_It was just a harmless, though amazing,
kid's toy that sold for less than a dollar.
Yet it plunged the entire nation into a
nightmare of mystery and chaos...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The thing is over now, but I can't see a Teddy bear or a set of blocks
in a department store window without shuddering. I'm thankful I'm a
bachelor and have no children around to remind me of the utterly insane
nightmare that a child's toy plunged our country into--the millions of
people who died in agony--the total disruption and near dissolution of
our nation.
And yet, as the United States tottered on the verge of complete
chaos, it was, ironically, another child's toy that saved us. A
simple, ordinary, every-day toy for tots stopped the "fever", halted
the carnage that was tearing our flesh and eyes and viscera into
shreds. With most the scientists in the world working for an emergency
solution, they could come up with no better answer than a toy that'd
been around for generations before the "Mystery i-Gun" was even
conceived.
Being a plain-clothesman, I have seen greed and impatience ruin many
individual lives. If I could have guessed at the chain of events that
would stem from my first contact with the younger Baxter brother, I
would have put a bullet through his head in cold blood and cheerfully
faced the gas chamber.
Instead I took off my hat and followed him through the substantial old
house to a moderately large room in the rear where, I'd been told, we
would find a body.
Leo Baxter was a little guy about five-foot six, like me but with a
better build. His size was important for a couple of reasons, one
being that it was startling to say the least, when he pointed to the
giant on the floor and said, "My brother."
He caught my look and shrugged impatiently. "I know, I know, but this
is no time for Mutt and Jeff gags. Calvin has been murdered. Now get
with it, Lieutenant!" If Calvin _was_ his brother, Leo's agitation was
understandable, but his voice had a flat note of practicality in it
that I didn't like.
As I looked down at the sprawled length of the big man on the tiled
floor, the Mutt and Jeff angle didn't fit at all. David and Goliath
was a better bet. This Goliath seemed also to have met his fate from a
hole in the forehead. I say, "seemed," because it developed that Calvin
Baxter was not yet quite dead.
"There's no pulse or breath," his brother said when I mentioned this
error in his assumption.
"You're no doctor. Now call that ambulance like I told you. Jump!" I
said.
He jumped. I made a quick examination, meanwhile, and when Leo came
back from the phone I pointed. "See, the blood. It's still coming out."
"Corpses bleed, don't they?"
"Not in spurts," I said. "The hole's tiny, but whatever's in there
touched an artery. See that?"
He looked and seemed convinced. "The ambulance will be here. Anything
else I should do?"
"Yes. Nothing. Don't touch a thing in this room ... or did you already?"
"Just Calvin. I heard him fall, and when I came in he was on his face."
"Why did you ask for homicide when you called the police? Or let's put
it this way: What makes you think it wasn't an accident?"
"Two reasons. First, because I couldn't see any cause of the accident.
When I turned him over the floor was smooth and clean under his
forehead except for the smear of blood. Reason number two: Because
Calvin just doesn't have accidents. All his life he's moved in slow
motion. I've never known him to stumble, or cut himself, or drop
anything or even bump into anyone."
I was checking around the room myself, and I had to admit that both
reasons might be valid. A man the size of Calvin wasn't likely to be
the skittish type. And by the time the ambulance arrived I was ready to
admit that if the injury were an accident, Calvin Baxter had contrived
to conceal its source.
It took several of us to load the unconscious man onto the stretcher. I
told his cocky little brother to stay on ice, while I rode downtown in
the ambulance.
Dr. Thorsen called me into the emergency ward. "How did this happen?"
he wanted to know. Thorsen is a lean, learned old chap who normally
gives more answers than he asks.
I said, "Don't know, Doc. I found him in a sort of home workshop. No
power tools, nothing dangerous in sight. The bench at one end had a
couple of little gadgets on it--looked sort of electrical. Some wire,
soldering iron, books, a few rough circuit drawings."
