The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder by Kenneth Robeson Page A

said Markham. “A bank president would not broadcast such visits. Anyway, he went to this one. The seeress said something about you and told him to look into her crystal ball. A ball,” he concluded, “much like this one.”
    He took out the crystal he had brought from his office and set it on the table before Cranlowe.
    “What Blandell may have seen in the ball, the medium swears she doesn’t know. How it might have affected him, she doesn’t know, either. At least that’s her story, and the police have been unable to shake her.”
    “Well?” said Cranlowe, looking at the ball. “How does all this concern me?”
    “I want you to look into the ball and tell me if you see anything.”
    “Nonsense!” snapped the inventor. “You know as well as I do that all you ever see in these things is what you imagine yourself.”
    “Precisely,” said Markham. “That is why I want you to look into the ball. The imagined scene you may see there, might give you a clue to what Blandell saw—or thought he saw—just before he had his mental trouble. After all, you were mentioned by the medium. There may be some event, known both to you and to Blandell, that was responsible for his lapse.”
    “If I knew of any such event, I’d tell all about it,” said Cranlowe. But his tone was a little different, a little more slow and dreamy.
    “Of course you would,” said Markham. His own tone was changing, now. It was becoming soothing, settling on a monotonous level that was almost a chant. “But the event may be locked in your subconscious mind so that it could only come out when you weren’t really trying to think of it. While you were looking into a crystal ball, for example. Look into the ball, Cranlowe.”
    “I . . . am . . . looking,” said Cranlowe.
    “Look hard! Try to see something in the ball, Cranlowe. Stare deeply into it.”
    The inventor seemed scarcely to be breathing. His face was blanked of all expression.
    “Tell me what you see in the ball, Cranlowe. And keep looking.”
    “I am . . . looking. And now . . . I see something—”
    “What do you see? Tell me, what do you see?”
    “I see . . . myself,” said Cranlowe dreamily, sleepily. “I am at this desk. I am writing. It has something to do . . . with my war inventions.”
    “Ah, yes, the invention,” said Markham, voice as monotonous and soothing as dripping water. “What is this invention, Cranlowe? You are to tell me what it is.”
    “It is a superexplosive,” said Cranlowe, mouthing the words a little. “It kills by concussion. It is so powerful that . . . that a two-pound bomb will kill every living thing in a two-and-a-half-mile circle. Too terrible to be used . . . even in a barbarous thing like modern war. Only to be used if a nation invades another. Then used for defense. That will stop all war. No nation will aggress.”
    “Yes! Very commendable, Cranlowe. You see yourself at this desk, writing. And it has something to do with the invention. You are writing the formula, are you not?”
    “Yes! I am writing . . . the formula,” said Cranlowe.
    “Show me, Cranlowe. Show me how.”
    “Like this.”
    Without looking, Cranlowe’s hands went to the places where paper and pencil were kept. He put a sheet of paper before him, and poised the pencil. A slight spasm crossed his face, as if with an inward struggle.
    “Show me, Cranlowe,” said Markham.
    “Like . . . this—”
    A word was written—
    There was a sharp exclamation from the doorway, and Markham was seized in powerful hands.
    “Mr. Cranlowe! Wake up! Snap out of it! Cranlowe!”
    Markham struggled in the hands of the inventor’s armed butler, who growled an oath and clipped him on the jaw. Markham went down, unconscious.
    Cranlowe was wavering in his seat, and into his deep-set eyes a normal light was coming.
    He stared at the ball as if he had never seen it before, stared with horror at the sheet of paper with the first word of his precious formula on it, glared with