The address for Alma Dakin turned out to be a small three-story walk-up
apartment building on a quiet residential street near the outskirts of
town. At two in the afternoon hardly anyone was visible on the sidewalks
and only an occasional automobile passed.
Kirk parked his car half a block further on down and got out into the
chill November air. He entered the building foyer and looked at the name
plates above the twin rows of buttons. The one for Alma Dakin told him
the number of her apartment was 3C.
He pushed the button several times but without response. The foyer was
very quiet at this time of day, and he could hear the faint rasp of her
bell through the speaking tube.
Kirk was on the point of shifting his thumb to the button marked
SUPERINTENDENT when a sudden thought stayed his hand. It was not the
kind of thought a conscientious, rule-abiding police officer would
harbor for a moment. The lieutenant, however, was fully aware he had no
business working on a closed case to begin with--and when you're
breaking one set of rules, you might as well break them all.
He rang four of the other bells before the lock on the inner door began
to click. Pushing it open, he waited until a female voice floated down
the stairs. "Who is it?"
"Police Department, ma'am. You folks own that green Buick parked out in
front?" There was no Buick, green or otherwise, along the street
curbing, but Kirk figured she wouldn't know that.
"Why, no. Officer. I can't imagine--"
"Okay. Sorry we bothered you, lady," Kirk let the door swing into place
hard enough to be heard upstairs. But this time he was on the right side
of it.
There was a moment of silence, then he caught the sound of retreating
feet and a door closed. Without waiting further, the Lieutenant mounted
the stairs to the third floor, his feet soundless on the carpeted
treads.
The entrance to 3C was secured by a tumbler-type lock. From an inner
pocket Kirk took out a small flat leather case and a thin-edged tool
from that. Working with the smooth efficiency of the expert, he loosened
the door moulding near the lock and inserted the tool blade until it
found the bolt. This he eased back, turned the door handle and, a moment
later, was standing in a small living room tastefully furnished in
modern woods.
His first action was to enter the tiny kitchen and unbolt the door
leading to the rear porch. In case Alma Dakin arrived at an inopportune
moment, he could be half way down the outer steps while she was still
engaged with the front door lock. Since he had pressed the moulding back
into place, there would be nothing to indicate his presence.
* * * * *
Within ten minutes Kirk had ransacked every inch of the living room in
search of something, anything, that would point to Alma Dakin as being
more than a nine-to-five secretary. And while he found nothing, no one,
not even the girl who lived here, could tell that an intruder had been
at work.
The bedroom seemed even less promising at first. Dresser drawers gave up
only the pleasantly personal articles of the average young woman. Miss
Dakin, it turned out, was almost indecently fond of frothy undergarments
and black transparent nightgowns--interesting but not at all important
to the over-all problem.
Kirk, his search completed, sat down on the edge of the bed's footboard
and totaled up what he had learned. It didn't take long, for he knew
absolutely no more about Alma Dakin than he had before entering her
apartment. No personal papers, no letters from a yearning boy friend in
the old home town, no savings or checking-account passbook. Not even a
scrawled line of birthday or Christmas greetings on the fly leaves of
the apartment's seven books.
To Kirk's trained mind, the very lack of such things, the fact that Alma
Dakin lived in a vacuum, was highly significant. It smacked of her
having something to hide--and his already strong suspicion of her was
solidified into certainty of her guilt. But certainty was a long way
from rock-ribbed evidence--and that was something he must have to
proceed further.
He was ready to leave when it dawned on him that he had not yet looked
under the bed. Kneeling, he pushed up the hanging edge of the green
batik spread and peered into the narrow space. Nothing, not even a
decent accumulation of dust. The light from the window was too faint,
however, to reach a section of the floor near the footboard. Kirk
climbed to his feet and attempted to shove that end to one side.
The bed failed to move. He blinked in mild surprise and tried again. It
was only by exerting almost his entire strength that he was able to
shift the thing at all, and then no more than a few inches.
He felt his pulse stir with the thrill of incipient discovery. Once he
made sure nothing was anchoring the bed to the floor, he began to tap
lightly against the wood in an effort to detect a possible false panel.
Within two minutes he located an almost microscopic crack in the
headboard cleverly concealed by a decorative design running along the
base. He ran his fingers lightly along the carvings until they
encountered a small projection which gave slightly under pressure.
Kirk pressed down harder on the knob. A tiny _click_ sounded against the
silence and a section of wood some three feet square swung out. Lifting
it aside, the detective found himself staring at an instrument board of
some kind with a series of buttons and dials countersunk into it. The
board itself formed a part of what was obviously a machine of some sort
which evidently contained its own power, for there seemed to be no
lead-in cord for plugging into a wall socket.