"The gadgets. What did they look like?"
I thought back and realized that what I had to describe would sound a
little peculiar. "Sort of like flashlights with a pistol grip ... and
no lens where the light should come out. Just blunt, flat ends."
Thorsen shrugged. "Then I don't know. I expected you to report some
kind of a blast or explosion."
"No sign of one."
"All right, then what else but a flying particle could drill a hole in
a man's forehead the diameter of a piece of 16-gauge wire?"
"What do the x-rays show?"
"We'll know in a minute. What about the murder-attempt angle?"
I said that I had nothing to go on yet. That was the whole truth and
the final truth!
When Doc's x-rays revealed _nothing but a blood clot_ deep in the brain
at the end of the tiny tunnel piercing the skull, I was left without
even a "modus operandi", let alone a substantial suspect.
* * * * *
For two days I investigated brother Leo, and when I wasn't
investigating him I was questioning him. The small town in Minnesota
where he claimed he and his brother were born had been the county seat,
and the whole shivaree had burned up in a prairie fire years ago,
courthouse, birth records and all. With no other living relatives,
I had to depend on people who had known both men. From those whom I
questioned, I ascertained that they had been passing for brothers, at
least, for some time.
On the third day Leo's patience began to crack. "You keep asking me
the same, stupid questions over and over. I tell you, I'm a mechanical
engineer. My brother was a mathematician. We're both single. I make
enough money in the construction game to support both of us. What's so
suspicious about humoring my brother's research?"
"Among other things," I said, "is your ignorance of what he was doing."
"For the fiftieth time I tell you I _didn't_ know!" His exasperation
was mounting to the pitch I had been awaiting.
"You used the past tense. You do know now?"
He wheeled and crossed the living room, poured himself a drink of
straight bourbon and downed it. "Yes, I have a notion now, but it's
none of your damned business. His ideas may be patentable."
I said slowly and quietly, "Now I'll tell you what I've been waiting
for. I've been waiting for you to offer me information about the two
little gadgets that you removed from your brother's work-bench--against
my explicit orders not to touch anything. Until you produce those items
and explain your actions I'll be around here asking stupid questions.
From now on, understand?"
"Damn cops!" He threw the shot glass to the floor and glared at me for
a long minute. "All right, come with me."
We went into a little library. He took two volumes from a high shelf
and from the recess snatched the two gadgets with the pistol grips.
From a table drawer, which he unlocked with a key from his pocket, he
took some drawings that looked like the ones that had disappeared from
his brother's little workshop.
"Calvin developed a new effect by applying one of his esoteric
mathematical symbols to a simple electronic circuit," Leo began, in
his surly tone. He pointed at the margin of the circuit drawing. There
were jottings of algebraic formulae in which the quantity "i" appeared
prominently. He pointed this out to me and continued, "Being a cop you
wouldn't understand, but this symbol stands for an imaginary number,
the square root of a minus one."
This rang a bell from away back in my own college math. I said, "Yeah,
I think I remember. It's some sort of operational factor in polar
coordinates. No real meaning in itself, but--"
"Well! An educated cop! That's right, except that Calvin managed to
give this symbol an actual, functional application. I was telling
the truth when I said I didn't know what he was doing. I still don't
understand it, and I've been losing sleep over these formulae."
"Then why not take it to the university and let the professors--"
"Because," he interrupted, "whether I understand it or not, Calvin's
gadget, happens to work. Watch this."
He picked an ordinary paper clip from the debris of pencils, stamps and
rubber bands from the top desk drawers, touched it to the "muzzle" end
of the gadget where it stuck as if magnetized. "Now keep your eyes on
the paper clip," he ordered.
His forefinger pressed a button in the pistol grip, and without click,
snap, buzz or murmur, _the paper clip disappeared_.
Leo stared at me, as thoughts of "hyper-space", fourth-dimension and
space-warps flitted through my mind. It wasn't a Buck Roger's atomic
disintegrator, because there was no heat, flash or sound. The clip was
suddenly elsewhere.
