The Invisible Master
By EDMOND HAMILTON
Author of
_The Hidden World, Cities in the Air, etc._
_Illustrated By RUGER_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Scientific Detective Monthly April 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_A thousand alarms are pouring into Police Headquarters! The
Invisible Master broods over the city! Who is He? We defy any
reader to guess the secret! Even the editorial staff of SCIENTIFIC
DETECTIVE MONTHLY was astounded at the conclusion of this
scientific yarn. Write and tell us if you were able to foretell the
ending._
_If you were to ask us which, in our opinion, is the greatest
scientific detective story of the year, we certainly would
pronounce the present story to be that unusual gem._
_Here is a story that will keep you fascinated, not only in
connection with its excellence of science, understandable by
everyone, but by the fast-moving action for which this well-known
author is famous._
_Invisibility in this sort of story is perhaps not a new idea;
but we venture to say that no one can foretell the O. Henry-like
ending, which is as unexpected as it is dramatic._
CHAPTER I
Carton Earns His Salary
"And to think," Charlie Carton exclaimed, "that they pay you a city
editor's salary for ideas like that!"
The other looked up from his desk, nettled. "I didn't say I took any
stock in the thing, Carton," he pointed out. "But I got the tip that
the _Courier_ and the _Sphere_ have their men hurrying out to the
university, and we can't afford to miss anything."
"And I'm to write a breath-holding tale of how Dr. Howard Grantham, the
super-physicist, has discovered the secret of invisibility?" demanded
Carton.
The city-editor smiled. "Write it any way you please," he said, turning
to the papers on his desk. "But whatever you get out of it, see that
the _Courier_ and _Sphere_ men don't get more!"
"I'll get out of it some pointers on the methods of publicity-crazy
scientists, if nothing else," was Carton's parting shot.
It was with this skepticism strong in him that he rode uptown on the
west-side subway, nor had his mood changed by the time he emerged again
into the morning sunlight. East and northward from him stretched the
campus of America University, a sweep of green from which rose the
great gray buildings. Carton walked quickly toward the building, one of
the nearest to him, that held the university's world-famed department
of physical science.
Once inside, he was directed through long corridors and past the doors
of laboratories filled with gleaming apparatus and intent students,
until he reached the door he sought. When he pushed it open he walked
into a small ante-room in which two men of his own age and unscholarly
appearance were lounging and smoking. They greeted him with calls of
joy.
"Carton, you're not stuck with this yarn too?" one asked. "You'll be
graduating to the Sunday supplements if you keep on."
"I can see the _Inquirer's_ headlines tonight," chaffed the other.
"'Noted scientist makes amazing discovery----'"
"Where is our noted scientist?" asked Carton of Burns, the _Courier's_
man.
"Dr. Grantham is even now engaged upon the tremendous work which he
will presently reveal to the eager press," said the other. "In other
words, he and that sour-faced assistant of his, Gray, are cooking up
something to get page-one space."
"I don't know about that, Burns, at that," put in the third
reflectively. "Dr. Grantham's got a great rep among the science boys,
and he's never been any space-hound."
"Well, why his announcement of this stuff, then?" demanded Carton.
"Claiming to be able to make matter invisible at will--rot! It's just
the old cancer-cure dodge the ambitious medics use, worked out in a
different way."
"Perhaps so," said the other, "but--"
He was interrupted by the entrance of a man from the room beyond, at
sight of whom Carton found himself revising some of his conceptions.
Dr. Howard Grantham was a man of over middle age, big and of average
appearance with his graying hair and clean-shaven face, but with very
unaverage eyes, gray and strong and steady. When he spoke his voice
seemed to hold a calm and contained power.
Powers of Invisibility
"I apologize for keeping you waiting, gentlemen," he told them, "but
you will appreciate that a demonstration of my discovery at this stage
is somewhat difficult. However, Gray and I think we can give you an
idea, at least, of the thing."
"You mean you're going to make some matter invisible before us?" Carton
asked incredulously, and as the scientist turned toward him, added
quickly, "I'm Carton--of the _Inquirer_."
Dr. Grantham bowed. "Yes," he said quietly, "we think we can give
you a demonstration of it on a small scale. Will you step this way,
gentlemen?"
As Carton passed after the physicist with his two companions into
the room beyond, he felt his skepticism fading still farther. It was
apparently Dr. Grantham's private laboratory into which they were
ushered. Beside a table in it there awaited them a dark young man of
thirty or so, with quick black probing eyes. When introduced to the
reporters as Gray, Dr. Grantham's assistant, he gave them but a curt
nod.
