Title: Secret of the Painting
Author: Williams, Robert Moore
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Secret of the Painting" ***


                        Secret Of The Painting

                       By Robert Moore Williams

               Many men would have killed to possess the
            painting--for Tom Calhoun knew it held a key to
            knowledge that would rock the scientific world!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                              April 1957
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Hold it, buddy," this fellow said, coming along the bar toward me. "I
want to talk to you."

The way he spoke set my teeth on edge. There was a whining, placating
tone in his voice, but under this was a growl which indicated that if
he had the chance, he would be glad to _order_ me to stop and talk to
him, instead of asking me. His clothes were expensive, but unpressed,
and he was wearing them in a way that I didn't like. There was another
thing about him that I liked even less--the slight bulge under his left
armpit.

All in all there was only one thing that I liked about him--the way his
lower jaw stuck out ahead of the rest of his face. It was a perfect
target for a left jab.

"You're Luke Shaw, ain't you?" he asked.

"I am. And so what?" He looked me over carefully after I spoke. A faint
flicker of grudging respect appeared on his face as his gaze crossed
my shoulders. He measured me for a hidden gun, which he didn't find
because I wasn't wearing it. He liked this. It made his job safer, if
not easier.

"Look, Luke, I'm not trying to stir up any trouble." The whining
tone was back in his voice. "I just wanted to know--you work for Tom
Calhoun, eh?"

I felt my back hair begin to raise as he mentioned Tom's name. So
far as I knew--and it was my business to know--Tom Calhoun didn't
have an enemy on Earth. He had me on his payroll for two reasons, the
first being that I was the best friend he ever had, with the possible
exception of Ann Briscoe, his laboratory assistant, the second reason
being that he knew he could trust me right down to his last chip.
Sometimes it gets important to have one guy you can really trust. My
job was to shoo away all curiosity seekers, who would invade his lab
by the scores just to get a glimpse of the great scientist, thus
making certain that Tom got all the privacy he wanted, which was about
all there was of this article. Also if the commies should come prying
around, I was supposed to meet them and roll out the carpet edged in
black. They had and I had.

Long Jaw didn't look like a commie, though in my experiences these
birds never look like what they are but always like something else. The
thing that makes them commies is inside, where it can't be seen, never
outside.

"Whatever you've got on your mind, get it off," I said. As I spoke a
couple of new customers came into the little saloon and lined up at the
back bar. Ned Kenro, owner of the place and my good friend, went back
to serve them.

"How would you like to make a couple of thousand bucks for yourself?"

His question staggered me. Two thousand dollars was a lot of money.
"What do I have to do for it?" I asked.

"Give me the key to the back door of Calhoun's laboratory," Long Jaw
said. As he spoke he watched my face. What he saw there, made him
realize he had said too much. He reached for the gun inside his coat.

He was fast, I'll give him credit for that. But not fast enough.

_Smack!_ My left jab caught him on the end of his protruding jaw, right
on the button. He got his feet tangled up with the bar rail and went
over backward. The gun, a nasty looking little .38, flew out of his
hand. I reached to pick it up. This movement probably saved my life.

A beer bottle came down across the left side of my head and struck
my shoulder a numbing blow. As I went to the floor, the whole saloon
seemed to turn upside down. Dazed, I tried to sit up and bring my eyes
into focus. I couldn't see very well but what little I saw, I didn't
like. The two joes who had lined up at the bar were coming toward me.
They didn't intend to kiss me.

I turned around to look for the gun that Long Jaw had dropped. It was
under the edge of the bar, out of reach. I tried to get to my feet.
My legs had rubber in them. Meantime Long Jaw's two pals kept coming
toward me.

Then the first one stopped coming. A stout length of hickory billy came
over the bar and went home against the skull of the first one with a
crack that was completely satisfying to me. I knew who was on the other
end of that billy: Ned Kenro! Never in the years had he owned this
little saloon, had he had to hit a man twice.

Nor did he have to hit this one the second time. The guy's eyes turned
upward into his skull as if he was trying to look inside his cranium
and see what had landed on his noggin. While he was trying to do this,
he fell flat.

I got the gun into my fingers. My eyes were back into focus. There had
been two men. The second one had seen Ned go into action with the billy
and he had also seen me get possession of the gun. He changed his mind
and headed for the rear exit, fast. Ned Kenro vaulted over the bar and
helped me to my feet.

