The enemy within

Front matter

K/

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

II

In quite another part of the city — to be more definite, in a delightful old-fashioned home on Stanford Heights — the intended victims of Andre Merwin’s artistic coup were discussing the same question, though from quite a different angle.

‘'When he said he’d be here at three, he’ll be here at three, be it rain, thunder, or only ordinary sunshine,” Cheever Rhoades was saying. “That’s all that’s wrong with him. He’s so punctual you could time a race by him, and so punctilious the club no longer subscribes to fashion sheets.”

“Then why don’t you sit down and stop wandering around as though you had to keep your eye on the sun to make sure it does its work?” Harney Inwood returned, carelessly adjusting himself into the depths of a morris chair. “As for me, I never worry. And just look at me. There’s nothing fitter on the Pacific Coast.”

Cheever Rhoades looked, and perforce agreed. What he saw was a slimly built young man, somewhere under the thirties, without a gray hair on his head or a care on his countenance. There was a ruggedness about the face and a lithesomeness about the limbs which bespoke the violence of much exercise, and a brownness of hands and cheek which told of conflict with the wind and the sun. Even in repose, Inwood reflected a certain indolent grace, but there was nothing about his manner to betoken any great mental concentration — even his friends must admit that — good fellow and all that he was. Just now, having tired of badgering his companion, he settled back to do nothing in particular.

Cheever Rhoades was of quite another type. Less precise of dress, even careless of personal appearance, heavier of frame, with muscles equally hard from a different class of work, stronger of face, with a slower, steadier eye, which told of high development. But now Rhoades, with success blinking in his face, lacked his customary calm.

“Then why can’t you wait until Merwin comes and see the deal through?” Rhoades demanded.

“Can’t be done. Got to catch a train for Sandy. Play the Barrancas to-morrow afternoon. Besides, that’s your business. Never could be bothered with details ; just tell me how it lumps up in the end.”

“But out of courtesy to Merwin, you should stay,” Rhoades protested. “Remember all he has done for me.

“Stodgy old boy, that, but quite lacks imagination. Just the sort I’d like to handle my stuff. Precise and reliable. One’d never have to do a thing but cash the dividends. Such a relief to put all one’s burdens on others; think I’ll take it up with him. Well, Cheeve, I must be off. Ah! here’s good old scout Benson. What’s the boy want now ? Forget it, Benny, old boy, whatever it is. Drop that gray mantle of business and come on down to Diego to see me ride the ponies. You need some sunshine to keep you young.”

The person thus accosted was a sober-visaged, somewhat pale-faced youth of twenty-two or three, dressed older and soberer than his age should permit, the epitome of business, of rigid adherence to rule and duty, but there seemed sufficient of youth left to reach out and respond to the call of Harney Inwood’s youth.

He smiled at his older and much gayer acquaintance.

“It’s Robinson, Air. Rhoades’ chauffeur, sick this time, Mr. Inwood,” the businesslike youth replied, quite formally, “and a fellow who calls himself a brother is here. He says if the car is to go out this afternoon he’ll take Robinson’s place.”

“There, he’s off again,” Inwood bantered. “ ‘Calls himself a brother.’ What a suspicious watch-dog, Benny ! And haven’t I told you to call me Inny ?”

“We’re to go out at three with Mr. Andre Merwin, to take a run through the park, Benson,” Rhoades informed, and remained watching silently until the youth had left the room, when he turned to his companion. “Now, Harney, you shouldn’t torment Benson so. He’s the most useful fellow I ever had, never overlooks a detail. Of course, it’s Robinson’s brother. It’s a luxury to have a man like Benson around.”

“Going to raise his salary when the deal’s through? Well, as I said before, I’m off. Get me at the Coronado if there’s anything to sign. Glad I haven’t your brains, Cheever. They’d keep my nose to the grindstone till I wore out the stone. Drab stuff, that business. Love to Andy.”

And with a wave of his hand and a flip of his cigarette, Inwood was through the door and down the steps to his own waiting car, into which he sprang, to dash away, himself at the wheel. For he despised chauffeurs as carelessly as he defied the fling of time.

There was a mingled look of envy, and admiration, and affection upon the face of Cheever Rhoades as he stood before the window watching that retreating symbol of youth. Envy for a certain buoyancy and freedom of youth which he himself had never known, admiration for his cool disregard for the creeping of time, affection for all that Harney Inwood had done for him in the past, had done and dismissed with the same careless fling of the hand. Rhoades straightened with a little thrill of pride. He had justified Inwood’s confidence, though the other had imposed no terms. He had fulfilled the other’s predictions of success, though Inwood had talked of that success without caring to know the bent of his brain or which road he was following.