The room seemed full of physical apparatus for the most part of
outlandish appearance to Carton, he and his two fellow-journalists
looking alertly around them. Upon the table before them, just inside
the casement through which the brilliant sunlight was streaming, rested
a squat cabinet of black metal, but inches square, with a small metal
framework on it and with connections to what seemed small batteries and
a row of three switches.
Dr. Grantham was drawing their attention to this when the door behind
them opened and another entered, an impeccably-dressed older man whose
white head and genial countenance the reporters recognized instantly
as that of Dr. Calvin Ellsworth, America University's very prominent
president. He waved Grantham back as the latter turned toward him.
"Don't let me interrupt, Grantham," he adjured him. "I just wanted to
be a spectator like the rest."
Dr. Grantham nodded in understanding, and turned back to the reporters.
"To describe understandingly what I am going to show you," he told
them, "you must understand something of the principle involved in this.
I can make invisible, and that may seem a strange thing to many, who
have not ever stopped to wonder just why matter is visible at all."
"Why is it, then? Why do we see a house? We see it for two reasons, its
obstruction and reflection of light. The light-rays come to us from all
around it, but not from behind the house because they are stopped by
it. The house, then, is an area of comparative darkness to us, and so
is outlined against the light. Also light is reflected from all sides
upon it and to our eyes."
"But suppose that the light-rays behind, instead of being stopped by
the house, curved round it? Then we would see what was behind the
house, with ease, and the house itself would be quite invisible to us,
granted that light striking it from all sides did not really strike it
but curved around it. Then if I want to make a house, or a tree, or a
stone, invisible, all I need to do is to deflect the light-rays around
it in such a way that they will curve around and avoid it instead of
ever striking it."
"Can that be done? In principle, it has been possible for years, for
years ago we learned that light does not always travel in straight
lines but can be deflected to one side or another by certain forces.
Einstein's discoveries showed that, it being photographically confirmed
after his theory that the light-rays of stars curve in toward the
sun in passing it in space. If there is a force that will attract
light-rays and make them curve in toward an object, why not a force
that will repel the light-rays and make them curve outward to avoid an
object?"
Sought for Years
"It is that force which for years I have sought and which I have
finally found. It is an electromagnetic force which repels light-rays
and by curving them around the zone of force can make all matter in
that zone invisible. Understand, it does not blot out light in any way,
it simply makes the light-rays detour around an object and so makes
that object invisible."
"So much for theory. I have here a small cabinet of black metal in
which is an apparatus for projecting this force upward for a few
inches. Any small object placed on top of the cabinet will become
invisible when the force from within is put into operation. If the
force were more powerful, and radiated out in every direction instead
of upward only, the cabinet itself and all around it would be made
invisible."
Dr. Grantham cast a quick glance around and then picked from the table
a small disk-shaped paper-weight of black, opaque glass.
"I shall endeavor to make this paper-weight invisible to your eyes--by
placing it on the cabinet and using the force within to bend the
light-rays around it."
He was turning with it to the little cabinet when Carton reached forth
a hand.
"May I look at the thing first?" he asked.
Dr. Grantham handed it to him, smiling. "Of course, and I trust you'll
find nothing faked about it."
The three reporters examined it closely, as did with evident interest
President Ellsworth. It was quite obviously no more than a disk of the
black glass used for paper-weights and inkstands. When they handed it
back to Dr. Grantham he leaned forward and placed it upright in the
little metal framework on the cabinet's top. It stood out there against
the brilliant sunlight streaming through the window just behind it, a
dead-black disk against that brilliant light.
Dr. Grantham turned to the assistant. "All ready, Gray?" he queried,
and the other nodded briefly.
"Everything on it set," he said. "The batteries are on."
"Please watch very closely," the physicist told those behind him.
"These tests are rather hard to arrange, and I don't want you to have
any doubts."
He pressed one of the switches beneath his hands, and from the cabinet
came a thin, almost inaudible whining. The three reporters and
President Ellsworth were watching spellbound. A half-dozen feet before
them the black disk of the paper-weight lay as dark as ever against
the sunlight streaming in. But as Dr. Grantham slowly turned a small
rheostat control they all uttered something like a sigh. The black disk
against the sunlight was becoming translucent, transparent. It was
disappearing!
[Illustration: As Dr. Grantham turned the rheostat control ... the
black disc against the sunlight ... began to disappear.]
