_The Lady of the Picture_
Phil Hurren, often known as "Zip" Hurren, reporter on the _Examiner_,
felt, on the day the managing editor called him into the sanctum, that
fortune could smile on him no more brightly. There wasn't anything
brighter.
"You stand well with the detective bureau," his boss had said; "and
you've followed this safe-disappearing stuff pretty closely. You're
relieved of everything else for the time being. Get on that business,
and see that the public hears from the _Examiner_!"
Phil knew better than to say any more, for before he recovered from
his surprise, the editor had turned his back, buried himself in his
work on the desk, and forgotten that Phil was there. Nor did Phil
waste any real time in rejoicing. That is why he was called "Zip."
When things happened, whether it was luck or system, Phil was usually
there. In sixty seconds more, Phil was in a taxicab, whirling toward
police headquarters.
Luck or system, he didn't know, but he struck it again. The big wagon
was just starting away from the station door when he arrived, crowded
inside with bluecoats and plainclothes-men. The burly, red-faced man
with chevrons on his sleeve, sitting beside the driver, saw Phil jump
out, and motioned with his hand. Phil leaped up on the back step of
the vehicle and hung on for dear life with his fingers through the
wire grating as they careened through the streets. The men on the
inside grinned at him; a number of them knew him and liked him.
Gradually the door was opened and he crowded in. He found Sergeant
Johnson and eyed him mutely.
"How the hell do you find these things out, I'd like to know," the
sergeant exclaimed. "Are you a mind-reader?"
"I don't really know anything," Phil admitted with that humility which
the police like on the part of newspaper men and seldom meet with. "Do
you mind?"
"No objection," grunted the sergeant. "Been watching all the old
crooks since these safes have been popping. Nothin' much on any of
them, except this slippery wop, Tony Costello. No, we haven't caught
him at anything. Seems to be keeping close and minding his own
business. Working in his laboratory. Ought to make a good living if he
turned honest; clever guy, he seems. But he's been too prosperous
lately. Lots of machinery delivered to his place; we traced it to the
manufacturers and find it cost thousands. Big deposits in his banks.
But, no trace of his having sold anything or worked at anything
outside his own place. So, we're running over to surprise him and help
him get the cobwebs out of his closets."
* * * * *
The raid on Tony Costello's shop and laboratory disclosed nothing
whatever. They surrounded the place effectively and surprised Tony
genuinely. But a thorough search of every nook and cranny revealed
nothing whatever of a suspicious nature. There was merely a tremendous
amount of apparatus and machinery that none of the raiding party
understood anything about. Tony's person was also thoroughly searched,
and the leather-framed photograph of the beautiful unknown girl was
found.
"Who's this?" the sergeant demanded. "She don't look like anyone that
might belong to your crowd."
"I don't know," Tony replied.
"Whad'ya mean, don't know?" The sergeant gave him a rough shake.
"What'ya carryin' it for, then?"
"I had really forgotten that it was in my pocket," Tony replied
calmly, at his ease. "I found it in a hotel room one day, and liked
the looks of it."
"I know you're lying there," the sergeant said, "though I'm ready to
believe that you don't know her. Too high up for you. Well, it looks
suspicious and we'll take the picture."
"Boy!" gasped Phil. "What a girl she must be in person! Even the
picture would stand out among a thousand. May I have the picture,
Sergeant?"
"You can come and get a copy of it to-morrow. We'll have it copied and
see if we can trace the subject of it. That might tell us something."
* * * * *
The following morning Phil was at Police Headquarters to pick up
further information, and to get a copy of the girl's photograph. Like
the police, he could not keep his mind off the idea that there was
some association between the crooked engineer and the disappearance of
the safes. It seemed to fit too well. The scientific nature of the
phenomena, Tony Costello's well known reputation for scientific
brilliance, and his recent affluence; what else could it mean? In some
way, Tony was getting at these safes. But how? And how prove it? Most
exhaustive searches failed to reveal any traces of the safes anywhere.
If any fragment of one of them had appeared in New York or San
Francisco, the news would have come at once, such was the sensation
all over the country that the series of disappearances had caused.
Tony's calm insolence during the raid, his attitude of waiting
patiently till the police should have had their fun and have it over
with so that he might be left at peace again, showed that he must be
guilty, for anyone else would have protested and felt deeply injured
and insulted. He seemed to be enjoying their discomfiture, and
absolutely confident of his own safety.
"There's got to be some way of getting him," Phil mused; and he mused
almost absent-mindedly, for he was gazing at the photograph of the
girl. For many minutes he looked at it, and then put it silently into
his pocket.
