Tales From the Darkside Part 14

"You will in a moment find yourself in complete operation of one of the most drastic inventions science has ever known," he said. He was speaking quickly and loudly now, running his words together and almost gasping for breath.

"Up until now genius has been vested in only a few persons, and those persons have been hailed as leaders in their field.

The truth is that there is genius in many of us, but it is unable to find its proper expression outlet. It is born and dies in the brain without ever seeing the light of the word."

"Psychology has known for a long time that the nervous impulses which course through the brain are electrochemical in nature, but that these impulses while in action set up a wave motion, psychology has steadfastly refused to admit.

"Call it telepathy, if you need a term, but my postulation was that each thought, each idea, and particularly each strain of melody which pa.s.ses through the brain sets up a distinct field of motion as existent as the field of an electromagnet, and that if an instrument could be made delicate enough, it would seize those waves and transform them into their actual sound.

"You know yourself how clearly a certain bit of music will pa.s.s through and linger in your mind. The very orchestra, instrument or voice seems to live there in your brain. IN your case, perhaps, this is accentuated a thousand times because you are a trained musician.

"Very well, Bancroft, I want you to think back, remember some one of your music numbers, some piece which you have played and heard many times and which you can recall note for note. Keep your attention upon this piano, and think of that music!."

It was with a curious mixture of emotions that I sat there listening to him. The little crimson piano rested on the table before me like some elaborate toy. The black liquid in the gla.s.s tube pulsed steadily upward.

And Farber's face was contorted now into an expression of delirious absorption. His hands were opening and closing convulsively.

I tried to guide my mind backward into the maze of piano compositions I have committed to memory.

Names of t.i.tles, of composers, spun through my head: waltzes, scherzoes, capri cesa"what was it I had been playing when Farber's message arrived at my door? Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre. The weird melody seemed a fitting one for the occasion. I puzzled my brain as to how the composition began. A moment of seeking a mental impression of the opening chord; and then, simulta neously with that instant when the train of melody entered my mind, an astounding thing happened. The piano, five feet away, trembled violently. The light in the queer-shaped bulb increased from a cherry red to a brilliant flaming orange, and the keyboarda"as though controlled by invisible hands- that keyboard leaped into motion and began to playa"the very music of which I was thinking!

I turned and stared at Farber. He was watching the instrument of his making with dilated eyes.

"It's . . . it's reading my mind!" I cried.

On played the piano, the little keys pressing downward to form the chords and racing along the octaves with lightning speeda"faster and faster as my brain ran over the familiar melody. It was Danse Macabrea"the Dance of Deatha"Saint Saens's masterpiece, and it was filling the room with all the tone and depth of a standard-size instrument.

Suddenly, however, as the utter singularity of it claimed my full attention, the tones of the piano dwindled off, and the keys came to a standstill.

Farber turned abruptly. "The music is no longer pa.s.sing through your brain," he said. "The musical thought waves have ceased, given way, I presume, to your complete surprise.

You are wondering at the natural tone coming from an instrument of such small size. This is accomplished by a sound chamber beneath the strings, made of zyziphus wood, an importation from central Baluchistan. A rotation light ray is sent through the sound chamber which automatically brings the reborn tones to the proper vibration. But see if you can concentrate again. Try another composition, one of your own, if you wish, and keep your eyes on the piano."

In a moment I was intoxicated with the strangeness of it. Sitting there tensely, my palms cold with perspiration, I ran my mind through the opening strains of my own fantasy, Satanic Dance, and from that with a rush into the middle of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor, and then, not waiting an instant, into the slow tempo of a Chopin lullaby. The piano did not falter. Even as the chords entered my mind they were born into sound on the keyboard. In full obedience the instrument played a few bars of one selection, then leaped to another.

It was weird, and as I sat there I found it difficult to repress an actual shudder. Yet the moment I submitted to incredulity, and my thoughts, as a result, slipped away from the remembered musica"that moment the piano, finding no stimuli, fell into a sudden silence. I saw that in order to make it continue smoothly, I must call every bit of concentration I could to mind, that I must control my thoughts to an absolute chronological succession of the notes and chords of any certain composition. To do this through an entire piece, keyed to fever pitch as I was, was almost an impossibility, and the piano consequently raced from the work of one composer to another in a mad, chaotic fashion.

At last, when it seemed I could think no more, I sank back into my chair and stared speechlessly at Farber. He, too, appeared strangely affected by the performance and for a moment said nothing. There was a deep flush of victory slowly mounting in his cheeks, and there was a wild stare of suppressed emotions in his eyes.

"You see, Bancroft," he said, "the piano proves my theory and opens a new world for research. This is only the beginning. But let me show you another feature of the instrument, the one probably that will be the greatest aid in the art of composing."

He reached for a second k.n.o.b, which I had not seen before, and turned it with a snap. The piano began again, this time with no effort on my part. Then in an instant I understood. It was repeating all that it had received, playing it all a second time exactly as it had before. It was not hard to recognize the significance of this act. Once born into sound, the musical inspiration was recorded permanently, could be played as many times as one wished, and then set down on paper at leisure.

