CHAPTER III

Penny's parents were dead. She lived with her grandfather, in a huge old brick house on a side street.

They found her lying at the foot of the front steps. Rocks' heart leaped into his mouth when he saw the white form lying there, crumpled and twisted, in the rays from the light burning over the front door. Until that moment he had not fully known how much she meant to him.

"Penny," he whispered.

Had the same horrible death struck at her? Had she tried to flee only to find death racing after her, death coming faster than she could run?

He was trembling as he knelt beside her.

Then--she stirred in his arms. Her dress did not fall into dust at his touch, as Morton's clothing had. And her skin was white, not a hideous blotched red. Death had passed her by.

"Oh, Rocks," she whispered. "It was awful--"

Kennedy and his two men paused only long enough to make certain Penny was not injured. Then they went on into the house, and Rocks, even in the pressure of that moment, found time to admire their courage. Good boys, those cops were. They knew they might find something inside that house against which their guns would prove useless. But they drew the guns, and went in.

"Are you all right?" Rocks whispered.

"I--I think so. After I called you, I ran outside to call for help and I slipped and fell down the steps."

He picked her up and carried her inside, laid her on a divan. He did not ask about her grandfather. He could hear the detectives on the floor above. They had stopped racing through the house, jerking open doors. They were all gathered in one room and they weren't saying much.

Then Kennedy came down the stairs, with one of his men. "Malone," he called softly.

"Here," Rocks answered. Kennedy came in. His eyes were black agates in a mask of dough. He slipped his gun back into its holster and said to the man who followed him, "You stay here with the girl. Malone, will you come upstairs with me?"

Rocks nodded. The detective led the way upstairs.

McCumber lay on the floor. The skin of his face was a blotch of red. His clothing had fallen away into dust. He had been working at his desk. When death struck him he had fallen to the floor.

Kennedy took a sheet from the bed and placed it over the still form.

Penny, very pale but very resolute, came into the room.

"Are you strong enough to tell us what happened?" Kennedy asked gently.

"I came in to kiss him goodnight," she answered. "He was lying there on the floor. I started to run to the telephone--then I heard something." She shuddered. "It was--I didn't hear anything. You can't hear silence, I suppose. But I did hear it. My feet didn't make any sound on the floor. I know I screamed, but I couldn't ever hear the sound of my own voice. I ran to call the museum, then I ran outside to call for help."

"Did you see anything in the room?"

"No. The desk light was burning and most of the room was in shadows, but if anything was here, I didn't see it. But--" she paused.

"What is it, miss?" Kennedy inquired gently.

"It isn't anything I'm sure of," she answered. "But I think that thing followed us home from the museum. I had the feeling that we were being followed."

"Did you see anything following you?"

She shook her head. "It was just an impression, a feeling."

"You had better go lie down," said Rocks. "We'll take care of everything." He looked at Kennedy. "Can she have a man to be on guard outside her door?"

"She sure can. I'll call headquarters and get a special detail here at once." Gently Rocks led her to her room. Better than anyone else, he knew how impossible it was to put into words anything that would make her feel better. Only time could do that. And now that the terrible death had struck twice, he knew that Penny might be in danger. No one could tell where it would strike again. Or why.

It was a death that came in silence. It came out of nowhere, struck, and passed back into nowhere, leaving no clues behind it. It had come out of a metal box found in the tomb of a king forgotten for six thousand years. It was older than the king. It was older than history. It came out of the black past of the planet with horrible, monstrous death. Sharp had seen it--a creature of planes and angles, flashing lights, a creature that disappeared at will, and reappeared elsewhere. It had been here in this home, and had struck down a man. It might be here still, watching, waiting.

Penny cried as she lay on her bed and wiped the tears away, and tried to think. How had it entered the house? The doors had been locked. Of course it could have secured entrance through an open window, but how had it passed so unerringly through the rooms, seeking out her grandfather? Why had it killed him? Did he threaten its existence?

Penny tried to think, and tried not to.

Rocks talked to Kennedy. The burly detective said, "If this was an ordinary murder, I would know how to handle it. The first thing we always look for is the motive. When we find that, we've got the killer. But there's no motive here--there's not anything. Frankly, Malone, I'm up a tree. We've got to find that thing, and destroy it, quickly. Supposing it should start wandering loose through the streets of Chicago--" The detective shuddered. "Malone, if you have any ideas, let's have them. I admit I don't know what to do."

