttered in an unsteady hand.

"Either something came out of that box, or something came through that box and escaped into the basement!"

Sharp's eyes went over the room, jerking from object to object like a man who suspects the presence of an incredible enemy and is warily watching for that enemy to strike.

The action sent cold chills up Rocks Malone's back. Something had come out of that box. It might still be here in the museum. Sharp thought it might be. He was looking for it.

"Through the box?" McCumber spoke. "I don't understand. How could anything come through it?"

"I don't understand either," the business manager answered. "I'm only telling you what Morton thought. He said the box might be a gateway between this world and a higher dimensional world. If the box is such a gateway, then something came through it. If it is not a gateway, then something came out of the box and escaped into the basement."

His eyes ran from face to face of his hearers.

"How do you know something came out?" McCumber persisted. He seemed to have taken over the questioning from Kennedy.

"Because I saw it," Sharp answered.

In the silence of the basement Rocks could hear several men breathing heavily.

"It lifted up, out of the box," Sharp continued. "It was a mass of grayish smoke, of shifting planes and impossible angles. It rose straight up and seemed to pause in the air. While it hung in the air—and I cannot begin to suggest an explanation for this—I suddenly seemed to lose my hearing. I couldn't hear a sound. There was utter, complete silence. It was the oddest sensation I have ever experienced."

Again the handkerchief wiped sweat from his face.

"Then—like a finger snap—the thing vanished. It disappeared into thin air. And when it vanished, I recovered from my deafness."

Rocks felt Penny's fingers searching for his hand. Her hand slid into his. She was trembling.

The detectives were pale, their faces bloodless. How much they had really understood of Sharp's description was open to doubt. Only a mathematical physicist could have grasped all the possibilities he had opened, and the cops weren't physicists. But they were alert. One had half-drawn his run. They were warily looking around the room.

"What did you do then?" McCumber persisted.

"We naturally spent some time searching the basement. When we found nothing, I began to suspect we were the victims of an illusion, that nothing had really come out of the box, that our imaginations were playing us tricks. Consequently, since it was already late in the afternoon, I departed. I thought nothing more of the matter until the police called me and told me that a man was dead here. Then I instantly realized that something had come out of the box, something utterly foreign to the science of our present day, something of which we have no knowledge, but which may be here now, watching us, waiting to pounce on its next victim—"

He subsided, and Kennedy, looking closely at him, shoved him a chair. "Here, sir. You had better sit down."

Sharp almost collapsed. "Thanks," he muttered.

"One further question," McCumber said. "Where was the box sitting when Morton opened it?"

"Why—" Sharp looked startled. "On that heavy table." He pointed to a table across the room.

"But it's on the scales now," McCumber said, nodding his head toward it.

"Yes, it is," Sharp answered. "Mr. Morton must have moved it after I left."

McCumber turned to the detectives. "Gentlemen, if I may suggest it, I think it would be wise to search the museum."

The detectives looked like they didn't enjoy the task, but they went about it efficiently, guns drawn. The others remained in the basement. Sharp kept up a running fire of nervous conversation, to which McCumber paid little attention. The old archeologist seemed to be lost in thought.

Kennedy returned. The detective was very pale. "We didn't find anything," he said. "We still don't know whether it's here or not. But we can't take a chance of that thing getting loose. We'll stay here, as a guard." He looked sharply at McCumber and the business manager. "If I may suggest it, this has been quite a strain on you. Perhaps it would be best if you went home and rested. However if someone who is familiar with the museum will stay—"

"I'll stay," said Rocks.

"No," Penny protested. "If that thing should attack you—"

Over her protests, Rocks stayed. However he walked out to the car with them. Sharp came out of the museum with them, but he had his own car, and drove off immediately.

McCumber settled himself in the seat, and Penny, still protesting, slid under the wheel.

"What do you think, sir?" Rocks queried. "Do you have any suggestions about looking for that—thing?"

