Sinister Barrier Read Free Page A

something, but the words wouldn’t come. Nobody could have got in or out of this office without being seen. We’ve checked on the six witnesses and they’re all above suspicion. Besides, the medical examiner says it’s heart disease.”
    “Maybe it is,” Graham evaded, “and maybe it isn’t.”
    A cold eddy wafted through the room as he spoke those words. A subtle tingling slid up his spine, stirred his back hairs and passed away. His inward self became filled with a vague unease, elusive but strong, like that of a rabbit which suspects the presence of a hawk it cannot see.
    “All the same, I’m not satisfied,” continued Lieutenant Wohl. “I’ve got a hunch that this Webb suffered from delusions. Since I’ve never heard of heart disease causing hallucinations, I reckon he’s taken something that’s caused both.”
    “You mean that he was a drug addict?” Graham queried.
    “I mean just that! I’ll gamble that the autopsy will show my hunch is correct.”
    “Let me know if it does,” requested Graham.
    Opening the doctor’s desk, he commenced to search carefully through the neatly arranged files of correspondence. There was nothing to satisfy his interest, nothing to which he could attach special significance. The letters without exception were orthodox, innocent, almost humdrum. His face registered disappointment as he shoved the files back into place.
    Closing the desk, he transferred his attention to the huge safe built into the wall. Wohl produced the keys, saying, “They were in his right-hand pocket. I’d have looked through that safe, but was told to hold off for you.”
    Graham nodded, inserted a key. The cumbersome door swung slowly on its bearings, exposed the interior. Graham and Wohl gave vent to simultaneous exclamations. Facing them hung a large sheet of paper bearing a hasty scrawl:
    “Eternal vigilance is the impossible price of liberty. See Bjornsen if I go.”
    “Who the deuce is Bjornsen?” snapped Graham, plucking the paper from the safe.
    “Don’t know. Never heard of him.” Wohl gazed in frank puzzlement at the sheet, and said, “Give it to me. It carries marks of writing from a sheet above it. Look, the impressions are fairly deep. We’ll get a parallel light beam on it and see if we can throw those imprints into relief. With luck, they’ll prove easy to read.”
    Graham handed him the sheet. Taking it to the door, Wohl passed it outside with a quick utterance of instructions.
    They spent the next half-hour making careful inventory of the safe’s contents; a task that revealed nothing except that Webb had been a painstaking bookkeeper and had kept close watch on the business side of his activities.
    Prowling around, Wohl found a small pile of ash in the grate. It was churned to a fine powder beyond all possibility of reclamation—the dust of potent words now far beyond reach.
    “Grates are relics of the twentieth century,” declared Wohl. “It looks like he stuck to this one so that he could burn documents in it. Evidently he had something to conceal. What was it? From whom was he hiding it?” The telephone buzzed, and he hastened to answer it, adding, “If this is the station maybe they’ll be able to answer those questions for us.”
    It was the station. The face of a police officer spread across the midget visor while Wohl pressed the amplifier stud so that Graham could listen in.
    “We brought out the words on that sheet you gave us,” the officer said. “They’re pretty incoherent, but maybe they’ll mean something to you.”
    “Read ’em out,” Wohl ordered. He listened intently while the distant police officer recited from a typewritten copy.
    “Sailors are notoriously susceptible. Must extend the notion and get data showing how seaboard dwellers compare with country folk. Degrees of optical fixation ought to differ. Look into this at first opportunity. Must also persuade Fawcett to get me data on the incidence of goitre in imbeciles,