Rocks had been thinking too. "This thing came out of that box back in the museum. If the secret of controlling it is anywhere, it's written on the lid of that box." He gritted his teeth. "I don't think we have a chance in a million of cracking that language, but right now it's the only thing I see to try."

"We'll go back to the museum," said Kennedy. "I can't help with the language, but I want another look around that place."

The authorities responsible in cases of sudden death had already arrived at the McCumber home. Kennedy left a special detail to guard Penny. He and Rocks went back to the museum.

Rocks went to work. He began to try to crack the hieroglyphics written on the lid of the box. That his task was all but impossible, he well knew.

He could read Sanskrit, Babylonian cuneiform, and Egyptian picture writing with fair readiness. He could translate ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek. An archeologist had to know these languages.

He thought the writing on the box might be in one of these languages.

He began with Morton's notes.

Then the telephone rang again. Kennedy went to answer it. He came back very excited.

"That was the girl--Penny," he said. "She may have something. She described a piece of round glass and said her grandfather had found it in his pocket tonight as he left the museum. She wanted to know if we had found it. I didn't. Did you?"

"No," Rocks answered. "But I can't see how it is important."

"Nor can I," Kennedy answered. "But it might be. I'll call and see if it has been found. She also mentioned another thing, and this, I think, is really important."

"What was it?"

"She said her grandfather was writing at his desk when he was killed. The piece of paper on which he was writing was under a blotter and we missed it. She found it. The old man had written a single question on it."

Rocks had risen from his chair. Here, he realized, might be a clue that would lead them to the capture of the incredible creature that was loose within the city. "What was the question?"

"'Why did Morton weigh the box a second time?'" Kennedy said.

"Why did he--" Rocks sat down again. His eyes went across the room to the box. It was sitting on the scales where Morton had placed it.

"It's routine here," Rocks said slowly, "to weigh all specimens as soon as they are brought in. Many statuettes, etc., were constructed as hiding places for gems. We weigh them, compute their specific gravity, and thus determine if they contain a hollow place that might be worth investigating."

His eyes lit up. "Morton weighed that box before it was opened. He opened it, and something came out of it. But, from Sharp's description, they were in doubt as to whether something had really come out of the box. There was one way to prove something had come out of it--weigh it again and check its present weight with its weight when it was brought in."

Rocks leaped across the room to the scales, checked the weight of the box. It weighed 121 pounds. Quickly he found Morton's notes and located the weight of the box when it was first brought to the museum.

"Before it was opened it weighed an even 130 pounds," he said. "Now it only weighs 121. That proves that something came out of it."

Kennedy whistled. "Nine pounds of sudden death. Well, we don't need any proof to know that something came out of that box. We've got two dead men to prove it. Look," the detective finished, "I'm going back to McCumber's residence and see if I can locate that piece of glass. You keep trying to crack that language."

He went out of the room on the run. The motor of the squad car howled to sudden life outside as the detective left.

Rocks expected Kennedy to return. But he didn't come back that night. He called instead. "I'm at the undertaker's. They didn't find any piece of red glass. I've been over McCumber's house with a magnifying glass. It isn't there. Either the thing that killed him destroyed it, or somebody picked it up. You getting anywhere with that language?"

"No," Rocks groaned.

"Well, keep trying. My hunch is that everything depends on whether or not you solve those hieroglyphics. I've got some checking to do on this end. I'll call you if anything turns up." The detective hung up.

Rocks went back to the basement. His job was to crack the language. And what a job that was!

The night ended. Dawn came. The morning was passing. Rocks worked on.

The museum was closed that day. The police were not willing to take a chance on some visitor stumbling into a death that came in silence. Nor was the museum itself. Sharp called in and gave explicit orders on that point.

Rocks drank strong coffee, and worked, and failed. The language was not similar to cuneiform. It was not like any language he knew. Every time he realized that fact, he shivered. It had either been invented by a people so long lost in the past that history had no record of them, or it didn't belong on earth at all.

Yet someone, somewhere, had constructed that box, and had used it to safeguard something. Perhaps they had used it as a prison, to cage a creature they could not control, an entity unknown to the science of the present. Perhaps later peoples had created legends about it--Pandora's Box. Perhaps this was really Pandora's Box that Morton had brought back from Asia Minor.

The creature had waited in that box for uncounted centuries. Now a new race had opened the door of his prison.

Now the Lord of the Silent Death was free again.

Rocks Malone kept wondering when and where he would strike.

During the whole day there was not even a whisper of the incredible silence in which men's lives were blotted out.

But when the second night came--