"You hurt, Luke?" His round face beamed with concern.

"Not much, thanks to you."

"Don't mention it. Glad to do the same for a friend any day." He
hesitated, his delicacy preventing him from intruding into what might
be a private fight. "But would you mind telling me what this is all
about? Watch it, Luke!" Ned's voice grew tight with alarm.

       *       *       *       *       *

I turned. Long Jaw wasn't coming toward me. He was heading out the
front door and he was in a hurry. I could have shot him, and perhaps I
should have smoked him, but I hate to shoot a running man. I followed
him outside just in time to see him jump into a car and roar away.

Perhaps I should have gone back into the saloon and kicked the truth
out of the third man, but all I could think of at that moment was that
Tom had to know about this. Yelling at Ned to take care of the third
man, I jumped into my own car and burned rubber getting out to the edge
of town where the lab was located. A car was parked in the driveway
and a man was coming out the door. Picking up Long Jaw's gun from the
seat beside me, I braked to a stop.

"Who are you and what the hell--" I got this far before I recognized
him. Samuel Herker, president of the company that had been organized to
develop Tom's inventions commercially. He had gotten rich off of Tom's
discoveries, but his main ambition in life was to get richer. "Sorry,
Mr. Herker," I called out.

He came across the drive to me. He was hot. "I want to tell you one
thing, Shaw!" His voice grated like a dull file being drawn across
tough metal. "Either this criminal expenditure of company funds comes
to a stop or I'm going into court and ask for the appointment of a
referee to conserve the assets of the company, then I'm going to ask
for a lunacy hearing to determine if Calhoun is mentally fit to order
equipment on company credit without my prior authorization!"

His feet kicked gravel as he stalked across the drive to his own car.
The door slammed. The rear wheels spun as he jammed the accelerator to
the floorboard. I headed into the lab.

Tom and Ann were there. Their heads close together, they were so
deeply engrossed in the papers spread all over the big lab table that
they did not hear me enter. How many times had I come in and found
them like this, deep in some problem? The sight always made me feel
good. Here were two people who were doing their dead-level best to
solve some of the problems that confront the human race. All day long
and as far into the night as he wanted her, Ann was always in the lab
with him, slipping away to steal a few hours of badly needed sleep so
that she could return to work bright-eyed and eager the next morning.
She was head over heels in love with Tom, and had been since the first
day she came to work. So far as I had been able to see, he had never
even discovered that she was a woman. A competent research worker, a
thorough technician with a keen brain, yes; but a woman, no. He had not
noticed that.

"Tom, I didn't want to interrupt, but I just met Herker outside--"

He looked up. A grin came over his face at the sight of me. "Would you
like to see what Sam is so upset about?" Without waiting for an answer,
he rose and moved to the back wall. New drapes had been hung there.
With an expression on his face that said Earth's last secret was about
to be revealed, he pulled the drapes aside.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I guess my jaw dropped. Behind
the drapes was a painting, of a girl. Her features were even and
regular, her eyes looked upward, and her face had a slightly oriental
cast. What held my gaze was the haunting quality of her smile. Leonardo
Da Vinci had gotten something of this same haunting quality in the Mona
Lisa. The girl in this painting smiled out at the world as if she knew
everything that had ever been, or ever would be--and was laughing at
the efforts of mere mortals to fathom her secret.

"I see it's getting you too," Tom said.

"It's a good job," I said. "But what is there about it to upset Herker?"

"The price I paid for it."

"What was that?"

"One hundred thousand dollars!"

       *       *       *       *       *

I rocked back on my heels and whistled softly. At that moment, I was of
the opinion that maybe Herker had something when he said Tom had gone
nuts.

"Did you ever hear of the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Tom asked.

"Um. Yes. Manuscripts a couple of thousand years old that have been
discovered near the Dead Sea in the last few years." I felt pleased
that I knew the answer to his question. "But what do they have to do
with this, if anything?"

"This painting came from a sealed jar hidden inside a cave in the same
region," Tom answered. "It was sold to a dealer in Egypt. I learned
about it from a friend."

"So far so good," I said.

"You sound like Sam," he answered. "Honest, Luke, I'm not nuts." A
strained expression crossed his face. "At least I don't think I am."

