Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 2 (1926-02).djvu/10

faint yapping in the distance, a fox squirrel barking in the tree tops. Katydids called to one another, and birds chirped drowzily in the thicket around the tent Inside, the clock ticked its slow way down the hill of minutes. Blandon tried to read, but the words some ambitious writer had laid so neatly end to end were simply words with the cunning joints all gone awry. It was almost 10 o'clock.

It was very still in the tent. Blandon heard none of the night voices without. A hush seemed to have settled down over the world.

"April sixth 10 p. m. has come," the majestic voice began without warning. No announcer paved the way for the statement, and once more that feeling of awe swept over Blandon. "I have a message for the United States and the world," the voice went on. Each syllable was distinct, and the little tent was filled with the volume of the tone. "It is a message and a warning. The message is this: War must cease. I have the power to end it. Who 1 am does not matter. What I can do is all that counts. In order to convince you I will not use words. I will prove my power to destroy completely and beyond reconstruction anything that I desire. The first proof shall come April seventh at 10 p. m. Across the Missouri River from Great Falls, Montana, there is a brewery building. At 10 p. m. exactly, April seventh, this structure will be destroyed. I warn all persons to be clear of it at that time. There is danger to anyone within two hundred yards of the building. April seventh, 10 p. m."

The voice ceased as suddenly as it began. After its measured cadences the quiet was almost tangible. Blandon sat listening for more. Nothing came. The mysterious message was ended, and the world was trying to realize what was meant.

"Madman" was the consensus of the press the next morning. Some monomaniac who was suffering from delusions of grandeur able to get hold of a powerful radio set-up, and thus imagined he could do more. Yet behind this casual dismissal, there was a hint of disturbance. Was he a faker? The feature writer with the Martian theory was undismayed at its sudden failure. He had another offer—an inventor was trying to sell a death ray at a big profit, so he took this method of advertising.

In Great Falls the curious gathered around the brewery, a string of cars filing across the bridge over the Missouri all day long. Parties drove up from Helena and down from Havre. A trainload came over from Butte. Early in the afternoon the building was deserted, but a ring of curious thousands encircled the brick structure, settled down to wait until 10 o'clock. The afternoon press might carry on with the theory that the sender of the message was a madman, but that crowd was not going to miss the show. Yet others were not in that circle of the curious, but were aboard trains hurrying away from Great Falls, afraid of a mere two hundred yard radius of safety.

The day for Blandon was one of complete idleness. He did not get a hundred yards away from his tent. He sat in the shade of a towering black walnut tree, while his terrier barked at squirrels and pursued fleeing cottontails to safety in briar thickets. He believed the message, believed that the man who delivered it would deliver again that night. His years in France had taught him to consider the unbelievable. He had learned how a man might come to hate war beyond all telling, and so hating, work to its abolition through a superforce. Why not a ray that would destroy matter in its visible form? Less than half a century ago Marconi would have been called a maniac. Why, less than a century