Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/84

Rh at the right. And a simple diagram may serve perhaps better than a page of explanation:



The electrolier, blazing from its four nitro lamps, illumined every nook and cranny of that office; shed its blazing effulgence upon Quarrier, standing like a graven image before that wall safe. And as he stood there, for the first time in his well-ordered existence a prey to fear, a face rose out of his consciousness; he heard again that voice of Marston, President of Intervale Steel:

"You have them, my dear Quarrier; keep them—safe."

Quarrier had never liked Marston; the man was elusive, like an eel; you never saw his hand: it was impossible to guess what moved behind the mask-like marble of his face, expressionless always, cold, contained.

But Quarrier had the "documents," or, rather, they were there, in that wall safe, in itself a small fort of chrome-nickel steel and manganese against which no mere "can-opener" could have prevailed—no torch, even.

Now, as he operated the combination, he was abruptly sensible of a curious sensation of strain; a shock; the short hairs at the back of his neck prickled suddenly as if at the touch of an invisible, icy finger. And for a moment he could have sworn to a Presence just behind him—a something in ambush grinning at his back—a danger, a real and daunting peril, the greater that it was unmeasured and unknown.

But with his fingers upon that dial, Quarrier half turned as if to depart. He was getting jumpy, his nerves out of hand—too much coffee and too many strong cigars, perhaps. That was it. That kidnapping; it might, after all, have had nothing to with Marston. The documents were safe—they simply had to be. Unless Marston had been there, and gone; but he would scarcely have had time.

Perhaps too, Quarrier might have obeyed the impulsion of that turning movement, and in that case, also, this story would never have been written. Quarrier might have done this, but for the moment, practical and sanely balanced as he was, for a split second he had the fancy that if he turned his head he would see—something that was not good, that was not—well—normal.

It was instinctive, elemental, rather than rational, and, getting himself in hand, he would doubtless, have turned abruptly, leaving the room, if, at that moment, out of the tail of his eye, he had not seen the inescapable evidence of a presence other than his own.

IV.

The Silent Witness.

UARRIER was a large man, and hard-muscled, a dangerous adversary in a rough-and-tumble, a "good man with his hands," as we have seen; young, and a quick thinker.

In the half of a second it came to him that Marston might have delegated his authority (at second- or third-hand, certainly) to some peterman, some yegg, say, to obtain possession of those documents. But the fellow would have to be a boxman par excellence; that strongbox was the last word in safes, and, Quarrier was certain, the final one.

No ordinary house-man could hope to break into it, and the marauder would have to depend upon a finger sandpapered to the quick, hearing microscopically sensitive, to catch, through that barrier of steel and bronze, the whispering fall of those super-tumblers.

And abruptly following this suggestion, a second and a more daunting thought obtruded: Suppose—just suppose, that their design held no