It could, Kirk thought, be a short wave radio transmitter. If it was, it
looked like none he had ever come across before. On the other hand it
could be some sort of infernal machine, ready to blow half the city to
bits at the turn of a dial.
* * * * *
Even as his mind was weighing the advisability of tampering with the
thing, his fingers were reaching for the various controls. Gingerly he
moved one or two of the dials but nothing happened. A little more boldly
now, he began to depress the buttons. As the third sank in, a low
humming sound began to fill the room. Before Kirk could find a cut-off
switch of some kind, the faint light of day streaming through the room's
one window winked out, plunging him into a blackness so infinitely deep
that it was like being buried alive.
Nothing can plunge a man into the sheerest panic like the absence of
light. Even a man like Martin Kirk, who had walked almost daily with
danger for the past fifteen years. And since the form panic takes varies
with the individual, the Lieutenant's reaction was an utter inability to
move so much as a finger.
Abruptly the low humming note ceased entirely, replaced immediately by
the sound of a human voice. "Mythox. Contact established. Proceed."
Almost as though the words had tripped a lever in his brain, Kirk's
paralysis ended. Both his hands seemed to swoop of their own volition to
the invisible control panel and their fingers danced across the dials
and buttons.
"Mythox," said the voice again. It seemed to swell and recede, like a
direct radio newscast from half around the world. "Contact estab--"
The word ended as though it had run into a wall. The humming note came
back, then ceased--and without warning daylight from the window washed
over the bewildered and thoroughly frightened police officer.
Not until five minutes had passed was Martin Kirk sufficiently in
control of his nervous system to even attempt replacing the loose panel
in the headboard. When at last he managed to do so, he returned the bed
to its original position, closed and bolted the kitchen door, took one
last look around to make sure nothing was out of place, then slunk out
of the apartment.
By the time he was back behind the wheel of his car and had burned up
half a cigar, Kirk's brain was ready to function with something like its
normal ability. He sat limp as Satan's collar, trying to piece together
the significance of the last half hour's events.
There was no longer any doubt that Alma Dakin was in this mess up to her
bangs. Linked as she was to the murders (and Kirk was convinced heart
disease had nothing to do with it) of those scientists, he would have
sworn she was a foreign agent bent on weakening America's defenses.
Except for one thing. That machine. The kind of mind that could design
and put together a mechanism like that was not of this planet. No longer
did Paul Cordell's story of a girl who floated in a ball of blue fire
sound like the ravings of a deranged brain. And the seeming miracle of
Naia North's escape from a cell block now passed from fantasy to the
factual.
What to do about it? Martin Kirk, at this moment undoubtedly the most
bewildered man alive, put his head in his hands and tried to reach a
decision. Take his story to the Police Commissioner? It would mean a
padded cell--and without even bothering to see if Alma Dakin possessed a
machine more complicated than an electric iron. Some government agency?
By the time the red tape was unsnarled the former secretary could have
reached Pakistan on foot.
Slowly from the depths of his terror of the Unknown, Martin Kirk's
training in police procedure began to make itself felt. A plan started
to form--hazy at first, then in a sharp and orderly pattern.
* * * * *
He left the car and returned to the apartment building. A glimpse of his
badge and a few incisive orders masked as requests reduced the
superintendent to a state of almost obsequious co-operation. Nor was
the tenant of apartment 3D, a middle-aged spinster, any less anxious to
assist the law. It seemed she had an older sister living on the other
side of town who would be happy to put her up for a few days. She
departed within the hour, a traveling bag in one fist.
Before that hour was gone, Chenowich, in response to a sizzling phone
call, skidded a department car to a stop at the curb a block from the
building. He delivered a dictograph to his superior, listened to a grim
warning to keep his mouth shut about this at Headquarters, asked a
couple of questions that drew no answers, and departed as swiftly as he
had come.
The next step was the dangerous one. The superintendent admitted Kirk to
the Dakin apartment and went down to the foyer to ring the bell in case
the girl arrived at the wrong time. He soothed the Lieutenant's anxiety
somewhat by explaining that she seldom returned to the place before
seven o'clock, over three hours from now, but Kirk was taking no
chances.
By five o'clock he had Alma Kirk's bedroom bugged and the instrument in
working order and thoroughly tested. He was painstaking about removing
all traces of plaster and sawdust and bits of wires before pushing the
dresser back into place to cover the dictograph's receiver.
He found the superintendent stiffly on guard in the foyer and gave him
his final instructions. The man listened respectfully, repeated them
back to Kirk to convince him there would be no slip-up, and the
Lieutenant went back upstairs to 3D to take up his vigil.
He was in the spinster's bedroom, working out a crossword puzzle,
earphones in place, when he heard the sound of the bedroom door closing
in the next apartment.
The time was 7:18.