_Tugh, the Cripple_
The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling
events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A
maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny
bits of cork and whirled away.
But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting
for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human
mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange!
Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood.
But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron
monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have
never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time--"
He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence
to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we
can understand--or at least explain--these things as being scientific.
And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."
Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at
least I am trying to realize it."
What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very
wonderful--"
Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The
cage was--is, I should say, since of course it still exists--that cage
is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through
Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster
fashioned of metal in the guise of a man."
Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one
to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where
half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That
cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the
future--somewhere--the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the
laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past--in the year
1777--that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So
much is obvious. But why--"
"Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct
this girl?"
"And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary.
"And it told you it would return?"
"Yes."
* * * * *
Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course....
Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?"
"No."
"Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?"
"No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms,
omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony,
not so many years ago--"
"I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."
"There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with
crystals to gaze into the future."
"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more
than you do about this thing."
I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"
She thought a moment. "No--yes, there was one." She shuddered at the
memory. "A man--a cripple--a horribly repulsive man of about one score
and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused.
"Tell us about him," Larry urged.
She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly
deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead
with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent
and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot
in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it.
But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our
cause well. He is rich.
"But you don't want to hear all this. He--he made love to me, and I
repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our
lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He
vowed then that some day he--he would have me; and get revenge on
Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth."
* * * * *
We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was
on his face.
He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"
"Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard
any Christian name."
Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"
"Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"
Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place?
Did you happen to notice?"
I had, and wondering I told him.
"Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone."
He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house
on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter
friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought.
Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
to have his crippled body made whole?"
"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."
Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
astonished questions. He said:
"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
master of that Robot."
Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
young man."
Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....
* * * * *
Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.
"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She
evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."
Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
of us had been in New York at the time.
Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."
"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.
But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for
contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her
accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he
murdered the girl.
"The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him
trapped in his house; had the house surrounded--this same one on
Patton Place--but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
vanished. He was never heard from again."
Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard
from--until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
the police guarding every exit to that house--well, it's obvious,
isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."
Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you.
Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had
a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
was a world in the future--he mentioned 1934 or 1935--which he hated.
A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring
death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was
demented, raving...."
* * * * *
Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another
silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock
in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds.
A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of
coming disaster to this great city?
Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do--tell the authorities?
Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that
she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful,
there will be an attack upon New York?"
"No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police
Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's
newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us.
"No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so
foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do?
You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl.
Heaven knows you need to be."
"I--I want to get back home," she stammered.
A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to
separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier.
"That mechanism said it would return!"
"Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what
I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think
of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."
"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.
"I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place.
Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!"
Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement.
"Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can
operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have
something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!"
Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this
mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we
thought we were acting for the best.
Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a
scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to
Patton Place.