Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 Part 10

"Dogs!" he muttered.

Shrieks of fury answered him. The mob surged toward him as if to grind his face to pieces under their feet--and then recoiled, mouthing and gibbering. But it was at d.i.c.k that they were looking, not at the dying man.

He raised himself upon one elbow with a mighty effort. "His Majesty the Invisible Emperor! Long be his reign triumphant!" he chanted. It was his last credo. The words broke from his lips accompanied by a torrent of red foam. His head dropped back, his body slipped down; he was gone. And no one seemed to observe his pa.s.sing. They were all screaming and gibbering at d.i.c.k.

"Rennell! Rennell!" yelled Stopford. "Where are you, Rennell? G.o.d, man, what's happened to your legs?"

d.i.c.k looked down at himself. For a moment he had the illusion that he was a head and a trunk, floating in the air. His lower limbs had become invisible, except for patches of trousering that seemed to drift through s.p.a.ce. The mob in the room had fallen back gaping at him in horror.

Then d.i.c.k understood. It was the invisible garment that had coiled itself about him. He tore it from him and became visibly a man once more.

Shouts from another room! A surging movement of the crowd toward it.

The m.u.f.fled sounds of an automatic pistol, fitted with a silencer!

Then screams:

"The devils are in there! They're murdering the soldiers!"

There followed a panic-stricken rush, more m.u.f.fled firing, and then the sharp roar of rifles, and the fall of plaster. Some one was bawling the President's name. The rooms became a ma.s.s of milling human beings, lost to all self-control.

A bedlam of noise and struggle. Men fought with one another blindly, cursing soldiers fired promiscuously among the mob, riddling the walls, stabbing at the air. The plaster was falling in great chunks everywhere, filling the rooms with a heavy white cloud, in which all choked and struggled. The yells of the civilian mob below, struggling helplessly in the packed crowd that wedged the great stairway, made babel. Outside the White House a dense mob that filled the lawns was yelling back, and struggling to gain admittance. Suddenly the lights went out.

"They've cut the wires!" rose a wild, wailing voice. "The devils have cut the wires! Kill them! Kill everybody!"

His cry ended in a gurgle. Somewhere in that dark h.e.l.l a struggle was going on, a well defined struggle, different from the random, aimless battling of the half-crazed soldiers and the civilians. President Hargreaves was still within the walls of the White House, it was known; it was physically impossible for him to have been carried away when every foot of s.p.a.ce was packed. And through that darkness the invisible a.s.sailants were edging him, foot by foot, toward the outside.

d.i.c.k was on the edge of this silent battle. He sensed it. Bracing himself against a bureau, while the mob surged past him, he tried to pierce the gloom, to reinforce with his perceptions what his instinct told him. A soldier, crazed with fear, came leaping at him, bayonet leveled. He thrust with a grunt. d.i.c.k avoided the glancing steel by a hand's breadth, and, as the impetus of the man's attack carried him forward, caught him beneath the chin with a stiff right-hand jolt that sent him sprawling.

From below the cries broke out again, with renewed violence: "They've got the President! Get them! Get them! Close all doors and windows!"

But a door went cras.h.i.+ng down somewhere, to the tune of savage yells.

The mob was pouring down the stairs. It was growing less packed above.

d.i.c.k heard Stopford's voice calling his name.

"Here, sir" he shouted back, and the two men collided.

"For G.o.d's sake do what you can, Rennell!" shouted the Colonel.

"They've got the President downstairs. They had him in this very room, in the thick of it all. I heard him cry out, as if under a gag. They put one of those d.a.m.ned cloths over him. G.o.d, Rennell, I'm going crazy!"

The upper floor of the White House was almost empty now. d.i.c.k thrust himself into the crowd that still jammed the stairs. He reached the ground floor. It was lighter here, but a glance showed him that it was impossible to attempt to restore any semblance of order. The big East Room was jammed with a fighting, cursing throng. d.i.c.k stumbled over the bodies of those who had fallen in the press, or had been shot down. Outside the mob was thickening, swarming through the grounds and screeching like madmen.

Nothing that could be done! d.i.c.k found himself caught once more in the human torrent. Presently he was wedged up against a broken window. He precipitated himself through the frame, dropped to the ground, stopped for an instant to catch breath.

The yelling mob was congregated about the main entrance of the White House, and on this side the grounds were comparatively empty. As d.i.c.k stopped, trying desperately to form some plan of action, he heard footsteps and low voices near him. Then two men came toward him, followed by three or four others.

The men--but, though the light was faint, d.i.c.k realized instantly that they were wearing invisible garments. He could see nothing of them; he could see through where they seemed to be--the trees, the buildings of the streets. Yet they were at his elbow. And they saw him. He heard one of them leap, and sprang aside as the b.u.t.t of a pistol descended through the air and dropped where his head had been.

Yet no hand had seemed to hold it. It had been a pistol, reversed, and flas.h.i.+ng downward, to be arrested in mid-air six inches from his face.