So Rhoades watched as long as he could catch a glimpse of the speeding car, then he turned away with a burst of spurious activity. He left the generous living room in which he had talked with Inwood, and crossed into a smaller room at the side, a combination library, den, and office-workshop, with French windows looking down upon the long silvery ribbon of the Bay, which sprawled below like some giant monster of the sea, its supine limbs outflung in repose. There he found Benson, busying himself as usual with papers. But when Rhoades tried to help, tried one thing after another in the hope of concentrating his brain, he could not. In time he recognized the futility of effort, recognized as well that the first flush of victory had caught him with its fever. In time he gave it up, gave himself over to wandering about the great house until Andre Merwin should come.

The younger man met him in the portico beyond the doorway, and mingled with his smile of greeting there were little reflective lights in the eyes of Merwin. With this eagerness on the part of Cheever Rhoades, it was all so easy, so simple as to rob the older man of some of the pride in his artistry.

“On the second, as usual, Merwin,” Rhoades greeted his visitor. “How I wish I had your reputation for all that is right and proper.”

“My dear boy, you have something greater,” Merwin returned, as he allowed a touch of admiration to creep into his eyes. “You have the brain to devise. As for me, I have but the brain of a machine. I but follow the ruts worn deep by generations. As for you, you flit in the air, with the clouds, wherever the nimble fancy of your brain can take you. The world is at your feet. It reaches out, it beckons, it is parti-colored with mystery. It is all beyond me, who am consigned to the drabness of ruts and routine. So Cheever, my boy, give thanks for the light-fingered brain which is yours, and not for the plodding kind which is mine. Ah, I see, the car comes to the door. That means ”

“That the ruts and the routine can wait for a while,” Rhoades returned with a boyishness which could not hide a kindling of gratitude towards the older man. “I want to tell you just how much I am indebted to that machine brain of yours, how it has smoothed out many things for me. And I want to say it in the car, in the open air, where you cannot watch me so closely. For I am not good at that sort of thing. I can feel it, but when it comes to passing it along, words seem such cold and inexpressive things

“Now stop right there, my boy,” Merwin interrupted hastily. “I have been trying to tell you all along that you are not indebted to me for a single thing, that friendship does not enter here, that I am only one cog in a machine, and that if you had picked on somebody else to handle it, it might have worked out a whole lot better for you.”

That made Andre Merwin feel better, it was his first touch of fire. He was experiencing a sensation which was almost a resentment, but it was a sensation which vanished with the same flash which brought it, so that by the time they reached the car he was as self-collected and as alive to events as was ever a man who played for high stakes.

At the wheel they found a man who might have been a brother of Robinson, or who might have been anything else in the human race, so non-committal was he in appearance. He was inconspicuous, that was all either Rhoades or Merwin noticed, and it did not occur to either to wonder when he drove away in the direction of the park without waiting for instructions. For a time neither man spoke, then they exchanged only the most hackneyed expressions of weather and road. The mind of each was filled with his own immediate future. There was a warm grayness in the air and a soporific droning to the motor which cast a pleasing spell about them, a silence which one of them believed to be the silence of understanding.

It was not until the machine came to a sliding stop at the northern entrance to the park that either man guessed remotely that their schedule of events was breaking down. It was Merwin, with brain more alert than that of his companion to the significance of small things, who noted first that there was no traffic reason for stopping, that the motor was still purring its living cadence. It was Merwin who first noticed a man step from the clustering shade of exotic shrubbery, and walk easily towards the car with an attitude of perfect understanding. It was not until the man calmly slipped the catch of the front tonneau door and stepped up to take his place beside the driver, that the hiatus in Andre Merwin’s brain was filled with an instinctive sense of alarm. Even then he only turned to Rhoades with the casual remark,

“Robinson seems very informal to-day. You let him take too many liberties.”

Just there he stopped, for there was in Cheever Rhoades’s eyes a wavering of incomprehension which came to Merwin like a dash of icy water.

“That is not Robinson,” Rhoades replied, “I don’t know who he is.”

Though seated immediately behind the driver, and thus diagonally from their unbidden guest, Merwin rose to his feet with some vague idea of thrusting the stranger from them, but a sudden jolting of the car, as the driver released the clutch into the speeding engine, threw him backward to his seat. A moment more, and they had slipped into one of the winding driveways which lead out to the sea. Yet to one who might observe, there was nothing to signal the fact that this party was any different from the scores of others which passed that way.

It all happened so unlooked-for, so swiftly, that the conflicting flood of emotions which swept the brain of Cheever Rhoades left nothing but the commonplace. There was a strange man, a brother of Robinson, at fhe wheel, and there was a stranger, with no moral or ethical rights, on the seat beside him.