All my desire to have that machine on the table as my own personal possession burst forth within me.

"Is it for sale?" I asked hoa.r.s.ely. "Will you part with it? Will you make me a duplicate? You can name your price -any price!"

He surveyed me in silence, apparently weighing his answer.

"The piano is still incomplete," he said. "There are other features, additional mechanisms, I plan to add.

But it will take me three weeks or more to get it ready. During that time I am willing to lend you the instrument for work on you new sonata, provided"a"his lineaments hardened suddenly -"provided you will agree to one thing."

"If your composition is p.r.o.nounced a success, you must declare to the world that it was conceiveda"from your own brain, of coursea"but by the sole means of this piano. You can readily see that my invention can be introduced only by a great musician. In my own hands it would be a mere recorder of simple tunes. Do you agree?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then I will have the piano expressed to your apartment early tomorrow.

It is, of course, much too heavy for you to carry with you."

I nodded and followed him out of the door and through the dark hallway.

At the street entrance I paused.

"May I ask," I inquired, "the nature of the mechanism you plan to add?

The instrument seems very complete."

His face was a study in black and white there in the corridor's gloom.

The dark eyes stared past me into the street of drizzle and fog.

"Now it is only a servant of the will," he said in a low voice. "It can only receive and bring forth what it receives into sound. Perhaps someday it may create and compose itself."

For two weeks the piano had been mine, two delirious weeks with the door of my apartment locked to the world.

During that time I had worked like a creature bewitched, composing, buried deep in the ecstasy of new creative music.

During those fourteen days I brought into creation Valse du Diable, Idyls to Martha, Mountain Caprice, and The March of the Cannoneers, all of which compositions I knew to be the best I had ever accomplished. It was a tremendous amount of work, yet more than that I wove to a sublime finis the thing I had been laboring on for so many months, my Sonata in B Flat Minor.

As Farber had said, the repeat device of the instrument was its chief a.s.set. There was no more toiling through the octaves, bar by bar, line by line. I let my brain run unhampered through as much of the pa.s.sing fancy as I could, then turned the little second k.n.o.b on the instrument panel and recorded the notes on paper as the piano repeated the strains a second, a third, or a fourth time.

I became intoxicated with the spell of it. I sat there hour in and hour out, searching for a basic theme that was original.

The piano's uncanny reaction to the slightest stimulus my brain chose to give it, its apparently effortless operation, affected me like drafts of old wine. Like some instrument of Satan, it stood there on my literary table, the little white keys leaping erratically, feverishly, from chord to chord.

And yet I lived under a distinct feeling of unease. The impression stole upon me that the piano was a living thing, that it was watching through hidden eyes my every move.

On the fifteenth day Martha returned from her visit up Cheshire way, an I hurried over to her apartment.

Martha Fleming was the girl I was engaged to marry, and during her long absence from London I had almost died of lonesomeness.

I had met her a year before in the course of some musical contact, a common interest in the piano bringing us together.

She was an accomplished pianist herself, and I have always maintained that her rendition of Brahms was far more intelligent than my own.

I found Martha's face darkened with a troubled frown when I arrived. There was anxiety in her eyes, and when I took her in my arms, her usual joviality seemed missing.

"Martha," I said at last, "what's wrong?"

She sat staring out through the open window into the humming traffic of St. Anne's Court.

"It's Kari again," she said slowly.

"Kari?" I glanced at the door of the opposite room, but the maid was not in sight. A year ago Martha had toured and visited the various beauty spots of the West Indies. And it was somewhere in Jamaica that she had found Kari, who was still living a life steeped in the black rites her slave trade ancestors had brought from Africa.

She was on obea woman, a performer of obi, that sorcery still practiced by inland West Indian Negroes, which the most rigid British law enforcement has failed to suppress. I had heard of this weird form of black magic before, had read somewhere how the unfortunate victims would fall into a morbid state which would finally terminate in a slow unexplain able death, or how the obea woman would reveal the events that awaited on in the future.

For some reason Martha had been attracted to Kari there in Jamaica. Her heart had gone out to the Negro girl when she saw the squalor and superst.i.tion under which the poor creature was living, and when she had returned to England, she had contrived to take Kari along as her maid.

I remembered the day Martha had first brought the young dark-faced woman forward and smilingly introduced me to her.

"The poor thing's life would have been a sordid thing," Mar that had said. "I couldn't bear to leave her there to practice her evil worship."

But she hadn't made a perfect maid. Although Martha had drilled her in the customs of European etiquette, Kari still clung to her black background. Several times she had given in to her inborn desire for mumbled incantations, and several times she had persisted in foretelling events of the future.

In this respect, I confess my skepticism regarding such matters suffered a severe blow. On three occasions, once in my presence, the Negro girl had seemed to throw herself into a trance and slowly chanted a prophecy of what lay ahead.

And strangely enough, three times she had been correct almost to every detail.

"What has she told you now?" I asked Martha.

For a moment the girl who was to be my wife said nothing. Then she sketched briefly Kari's latest psychic introspection.