Five o'clock in the evening of that same day came the news of another
safe disappearance. Phil got his tip over the phone, and in fifteen
minutes was at the scene. It was too much like the others to go into
detail about; a six-foot portable safe had suddenly disappeared right
in front of the eyes of the office staff of The Epicure, a huge
restaurant and cafeteria that fed five thousand people three times a
day. In its place stood a ragged, rusty old Ford coupe body. He went
away from there, shaking his head.
Then suddenly in the midst of his dinner, he jumped up, and ran. An
idea had leaped into his head.
"Right after one of these things pops is the time to take a peek at
Tony," he said to himself, and immediately he was on the way.
* * * * *
But how to get his peep was not so easy a problem. When he alighted
from his cab a block away from Tony's building, he was hesitant about
approaching it. Tony knew him, and might see him first. Phil circled
the brick building, keeping under cover or far enough away; all around
it was a belt of thirty feet of lawn between the building and the
sidewalk. Ought he have called the police and given them his idea? Or
should he wait till darkness and see what he could do alone?
Then suddenly he saw her. Across the street, standing in the shelter
of a delivery truck in front of an apartment, she was observing Tony's
building intently. The aristocratic chin, the brightness of the eyes,
the waves of her hair, and the general sunny expression! It could not
be anyone else. Post haste he ran across the street.
"Pardon me!" he cried excitedly, lifting his hat and then digging
hastily into his inner pocket. "I'm sure you must be the--"
"Well, the nerve!" the young woman said icily, and pointing her chin
at the opposite horizon she walked haughtily away.
By that time Phil had dug out his picture and was running after her.
"Please," he said, "just a moment!" And he held the picture out in
front of her face.
"Now, where in the world--?" She looked at him in puzzled and
indignant inquiry, and then burst out laughing.
"It _is_ you, isn't it?" Phil asked. "What are you laughing at?"
"Oh, you looked so abject. I'm sure your intentions must be good. Now
tell me where you got my picture."
"Let us walk this way," suggested Phil, leading away from Tony's
building.
* * * * *
And, as they walked, he told her the story. When he got through she
stood and looked at him a long time in silence.
"You look square to me," she said. "You're working on my side already.
Will you help me."
"I'll do anything--anything--" Phil said, and couldn't think of any
other way of expressing his willingness, for the wonderful eyes bore
radiantly upon him.
"First I must tell you my story," she began. "But before I can do so,
you must promise me that it is to remain an absolute secret. You're a
newspaper man--"
Phil gave his promise readily.
"My father is Professor Bloomsbury at the University of Chicago. He
has been experimenting in mathematical physics, and I have been
assisting him. He has succeeded in proving experimentally the concept
of tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact that
space is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinite
distance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter,
there is a pucker or a wrinkle in space. My father has found that by
suddenly removing a portion of matter from out of space, the pucker
flattens out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal sudden
enough, there is a violent disturbance of space. By planning all the
steps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section of
space on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing two
portions of space to change places through hyperspace, or as you might
express it popularly, through the fourth dimension."
* * * * *
Phil held his hands to his head.
"It is not difficult," she went on smiling. "Loan me your pocket knife
and a piece of paper from your notebook. If I cut out a rectangular
piece of paper from this sheet and mount it on a pivot or shaft at A
B, I can rotate it through 180 degrees, just like a child's
teeter-totter, so that X will be where Y originally was. That is in
two dimensions. Now, simply add one dimension all the way round and
you will have what daddy is doing with space. He does it by shoving
fifty or a hundred pounds of lead right out of space; the sudden
flattening out of the tensors causes a section of space to flop
around, and two portions of space change places. The first time he
tried it, his desk disappeared, and we've never seen it again. We've
thought it was somewhere out in hyperspace; but this terrible story of
yours about disappearing safes, and the fact that you have this
picture, means that someone has got the desk."
"Surely you must have suspected that long ago, when the disappearances
first began?" Phil suggested.
"I've just returned from Europe," said Miss Bloomsbury. "I was
tremendously puzzled when I got my first newspapers in New York and
read about the safes. Gradually I gathered all the news on the
subject, and it seemed most reasonable to suspect this gangster
engineer."
"Great minds and same channels," Phil smiled. "But your father. Why
didn't he speak up when the safes began to pop?"
"Ha! ha!" she laughed a tinkly little laugh. "My father doesn't know
what safes are for, nor who is President, nor that there has been a
war. Mother and I take care of him, and he works on tensors. He has
probably never heard about the safes."
