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?