"And I suppose the other gadget brings it back," I said.
"That's what I thought, but I can't make it work. I suppose my brother
could, if he were here."
He tossed the thing to me, pointed at the little box of paper clips in
the drawer and said, "Have fun."
I did, for about five minutes. Eight paper clips later I was convinced
that whatever else it might be, the gadget was no potential murder
weapon. The clips disappeared, totally. You could pass your hand
through the point of departure without a tingle of sensation.
Leo briefed me further. The thing worked only on metallic conductors.
It was harmless to human flesh and other organic matter. Then he
removed the cover that ran the length of the rather crude, hand-carved,
wooden barrel. From front to back, were: One pen-light cell, a
lumpy-looking coil of wire hand-wound on a spindle-shaped iron core,
and a short, cylindrical bar-magnet.
"In mass production," he said, "About 40 cents worth of material and
maybe 50 cents worth of labor! Do you see why I wanted to keep it a
secret until I could patent it?"
"No!" I said flatly. "Unless you consider a paper-clip disposal unit an
item of commercial importance."
"But it's a whole new scientific principle--the rotation of matter
completely out of our space-time continuum!"
"That much I grasp, but what good is it except as a demonstration of a
piece of pure scientific research?"
"Good Lord, man, have you no imagination?"
"Okay, okay! Get rich," I said and slammed the front door behind me as
I stomped out. I had been so certain that the missing gadgets would
give me a motive for the attack on Leo's brother, or at least the
method of inflicting the fantastic wound, that I was about ready to
turn in my badge in frustration. All I could pin on Leo was a desire to
cash in on his brother's gimmick--which, presumably, he could have done
whether Calvin lived or died.
Suppose, I mused on my way back to the station, that Calvin had refused
to let Leo commercialize on his discovery? Perhaps Calvin was preparing
a paper for publication in scientific circles. Maybe cool-headed little
Leo tried to knock off his brother to keep the secret in the family
until it could be turned to a selfish dollar.
All right, suppose a jury would accept such an impalpable theory as a
motive, then what? No murder weapon. No witnesses. Not even a genuine
murder yet, because Calvin was still alive.
Yes, old Doc Thorsen had kept the mathematician alive somehow. The
elder Baxter lay on his back across two, white iron beds pushed
together in the City Hospital, and Thorsen came in to report to me.
"The clot seems to be absorbing better than I expected, but it's
doubtful that we could operate to remove the paralyzing pressure. The
puncture is deep into the brain tissue, and he's too nearly gone to
survive such an ordeal."
"Any chance that he might recover consciousness?"
"Pretty remote," Thorsen told me. "We'll keep a special nurse with him
as you ordered, just in case he does."
I left Calvin Baxter pale and motionless as some great statue supine
amid the tangle of plasma, glucose and saline hoses, under his
transparent oxygen tent. The wound that had laid him low was no more
than a dot of dried blood on his massive forehead.
Until his death, his file would remain under unsolved crimes. In my
own mind I was no longer sure of anything, except that if there was a
nickel in Calvin Baxter's discovery, his mercenary brother would wring
it out.
And he did. Even before Calvin died.
Some seven weeks later Leo marketed the "MYSTERY i-GUN" as a combined,
toy, trick and puzzle, and it set the whole damned world on its ear!
I located Leo Baxter in his new suite of offices on the 34th floor
of the State Building. He peeled back his lips in a sneery grin. "I
thought you'd be showing up."
He waved away his male secretary who was still clinging to my arm
trying to tow me back to the reception room. I said, "I kept your
secret, then you pull an irresponsible thing like this! A kid's toy!
Good Lord, man, that device might be dangerous!"
"I appreciate your professional ethics, Lieutenant. I've applied for a
patent, so you can tell all your friends now. And stop worrying. The
"Mystery i-Gun" is quite harmless. I experimented a week before going
into production."