"To me, whatever you say is right," I said, loyally. "But what's the
pitch on this painting? Why is it worth so much money?"

"Because there is a secret hidden in it," he answered. "And I'm trying
to re-discover it."

"Ah?" I said.

"Luke, you mustn't think that science came into existence this
generation," he said. "There were men ahead of us who were just as
interested in solving Nature's secrets as we are. Some of them came
close to doing it. I think the man who painted this girl was one of
them. I think he hid his knowledge in this painting, hid it because he
did not dare reveal it. It is my hope that if I can discover his secret
and perhaps add it to the knowledge of modern science, I can come up
with something that may be as startling as the atom bomb, only in a
different way." He frowned and a far-away look crept into his eyes. I
knew he was dreaming of the future as he saw it, a better, healthier,
happier world. He was just the man to make that dream come true!

"I've already uncovered part of the secret." He nodded toward the pages
of paper on the big table. "Enough to know that the man who painted
that picture was a real genius even if recorded history has no record
of him! The geometry of the painting itself has meaning, the distance
between the eyes, the angle of the chin, the way the hair is dressed--"
He went on at some length but I had stopped listening. I knew nothing
of the more obscure aspects of cryptography but I knew enough to know
that Tom could be right. I had never seen such a glow in his eyes or
such an eager expression on his face during all the years I had known
him. If he was dreaming, I hoped his dream came true.

I interrupted him long enough to tell him about the men in the saloon.

"You take care of all such intruders, Luke. That's your job," he told
me.

Ann followed me outside, to ask further questions. "He had some
visitors a few days ago, but I don't know who they were," she said.

"What do you think of this secret of the painting?" I asked.

"I think it's real," she answered, turning back toward the lab.
Wistfully, I watched her go. Someday, maybe, I would be lucky enough
to find a woman as loyal to me as Ann was to Tom. When this happened, I
would notice that she existed! In the meantime, my job was to check the
spacious grounds.

_Wham!_

The length of garden hose with the lead in the end of it came at
me from behind a wide hedge I was passing. I saw both it and the
arm holding it, but I didn't see either soon enough. It came down
across my skull with enough force to have addled an elephant. I saw
constellations of stars as I went down.

I recovered consciousness with the thought in mind that dozens of
smallsized devils were jabbing me with red-hot needles. Trying to move,
I discovered the source of the devils. I had been tossed into the
middle of the wide hedge and the thorns were sticking me. My hands were
tied behind my back and my feet were pulled up behind me and tied to my
hands. Also, the sun was rising. I could see the glow of dawn in the
sky. I had been unconscious all night!

"If I ever catch that Long Jaw!" I thought.

Then I realized that the light I was seeing wasn't coming from the
rising sun. The main building of the lab was on fire! Tom and Ann might
be in there!

The cords that bound my hands snapped like so many threads as I hunched
my shoulders. Putting my hands in front of my eyes, I rolled out of the
hedge. Thorns tore at my flesh. I didn't care. I hit the ground with a
jolt that rattled every bone in my body, then tore the cords from my
feet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Smoke was pouring upward into the night sky. Off in the distance a
siren was screaming. The police or the fire department, I couldn't
tell which. Heat seared my face and I ran toward the lab. Looking
inside, I saw a figure moving against the flames. Ann! As I stared, she
went down. Pulling my coat over my face, I dived into the lab. Flames
crackled in my ears. I sensed rather than felt my clothes begin to
smoke. Ann stumbled to her feet and went down again. Reaching her side,
I saw that she had been trying to drag Tom out of the building. The
task had been beyond her strength.

One under each arm, I carried them out of the inferno. Most of Ann's
clothes were gone, burned off. Her flesh, raw and red, was exposed.

"They--they burst in. When Tom tried to stop them, they slugged him.
They also hit me."

"They left both of you there after setting the lab on fire?"

"Yes. I think they hoped the fire would cover up their theft."

"And that it would also cover up you and Tom." In my mind's eyes, I was
thinking what I would do to Long Jaw if I ever caught him again. "What
did they take?"

"The painting."