"I'm afraid I don't, lad," the old man answered. "Nothing like it has ever been seen before." He reached into his pocket for his pipe. His questing fingers brought from the pocket not only the pipe but a spherical piece of glass that looked like a child's marble. He held it under the dash lamp. "A marble? Wonder where I picked that up?" Then he dropped it back into his pocket as he explored for his tobacco. "This much I can say, lad. Whatever it was that came out of that box, the museum, in a sense, is responsible. We brought the damned thing to this country. We've got to capture or destroy it before it does any more damage. If such a thing should escape into the city, the results might be terrible. I'll be down early in the morning, lad. I hate to go off like this, but the old body won't take punishment like it once would. You be careful."

"I will, sir."

"You darned well better be," said Penny, as she slipped the car into gear.

Rocks returned to the museum. With Kennedy and the other detectives he again made a complete search of the building. The museum was filled with nooks and crannies where anything might hide. They found nothing.

They were again in the basement when the telephone on the main floor started ringing.

Who would be calling at this time of the night, Rocks wondered as he raced upward to answer it. Very few people knew the number.

He jerked the phone from its hook, and the voice in his ears almost took his breath away. It was Penny. She was screaming.

"Rocks, please come quickly. That terrible thing is here. It's got grandfather. Hurry, please—"

He waited to hear no more.

"Come on," he yelled to the detectives. "That damned thing is loose again."

Sirens screamed in the night as the squad car raced to the home of Andreas McCumber. Rocks rode in the seat beside Kennedy, and urged the detective to drive faster.

"I'm doing seventy now," Kennedy grated.

"Then do eighty," Rocks answered. Blood was running down his chin where he had bitten his lips. In his mind was the single thought: has something happened to Penny?

CHAPTER III

Penny's parents were dead. She lived with her grandfather, in a huge old brick house on a side street.

They found her lying at the foot of the front steps. Rocks' heart leaped into his mouth when he saw the white form lying there, crumpled and twisted, in the rays from the light burning over the front door. Until that moment he had not fully known how much she meant to him.

"Penny," he whispered.

Had the same horrible death struck at her? Had she tried to flee only to find death racing after her, death coming faster than she could run?

He was trembling as he knelt beside her.

Then—she stirred in his arms. Her dress did not fall into dust at his touch, as Morton's clothing had. And her skin was white, not a hideous blotched red. Death had passed her by.

"Oh, Rocks," she whispered. "It was awful—"

Kennedy and his two men paused only long enough to make certain Penny was not injured. Then they went on into the house, and Rocks, even in the pressure of that moment, found time to admire their courage. Good boys, those cops were. They knew they might find something inside that house against which their guns would prove useless. But they drew the guns, and went in.

"Are you all right?" Rocks whispered.

"I—I think so. After I called you, I ran outside to call for help and I slipped and fell down the steps."

He picked her up and carried her inside, laid her on a divan. He did not ask about her grandfather. He could hear the detectives on the floor above. They had stopped racing through the house, jerking open doors. They were all gathered in one room and they weren't saying much.

Then Kennedy came down the stairs, with one of his men. "Malone," he called softly.

"Here," Rocks answered. Kennedy came in. His eyes were black agates in a mask of dough. He slipped his gun back into its holster and said to the man who followed him, "You stay here with the girl. Malone, will you come upstairs with me?"

Rocks nodded. The detective led the way upstairs.

McCumber lay on the floor. The skin of his face was a blotch of red. His clothing had fallen away into dust. He had been working at his desk. When death struck him he had fallen to the floor.

Kennedy took a sheet from the bed and placed it over the still form.

Penny, very pale but very resolute, came into the room.

"Are you strong enough to tell us what happened?" Kennedy asked gently.

"I came in to kiss him goodnight," she answered. "He was lying there on the floor. I started to run to the telephone—then I heard something." She shuddered. "It was—I didn't hear anything. You can't hear silence, I suppose. But I did hear it. My feet didn't make any sound on the floor. I know I screamed, but I couldn't ever hear the sound of my own voice. I ran to call the museum, then I ran outside to call for help."

"Did you see anything in the room?"

"No. The desk light was burning and most of the room was in shadows, but if anything was here, I didn't see it. But—" she paused.

"What is it, miss?" Kennedy inquired gently.

"It isn't anything I'm sure of," she answered. "But I think that thing followed us home from the museum. I had the feeling that we were being followed."

"Did you see anything following you?"

She shook her head. "It was just an impression, a feeling."

