Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/108

 WAS boarding the Golondrina of the International Lines.

She was the latest thing in transoceanic airplanes. From the end of her nose to the tip of her rudder she was built for speed. Her ten great motors of a thousand horsepower reflected each shining part under the glare of the sunlight. Her transparent wing, three hundred feet long, reached out as a challenge to the sky that she had conquered, the upper strata where she had broken all passenger records. In 1942 there were few records to be broken.

I boarded her at the Grand Central Terminal at Los Angeles fifteen minutes before she lifted off for Valparaiso, Chile. Two hours before that time when I had turned from the police station into the office of the Daily Bulletin where I was a reporter, I was suddenly conscious of the fact that all eyes were turned my way. That much I remembered as I entered the editorial room. Spencer, the city editor, was on his feet, suddenly, smiling as if elated at my arrival. The staff had followed him to surround me, firing questions faster than I could answer them.

"You knew Creel, didn't you?"

"You're a helluva reporter to hide a story like that!"

"Shut up!" bawled Spencer. "I've got to have all the facts about Holden's murder. Now out with it, Edwards!"

I recall having taken Spencer to the little conference room outside the realm of the editorial staff. Here I was forced by that self-possessed worthy to disclose what I knew of the murder of young Dale Holden whom, six months before, I had found dead in his chemical laboratory. For purely personal reasons I had kept what I knew as a secret, and consequently had lost my big chance of becoming star reporter on the Bulletin.

 

It had been in the fall of 1941—the fifteenth of September to be exact—that Dale Holden discovered that strange chemical formula now known to the world as "multiple". Years of research and hard work were back of the discovery of this strange substance whose elements, when united with another, caused the resulting creation to grow at a rate faster than the eye could see—a spongy, jelly-like growth that filled test cylinders almost before the young chemist could seal them.

Holden had called me in to view his triumph, the advantages of which I could readily understand. A few drops of the strange stuff placed in a large room would grow until the room was filled! It could be used as a terrible agent of war!

I told Holden that I was going to make this the biggest story of the year. Smiling he asked me to wait until that afternoon when he could have Diane there—Diane who was his fiancée, who had hung around the shop until she became a fixture. That she had inspired him to finish his work I knew. I believe every tenth word of Dale's was in reference to Diane Nordham.

I suggested calling at the Nordham home on my return from luncheon and bringing Diane to the laboratory where I was to take some pictures of the two. Dale consented to this and I hurried through the noonday meal with visions of a banner line story. It was that decision of Holden to have Diane there that is the excuse for this story.

I drove to the Nordham mansion out in Beverly where Diane greeted me, in that sisterly way of her'shers [sic] and together we returned to Holden's laboratory. I opened the door and gently pushed Diane into the room ahead of me. But she stepped back with a terrifying scream that rent the air and brought dozens of people to the door. I looked inside. Dale lay upon the floor, face upward, with a small test tube in his mouth, held there securely with ordinary friction tape. When I reached his side I knew he was dead.