I didn't have time to wonder what there was about the painting that was
valuable enough to justify murder and theft. Fire engines with bells
clanging were screeching to a halt in the drive. Men in rubber coats
began yanking hose from the truck. They worked as if they knew exactly
what to do and how to do it. They also wanted to talk to me, but I
didn't have time to tell them anything except that it was their fire
from here on. Putting Tom and Ann into my car, I mashed the accelerator
to the floorboard.

The doctor in the emergency receiving room of the hospital didn't waste
any time on diagnosis. He took one look at the man I was carrying and
a second look at the woman leaning on my arm, and went to work. He had
Tom and Ann in separate rooms, with plasma and oxygen flowing into
them, within minutes, and before I knew what was happening a nurse
had thrown me out. I paced up and down the corridor for the two hours
before I was able to get hold of Dr. Crane again.

"The woman has third degree burns," he told me when I cornered
him. "The man has only first degree. However, he has a slight brain
concussion."

"Will they be all right?"

Down inside, he was a good joe. He didn't want to give me the news, so
he put on his professional smile. Both of us knew he was lying. "We
will do everything we can. The man will probably recover. As to the
woman--"

"You've got to fix her up too, Doc," I begged him. "He doesn't know it,
but he'll die without her."

I left the hospital with the memory of his professional smile lingering
in my mind. It was a sad smile. It said that in the face of some
conditions, even the doctors were helpless.

Reaching the lab, I found that the fire had been extinguished. A deputy
sheriff was on guard, to protect the property, and--Herker was there.

"You're hired as a guard for this laboratory." Herker told me. "You're
supposed to be on duty at all times, instead of out on all-night
drunks. A lot of money went up in smoke because of your negligence.
What do you have to say?"

I never wanted to clobber a man as much in my life, but I held my
temper in check. I told him what had happened, and explained that the
painting was gone.

"You utter fool! Don't you know the company paid a hundred thousand
dollars for that daub?"

"I don't care what it cost," I answered. "There's more at stake now
than a damned painting, namely Ann's and Tom's life." I walked away
from him then. If I had stayed any longer, I would have hit him.

Reports had to be made to the sheriff's office and to the insurance
people. Since the lab was outside the city limits, we had a bona-fide
sheriff. He was willing and honest and he promised to do everything he
could to locate the thieves but both of us knew that this was locking
the stable after the horse had been stolen. When I finished with the
insurance people and reached my room, the phone was ringing. "To hell
with it." I thought. Fatigue was on me in layers. The phone kept right
on ringing. Prepared to blister the guy on the other end, I jerked it
off the cradle. Tom's voice came over the wire.

"Come and get me," he said.

"What?" I gasped. "You won't be released from the hospital for days!"

"Come and get me," he answered. And hung up.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a flurry of nurses in Tom's room when I arrived. In addition,
there were two big orderlies of the type and size who are used when
patients become obstinate. As soon as I entered the room, the orderlies
measured me for size. I repaid the compliment and thought what a good
time we were going to have. Tom, wearing a hospital nightgown and a
dressing robe, his face almost covered with bandages, was on his feet.
Dr. Crane, looking very serious, was present.

"Here's the man to drive me home," Tom said. "Bring me my bill."

Dr. Crane cupped his chin in his hands. "You ask me to accept a serious
responsibility in discharging you when you are not ready."

"I agree with you," Tom said. "That's why I'm going home."

"Do you intend to resume your work?"

"I don't have any choice," Tom answered.

Dr. Crane's mouth became a knife line. Tom crooked his finger at me. I
moved to his side. The two orderlies looked at me. I looked right back
at them. Dr. Crane studied the situation. On the one hand, he didn't
want a patient to leave before treatment was finished. On the other
hand, by this time he had probably learned who Tom was. And on the
third hand--well, he could see that my shoulders were broad and that I
was willing. Finally, he nodded his agreement. "With the proviso that
you will report back for treatment in case it becomes necessary."

Tom nodded as if he did not know he was lying. With the two orderlies
looking very relieved, we left the hospital. "What about Ann?" I asked
outside.

Tom shook his head. "Take me to the lab."

"But--"

"Shut up, Luke. I know what I'm doing."

I wish I could have said the same for myself.

In the lab, Tom surveyed ruefully the damage the fire and water had
done. He stood for a long time staring at the spot on the wall where
the painting had hung, then sighed and shook his head. I had the
impression that he was sorry for the whole human race.