"You had better go lie down," said Rocks. "We'll take care of everything." He looked at Kennedy. "Can she have a man to be on guard outside her door?"

"She sure can. I'll call headquarters and get a special detail here at once." Gently Rocks led her to her room. Better than anyone else, he knew how impossible it was to put into words anything that would make her feel better. Only time could do that. And now that the terrible death had struck twice, he knew that Penny might be in danger. No one could tell where it would strike again. Or why.

It was a death that came in silence. It came out of nowhere, struck, and passed back into nowhere, leaving no clues behind it. It had come out of a metal box found in the tomb of a king forgotten for six thousand years. It was older than the king. It was older than history. It came out of the black past of the planet with horrible, monstrous death. Sharp had seen it—a creature of planes and angles, flashing lights, a creature that disappeared at will, and reappeared elsewhere. It had been here in this home, and had struck down a man. It might be here still, watching, waiting.

Penny cried as she lay on her bed and wiped the tears away, and tried to think. How had it entered the house? The doors had been locked. Of course it could have secured entrance through an open window, but how had it passed so unerringly through the rooms, seeking out her grandfather? Why had it killed him? Did he threaten its existence?

Penny tried to think, and tried not to.

Rocks talked to Kennedy. The burly detective said, "If this was an ordinary murder, I would know how to handle it. The first thing we always look for is the motive. When we find that, we've got the killer. But there's no motive here—there's not anything. Frankly, Malone, I'm up a tree. We've got to find that thing, and destroy it, quickly. Supposing it should start wandering loose through the streets of Chicago—" The detective shuddered. "Malone, if you have any ideas, let's have them. I admit I don't know what to do."

Rocks had been thinking too. "This thing came out of that box back in the museum. If the secret of controlling it is anywhere, it's written on the lid of that box." He gritted his teeth. "I don't think we have a chance in a million of cracking that language, but right now it's the only thing I see to try."

"We'll go back to the museum," said Kennedy. "I can't help with the language, but I want another look around that place."

The authorities responsible in cases of sudden death had already arrived at the McCumber home. Kennedy left a special detail to guard Penny. He and Rocks went back to the museum.

Rocks went to work. He began to try to crack the hieroglyphics written on the lid of the box. That his task was all but impossible, he well knew.

He could read Sanskrit, Babylonian cuneiform, and Egyptian picture writing with fair readiness. He could translate ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek. An archeologist had to know these languages.

He thought the writing on the box might be in one of these languages.

He began with Morton's notes.

Then the telephone rang again. Kennedy went to answer it. He came back very excited.

"That was the girl—Penny," he said. "She may have something. She described a piece of round glass and said her grandfather had found it in his pocket tonight as he left the museum. She wanted to know if we had found it. I didn't. Did you?"

"No," Rocks answered. "But I can't see how it is important."

"Nor can I," Kennedy answered. "But it might be. I'll call and see if it has been found. She also mentioned another thing, and this, I think, is really important."

"What was it?"

"She said her grandfather was writing at his desk when he was killed. The piece of paper on which he was writing was under a blotter and we missed it. She found it. The old man had written a single question on it."

Rocks had risen from his chair. Here, he realized, might be a clue that would lead them to the capture of the incredible creature that was loose within the city. "What was the question?"

"'Why did Morton weigh the box a second time?'" Kennedy said.

"Why did he—" Rocks sat down again. His eyes went across the room to the box. It was sitting on the scales where Morton had placed it.

"It's routine here," Rocks said slowly, "to weigh all specimens as soon as they are brought in. Many statuettes, etc., were constructed as hiding places for gems. We weigh them, compute their specific gravity, and thus determine if they contain a hollow place that might be worth investigating."

His eyes lit up. "Morton weighed that box before it was opened. He opened it, and something came out of it. But, from Sharp's description, they were in doubt as to whether something had really come out of the box. There was one way to prove something had come out of it—weigh it again and check its present weight with its weight when it was brought in."

Rocks leaped across the room to the scales, checked the weight of the box. It weighed 121 pounds. Quickly he found Morton's notes and located the weight of the box when it was first brought to the museum.

"Before it was opened it weighed an even 130 pounds," he said. "Now it only weighs 121. That proves that something came out of it."

