River of Ice

CHAPTER III Priceless Manuscript

Most people have heard of the Wittwar Foundation. Toward the end of the last century Phineas Wittwar made countless millions in steel. He died in 1917, and his will directed that twenty million dollars be set aside for the purchase of ancient Americana: Indian relics, fossils of an even older period, everything pertaining to the North American continent from 1500 A.D. backward.

The twenty million dollars was still intact, with several more millions having accumulated in interest from the trust fund. The sum was handled by Frank Wittwar, Phineas Wittwar’s son. Frank Wittwar owned a big meatpacking company and was a large investor in public-utilities stocks.

The advisors and fellow directors of the board, which had been set up to administer the Foundation funds, were three shrewd businessmen — Mortimer Werner, Roland Mallory and James Conroy. The Foundation had its own offices on the top floor of the Kembridge Building, on Lexington Avenue in New York City.

About three weeks after Lini Waller had apprehensively left her brother at his dangerous guard post, the four men who directed the destinies of old Phineas Wittwar’s millions sat in the conference room of the Foundation’s office suite. They were looking at the sample Lini had left with Frank Wittwar four days before.

That sample was a marvelous thing. It was one of the bundles of records from the library cave. The four men, all expert at ancient documents, had been over it fifty times, searching for indications that it was a phony. And they had been able to find none.

“The incredible thing about it is its apparent age,” said Frank Wittwar. He was a stocky man of fifty-five, with a firm jaw, clear if rather hard gray eyes, and a habit of clearing his throat brusquely before speaking. “If it is what it seems to be — and we are all pretty well agreed on that point — it must be at least fifty thousand years old.”

“And that girl said there were caves full of stuff from the same era and produced by the same ancient race!” exclaimed Conroy, who was reddish-haired, heavy-featured, blue-eyed. “Seven caves full, to be exact. And she said that in one of the caves there was actually a mastodon — not just the fossilized bones — but a full-fleshed mastodon.”

“I can’t swallow that,” grunted Mallory, who was thin and stooped. He had dark, sharp eyes that bit through horn-rimmed glasses at a world he evidently regarded very pessimistically. “Mastodon, indeed! Seven caves full of stuff from the ice age! After all, now — there are limits.”

“There’s this book to prove it,” pointed out Werner, who was a rotund, smiling man with the appearance of a cherub — till you looked closely at his jaw, like a steel trap. “If that bundle of hide were preserved, why couldn’t other things have been preserved?” They were silent. There wasn’t any answer to that logic.

“Did you get a chance to decipher any of the picture writing?” asked Mallory, dark eyes gloomy behind his lenses.

Wittwar brusquely cleared his throat. “A very little,” he said. “As I told you, this bundle of manuscript has a key to the hieroglyphs on the first page. A language key. And the first thing said in the book is that in each of the other volumes there is also a language key. That is so that any one manuscript, found by itself, could be deciphered no matter what the language of the discoverer. This indicates that there are many other volumes, just as the girl says. A whole cave full of them. It also indicates that this ancient race did try to leave a record and a physical specimen of everything that touched their lives.”

“Fancy!” beamed Conroy, running thick fingers through his stiff, reddish hair. “The entire archives and culture of a race going back fifty thousand years! We should not hesitate, gentlemen. Someone else will buy this priceless store if we don’t.”

Werner nodded, steel trap of a jaw firm in his cherubic face. “We have been fooling with Indian relics going back, at the most, three thousand years. Now we have this ancient museum thrust at us — at least fifty thousand years old. I say grab it.”

Wittwar cleared his throat. “At the figure suggested, gentlemen?”

“Sure,” said Mallory.

Wittwar rubbed his hands together. “Two and a half million,” he said, frowning. “That’s more than my packing company makes net in two years.”

“This isn’t out of your packing company,” Mallory said. “It’s out of the Foundation funds. And we can easily afford it. Don’t try to be too shrewd with the girl. We might lose the thing.”

Wittwar pressed a bell. His secretary came in. “Is Miss Waller outside? Send her in, please.”

Lini Waller came into the conference room and looked at the four men.

Wittwar cleared his throat briskly. “We have decided that — as far as can be humanly judged — this bundle of thin hides you brought is indeed an ancient manuscript, and that there is probably a store of other relics such as you describe. Therefore, we have decided to meet your price. We shall place two and a half million dollars in escrow with any bank you care to name. The money will become yours the instant we enter the seven caves you mention and get the things ready to transport back to New York. Is that satisfactory?”