"I want you to pick up all the scraps of paper that were on the big
table," he said. "It doesn't matter if they are scorched or soaked.
Enough will remain for me to reassemble my own equations that I
developed from the painting. Bring these to the old lab. Then I want
you to make certain that I have all the black coffee on hand I can
drink. Then--" He hesitated. "Do you think they will be back?" he said
at last.

"I hope so." I said.

I collected the scraps of paper and took them to the old lab and set
up an electric coffee maker that would keep the black brew hot at all
times. Digging a folding cot out of the basement, I put it across the
door. Putting my gun within easy reach, I lay down on the cot. The last
glimpse I had of Tom before I went to sleep, he was frowning at the
pieces of paper on the table in front of him. With the bandages on his
face, he looked like a mummy in grave clothes risen from the tomb to
try to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and not doing very well with the
problem.

During the night I awakened. Tom was still at the table. When morning
came, he was still there, but his head was beginning to droop. When I
tried to coax him to take a turn on the cot, he glared at me as if I
were crazy.

"I can't afford to sleep. Go get me some benezedrine."

From the drug store, I called the hospital. "Miss Briscoe is very low,"
Dr. Crane told me. "How is my other patient?"

"Alive," I answered. Returning to the lab with the benezedrine tablets,
I didn't tell him about Ann. I spent the morning throwing out Herker
and more inspectors from the insurance companies. I didn't want any of
Long Jaw's pals to slip in under the pretense that they were insurance
adjustors.

In the late afternoon Tom yelled, "I've got it, Luke. Here! Get these
items for me." Hastily scribbling what he wanted, he handed the slip
of paper to me. "Burn up the road, Luke. Move!" I moved.

When I returned with the parts he wanted, he got busy assembling the
weirdest-looking gadget I have ever seen. It seemed to be electronic
in nature but it also seemed to include elements that started where
electronics left off. All night long, he continued to work on it.
Dozing on my cot, I awakened once to find him pacing the floor.
"Uh-huh," I thought. "He hasn't got all the bugs out of it yet."
Sometime during the night the unlisted phone rang. "What the hell?" I
wondered, getting up to answer it. Nobody knew this number.

Dr. Crane was on the wire. "Miss Briscoe gave me this number," he said.
"She asked me to call Mr. Calhoun and tell him that she needs him."

"I'll tell him," I said.

"You might also tell him that she can't possibly last out the night."
Crane's dry objective voice went into quiet silence as he replaced the
phone on its cradle.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tom hadn't heard the phone ring. I had to shake him to get his
attention. When I told him what Crane had said, he nodded as if this
was exactly what he had been expecting. "Okay, Luke, we'll go to her."
He picked up the breadboard on which his gadget was mounted.

"What are you taking that with you for?" I demanded.

"Ann worked hard helping me solve the secret of the painting," he
answered. "She deserves to see its first performance. Get yourself into
over-drive, Luke."

At the hospital, a nurse took us directly to Ann's room. Lying on the
bed, swathed in bandages, she was a mummy that did not move. Deep in
sedation now, she did not know we were present. On the far side of her
bed, whole blood was being dripped into her arm. Dr. Crane looked up
from checking her pulse as we entered. "Everything we could do to give
her strength has failed," he said.

"What about infection?" Tom asked.

The doctor gave him a sharp look as if to ask what he meant by hinting
that infection could exist in a properly run hospital. "There is no
serious infection. Her burns were so severe that she simply lacks the
strength to rally." His voice was as grim as my thoughts.

Tom set his breadboard on the foot of the bed and ran an extension cord
to an electric outlet.

"What do you have there?" Crane asked.

"A way to give her strength," Tom answered.

The doctor leaned back on his heels. He looked at the instrument, which
certainly did not impress him, and started to shake his head. Then he
looked at Tom. The headshake turned into tightly clenched lips. "I am
familiar with your reputation, Mr. Calhoun, but this--" The headshake
came back.

"There was a first time for a hypodermic injection, a time when
somebody first gave blood, a time when somebody took the first
antibiotic," Tom said.

Dr. Crane hesitated. A struggle was going on within his mind. He
moved to the bed and felt Ann's pulse. A thin trace of perspiration
appeared on his forehead. "She's dying," he whispered. "Under any other
circumstances, I would say no. But--Oh, hell, Mr. Calhoun, if you know
a way to give her strength, go ahead."