Kennedy whistled. "Nine pounds of sudden death. Well, we don't need any proof to know that something came out of that box. We've got two dead men to prove it. Look," the detective finished, "I'm going back to McCumber's residence and see if I can locate that piece of glass. You keep trying to crack that language."

He went out of the room on the run. The motor of the squad car howled to sudden life outside as the detective left.

Rocks expected Kennedy to return. But he didn't come back that night. He called instead. "I'm at the undertaker's. They didn't find any piece of red glass. I've been over McCumber's house with a magnifying glass. It isn't there. Either the thing that killed him destroyed it, or somebody picked it up. You getting anywhere with that language?"

"No," Rocks groaned.

"Well, keep trying. My hunch is that everything depends on whether or not you solve those hieroglyphics. I've got some checking to do on this end. I'll call you if anything turns up." The detective hung up.

Rocks went back to the basement. His job was to crack the language. And what a job that was!

The night ended. Dawn came. The morning was passing. Rocks worked on.

The museum was closed that day. The police were not willing to take a chance on some visitor stumbling into a death that came in silence. Nor was the museum itself. Sharp called in and gave explicit orders on that point.

Rocks drank strong coffee, and worked, and failed. The language was not similar to cuneiform. It was not like any language he knew. Every time he realized that fact, he shivered. It had either been invented by a people so long lost in the past that history had no record of them, or it didn't belong on earth at all.

Yet someone, somewhere, had constructed that box, and had used it to safeguard something. Perhaps they had used it as a prison, to cage a creature they could not control, an entity unknown to the science of the present. Perhaps later peoples had created legends about it—Pandora's Box. Perhaps this was really Pandora's Box that Morton had brought back from Asia Minor.

The creature had waited in that box for uncounted centuries. Now a new race had opened the door of his prison.

Now the Lord of the Silent Death was free again.

Rocks Malone kept wondering when and where he would strike.

During the whole day there was not even a whisper of the incredible silence in which men's lives were blotted out.

But when the second night came—

CHAPTER IV

At nine o'clock that night Rocks was ready to drop from exhaustion. He was not only so tired that the hieroglyphics blurred before his eyes, but he had failed. That hurt worse than anything else. Everything depended on his cracking the lost language, and he had failed.

At nine o'clock it happened.

There were three officers on duty at the museum. They had been sent there as a guard detail and they had brought in a radio so they could listen to the police calls. They had the radio in a room on the first floor, so it would not disturb Rocks.

At nine o'clock one of them came stumbling downstairs. His face was ashen. "Hell's broken loose," he said tersely. "It's coming in over the radio. Come on upstairs if you want to listen. You might as well forget that language now."

Over and over again the announcer was droning. "Calling all cars—Calling all cars—Drop everything and be on the alert. Tragedy in burlesque showhouse. Over three hundred people dead. Cause of death not known. Manager went in to investigate sudden silence. Found audience and cast of show dead. Bodies livid color, as if they had been burned. Clothing falls to ashes when touched. Sergeant Kennedy of the homicide division suggests there is a definite connection between the death of these people and the death of the two Asian Museum archeologists last night. Be on the alert. Take over main intersections and prevent panic. Story already broken in general radio news flash. Cordon being thrown around the theater area. All special details canceled, all squad cars call your stations for definite orders—Be on the alert—Calling all cars—"

Death was walking through Chicago, a horrible, incredible form of death.

Rocks Malone stood without moving, listening to the operator repeat his message. He could scarcely conceive the meaning of the words. "Over three hundred people dead—" Dim pictures flashed to his mind. Out of nowhere, out of nothingness, silence had come. Three hundred people had died. Before they knew what struck them, death had washed over them. Millions of microscopic needles had plunged through their bodies, points of agonizing pain. Then death—

Jerkily, the telephone rang. One of the officers grabbed it. He listened, said "Okay," huskily, and turned to his fellows.

"Station calling. We're to report back there immediately for emergency duty. They're calling us off here. Come on."

The radio was still droning as they went out.

The telephone rang again. It was Penny this time.

"I'm coming down there," she said, "I'm scared. I'm coming down there with you."