At intervals during the train ride from Cheshire, the Negro girl had lapsed into fits of crying and had begged Martha to exercise the utmost caution in everything she did for the next few days. The immediate future, she declared, was very black, and a terrible misfortune lay in store for both of them.

"You shouldn't let such throwbacks to superst.i.tion bother you," I said.

"They mean nothing at all."

"There was a time when I would have thought the same,"

she answered slowly, "but youa"you don't know Kari. Some times I almost believe obi to be an actual power, something fundamental and primitive which we can not understand."

I talked to destroy her fears, and in the end we left for my apartment, where I was anxious to show her the powers of Farber's strange invention.

While we walked I enumerated the compositions I had written in the past few days and waxed enthusiastic over them separately. The strange instrument I described in detail.

Finally we reached the door of my study. I thrust it open and strode ahead toward the table. Two feet away I stopped.

The piano was gone! Only empty s.p.a.ce on the walnut table met my eyes.

For a moment I stood there, motionless, disappointment sweeping over me. Then I saw the slip of paper lying on the floor where the draft had evidently blown it, and picking it up, I read the following: Bancroft: I am very sorry, but the changes I have planned to include in the piano are almost ready, and I shall have to take the instrument back sooner than I expected. I trust that in the short time you have had it, you have found it the means of bringing forth some excellent compositions. If they are favorably received, remember your promise to give the piano its full credit. Possibly when the new additions are fully completed, I may permit you to operate it again.

Wilson Farber The adventure was at an end. Those hours which had seemed like an excerpt from the Arabian Nights had run to their close. Well, at least I had not wasted the opportunity. Through the instrument's powers I had finished my Sonata in B Flat Minor.

An urgent request that I go to Chatham Downs to the country manor of my old friend, Major Alden, and play for a group of weekend guests came early the next morning. Alden was prominent behind one of the largest music-publishing houses in all Britain. To strain his friendship, if only from a monetary standpoint, would be foolhardy. I telephoned Martha and caught the first train.

Three days later, bored with an interlude of playing before an audience that thought more of cricket than of music, and horribly lonesome, I arrived back in London. But the instant I stepped into the station, tragedy fell upon me.

Even after its full significance had been brought to me by the pages of the Times, I found myself walking the streets sick with despair, helpless as to what I should do next.

The disappearance of Martha Fleming caused a furor in music circles. A member of the Sat.u.r.day Musicale and the Etude Society, she had countless friends who were shocked at the thought that anything had happened to her. Scotland Yard raced to the case.

From the landlord of her apartment building I gathered only the feeblest of information. Martha had left her rooms about eight o'clock in the evening, apparently bound for the little sweet shop around the corner. The landlord had noticed her exit on this evening because of the strange action of Kari, her West Indian Negro maid. Scarcely had the street door closed behind Martha, he said, when the Negro girl slipped stealthily down the hall and followed her.

The two of them had failed to return!

As my bewilderment slowly settled into cold reasoning I became frantic for Martha's safety. I questioned the other occupants of the building. I searched her apartment trying to find some clue. But I found nothing. Nor did Scotland Yard have any better results. Martha and her Negro maid had disappeared as completely as if they had fallen into another dimension.

I paced along the night streets, searching the face of every pa.s.serby.

Hopelessly I offered a reward for information as to her whereabouts.

There seemed no reason. If it had been kidnapping, there would have been a ransom note; and if murdera"I shuddereda"some traces of the crime. There was nothing, nothing save Kari's black prophecy to stand out in an otherwise clueless mystery.

At last one night I returned to my study, utterly discouraged.

I sat there slumped in the chair, brooking with my thoughts. Then, as if to add to my unpleasantness, came- Wilson Farber.

He entered my apartment without knocking, and almost before I was aware of it, he was pushing me out of the door and into the hallway.

"I tell you I'm not interested in your piano," I said.

"I don't care how much you've improved it. I have other things on my mind. Please go away and leave me alone."

"I know, Bancroft," he said. "But I must have a man who is musically trained inspect the instrument in its new form.

"Get someone else, then," I snapped. "You can throw the thing into the Thames for all I care."

"You are the only man I can trust, Bancroft, the only one I've told my secret. Come. It can do not harm.

Perhaps it may freshen your mind and give you new vigor in continuing your search."

Almost as in a dream I permitted Farber to lead me into a waiting cab. Then once again I was gliding toward that fantastic room in Milford Lane.

I found that wild music chamber with its note decorations, aged instruments and black drapes the same as before.

But I looked vainly for the midget piano. The operating table was empty. Then, following Farber's gaze, I saw the thing.

It was mounted on a small extending shelf high up on the right wall at a point just below the ceiling. And as I looked upon it, there came that same feeling that it was watching me.

"I have placed the instrument up there," explained Far her, "because I find it is more susceptible to the thought waves if at a higher position than the level of the operator's eyes. Now your full attention, please, while I adjust its tuning."

He propped a chair against the wall, stood on it and began to turn the little dial on the instrument panel.

Five seconds later I saw the little bulb within glow cherry red and the black liquid in the gla.s.s tube bubble and mount slowly upward.