Tom closed a switch. A soft hum came from the instrument. A cone
that looked like a small transmitting antennae was mounted on the
breadboard. Tom lined up the cone so that it pointed at Ann's body. He
glanced at me. Sweat was visible on his face too. Without a word, I lit
a cigarette and gave it to him. The sweat was very clear on his face
now. Or was it tears?

"You knew all the time that Ann had no chance to get well?" I asked.
"That's why you worked so hard, on this?"

"Yes," he answered. "It was a race against time. It still is." He
turned his attention to his instruments.

I shut up. It got very still in that hospital room. In the corridor
outside feet lisped on tip-toe as a nurse hurried on an errand of
mercy. In the far distance a car hooted impatiently as somebody bucked
for his place in the emergency receiving room. Dr. Crane stood without
moving. His eyes went from Tom to the instrument, then on to Ann, then
retraced their course. Tom closed another switch. A white radiation
leaped from the cone. It touched Ann's body at the knees. Part of it
seemed to dive through the bandages there and flow inward. The rest
of it passed upward along the body, penetrating where it touched. It
turned the bandages the color of old silver, well polished.

"What is that?" Dr. Crane asked. His voice was a taut whisper.

"The white light that you see is the visible component of invisible
radiations," Tom answered. "It means my generator is not working
properly. Otherwise, there would be nothing to see."

"Is this the bug you were worrying about?" I asked.

"Yes. I didn't have time to clean it up."

       *       *       *       *       *

The doctor stepped forward and took Ann's wrist in his fingers. A
startled expression appeared on his face. "Her pulse is getting
stronger," he said.

"She is receiving energy, her whole body is being bathed in it," Tom
said. "Seen from one viewpoint, energy is all that exists." His voice
suddenly had the dry tones of a professor addressing a class in atomic
physics. "Energy in motion at one rate of speed we call light. Energy
whose motion has been slowed to a crawl, we call matter. The two
are interchangeable. Even the human body, with all of its marvelous
glands, its nervous system, and its wonderful brain, falls into the
last category. If we could see our bodies as they actually exist, we
would be aware of an infinite number of dancing points of light, the
infinitesimally minute particles of energy that compose it." He paused.
The doctor stood absolutely motionless. "So there is energy--and
something else." Tom continued. His voice seemed to come from miles
away.

"What is this something else?" the doctor asked.

"I call it _mind_," Tom answered. "It works with energy, directs it,
and moulds it into a thousand different shapes and forms." His voice
was soft with awe and reverence.

The doctor reached forward to check Ann's pulse. An exclamation of
surprise came from his lips. He lifted her arm, then snapped on a
light. His surprise grew greater. Snatching a pair of scissors, he cut
swiftly through the bandages that swathed her arm.

"New flesh!" the doctor gasped. "Where there was only burned meat,
now there is new flesh. And n--new skin!" A stutter appeared in the
doctor's voice. A glaze came into his eyes. His chest heaved. "Medicine
knows nothing like this." His voice was heavy with wonder.

"It knows something like this now," Tom said. "Remove the rest of the
bandages."

The doctor's fingers shook as he applied the scissors. Her body was
revealed. The burns had vanished. Instead there was the warm pink flesh
of a child, built there by the energy flowing from the cone.

She stirred sleepily on the bed. "I have been having the most wonderful
dream--that I have a new body."

Under heavy sedation, she knew nothing that had been going on. She
thought she was having a dream. The three of us in that room knew how
wonderful that dream really was.

Cool air breathed across my neck. I don't know how I knew what had
happened but I knew. As I turned, my eyes confirmed my hunch. The door
was open. Three men were coming through it. Long Jaw was in the lead.

I hit with all my strength. The protruding jaw was within range. My
fist landed full on the button with a thud that I felt all the way
through my body. Never in my life had I hit a man that I enjoyed
hitting as much. Long Jaw went over backwards.

I found myself looking at guns in the hands of the two men who were
following him. "Get your hands up!" the first one said. Since I had no
choice, I obeyed. As my hands went up, the second man stepped forward
and slugged me in the pit of the stomach. As I doubled up from the
pain, he hit me in the jaw.