Dr. Grantham's hand still moved on the rheostat handle and as the
thin whine from the cabinet came louder they saw that the disk was
but a mere ghost-like shape against the sunlight, and then that too
had vanished. The paper-weight was invisible! They gazed silently,
fascinated, and then as Grantham moved back the control in his hand the
shadowy circle of the disk appeared again, it grew quickly more opaque,
and as the switch clicked and the cabinet's whine ceased it rested
there as black and opaque and visible as ever!
Dr. Grantham leaned and grasped it, handed it to the four. Wonderingly
they passed it from hand to hand, seeing it the same as before, quite
black and commonplace and visible. Carton, himself oddly stirred by
what he had seen, heard Burns' exclamation from beside him.
"Good Lord! What a story!"
"And you can do that to anything?" Carton demanded of the physicist.
The Invisible Man
Dr. Grantham nodded. "To any matter. Gray and I are now finishing a
cabinet-projector that will be of sufficient power to make invisible
itself and all for a few feet around it. With it a man would be
perfectly invisible."
"An invisible man?" President Ellsworth was looking at the scientist
keenly. "My dear Grantham--do you mean it would make a man as invisible
as that paper-weight?"
The physicist calmly nodded. "Just that, and if he had the cabinet and
its compact batteries attached to him he could move at will invisibly."
"But the possibilities of that are rather appalling," said President
Ellsworth, his brows knit. "Do you realize that if some criminal were
to get hold of the thing, he could----"
"No criminal is going to hear of that part of it, even," Grantham told
him reassuringly. "I know that you, gentlemen, will at my request
confine your accounts to the principle of the discovery and to my
demonstration without hinting of its possibilities on a larger scale."
Already the reporters were at the door, but Carton turned back. "You
wouldn't mind if I'd take that paper-weight with me?" he asked,
somewhat apologetically. "Of course I know it's all square but editors
are such a skeptical crew--"
"Of course not," the physicist said, handing it to him. "Any valid
scientific discovery will stand all the investigations of it that can
be conceived. I only trust that you'll restrain your imaginations as
much as possible in your descriptions."
A half-hour later Carton was pouring out an excited tale to the city
editor of the _Inquirer_, who heard him with calm, lighting a cigar.
When he had tossed away the match, he looked up.
"It all boils down, then," he commented, "to the fact that Dr. Grantham
has made a claim and then put on some hocus-pocus up there to convince
you of it."
"Hocus-pocus nothing!" exclaimed Carton heatedly. "I tell you I was as
skeptical as you about it until he did the thing before our eyes, made
this paper-weight disappear!"
The editor scratched his chin reflectively. "Well, it can have a column
on page one," he said, "but remember to keep the responsibility on Dr.
Grantham. I'm not going to have this paper mixed up in a silly hoax."
"The biggest story to break in years and you call it a hoax!" Carton
said bitterly. "If the building was burning down around you, you'd wait
for a statement from the fire department before you'd run the story."
"Well, that would be better than retracting the story the next day,"
the other rejoined. "These scientists have brainstorms regularly,
Carton, and this discovery of Grantham's is one if I ever saw one."
It was in that frame of mind, Carton perceived when his story appeared
that afternoon, that it was read by most. The thing was accorded very
considerable space by most of the metropolitan newspapers, but all
of them were one with the _Inquirer_ in presenting Dr. Grantham's
claim and describing his demonstration of it without taking any
responsibility as to its truth. Too many times in the past had the
newspapers been duped by clever scientific hoaxes.
All had more or less accurate statements of Dr. Grantham's principle
of light-bending as a means of invisibility, and some had additional
statements from noted physicists and astro-physicists. These,
respectful for the most part of Dr. Grantham's huge reputation,
ventured no criticism or support of his theory, but corroborated his
statements as to the curving of light-rays in passing the sun. It was
assumed by all of them, and by the greater part of those who read
the articles, that even if true Dr. Grantham's discovery was a mere
laboratory triumph without possibility of any practical application.
Carton saw, with some exasperation, that the thing was being treated
only as another of the lurid pseudo-scientific sensations which had
long ceased to astound the public. Dr. Grantham himself had made no
statements other than to affirm quietly the fact of his discovery, and
Carton would have given much to have been able to spring the sensation
of the physicist's larger projector that would make a man invisible.
Without it, he saw, the thing as a news sensation was doomed to wither
and die quickly. But in this, for once, he was wrong.
For a few hours before the next morning his phone jangled and when he
answered sleepily the voice of the _Inquirer's_ night-editor jolted him
to attention.
"Carton? You handled that Grantham thing yesterday, didn't you? Then
pile out to America at once--Dr. Grantham's been attacked by someone
there, and there's a rumor of an invisibility apparatus of his being
stolen!"