The Time Mirror Part 8

The aged scientist's lips quivered with pa.s.sion and despair.

"Why do you stay?" he cried. "You have won. Why do you mock us? Go away!

Let us alone!"

"Oh, no." The other shook his head. "I don't want to leave just yet, professor. There are still some things I have to tell you. Things I learned while making preparations for Elaine's little trip."

He paused to gloat.

"How thoroughly have you investigated the case of that first Elaine Duchard, in whose body your daughter now resides, Professor Duchard?" he demanded.

The white-haired savant did not even answer. He leaned weakly against a laboratory bench, a broken man.

"Did you know, for instance," Adrian Vance continued, "that Baron Morriere's men tortured Elaine Duchard before they murdered her?"

"You fiend! Not even a savage would do a thing like that!"

Vance chuckled evilly.

"You exaggerate," he sneered. "Besides, Elaine's sweetheart, here"--he prodded the still-p.r.o.ne Mark with his foot--"no doubt will protect her."

His face darkened.

"And if you did not want harm to befall her, why did you let her reject me when I asked to marry her? I gave her her chance. When she didn't take it, what else could she expect but my revenge?"

"Go away. Please go away."

On the floor, Mark stirred uneasily. His brain was clear now, though his head throbbed like a jungle tom-tom under the beat of a mad witch doctor. Slowly, he tried his muscles. Tensed them. Relaxed them. Tested them for complete control.

Vance said:

"In case you still have any notions of rescuing your daughter from the far reaches of time, professor, forget them now. It's impossible to call a person back. In the first place, a time mirror would be needed--and the only one in existence, the one I bought from a French sorcerer who once studied under Eliphas Levi, now stands on that easel in the corner."

Sobs racked the other's frail form. He still leaned against the bench, his face buried in his hands.

But on the floor, Mark Carter's jaw grew hard. He readied himself for a savage leap.

"Furthermore," their captor went on, "your precious Elaine remembers nothing of her life in this century. For all practical purposes she has become the first Elaine Duchard. I know this, because I tried out the mirror by sending one of my clerks three months into the past. He was possessed by a strange amnesia that left his mind a perfect blank so far as what had happened in those three months was concerned!"

The antiquarian paused, savoring the full effect of his words on Elaine's father with evil glee. His black eyes were s.h.i.+ning with h.e.l.l's own fire.

And in that tense, silent second, Mark Carter struck.

He came off the floor like a tiger springing, and the roar of a jungle beast was in his throat. His arms shot out to embrace Adrian Vance's legs and pull him down. His fingers hungered for the feel of his enemy's throat.

He was still in the air when the other moved. Like lightning, Vance leaped aside. Away from Mark's clutching hands. He landed, tense and poised, the gun in his fist sighted on young Carter's chest, a grin of triumph splitting his oily face.

"Did you think I was asleep, you fool?" he crowed. "Did you think I wasn't watching you every second out of the corner of my eye? I've been ready to kill you from the moment your eyelids first fluttered!"

Mute, his face still livid with hate, Mark staggered to his feet.

"Come on!" Vance challenged. "If you think you can jump me before I pull the trigger, come ahead! I'll be glad to take my chances before a jury when you're dead!"

Elaine's fiance glared helplessly. His fists clenched and relaxed again and again.

"You win," he said at last, his face grey beneath its tan. "Go on. Get out. You've got us licked."

But the antiquarian shook his head.

"Not quite yet," he answered. "I've still got one job to do."

Then, so fast the eye could hardly follow, his gun-hand came up.

_Bang--bang--bang!_

Three shots he fired. Three shots, straight toward the easel in the corner. Dead center into the mirror that stood upon it.

There was a wild tinkling of falling gla.s.s. The tablecloth slipped away.

Revealed the shattered remnants of the time mirror.

"I'm taking no chances!" cried Vance. "Professor Duchard's reputation as a research physicist is too high." And then, mockingly: "However, I doubt that even he can make any good use of that mirror now!"

With that final sally, he backed away and out the door, the Magnum in his hand still grim and unwavering as he covered Mark and the old scientist.

Curtly:

"I wouldn't come out too soon if I were you."

The door slammed shut.

Mark started forward. But the professor caught his arm.

"It is useless," the savant said. "To follow him would bring death and would avail nothing, my boy. He has won."

Like men in a daze, then, they stared into each other's eyes. They saw only dull hopelessness. The last spark was gone out.

Slowly, Mark walked over to the corner where stood the shattered mirror.

Looked blankly down at its fragments. Bending, he picked up a splinter.

Inspected it idly.

The next instant he whirled about.

"Professor Duchard!" he rapped. "How did this devil's looking-gla.s.s work?"

The scientist looked up dispiritedly, shrugged.