“Stop the car, Robinson,” Rhoades called sharply. But the only change in events was an acceleration of speed, slight, but perceptibly ominous. It seemed a warning as to who held the balance of power.

Andre Merwin’s lips had grown white and drawn. There was something here not satisfying to his artistic sense of things; there was something of personal menace, something which spurred him keenly into action. So Merwin leaned forward, and gripped the driver by the shoulders as though to pull him from the wheel. Then the stranger turned to him a face which was hard to read.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, with the crispness of command, and he smiled. But even the most radical of optimists could have found no friendliness in that smile. It was the facial contortion of a determined man.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the stranger repeated, as he turned about in his seat to face Merwin and Rhoades with one glance, a glance which seemed that of a fanatic. Andre Merwin sank back in his seat, his eyes darting here and there in search for some external help.

“And I wouldn’t try to signal a passing car, nor a cop,” the man up in front went on, as though conscious of Merwin’s intent. “For I’m a nervous man, and if cornered I’m apt to do something rash. I don’t mean no bad intent, leastways, not now. So you’d better sit back and listen. I shouldn’t of been sent on this job, ’cause I’m so nervous. That’s why you can’t see my hands. I got a gun in one, and some sort of contrivance in the other which, if I took a finger off the spring, would blow us all into kingdom come. I’m trying to hold onto that finger, but if something should happen to upset me, such as a cop gettin’ too near or something like that, I don’t want to be responsible for what’d come next.

“That’s better, gentlemen. Sit back comfortable and look as though you’re enjoying the drive. We don’t want people to think we’re posin’ for the movies. Now you didn’t think such a thing could happen, did you? We’ve got charge of the car. Robinson here’s deaf. Can’t hear a word except when I speak to him. Besides, he’s got a gun too. I guess you’re quite right. If somebody’d a told you a thing could happen like this, in broad daylight, in a fashionable park like this, with a motor passing every two or three minutes and people sitting round on the benches, you wouldn’t a believed it. Don’t know as I blame you, but detail’s what counts, gentlemen, and we ain’t overlooked anything ”

“Suppose you tell us what you want, and what you are doing in my car, like a graceless thug,” Rhoades broke into the monologue, and Merwin noted that though the younger man’s voice gave evidence of excitement there were no traces of fear. “I’ll admit you have the drop on us. A calculating pirate can do that to a gentleman any day in the week. All I can do now is congratulate you on the novelty of your ideas.”

“That’s just the point, Mr. Rhoades,” the stranger returned coolly enough. “A man like you will appreciate novelty, and we just had to get you somewhere where there wasn’t one chance in a hundred of anybody or anything interrupting our little conversation. No, the tires ain’t going to burst, for they’re all new to-day. That’s our gift to you. And the engine isn’t going to stop, for it’s just been overhauled. And there’s miles and miles of roadway in this park that we can keep circling on, to say nothing of the speedway and the ocean boulevard at the end of it, and there ain’t nobody going to stop us and you ain’t going to stop anybody ”

“It takes you a long time to get to the point,” Merwin snapped, though all the time his shrewd eye was studying, searching for the probable points of weakness in the stranger’s make-up. “We haven’t either one of us much money, but if that’s what you want, take it and go. Rhoades can drive his own car home, and we’ll give you five minutes to get out of sight.”

“Now that’s talking like a real gentleman. But there’s to be no thieving at this party; it’s just an educational meeting.”

“Your language hardly stamps you as an educationalist,” Merwin retorted.

“That’s just where you’re mistaken. For there’s education of the brain and education of the spirit, and it’s the last kind that you gentlemen need, education of principle.”

“Principles of the high type which we now see you putting into practice,” Merwin interjected hastily, reaching out roughly to intercept what seemed to him the inevitable unmasking of his chicanery. For Andre Merwin did not know the man. And more than that, he could not know how much the man might know. So his every instinct was alert to stave off the blow to his prestige in the eyes of Rhoades.

“No, not that. Principles which consider the welfare of the whole human race, and not of individuals,” the man returned, strangely enough including Rhoades and Merwin in the same estimate. Then abruptly the last trace of irresolution was swept from the man’s face, to leave it hard and merciless. “No, gentlemen, if I was to treat this as a matter between individuals, I would shoot you both dead. That would be your deserts. But I am not going to do that, not yet. Perhaps not at all, if you are reasonable. The point is this, you two men are plotting and planning the deaths of others, hundreds of others, perhaps thousands, with the cold-blooded deviltry of fiends. Why shouldn’t you die this minute?”