"A week?" I could scarcely believe my ears. "What happens when some kid
jams his gun against a light-pole or an automobile ... or the night
lock on the First National Bank?"
"Nothing. It punches no holes. A large metallic object simply
dissipates the field. The largest object it will handle is about a
half-inch steel screw--"
"Baxter, your brother's accident is connected to that device--and you
turn it loose as a novelty!"
"Nonsense. It's safe as a knot-hole. It simply makes things disappear.
Little things, like tacks, ball bearing, old rusty nuts and bolts--"
"And dimes and mamma's earrings and the front door key," I snapped
back. "Until you know how to bring those things back you had no right
to market that rig."
He laid his small hands before him on the desk. "Lieutenant, I'm sick
of working for other people. This is my chance to get a bank-roll to
back my own contracting firm. Yes, I financed Calvin's research because
he's brilliant, and I knew he'd come up with something some day. Now
he's done it, and I'm merely protecting his interests and my investment
in him. See here." He shoved some documents at me. There was the patent
application, a declaration of partnership for purposes of marketing
the Mystery i-Gun, and the articles of incorporation of the Baxter
Construction Company.
"Okay," I said. "So you've cut your brother in on all this. Who's his
beneficiary when he dies?"
"Still looking for a motive for murder, aren't you, Lieutenant?"
I didn't admit it to him, but he was right. Calvin's "accident" seemed
too convenient to the purposes of his practical little brother,
Leo. What's more, the lab and medical men on the force were just
as mystified today as they were when we brought Calvin in with the
needle-thin hole in his skull. Old Doc Thorsen had admitted to me that
he could name no implement--not even a surgical instrument--that could
have inflicted such a narrow gauge hole. It had to be caused by a
fragment, _but there was no fragment in the brain_!
"Leo," I said, "I know you consider this case closed, but I want you to
do me a favor. I want to go over your brother's lab once more."
"But you've--" He stopped, shrugged and nodded his head. "Okay. I'm
interested in finding out what hurt Cal, as much as you are. I'll tell
you, I'm busy the rest of this week, but I'll meet you at the old house
next Monday evening at eight. You see, I closed up the place and moved
downtown."
I agreed, with the feeling that he was deliberately making me wait just
to annoy me. Leo Baxter was an important man now, a man graciously
willing to cooperate with the police--at his own convenience. I stood
up. "Your brother has been calling your name. I suppose they told you
that?"
"They phoned. Doctor said it was just mutterings."
"You haven't even been to see him?"
"What's the use? He wouldn't recognize me."
Well, it wasn't any of my business, really, but it's funny how you get
to hate a man for his attitude. I don't know what I expected to find
by going over that lab-workshop again, but whatever it was, I hoped it
would incriminate Leo. On the face of it he was guilty of nothing more
than a premature marketing of a new device, but the way he was cashing
in on Calvin's genius certainly did the dying man no honor.
_Cash in was right!_ The toys sold like bubble-gum. The papers, radio,
and TV picked up the sensational gimmick and gave it a billion bucks
worth of free advertising. And the profitable part of it was that the
i-Gun was so simple to mass-produce that Leo's fifteen contracting
manufacturers were almost able to keep up with the astronomical demand.
Before that week was up, the Wall Street Journal estimated there
were already more i-Guns in the hands of the juvenile public than all
the yo-yos ever produced. They retailed at eighty-five cents, made of
plastic with a hole in the back where you could change the pen-light
battery. They sold, all right. They sold in drugstores and toy stores
and dime stores and department stores. Toddler's, tykes and teen-agers
went for them. And adults. Maybe 30 million of them were in the hands
of the public before I saw Leo Baxter next.
Which was almost two weeks instead of the one week he had promised.
I finally got an appointment. "Sorry," he said. "I've been tied up with
government people all week. The A. E. C. tried to get me in trouble."