Lloyd Biggle Jr.: The Chronocide Mission

“Then you think this funny business concerns something he was working on when he got sick? Someone got wind of it and is trying to steal it?”

“It seems so.”

“If the nephew cleaned everything out, why the search for hiding places?”

Jeff spoke from the top of the ladder. “I’ve been wondering about that myself. Why would he bother to hid things in a false ceiling, or under the floor, or behind fake partitions? If it was something he was using regularly, he would want it where he could get at it. If he wanted a really secure hiding place, he could have rented a safe-deposit box.”

“With eccentric millionaires, you never know,” Brock said. “I talked to his attorney. He guarantees there was nothing in his safe except deeds, stock certificates, bonds, financial records, things of that kind. He doesn’t think DuRosche had a safe-deposit box. No rental notice has ever arrived for one. Also, no important papers are missing. So we have to search.”

“And how did Hy—whatever his last name was—get connected with this thing?” the detective demanded.

“That part is easy,” Brock said. “He found what we are looking for.”

Ulling shook his head. “You academic types have your own special brand of logic. If Hy found it, then it is no longer hidden. So why are you looking for it?”

“Because it isn’t around anywhere. Therefore Hy hid it again—or left it hidden.”

“If that kind of mental loop-the-loop appeals to you, I suppose you might as well look. If you have nothing better to do, that is. Unfortunately, I do, but Colonel Lobert telephoned someone at headquarters, and that someone spoke to someone else, who spoke to my boss, and I’m assigned to keep an eye on you. As long as I’m here, I might as well look, too. The sooner we finish looking, the sooner all of us can do something else.”

From the first floor came an enormous clatter. Alida and the detective ran. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the plump Mrs. Jefferson was just ahead of them, moving with surprising speed. In the kitchen, one of the students sat dejectedly on the floor surrounded by pans of every description.

Mrs. Jefferson shook her finger at him and said angrily, “There are no hiding places in my kitchen!”

By evening, the students were convinced there were no hiding places anywhere. They had examined the floor boards throughout the house except where carpets had been in place for years. They had eliminated any possibility of false ceilings, false partitions, secret rooms, hidden staircases, or even wall cavities. One carload at a time they were giving up and leaving.

Alida, descending the cellar stairs, found Jeff standing on a chair and scrutinizing with intense interest a bulge in a furnace pipe. “Have we sunken to that?” she asked.

“I’m afraid it’s the only thing left,” Jeff said, “except for a suspicion I’ve been nourishing about that old oil tank at the other end of the cellar. It easily could contain blueprints, or drawings, or notes of experiments, or even some of those strange lenses. Unfortunately, it is at least a third full of oil. I’m wondering if I should try to drain it.”

“Better not,” Brock said from the other side of the furnace. “I already asked about it. The oil furnace was installed after DuRosche had his stroke. When they changed to natural gas, they kept the tank just in case they decided to switch back.”

“Scratch one oil tank. How are things going upstairs?”

“The same as down here,” Alida said. “Our detective decided we weren’t worth keeping an eye on. His superiors agreed, so he left. Most of the students had to leave for classes. The ones still here are persisting but with noticeably less enthusiasm. They want to know if they should start over again. I’m afraid it’s a washout.”

“Too bad,” Jeff said. “It seemed like such a good idea—especially with Hy being the mysterious Johnson.”

“The only thing the search established beyond a doubt is that Mrs. Kernley is an excellent housekeeper,” Alida said. “By the way, she insists that anything connected with Hy will be hidden down here. He sometimes ranged through the rest of the house doing chores, but this is where he spent his leisure— which seems to have taken up quite a lot of his time. No one knows what he did with it except that sometimes he tinkered. Mrs. Kernley thinks he slept a lot.”

“She’s wrong,” Jeff said. “About there being anything hidden down here, I mean. We have searched everything but the cellar walls. I thought of tapping on them, but those stones wouldn’t sound hollow even if they were. Was Hy a tinkerer?”

“He fixed things, if that’s what you mean. When he first came here, years ago, he would roam the alleys and pick up junk and repair it.”

“And sell it?”

“He wasn’t much concerned with money. He would give it away if someone wanted it.

“Then where is it? That sort of person usually converts his environment into a junk yard.”

“Mrs. Kernley wouldn’t have tolerated that.”

Jeff picked up a hammer and tapped on the nearest wall. “See? Even if it were hollow, it wouldn’t sound any different. I suppose I could look for loose stones.”

He went on tapping and prying at the stones. Alida and Brock stood watching him. He worked as far as the old wardrobe, and then he resumed on the other side.

“You aren’t being consistent,” Alida said. “That wardrobe is the only thing down here that could be hiding something. It’s right up against the wall.”

Jeff grabbed the wardrobe, tried to shove it, tried to lift a corner. “It seems to be cemented down,” he said.

“Let’s try moving it the other way,” Brock said. “I’ll push and you pull.”

He put his shoulder to the other side of the wardrobe. Jeff pulled. It swung aside with ridiculous ease, dumping Jeff to the floor. It was hinged, and it served as a door to an opening in the basement wall. Beyond it, in the shadows, was a small room. At the back stood a workbench and equipment.

There were papers on the bench; at one side there was a bracket with an odd-looking circular object. There were similar objects scattered on the bench.

“Finally, the Honsun Len!” Brock breathed.

The wardrobe had a spring that closed it automatically. Jeff set a chair against it to hold it open. Brock stepped into the hidden room.

“It’s the old well for an outside stairway,” he announced. “DuRosche must have poured a cement roof and sodded over it so he could have a secret workshop. These are technical drawings.”

He pulled the chain on a dangling light bulb and bent over the drawings. “This is it,” he said. There was a queer flutter of excitement in his voice. “We have got it. The important thing now is not to let anyone touch anything until we are very sure what we are going to do with it.”

He continued to scrutinize the drawings. “DuRosche’s name has been trimmed from one of these but not from the others. And here is a sheet of paper where someone has practiced lettering the name ‘H. H. Johnson’ in the same style as the lettering on the drawings. Meaning ‘Hyacinth Hyatt Johnson,’ I suppose. I do believe Hy was about to steal DuRosche’s invention. And look—here are Hy’s personal papers, including a diploma from the Mellia Technical Institute certifying that one H. H. Johnson accomplished this and that. I’ve never heard of it. Has anyone seen Arne?”

“He is still wandering around outside,” Jeff said. “I think he is worrying about what might happen here after dark.”

Professor Brock nodded. “The house is highly vulnerable, you know. As for this workshop, we simply must not let anyone else near it. Looking into this odd lens can be dangerous. That’s what DuRosche did. The lens releases bursts of energy, probably at random moments, and he had the bad luck to catch the full blast of one. Probably he was at work down here. He staggered backward and collapsed on the basement floor. The wardrobe swung shut, and no one except him knew the secret workroom existed. And the doctors, who had never seen such an affliction, thought he’d had a stroke. Maybe he did, in a way. He might have suffered broken blood vessels.