Something like a cold, blue flame crept up in the man’s eyes, and grew there, as though feasting upon the prospects of death. That gaze was so intent and virulent that Merwin’s fingers stiffened and gripped the frame of the car where they had rested. Cheever Rhoades made a movement as though to spring upon the man, but — a quick little jerk of the stranger’s hand — and Rhoades saw the folly of violence. A black muzzle was resting across the back of the seat, almost hidden beneath the hollow of his shoulder, and on a level with Rhoades’ heart.

For a time there was nothing to be heard but the droning of the motor, the swish of the wheels, and a cheerless little soughing of the sea-breeze among the eucalyptus. Then Rhoades’ lips parted in a mirthless laugh.

“The gun’s loaded, and it has a silencer,” the unbidden guest added grimly. “Don’t tempt me again, for I am weak.”

“I know what he means now, Merwin,” Rhoades laughed again, rather harshly. “He is referring to ”

“A fiendish contrivance to deal out death, which you, in the name of science, were about to call a great invention. Men, look on me. I am only one of a powerful clique sworn to a purpose. If you got me, though you can’t, there would be others rise up in my place. This man Rhoades, by his invention, has advanced the science of death, grim enough before. He has made himself a curse to humanity, so we have marked him out. As for you, Merwin, you are the arch-fiend urging him on. You too are the enemy of humanity and all rightful human motives, so we have marked you out. The one makes the weapon. The other buys it, to hurl it to spread death. You are equally guilty. But we are merciful. We do not ask your death ”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” Rhoades demanded.

“We? Why, the friends of humanity, the world over. The Unknown Quantity. A society organized for

Just there he stopped, as the car swerved around a cluster of foliage drooping from its exotic fervor, and straightened out on the driveway which ran plumb to the sea. At the western gateway a mounted officer was posted, watching the traffic listlessly, and at the sight of the man in uniform Andre Merwin’s eyes kindled. But the unknown did not overlook that betraying flash of intent, so that a little withered grin came to his lips, as he added :

“Well, if you are ready for death, so am I. See, I’ve put the automatic out of sight, but the other hand is getting nervous again. No, I shouldn’t have been sent on this job. Now, if either of you gentlemen should happen to shout, or wave, or do anything out of the ordinary ”

“Don’t be a fool,” Rhoades interrupted. “Do you suppose we are going to do anything until we have heard you through to the end? As for me, I was getting too much interested to have you break things off in the center. We’re a quiet little motor party just as long as you want us to be.”

“Now, that’s sensible, isn’t it?” the stranger appealed to Merwin, as the latter sank back in his seat to stare at the gray-uniformed figure with a telepathic concentration which should have produced results. But the officer was dreaming, far out to sea, so that in a moment the car had swished past the safety zone and swung to the south where the ocean boulevard stretched for miles before the eye, and where, though still early afternoon, the first spindrift was already stealing in from the sea. Soon, Andre Merwin knew, that spindrift would grow thicker, would blot out whole strips of the sky and the land, so that shortly they would be by themselves, traveling in a little gray-misted world of their own. He crouched still farther back in his seat, with a sigh of surrender.

“You were at a very interesting point a moment ago,” Rhoades reminded their captor. “You were about to tell us the aims of the society, your Unknown Quantity.”

“Yes, the great good friend of humanity, whose creed is not your creed, which believes in the death of one or two that hundreds may live, which will kill the few, ruthlessly, with the flip of a finger, to spare the thousands the turmoil and travail which you would bring upon them by your devilish scheming. We are strong. We have millions back of us. We are known as the

Society for the Forestalling of War, but for the sake of brevity we simply call ourselves the Unknown Quantity, and that is how you will know of us and hear from us in the future, that is, if you live to hear. I tell you this in all fairness, for we are merciful. We are not cruel like you, we give every man his one chance, and then — but why anticipate, for I can see that you are reasonable men.”

“But why attack us? Why don’t you get at the root of things?” Rhoades demanded.

“The root is too big, too deep, to attack at first. Existing conditions, the greedy hearts and souls of fiends and charlatans we cannot change overnight. But we can reach the outer branches of the thing, and lop them off as they grow. You are an evil branch growing out from an evil tree, exuding the threat of death as you go, like a pestilence. We cannot destroy the tree, not yet, but when we have lopped off the new shoots, one by one, then in time we will grow strong enough to break the tree itself.”

“You speak as though you had already experienced some success,” Rhoades suggested.

