Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/20

Rh Suddenly the lights flashed on, and the apparition disappeared. Noticing that there was something glistening on the floor where the thing had stood, I went over to investigate. There was a small pool of clear, foul smelling liquid rapidly soaking into the rug. As I bent over to examine it I heard a cry of warning from the girl and a quick movement behind me. I turned, but could not move in time to avoid the heavy chair which was rushing toward me. It knocked me flat, fell over me, righted itself, and came back, apparently bent on my destruction. I managed to roll out of its way and get to my feet, but it promptly chased me to the davenport, behind which I took shelter.

"Holy mackerel!" exclaimed the pseudo Dr. Dorp.

The chair, apparently realizing that it was baffled, swung about and quickly returned to its place in the corner.

The phenomena, thus far, including the materialization of the spectre, had taken a little more than half an hour. I heard the sound for which I had been listening—the roar of the doctor's motor.

"A remarkable chair, doctor," I said. "The thing rather fagged me. I think I'll step out on the porch for a breath of cool air."

The door obligingly opened for me when I left the room. The front door, however, was already open. Rafferty was standing on the porch.

"Go on down to the car," he whispered. "The doctor's waitin' for you."

I went, and climbed into the front seat beside the doctor. Detective Hogan was in the back seat. We whirled away with moaning gears.

The doctor handed me a folded map.

"Open this, will you, Evans?" he requested. "Hold it beneath the dash light. I don't want to miss the road."

I opened it, and found it was a detailed map of Lake County. A large triangle had been traced on the paper, its smallest angle resting on a spot marked with an X, apparently some eight miles due west of our present location.

"Does X mark the spot where the body was found?" I asked, as we spun around onto Sheridan Road on two wheels.

"It marks the spot where I expect to find the source of Miss Van Loan's troubles," replied the doctor. "It isn't far, as the crow flies, but there is no through road to it. We have a roundabout trip of about sixteen miles ahead of us."

E continued north on Sheridan Road for nearly four miles. Then we swung west at Highwood, continuing in this direction for about eight miles. Turning south on the Milwaukee road at Halfday, we covered another three miles of road before the doctor slowed his terrific pace.

"Take the wheel now, will you?" he requested, "and drive slowly."

We changed places, and I started off at a speed of about ten miles an hour. The doctor lifted a small portable radio set from behind the back seat, adjusted the tuning dials, and slowly moved the loop aerial back and forth until there was an angry buzz from inside the machine. He then continued to slowly turn the loop aerial as we moved along, apparently with the purpose of keeping it in a position where the machine would buzz the loudest.

I noticed that, at first, the direction of the loop only made a very slight deviation from the direction in which we were going. Gradually, however, the deviation grew greater until the loop stood at right angles to our course. We were, at the moment, passing the entrance to a lane, which led to a farm house set back about half a mile from the road. As we continued past the lane the aerial gradually straightened out toward our course.

About a thousand feet beyond the entrance to the lane was a brightly lighted filling station. We stopped there, left the car in charge of the service man, and started across the fields. When we had gone a short distance, the doctor handed me an automatic pistol.

"I hope we won't have to do any shooting," he said, "but it's safer to be prepared."

It took us all of ten minutes to reach the farm house. It was in darkness, except for one of the rear rooms, which was dimly lighted. Admonishing us to tread carefully, the doctor led the way around the house. As we rounded the rear porch, I saw that a four-wire aerial had been stretched between the gable and the barn. A wire connected to the aerial, led down into the dimly lighted rear room.

Instructing us to stay where we were, the doctor crept stealthily up on the porch and peered through the window. For five minutes at least he stood there, looking into that room while we waited below. Then he turned and beckoned to us. Neither Hogan nor I lost any time in getting up to the window. I'm sure he was as curious as I to learn what was going on in that room.

Seated on a long bench before an instrument board which contained a bewildering array of dials, buttons and levers, was a short, bull-necked man. He wore a close cropped, bristling pompadour, a thin, fiercely upturned moustache, and an immense pair of thick lensed, horn rimmed spectacles. A set of headphones covered his ears, and his pudgy hands worked incessantly with the levers, dials and buttons on the board before him. The only light in the room came from a panel of frosted glass which was just above the instrument board. On the panel, which the operator constantly watched, was a very clear shadow picture of the living room I had quitted only a short time before, in the home of Miss Van Loan.

From where I stood I could see Miss Van Loan and the pseudo Dr. Dorp seated just as I had left them, while Rafferty, who was impersonating me, was staging a quite lively wrestling match in the center of the room with the chair which had proven so hostile toward me earlier in the evening.

At a sign from Dr. Dorp, we drew our weapons and tiptoed to the door. It was locked, and the key was in place, but Hogan opened it quickly and silently with a small tool which he carried for the purpose. Before he was aware of our presence we had the op-