The Time Mirror Part 13

And then--

He was slipping through the door, alive and unharmed, with the picture clasped under his arm!

The professor jerked about from the task of hanging a new and bigger time mirror on the easel. It still was shrouded with a heavy cloth.

"It's ready?"

The scientist nodded.

"Yes. I got special co-operation from an old friend who is manager of a gla.s.s works." He paused. "And you?"

Mark waved the Jerbette.

"I got the picture," he clipped, "but we're going to have to work fast.

The police probably are on their way here now. Vance caught me in the act of stealing the painting." He still was panting from the exertion of his race here.

"Then clip it to this frame quickly!" The professor indicated an arrangement like an oversize drawing board. He hurried to a.s.sist the younger man. In a moment their work was done.

There, at last, was "Elaine Duchard's Escape." Mark for the first time studied it carefully.

Four people were shown. The central figure was that of the first Elaine Duchard. She was in the act of entering a carriage, her lovely face alive with panic. Beside her a young man--his face in the shadows--held a horse pistol on another man. This second man's features were twisted with hate; Mark thought he never had seen such malevolent eyes.

"Baron Morriere" the professor explained. "The younger man is Jacques Rombeau, Elaine Duchard's lover."

Mark nodded. Turned to scrutinize a third man, unidentifiable, who was clambering to the driver's seat of the coach.

The next instant the laboratory was re-echoing with the sound of heavy blows upon the door.

"Open up!" roared a m.u.f.fled voice. "It's the law!"

"The police!" Mark's face went pale.

Professor Duchard darted to the bench which lined one wall. Seized a strange-looking helmet which stood there. Rushed with it to Mark.

"The insulator-helmet!" he explained hastily, his blue eyes feverish with excitement. "Strap it on! Quickly!"

"Open up!" the alien voice roared again. "We want in!"

And then the angry accents of Adrian Vance:

"Break it down, officer! Don't let them get away!"

Mark hauled the frame on which the painting was stretched to a position in front of the mirror. Whirled back. Gripped his companion's hand.

"Will it work, professor? Will the mirror take me back through time?"

"That I cannot tell you, my boy. But it should. You know the formula I worked out. You understand the process by which it was constructed." A second's pause. "Actually, I believe it should work far better than the previous time mirror. The one Vance gave Elaine was very old, very crude. This one is the product of modern science, modern workmans.h.i.+p. It creates a tremendously larger rift in the s.p.a.ce-time continuum--"

A shot rang out.

At the other end of the laboratory, the outside door burst open, lock shattered. Uniformed police rushed in, Adrian Vance at their head.

"Mark! Quickly! I shall hold them!"

With a savage jerk, Elaine's fiance ripped aside the cloth that veiled the new time mirror. The reflection of Jerbette's painting sprang across its silver surface.

Mark's jaw went hard with tension. He glued his eyes to the figure of Jacques Rombeau, Elaine Duchard's lover.

Behind him, Adrian Vance charged down the laboratory, struggling to shake off the frail, tenacious figure of Professor Duchard. He brought up his heavy Magnum.

But Mark paid him no heed. Already his brain was spinning, his senses reeling. Yet still he concentrated on the lithe, tense figure of Jacques Rombeau holding the fuming Baron Morriere at bay. And through his mind the words kept ringing:

"I shall take over the brain of Jacques Rombeau! I shall save Elaine from her fate!

"_I shall change history!_"

"You dog!" said Baron Morriere in a voice that trembled with pa.s.sion.

"I'll see you drawn and quartered for this! You'll swing from the highest gibbet in all France--"

"Save your breath!" snapped Mark--and then nearly dropped the horse pistol he grasped as the sound of his voice struck his ears. For he spoke in the French of the late eighteenth century, and the voice was not his own, but that of Jacques Rombeau!

From behind him came another voice--faintly tremulous, the voice of a woman:

"Jacques, _mon cher_! We are ready! Quick!"

"Right!"

Then, prodding the baron's stomach with the gun barrel:

"Why I don't kill you now I'll never know. _Le Bon Dieu_ knows I've got cause enough. And may He have mercy on your soul if you try to follow us!"

Turning on his heel, Mark sprang aboard the coach. From the driver's seat came a shout and the crack of the whip. With a jerk that nearly threw Mark to the floor, they were off!

"Oh, Jacques! I was so afraid! The baron--"

He turned in his seat. Looked into the lovely, appealing face of Elaine Duchard. Her arms reached out to him. Instinctively he accepted the embrace. He held her close, and his lips sought hers.

It was strange; incredible. Even as he kissed the girl, Mark realized it. He was two people simultaneously--Mark Carter and Jacques Rombeau.

The brain of the former had traveled back through time into the body of the latter. In so doing, it had somehow acquired all the knowledge, the personality, the character traits of Rombeau. Yet because the mind of Mark Carter had been protected by Professor Duchard's insulating helmet, he still was able to think independently--almost as if his own twentieth century being was held apart in a special brain lobe within Jacques Rombeau's skull!

"I knew you would come, Jacques! I knew it!"

A wave of sentiment choked off Mark's reply. Again he kissed the soft hollow of that first Elaine Duchard's throat, trying the while to fight off the awful sense of futility that swept over him as he remembered history's verdict as to her fate.

Then, suddenly, the coach was halting.