"Stay away from here!" Rocks shouted. But she had already hung up. Desperately, he tried to call her back. There was no answer. She had already left. She was driving toward the museum, driving through a night in which death lurked.

Rocks groaned. He went back to the basement. There was nothing he could do. Nothing! The coffee pot was bubbling on its burner. He poured himself a cup of the scalding brew. It burned his throat but it cleared his head.

He went back to work. The language was out. He couldn't crack it. He didn't even have time to try to crack it any more. But there were Morton's notes. He hadn't studied them thoroughly. He had read only those portions of the notes that dealt with the language. He began to go over them again, starting with the section that dealt with the discovery of the box.

Jan. 10, 1940—Morton had written—Discovered today what is unquestionably the tomb of a Sumerian king. Located in a hillside. Cut out of solid rock. Landslide centuries ago had covered entrance. But even more important, in my opinion, than the tomb is the discovery of the strange metal box that we found in a niche at the back. We are unable to determine the metal of which the box is constructed. It is covered with mould but shows no sign of rust or corrosion, which is exceedingly unusual, for this tomb dates back into the past for at least six thousand years.

"Jan. 12, 1940. Box very heavy—must weigh more than a hundred pounds. Frankly, aside from its archeological interest, I am curious to know the contents of this box. There is a possibility of gold or gems. Guess I'm human after all, to be thinking about wealth. Am writing full details to the museum.

"Jan. 15, 1940. Unable to open box. Must have cunning combination lock. Also unable to decipher inscription on it. Don't know this form of writing. No record of it anywhere. This is exceedingly unusual. A completely forgotten language rediscovered."

Rocks Malone went through the notes, reading swiftly, searching, hoping for a clue. Outside in the night death was stalking. And there was a possibility that the clue to the death lay here, in the notes of the dead archeologist.

Penny came in. He went to meet her. She flew to his arms. "It's awful outside," she whispered. "Thousands of people must have heard the news broadcast. Half of them are trying to get to the theater where all those people were killed. The others are trying to get away. Oh, Rocks, have you discovered anything."

He shook his head. She looked again at his unshaven, haggard face, and said nothing.

He went back to the notes Morton had left. With Penny helping, he went through them, down to the last page. "It's no use," he groaned. "Morton didn't know anything about the thing that was in that damned box."

Then he turned the last page. Morton had written that page only yesterday, the day he died.

"Sept. 21, 1940. Succeeded in opening the box today. As I suspected it was closed by a combination lock. Deucedly clever thing, that lock. Not like any lock in use today. Patent rights on it might provide the museum with some of the cash it so badly needs.

"To my great astonishment, and regret, when I opened the box, I found it empty."

Rocks Malone started at the words Morton had written. Penny had been reading over her shoulder. He heard her catch her breath.

EMPTY! The single word seemed to leap out at him. How on earth could Morton make a mistake like that!

There was another line of writing. "Weighed box. Find that it weighs nine pounds less than it did when I brought it here."

In the fleeting flash of a second, Rocks saw the whole picture. Or almost all of it. There were parts that needed clearing up. But he knew at last the real significance of the fact that Morton had weighed the box a second time.

"There's somebody coming!" Penny whispered.

A step had sounded on the stairs outside the room. The door opened. Sharp entered.

He had a traveling bag with him.

Rocks shoved the last page of Morton's notes out of sight, got to his feet. "Hello," he said. "Have you heard the radio?"

"I'll say I have," the business manager answered. "That's why I've got this bag along. I'm getting away from here while I have a chance. It's terrible—what happened to all those people at the theater. For all I know, it might happen to me next. Have you," he paused, "have you found anything that might—might lead to the capture of that horrible beast? That's why I stopped here, before I left town."

"No," Rocks answered. He walked across the basement toward the business manager. He was ten feet away, he was five feet away. He stopped. "One thing we have discovered. Morton's notes. He said in his notes that when he opened the box he found it empty. What do you suppose he meant by that?"

Sharp looked perplexed. "Why, I have no idea. Perhaps he decided that what we saw was an illusion after all."

"I think not," Rocks contradicted. "He would certainly have mentioned any creature such as you described if he had found such a thing in the box. No, I think he meant exactly what he said. When he opened the box, it was empty. That surprised him greatly. It also made him suspicious. So he weighed it, to determine if somebody had already opened it and removed its contents. What did you find in that box, Sharp!"