Lini sat down abruptly. She had known the things she had seen under the glacier were worth that. She had been sure she would get her price, huge as it was. But the definite statement that she had won left her weak for a moment. Two and a half million dollars! “That is q-quite satisfactory,” she said. “I’ll go with you and show you where the caverns—”

Wittwar’s secretary opened the door and poked her head in. Wittwar frowned. She wasn’t supposed to come unless rung for. At her words, however, his frown swiftly disappeared. For the secretary said, “He is here.”

“Oh!” said Wittwar. “Oh, yes! Splendid. Bring him right in.” He turned to Lini. “There is one final test which your sample manuscript will have to pass,” he said. “We are all fairly expert at judging such things. In addition, I have showed the bundle of skins to three museum heads. There is one authority on such matters who goes beyond us all. That is a man named Benson. Richard Henry Benson. If he O.K.s this, the deal is set.”

Lini nodded. And the door opened once more. A man came in at whom she found herself staring with profound awe. He was not a big man, yet there exuded from him an aura of tremendous power. He was obviously young, though his hair was snow-white. His face was equally white, utterly lifeless, like a death mask in white wax. His flaring gray eyes were so pale that they seemed to be colorless holes, set deep in his emotionless face.

He strode in with swift, flowing movements; and the four men, each wealthy and authoritative, treated him very respectfully indeed. He didn’t waste time in greeting them, merely nodded brusquely.

“Here is the object I spoke of over the phone, Mr. Benson,” said Wittwar. Benson’s pale, infallible eyes studied the bundle of hide. For about fifteen minutes he looked at it. The rest noted that he began by studying that first page, containing the language key. Then he turned to other pages and seemed, incredibly, to read them off almost as swiftly as if they were written in English. Evidently the one long glance at the symbol pictures had told him more than most language students could have learned in a week.

“This is interesting,” he said, closing the bundle, but with his steely forefinger holding a place. “This is evidently the record of surgery and medicine of the race that devised the manuscript. One surgical operation they performed, in particular, is unique.” The pale, deadly eyes swept the face of each, impersonally and swiftly. Yet, each felt an almost physical shock at the impact of the colorless gaze. “It tells how they made slaves — by a simple and quite devilish brain operation, robbing their victims of conscious will. Their captives in war and the malcontents of their own tribe were treated in this way and made into robots.”

He opened the page he had kept with his finger. The rest looked at it. There was a drawing and diagram of a skull on that page. At a point roughly halfway between the left ear hole and the top of the skull, there was a line drawn. That the spot was to be exactly located was evident from the fact that a quarter-circle went over the skull at that point, curving from the ear cavity to the top of the skull. This was divided into eight segments. The line touched the skull about three and a half segments from the ear cavity. “They operated there,” said Benson, “and the one operated upon became an automation. Amazing! Modern surgery has not discovered the seat of conscious will that definitely.”

“You are convinced this is genuine?” said Wittwar, after his inevitable little throat-clearing.

“Definitely,” said Benson, pale eyes intent on the ancient bundle of thin, pliant hide with the picture writing on it. “I would hesitate to say how many thousands of years ago this was drawn up. But a great many. Till now, humanity has come across no such record of a recognizable culture that far back in antiquity. It is beyond price, gentlemen. And you say there is more?”

“Seven large caves full,” Lini spoke up.

“A truly wonderful discovery,” said Benson, colorless eyes leaving her with the breathless impression that diamond drills had probed her brain to its depths.

“It’s a deal,” said Wittwar to Lini Waller. He gave her his hand on it, and Lini was breathless with knowledge of a sure fortune. The four directors of the Wittwar Foundation smiled at her benignly.

But Richard Henry Benson, known to the underworld by the grim title, The Avenger, continued to stare at the ancient bundle of hides making up a book. One of the first of the thin hides — a page if you wished to call it that — was missing! Swift as his inspection of the bundle had been, it had told him that definitely.

One of the first pages was gone! And the bundle was secured by thongs as strong and tough as they day they were made; also the thin skin pages were too tough to tear easily. The thing could not have been lost by mere handling; it must have been deliberately taken out! That was more than odd, thought The Avenger.