At that moment, I would cheerfully have destroyed both of them with my
bare hands. All I could do was glare at them. As I fell back against
the wall, I saw that Dr. Crane was looking at them. Judging from the
expression on his face, I think he would gladly have used his best
surgical knives to cut their hearts out, if he had had the chance. He
started to move. A gun swung to cover him. "Just stand pat, doc," he
was advised.

Tom, at the foot of Ann's bed, did not even look around. His attention
was completely engrossed in his gadget.

"You can't get away with this," I said. "This man is working on a
project that is vital to national defense. The FBI will hound you to
Siberia." I was bluffing and I knew it. So did they.

       *       *       *       *       *

Long Jaw got slowly to his feet. "Is that so?" he said. He moved toward
Tom. "Come on. We want you--and your machine."

For the first time, Tom looked up. "I'll come with you in just a few
minutes," he said, nodding toward Ann. "Her life is not quite out of
danger yet."

"To hell with that," a new voice spoke from the doorway. "Get the
machine--and the inventor."

I didn't have to turn to know that voice. Herker! He was standing in
the doorway waving a bunch of papers.

"I always knew you had the makings of a crook," I said. "You at least,
ought to have the sense to know that you can't get away with it."

"These men are in my employ." Herker waved his fingers toward the
three. "I have a court order here empowering me to seize any and all
company property in order to conserve the assets of the corporation."
His face was very smug and self-assured. "It's all legal. There's
nothing you can do about it."

I would have rocked back on my heels if the wall hadn't already been
behind me. "What about Tom?" I finally managed to say. "Have you got a
court order to seize him too, as a company asset?"

Herker fingered through his papers. "Yes," he said. "I have an order
here empowering me to bring him before a lunacy commission."

For the first time, Tom looked up. "What you are really trying to say
is that these men came to you and offered you more millions than you
can count for my discovery and for the chance to force me to tell them
how it works."

Herker acted as if somebody had slugged him in the throat. He gulped
and tried to find words. "How--how did you know?"

"They approached me first," Tom answered. "I refused to talk to them."

"But why? There's millions in it!" In all his life, he had never been
able to see anything more important than a dollar.

"Enough of this," Long Jaw said, taking command of the situation. "We
want you and your invention."

He moved toward the bed, but Tom held up his hand. "There on the bed
you see proof of what this invention can do in the way of saving life.
Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Sure, sure," Long Jaw answered. "You'll be well taken care of. Just as
soon as you demonstrate it to the big boys, your future will be safe."

"I'll demonstrate it now," Tom said.

He swung the cone so that the radiation from it would strike Long Jaw,
then closed a switch.

A burst of blackness leaped from the cone. It struck Long Jaw.
Instantly it seemed to flow over his body, engulfing him. I heard him
scream, once, a sound that seemed to get farther and farther away.

Then the space he had occupied was empty.

Moving with the speed of light, the blackness leaped on to engulf the
other two men. They went as Long Jaw had gone, into the blackness,
swallowed up in an instant.

Herker dropped the papers. The black light hit him. He screamed and was
gone into the darkness, gone instantly, gone forever.

The wall behind started to vanish as Tom cut the switch.

"The energy that heals can also destroy," Tom said. He turned the cone
back to Ann and changed the switch again. Again the white light flowed
out. I stepped forward and picked up the papers. The doctor, who had
stood rooted to the floor, roused himself with a jerk. "I swear I saw
four men come in here. Where did they go? What happened? Somebody tell
me what happened!" His voice was rising.

"Perhaps your nerves are a little overstrained," Tom said, his voice
very kind. "A mild sedative might help."

Without a word the doctor went from the room.

Tom switched off the light and moved to the edge of the bed. "Ann..."
he whispered. "Ann..."

Even under sedation, she heard his voice. The smile that came over her
face seemed to light the whole room.

I went outside and closed the door and stood guard over it. They had
some things to talk about which didn't need my presence, or they would
have some things to talk about as soon as Ann regained consciousness
and found that her dream was true.

In time the world of tomorrow would have something to talk about too, a
secret that some scientist of the long-gone time almost found, and hid
in a painting in the hope that in some future day some unborn genius
would discover his secret again, and perfect it, and give it to the
world. Awe was in me, at the wonders of the world in which I lived, and
gratitude, that such men as Tom Calhoun inhabited it.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Secret of the Painting" ***

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