Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 Part 33

"Good-by, Keegan, forever," murmured Norma.

"Amen," O'Hara devoutedly agreed.

From the Ocean's Depths

_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_

Man came from the sea. Mercer, by his thought-telegraph, learns from the weirdly beautiful ocean-maiden of a branch that returned there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Her head was a little to one side, in the att.i.tude of one who listens intently._]

From somewhere out on the black, heaving Atlantic, the rapid, m.u.f.fled popping of a speed-boat's exhaust drifted clearly through the night.

I dropped my book and stretched, leaning back more comfortably in my chair. There was real romance and adventure! Rum-runners, seeking out their hidden port with their cargo of contraband from Cuba. Heading fearlessly through the darkness, fighting the high seas, still running after the storm of a day or so before, daring a thousand dangers for the sake of the straw-packed bottles they carried. Sea-bronzed men, with hard, flat muscles and fearless eyes; ready guns slapping their thighs as they--

Absorbed in my mental picture of these modern free-booters, the sudden alarm of the telephone startled me like an unexpected shot fired beside my ear. Brus.h.i.+ng the cigarette ashes from my smoking-jacket, I crossed the room and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo!" I snapped ungraciously into the mouthpiece. It was after eleven by the s.h.i.+p's clock on the mantel, and if--

"Taylor?" The voice--Warren Mercer's familiar voice--rattled on without waiting for a reply. "Get in your car and come down here as fast as possible. Come just as you are, and--"

"What's the matter?" I managed to interrupt him. "Burglars?" I had never heard Mercer speak in that high-pitched, excited voice before; his usual speech was slow and thoughtful, almost didactic.

"Please, Taylor, don't waste time questioning me. If it weren't urgent, I wouldn't be calling you, you know. Will you come?"

"You bet!" I said quickly, feeling rather a fool for ragging him when he was in such deadly earnest. "Have--"

The receiver snapped and crackled; Mercer had hung up the instant he had my a.s.surance that I would come. Usually the very soul of courtesy and consideration, that act alone would have convinced me that there was an urgent need for my presence at The Monstrosity. That was Mercer's own name for the impressive pile that was at once his residence and his laboratory.

I threw off the smoking-jacket and pulled on a woolen golfing sweater, for the wind was brisk and sharpish. In two minutes I was backing the car out of the garage; a moment later I was off the gravelled drive and tearing down the concrete with the accelerator all the way down, and the black wind shrieking around the winds.h.i.+eld of my little roadster.

My own shack was out of the city limits--a little place I keep to live in when the urge to go fis.h.i.+ng seizes me, which is generally about twice a year. Mercer picked the place up for me at a song.

The Monstrosity was some four miles further out from town, and off the highway perhaps a half-mile more.

I made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes, and clamped on the brakes as I saw the entrance to the little drive that led toward the sea, and Mercer's estate.

With gravel rattling on my fenders, I turned off the concrete and swept between the two ma.s.sive, stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive. Both of them bore corroded bronze plates, "The Billows," the name given The Monstrosity by the original owner, a newly-rich munitions manufacturer.

The structure itself loomed up before me in a few seconds, a rambling affair with square-shouldered balconies and a great deal of wrought-iron work, after the most flamboyant Spanish pattern. It was ablaze with light. Apparently every bulb in the place was burning.

Just a few yards beyond the surf boomed hollowly on the smooth, shady sh.o.r.e, littered now, I knew, by the pitiful spoils of the storm.

As I clamped on my brakes, a swift shadow pa.s.sed two of the lower windows. Before I could leap from the car, the broad front door, with its rounded top and circular, grilled window, was flung wide, and Mercer came running to meet me.

He was wearing a bathrobe, hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit, his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers.

"Fine, Taylor!" he greeted me. "I suppose you're wondering what it's all about. I don't blame you. But come in, come in! Just wait till you see her!"

"Her?" I asked, startled. "You're not in love, by any chance, and bringing me down here like this merely to back up your own opinion of them eyes and them lips, Mercer?"

He laughed excitedly.

"You'll see, you'll see! No, I'm not in love. And I want you to help, and not admire. There are only Carson and myself here, you know, and the job's too big for the two of us." He hurried me across the broad concrete porch and into the house. "Throw the cap anywhere and come on!"

Too much amazed to comment further, I followed my friend. This was a Warren Mercer I did not know. Usually his clean-cut, olive-tinted face was a polite mask that seldom showed even the slightest trace of emotion. His eyes, dark and large, smiled easily, and shone with interest, but his almost beautiful mouth, beneath the long slim mustache, always closely cropped, seldom smiled with his eyes.

But it was his present excited speech that amazed me most. Mercer, during all the years I had known him, had never been moved before to such tempestuous outbursts of enthusiasm. It was his habit to speak slowly and thoughtfully, in his low, musical voice; even in the midst of our hottest arguments, and we had had many of them, his voice had never lost its calm, unhurried gentleness.

To my surprise, instead of leading the way to the really comfortable, although rather gaudy living room, Mercer turned to the left, towards what had been the billiard room, and was now his laboratory.

The laboratory, brilliantly illuminated, was littered, as usual, with apparatus of every description. Along one wall were the retorts, scales, racks, hoods and elaborate set-ups, like the articulated gla.s.s and rubber bones of some weird prehistoric monster, that demonstrated Mercer's taste for this branch of science. On the other side of the room a corresponding workbench was littered with a tangle of coils, transformers, meters, tools and instruments, and at the end of the room, behind high black control panels, with gleaming bus-bars and staring, gaping meters, a pair of generators hummed softly. The other end of the room was nearly all gla.s.s, and opened onto the patio and the swimming pool.

Mercer paused a moment, with his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door, a strange light in his dark eyes.

"Now you'll see why I called you here," he said tensely. "You can judge for yourself whether the trip was worth while. Here she is!"

With a gesture he flung open the door, and I stared, following his glance, down at the great tiled swimming pool.

It is difficult for me to describe the scene. The patio was not large, but it was beautifully done. Flowers and shrubs, even a few small palms, grew in profusion in the enclosure, while above, through the movable gla.s.s roof--made in sections to disappear in fine weather--was the empty blackness of the sky.

None of the lights provided for the illumination of the covered patio was turned on, but all the windows surrounding the patio were aglow, and I could see the pool quite clearly.

The pool--and its occupant.

We were standing at one side of the pool, near the center. Directly opposite us, seated on the bottom of the pool, was a human figure, nude save for a great ma.s.s of tawny hair that fell about her like a silken mantle. The strangely graceful figure of a girl, one leg stretched out straight before her, the other drawn up and clasped by the interlocked fingers of her hands. Even in the soft light I could see her perfectly, through the clear water, her pale body outlined sharply against the jade green tiles.

I tore myself away from the staring, curious eyes of the figure.

"In G.o.d's name, Mercer, what is it? Porcelain?" I asked hoa.r.s.ely. The thing had an indescribably eery effect.

He laughed wildly.

"Porcelain? Watch ... _look_!"