His words were hard and flat. There was no mistaking their challenge.

Behind him he heard Penny whisper. "Oh, Rocks—"

He knew he had made a mistake. He should have waited, let the law handle the situation, let men trained for the task do the job. But Morton had been his friend. And so had McCumber. And Morton and McCumber were dead. And Rocks Malone was not a man to wait for someone else to do what he considered his job.

Sharp stood without moving, his close-set eyes drilling into the young archeologist facing him. A second ticked into nothingness, and another, and another. He was estimating the situation, considering the odds and the chances.

"I'm waiting," Rocks said grimly.

"All right, snoopy," Sharp snarled. "This is what I found in it."

"All right, snoopie, here it is." Sharp lifted a strange implement from his bag and pointed it. "Duck," Penny shouted, "That's it!"

He jerked his bag open. His hand dived into it. It came out of the bag with the strangest looking instrument Rocks had ever seen. Constructed of pale silvery metal, fitted with a series of faceted lenses, it glinted evilly under the lights.

Because of the very nature of the instrument, Sharp handled it clumsily. But there was no mistaking its purpose. He brought it up. Penny screamed.

Rocks stepped forward. His left hand flicked out. All the weight of his body was behind that blow. He drove it straight at Sharp's chin. It would have made Joe Louis bat his expressionless eyes. It would have knocked Sharp's head almost off his shoulders—if it had landed.

That was the trouble. It didn't land. Sharp saw it coming. He ducked down and to one side, fumbling with the instrument he had taken from his bag. The fist skidded across the top of his head. It sent him staggering backward.

"The next time," Rocks gritted. "I won't miss. I'll knock your damned head off, you dirty murderer." He charged.

Sharp brought the instrument up. Pale, scarcely visible flame lanced from it, like a heat wave moving through air. It spurted forward, soundlessly. As it leaped it seemed to absorb, to blot out all sound. There was a sudden heavy silence in the museum basement, the sort of silence that is so real it registers on the ear drums.

Rocks saw the instrument coming up. He kicked himself to one side, in a dancing step. The fringe of lambent flame barely touched him. But that touch sent needles of agony through his body, sucked the life out of him, turned his muscles into lumps of lead, threw him off balance, so that his charge, instead of striking Sharp, barely grazed him. His arms closed around the business manager's body. To keep himself from falling, Rocks clinched.

They wrestled. Sharp could not use the instrument. Rocks was so groggy he could barely hold on. Sharp dug into him with his elbows, kicked viciously at his shins.

If he could only hold on, Rocks thought. The agony was lessening. The groggy shadows were going from his mind. If he could only hold on for another minute.

He was holding on. He was winning. Soft living had made a weakling of Sharp. He would be no match for the rugged, youthful muscles of Rocks Malone, in a fair fight.

Then Sharp struck upward. His fist hit Rocks in the chin. Malone sagged downward. Shaking his head, he grabbed at Sharp again. And missed. And fell to the floor. Before he could move, Sharp had leaped around a table. He had brought the instrument up.

"All right," he husked. "You asked for it, with your snooping. You're going to get it. You and this girl."

Rocks staggered to his feet. He leaned against the edge of the table, panting, fighting for breath and strength. Sharp was across the table from him. He was aiming the instrument.

This time there would be no escaping it. It would point at him and those almost invisible tongues of light would flash out, the deadly silence would smash all sound into nothingness, and millions of microscopic needles would tear through his flesh.

Sharp fumbled for the firing button.

Penny, crouched on the other side of the room, grabbed the handiest object she could find, and threw it. It was the alarm clock. It struck Sharp full in the face, and the alarm, jarred by the impact, went off.

Probably the clang of the alarm bell started Sharp as much as the impact of the clock. Certainly it did not hit him hard enough to harm him. But it did startle him, scare him. He reeled backward.

Rocks cleared the table with a single leap. He went up into the air like a kangaroo and leaped, feet foremost, at Sharp. His feet struck the business manager full in the stomach. Sharp doubled up like a jackknife, and went to the floor. Rocks fell on top of him. He struck viciously with his fists. Sharp cried in pain and Rocks struck harder. The man was down, but he wasn't out. Rocks drew back his fist for the final blow.