But the men were not wholly invisible. Nearly six feet above the ground, three or four pairs of eyes were staring malevolently into d.i.c.k's. Only the eyes were there.

The two foremost men were breathing heavily. They were carrying something. Grotesquely through a rent in the invisible garment d.i.c.k saw a patch of trouser. He heard a m.u.f.fled sigh. President Hargreaves, in the hands of his abductors!

d.i.c.k's actions were reflex. As the pistol hung beside his face, he s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, wrested it away, struck with it, and heard a curse and felt the yielding impact of bone and flesh. He had missed the head but struck the shoulder. Next moment hands gripped the weapon, and a desperate struggle began.

It was torn from d.i.c.k's grasp. He struck out at random, and his fist collided with the chin of a substantial flesh and blood human being.

Invisible arms grasped him. He fought free. The pistol slashed his face sidewise, the sight ripping a strip of flesh from the cheek. He was surrounded, he was being beaten down, though he was fighting gamely.

"Kill the swine! Shoot! Shoot!" d.i.c.k heard one of his a.s.sailants muttering.

Out of the void appeared the blue muzzle of another automatic, with a silencer on it. d.i.c.k ducked as a flame spurted from it. He felt the bullet stir his hair. He grasped at the hand that held it, and missed.

Then he was held fast, and the muzzle swung implacably toward his head again. Helpless, he watched it describe that arc of death. It was only later that he wondered why he had fought all the while in silence, instead of crying for help.

But of a sudden the pistol was dashed aside. A woman's voice spoke peremptorily, in some language d.i.c.k did not understand. And he saw her eyes among the eyes that glared at him. Dark eyes that he knew, even if the voice had not revealed her ident.i.ty. The eyes and voice of Fredegonde Valmy!

d.i.c.k cried her name. He put forth all his strength in a final struggle. Suddenly he felt a stunning impact on the back of the head.

He slipped, reeled, threw out his hands, and sank down unconscious on the gra.s.s at the side of the path.

CHAPTER IV

_The Invisible Amba.s.sador_

Fredegonde Valmy implicated in the conspiracy! That was the first thought that flashed into d.i.c.k's mind as he recovered consciousness.

He might have suspected it! But the idea that the girl he loved was bound up with the murderous gang that was attacking the very foundations of civilization chilled him to the soul.

d.i.c.k had been picked up a few minutes after he had been struck down, identified by Colonel Stopford as he was about to be removed to a hospital, and carried into the White House. Order had been restored by the arrival of a detachment of troops from Fort Myers, the severed cables located and mended, and by midnight the interior of the Presidential home had been made habitable again.

President Hargreaves was gone--kidnapped despite the utmost efforts to protect him; and it was impossible to conceal that fact from the world. But the wheels of government still revolved. All night an emergency council sat in the White House, and, deciding that in a time of such grave danger heroic means must be adopted, with the consent of such of the Congressional leaders as could be summoned, a Council of Defence was organized.

The whole country east of the Mississippi was placed under martial law. The fleet and army were put on a war footing. Flights of airplanes were a.s.sembled at numerous points along the eastern seaboard. To this Council Donald was attached as head of Intelligence for the Eastern Division. Yet all this availed little unless the location of the Invisible Empire could be ascertained, and, despite telegraphic reports that came in hourly, alleging to have discovered its headquarters, nothing had been achieved in this direction.

The garment taken from the slain soldier had been examined by a half-dozen of the leading chemists of the East. Pending the arrival from New York of the celebrated Professor Hosmeyer, it was deposited under military guard in a dark closet. The result was unfortunate. The garment exhibited to the a.s.sembled scientists was a mere bifurcated silken bag.

The gas with which it had been impregnated, though it had been heavy enough to adhere to the fabric for hours, had also been volatile enough to have disappeared completely, leaving a residue which was identified as a magnesium isotope.

Equally spectacular had been the disappearance of Mademoiselle Fredegonde Valmy. A cable from the Slovakian Amba.s.sador had arrived a few hours later, denying her authenticity. And with her disappearance came the discovery that she had been at the head of an espionage system with ramifications in every state department, and in every statesman's home.

Three days pa.s.sed with no sign from the enemy. The Council sat all day. In the executive offices of the White House d.i.c.k toiled ceaselessly, planning, receiving reports, organizing the flights of airplanes at strategic points throughout his district. From time to time he would be summoned to the Council. At night he threw himself upon a cot in his office and slept a sleep broken by the constant arrival of messengers. And still there was no clue to the location of the headquarters of the marauders.

But in those three days there had been no sign of them. Hope had succeeded despair; in the rebound of confidence the populace was beginning to ridicule the nation-wide precautions against what were coming to be considered merely a gang of super-criminals. It was even whispered that President Hargreaves had not been kidnapped at all. The Freemen's Party accused the Government of a plot to subvert popular liberties.