“To be definite, we have, and I will tell you of one. Do you remember, last year, that most cruel instrument of destruction devised by Professor Marchesi of Rome? The Roentgen ray perfection, capable of firing explosives at fifteen miles radius. You remember how Marchesi was holding that out to the highest bidding nation. An admirable instrument of war, remarkable for its powers of destruction. Could be set up as a land defense and slaughter battleships like insects. Not that we cared for the ships. Let them go. It was the human lives we counted. Then you remember how Marchesi sank from sight and the world forgot him, his hell-instrument with him. Well, we made to Marchesi such an offer as we will make to you to-day. He saw the folly of his ways. He is one of us to-day, and his instrument with him, for our protection or your destruction, as fate may decide.”

“You’re rambling like a man without wits,” Andre Merwin interrupted testily. “You spoke of an offer. Then make it, without all this brag. I suppose you want our machine the way you got Marchesi’s, or the way you say you got it, or you want us to go in with you the way you got him ?”

“What a discerning mind! We want the machine, but we do not want you,” the stranger returned. “The only offer I am empowered to make is to Mr. Rhoades. He is on the point of selling his submarine, a fiendish thing, by the way, and the plans, for a certain figure. We know the amount, as we know other things. We are prepared to make Mr. Rhoades a cash offer for the submarine and the plans, the exact amount he is to receive from Mr. Merwin, the selling agent, and to Mr. Merwin we will allow a ten per cent, commission on the sale. You are given until eight o’clock to-night to decide whether or not you accept.”

For a time there was silence, through which came the idle pounding of the surf upon the sands, and through which could be heard the clicking of Andre Merwin’s lips. It was Cheever Rhoades who broke the silence.

“And if we refused?” he asked quietly.

“You would hear from us again, an ultimatum, with the offer withdrawn.”

“And if we accepted?”

“The money would be paid at once.”

“I mean, what is to prevent me accepting your money, then turning around and building another machine just like it, perhaps better, or, as you might say, deadlier?”

“Then you would bear the brand of the traitor, and you would surely die.”

“Seems very positive and definite about it, Merwin,” Rhoades suggested, with a nervous laugh.

“And what is worse, the blasted idiot is probably speaking the truth,” his companion returned. “There was talk of some such thing as this a year ago when Marchesi broke off his negotiations, but no one quite believed it.”

Then suddenly Cheever Rhoades straightened in his seat and fixed the unwelcome guest with a glare, as he demanded :

“What if you are nothing but scoundrels, after all, and not fanatics? What if this is only a plot to turn the submarine and the plans over to some other purchaser, some foreign government, perhaps, at a huge profit? If that is the case, you have my answer now — I’ll fight you to the last minute.”

“Admirable,” their captor applauded, not entirely without admiration. “With a courage like yours and a brain like yours, directed in the right way towards the betterment of humanity and not its destruction, the world would be a brighter spot. But you have my assurance that no such thing is intended. Your machine, as it stands now, is an engine of torture. It can serve no possible good. So to us it is nothing but a foul reptile, and all foulness we destroy. If you can make it utilitarian and commercial, you will be given a chance to work under our direction. If not, you can stand and watch the plans burned before your own eyes, and you can see the machine blown to the bottom of the sea. That is our offer.”

There was no mockery or triumph upon the face of the man before them, and Rhoades almost fancied that he caught in the stranger’s voice a smack of sincerity. He glanced towards Andre Merwin, and strangely enough Merwin had grown calm and passive. It almost seemed as though his thoughts were far away, that he had left Rhoades alone with his problem, for when the latter bent upon him a quizzical glance he remained detached and unresponsive.

“You said something about giving me until eight to-night,” Rhoades turned again to the man whom he was already learning to regard as a visionary. “Better bring this thing to an end. The fog is deepening and we’re getting a long distance from the city.”

“To prove to you that we are always fair. That leaves you some hours in which to decide.”

“How are you going to know my answer? You don’t think you are going to stay with us that long and then make a getaway, do you ?”

“Were we to remain with you, it would be unfair. Your thoughts would be biased. You can communicate with us in a simple manner. If you find that your mind is free to negotiate, that you are ready to accept the offer, then leave your front doorway at eight to-night, eight sharp, walk from there to the street, light a cigarette and remain for one minute on the sidewalk, smoking. You yourself, remember, for no one else will do. If you refuse the offer, do anything you please but what I have mentioned. You are quite free to try to catch our emissary.”

Through the silence which followed they heard again the lazy pounding of the sea, which seemed far-off and indifferent to the complex passions of mankind, then from out in front, beyond this little gray-mist world of theirs, came the distant thrumming of a motor, purring with power. Without signal or warning, their own car came to a stop, and the man who might have been a brother of Robinson bent over and shut off the engine.