It never landed. Down over his shoulder the barrel of a gun flashed. Where it had come from, Rocks did not know. It struck the business manager across the skull.

His head popped like the breaking of a rotten egg. He went limp.

Rocks looked up. Kennedy stood there. He was holding the pistol with which he had struck Sharp, in his hand. He looked to see if he would need to use it again. He saw he wouldn't.

He whirled the gun around on its trigger guard.

"Damn me for a fool," he said. "I could kick myself from here to the Loop and back again. I missed a trick and it cost three hundred people their lives."

"What trick?" Rocks gasped.

"I should have known this gazabo was lying," Kennedy snarled. "I should have known his long cock and bull story about some incredible creature coming out of that box was too fantastic for belief. I should have known he was lying, out damn it, the sight of Morton's body so addled my wits that I was willing to believe the story Sharp told. Oh, he was smooth enough about it. He knew how the weapon he found killed. He knew what it did to Morton's body, and he had to have a fantastic story to account for the way Morton looked. He solved the secret of that box soon after it was brought here. He had a reason for it too. He had been playing the market and he was down on his uppers. If there was a treasure in that box, he wanted first crack at it. He didn't find any treasure in it. Instead he found some kind of a damned weapon in it that came from God alone knows where. When he found Morton had opened the box and was about to catch up with him by weighing the box, he took the obvious out—by killing Morton, using the weapon he had found in the box. He killed McCumber because the old man knew there was something fishy about the box being on the scales. So he killed McCumber—to shut him up."

"But those people in the theater?" Rocks whispered.

Kennedy exploded. "He needed money, needed it bad. I dug this all up in my investigation today. He was trying to sell the weapon he had discovered to the agents of a foreign power. They wanted a demonstration before they would pay off. So he gave them a demonstration. He showed them how efficient a weapon he had for sale—by killing all the people in a theater."

The detective was furiously angry. "And I let myself get taken in by a story of a monster."

Rocks had already picked up the instrument Sharp had found in that box. He was studying it, looking it over. The principle on which it operated, he couldn't begin to guess, but he saw one thing that startled him enormously. He showed it to the detective.

"Great Jehosophat!" Kennedy gasped. "A place for six fingers. Whoever built that damned thing had six fingers."

The Lord of the Silent Death was not an extra-dimensional monster. It was a weapon that killed in utter silence.

The instrument that came out of the box from the tomb of the forgotten Sumerian King is now in Washington, in the secret vaults of the War Department. The experts are studying it, trying to fathom how it works. They have begun to get hints of the principle involved. Only hints, but something to go on. They have discovered that it kills in two ways. The first, and obvious way, is by pointing it directly at its victim. At the theatre he had sprayed the power, full on, across the audience, then across the ensemble on the stage, then as he went out the back had caught all others.

The second way is worse. In Sharp's bag was found a sack of small round objects that look like marbles. All the owner of the weapon needs to do to kill an enemy is to drop one of those bits of glass in the enemy's pocket. Then he can go off several miles and start the weapon. The force it generates is concentrated in the bit of glass, and the silence is instantly generated, the bit of glass being destroyed in the process.

That was the method Sharp used to kill McCumber. As they left the museum, Sharp dropped one of the bits of glass in the pocket of the old archeologist's coat. McCumber had found it, but had attached no significance to it.

The experts hope that the War Department of this country will never need such a weapon. But if it does, it will have it.

But the thing that plagues the experts, that frets the archeologists, that has caused Rocks Malone to tear his hair, is the fact that the weapon was designed to be used by a creature who had six fingers. Not five fingers. Six. And the archeologists are having drizzling fits trying to decide whether there was once a race of six-fingered creatures here on earth, a race that reached tremendous scientific heights, and vanished.

Or was earth once visited by creatures out of space, who left a weapon behind them?

Nobody knows. Possibly nobody will ever know.

But Rocks Malone is preparing to leave for Asia Minor, to dig in the ruins of lost and gone civilizations, searching for another clue to the identity of the lost race.

Penny is going with him.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORD OF THE SILENT DEATH ***

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