* * * * *
"What were you going to do around here?" Phil asked, marveling at the
courage of the girl who had come to look the situation over
personally.
"I hadn't formed any definite plans. I just wanted to look about
first."
"Well," said Phil, "as you will soon see by the papers, another safe
has puffed out. It occurred to me that we might find out something by
spying about here immediately after one of the disappearances. That's
why I'm here. If you'll tell me where you live, or wait for me at some
safe place, I'll come and report to you as soon as I find out
anything."
"Oho! So that's the kind of a girl you think I am!" She laughed
sunnily again. "No, Mr. Reporter. Either we reconnoiter together, or
each on our own."
"Oh, together, by all means," said Phil so earnestly that she laughed
again. "And since we'd better wait for darkness, let's have something
to eat somewhere. I didn't finish my dinner."
Phil found Ione Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful than
her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent,
too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a
tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy
in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too
much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his
heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have
her by his side, slipping along through the darkness toward Tony's
building.
This building was a one-story brick affair with a vast amount of
window space. From the sidewalk they could see faint lights glowing
within, but could make out no further details. They therefore selected
the darkest side of the building, and made their way hurriedly across
the lawn. Here, they found, they could see the crowding apparatus
within the one long room fairly well. They looked into one window
after another, making a circuit around the building, until Phil
suddenly clutched the girl's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "Straight ahead and a little to the left!"
At the place he indicated stood a tall safe. Across the top of its
door were painted in gold letters, the words: "The Epicure."
"That's the safe that went to-night," whispered Phil. "That's all we
need to know. Now, quick to a telephone!"
"Oh," said a gentle, ironic voice behind them, "not so quick!"
* * * * *
They whirled around and found themselves looking into two automatic
pistols, and behind them in the light of the street lamps, the
sardonic smile of Tony Costello.
"Charmed at your kind interest in my playthings, I'm sure," he purred.
"Only it leaves me in an embarrassing position. I'm not exactly sure
what to do about it. Kindly step inside while I think."
Phil made a move sidewise along the wall.
"Stop!" barked Costello sharply. "Of course," his voice was quiet
again, "that might be the simplest way out. I think I am within my
legal rights if I shoot people who are trying to break into my
property. Yet, that would be messy--not neat. Better step in. The
window swings outward."
At the point of his pistols they clambered through the window, and he
came in after them. He kept on talking, as though to himself, but loud
enough for them to hear.
"Yes, we want some way out that is neater than that. Hm! Violence
distresses me. Never liked Ed's rough methods. Yet, this is
embarrassing."
He turned to them.
"What did you really want here? I see that you are the _Examiner's_
reporter, and that you are the lady of the photograph. What did you
come here for? Ah, yes, the safe. Well, go over and look at it."
As they hesitated, he stamped his foot and shrilled crankily:
"I mean it! Go, look at the safe! Is there anything else you want to
know?"
"Yes," said Phil coolly, his self-control returning, "where are the
other safes?"
"Oh. Anything to oblige. Last requests are a sort of point of honor,
aren't they. Ought to grant them. Stand close to that safe!"
* * * * *
He backed away, his guns levelled at them. He laid down the right one,
keeping the left one aimed, and moved some knobs on a dial and threw
over a big switch. A muffled rumbling and whirring began somewhere;
and then, slowly, a block of tables and apparatus ten feet square rose
upward toward the ceiling. A section of the floor on which they stood
came up, supported by columns, and now formed the roof of a room that
had risen out of the floor. In it were four safes.
"Poor old Ed!" sighed Tony. "There was a time when he had a lot of
good stuff put away down there. I've got six rooms like that. Well,
the good old times are over."
He threw out the switch and the whole mass sank slowly and silently
downward till the floor was level and there was no further sign of it.
Then he backed away to another table, across the room from them,
keeping his gun levelled.
"Too bad," he said. "I don't like to do these things. But--" he sighed
deeply, "self-preservation. Now I'm going to flip you out, yes,
_out_, into a strange region. I've never been there. I don't know if
there is food or drink there. I hope so, for you'll never get back
here."
Phil stiffened. He determined to leap and risk a shot. But he was too
late. Tony's hand came down on a switch. There was a sudden,
nauseating jar. The laboratory vanished.
There was only the safe, Ione Bloomsbury and himself, and a small
circle of concrete floor extending to a dim little horizon a dozen
feet away. Beyond that, nothing. Not blue, as the sky is. Not black,
as dark, empty spaces are. It suggested black, because there was no
impression of light or color on the eyes; but it wasn't black. It was
nothingness.