Sinister Barrier Read Free

not?”
    “Because I knew Mayo exceedingly well. As a government liaison officer between scientists and the U.S. department of special finance, I have dealt with him personally over a period of ten years. You will remember that I have negotiated four loans for the furtherance of his work.”
    “Yes, yes.” Sangster nodded.
    “In general, scientists are an unemotional crowd,” Graham continued, “and Mayo was about the most phlegmatic of the lot.” He gazed earnestly at the little screen. “Believe me, sir, Mayo was not capable of self-destruction—at least, not while in his right mind.”
    “I believe you,” said Sangster, without hesitation. “What do you wish to have done?”
    “The police have every reason to treat this as a simple case of suicide and I cannot interfere because I have no status in such cases. I suggest that all necessary strings be pulled to make sure that the police dismiss this matter only after the most thorough investigation. I want them to sift this to the bottom.”
    “It shall be as you ask,” Sangster assured. His rugged features grew large as they were brought nearer to the distant scanner. “The appropriate department will intervene.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Graham responded.
    “Not at all. You hold your position only because we have complete faith in your judgment.” His eyes lowered to a desk not visible in the screen. A rustling of papers came over the wires. “Mayo’s case has a parallel today.”
    “What?” ejaculated Graham.
    “Doctor Irwin Webb has died. We were in contact with him two years ago. We provided him with sufficient funds to complete some research which resulted in our war department acquiring a self-aligning gunsight operating on magnetic principles.”
    “I recall it well.”
    “Webb died an hour ago. The police phoned because they found a letter from us in his wallet.” Sangster’s face became grim. “The circumstances surrounding his death are very strange. The medical examiner maintains that he died of heart disease—yet he expired while shooting at nothing.”
    “Shooting at nothing?” echoed Graham, incredulously.
    “He had an automatic pistol in his hand, and he had fired two bullets into the wall of his office.”
    “Ah!”
    “From the viewpoint of our country’s welfare and scientific progress,” continued Sangster, speaking with much deliberation, “the deaths of such able men as Mayo and Webb are too important to be treated lightly, especially when mysterious circumstances intervene. Webb’s case seems to be the more peculiar of the two. I want you to look into it. I would like you, personally, to examine any documents he may have left behind. Something of significance may be lying around there.”
    “But I have no official standing with the police,” Graham protested.
    “The officer in charge of the case will be notified that you have governmental authority to examine all Webb’s papers.”
    “Very well, sir.” Sangster’s face faded from the visor as Graham hung up. “Mayo!—and now Webb!”
     
    Webb lay on the carpet midway between the door and the window. Flat on his back, with his dead eyes wide open, the pupils were almost hidden where they turned up and under the top lids. The cold fingers of his right hand still grasped a dull blue automatic loaded with segmentary bullets. The wall toward which the gun pointed bore eight abrasions; a small group of weals where quarter sections of two split missiles had struck home.
    “He shot at something along this line,” Lieutenant Wohl said to Graham, stretching a thin cord from the center of the weals to a point four or five feet above the body.
    “That’s what it looks like,” agreed Graham.
    “But he wasn’t shooting at anything,” Wohl asserted. “Half a dozen people were passing along the passage outside when they heard his gun suddenly start blasting. They burst in immediately, found him like this, breathing his last. He strove to say something, to tell them