A Stone & a Spear Read Free Page A

Curt. "Who have you had? Louise will stay with you."
     
    "Don't bring a doctor. There's no escaping this. I've known it for months. Wait, here with me, Curt. I'll be gone soon."
     
    Curt stared with pity at the great scientist whose mind had so disintegrated. "You need a doctor. I'll call a hospital, Johns Hopkins, if you want."
     
    "Wait, maybe you're right. I have no phone here. Get Dr. Wilson — the Judge Building, Towson — find his home address in a phone book."
     
    "Fine. I'll only be a little while."
     
    He stepped to the door.
     
    "Curt! Take the lane down to the new road — behind the farm. Quicker — it cuts off a mile or so — go down through the orchard—"
     
    "All right. Take it easy now. I'll be right back."
     
    Curt frantically got dressed, ran down the stairs and out to the car. He wondered absently what had become of the cadaverous Brown, who seemed to have vanished from the premises.
     
    THE wheels spun gravel as he started the car and whipped it out of the driveway. Then he was on the stretch of lane leading through the grove. The moonless night was utterly dark, and the stream of light ahead of the car seemed the only living thing upon the whole landscape. He almost wished he had taken the more familiar road. To get lost now might mean death for Dell.
     
    No traffic flowed past him in either direction. There were no buildings showing lights. Overwhelming desolation seemed to possess the countryside and seep into his soul. It seemed impossible that this lay close to the other highway with which he was familiar.
     
    He strained his eyes into the darkness for signs of an all-night gas station or store from which he could phone. Yma\\y, he resigned himself to going all the way to Towson. At that moment
     
    lie glimpsed a spark of light far ahead.
     
    Encouraged, Curt stepped on the gas. In less than ten minutes he was at the spot. He braked the car to a stop, and surveyed the building as he got out. It seemed more like a power substation than anything else. But there should be a telephone, at least.
     
    He knocked on the door. Almost instantly, footsteps sounded within.
     
    The door swung wide.
     
    "I wonder if I could use your — " Curt began. He gasped. "Brown! Dell's dying — we've got to get a doctor for him — "
     
    As if unable to comprehend, the hired man stared dumbly for a long moment. His hollowcheeked face was almost skeletal in the light that flooded out from behind him.
     
    Then from somewhere within the building came a voice, sharp with tension. "Brown! What the devil are you doing? Shut that door!"
     
    That brought the figure to life. He whipped out a gun and motioned Curt inward. "Step inside. We'll have to decide what to do with you when Carlson finds you're here."
     
    "What's the matter with you?" Curt asked, stupefied. "Dell's dying. He needs help."
     
    "Get in here!"
     
    Curt moved slowly forward. Brown closed the door behind him and motioned toward a closed door at the other end of a short hall. They opened it and stepped into a dimly lighted room.
     
    Curt's eyes slowly adjusted and he saw what seemed to be a laboratory. It was so packed with equipment that there was scarcely room for the group of twelve or fifteen men jammed closely about some object with their backs to Curt and Brown.
     
    Brown shambled forward like an agitated skeleton, breaking the circle. Then Curt saw that the object of the men's attention was a large cathode ray screen occupied by a single green line. There was a pip on it rising sharply near one side of the two-foot tube. The pip moved almost imperceptibly toward a vertical red marker over the face of the screen. The men stared as if hypnotized by it.
     
    THE newcomers' arrival, however, disturbed their attention. One man turned with an irritable growl. "Brown, for heaven's sake — "
     
    He was a bony creature, even more cadaverous than Brown. He caught sight of Curt's almost indecently robust face. He gasped and swore.
     
    "Who