Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb by D. R. Martin Read Free Book Online

“Let’s just begin at the beginning,Miss Graphic. Tell me about the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft.”
    Mel nodded tiredly. “Before he died in the Great War, Oskar Hausenhofer posed a question: Just how, scientifically speaking, can wraiths touch and affect the physical world? Some kind of physics is operating here and there has to be a rational answer. Our small group looks for that explanation.”
    “And what have you actually discovered?” sneered Santangelo. “Scientifically speaking.” His left hand continued to twitch incessantly.
    Johnny, as a rule, liked most of the people he met—alive or dead. He thought of himself as a friendly sort of person. But this Santangelo character somehow gave him the creeps. And not just because he was showing Mel that snotty attitude. This guy wasn’t to be trusted.
    “Have we uncovered the basic secrets of the ether?” asked Mel, scowling at the bald man. “No. But thanks to the work of my parents, we’ve harnessed the intrinsic glow of ghosts to allow them to prospect for metals far underground and to diagnose illness inside living human bodies. I was flying to La Concha to work on an etheric photo film that might let us photograph wraiths.”
    “But you still don’t know the basic science,” the bald man said. “You still can’t tell us why an oral contract between etherist and ghost allows the ghost to operate in this dimension.”
    “That may be true,” Mel allowed. “But I fail to see how that has any bearing on this series of terrible murders. Or on the attempted mass murder of the innocent people on the Night Goose.”
    “There’ve been two more Gesellschaft killings overnight, Miss Graphic,” Crider said grimly.
    Mel almost came up out of her chair. “No! Who?”
    Crider took a telegram out of his pocket and unfolded it. “John Addison in Neuport. Machine-gunned to death by a gangster ghost. And Hans Wallin in the Duchy of Steinberg. You would have been the ninth.”
    Mel’s chin began to quiver and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. Johnny reached over and patted her arm. She sure has had a bad night, he thought. But there would be no “I told you so” from his direction.
    Crider let Mel collect herself, then continued. “Is there anything that members of your group could have done or written about that could be perceived as a threat by others? I’m trying to get at the possibility of a motive for these crimes.”
    Still sniffling a bit, Mel said, “I’ve read every article ever published in The Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft , and I can’t imagine anything our members have said that could provoke others.”
    Johnny looked across the table at Crider and Santangelo, and felt pretty proud of Mel. She was holding her own against these two tough guys. But then, he always knew she had guts. He’d seen plenty of that in the days after Mom and Pop were lost.
    “Here’s an idea,” Mel said, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Why would a ghost be willing to do such bloody work? What reward would motivate him? Of course, the ghost of a psychopath or some other monster might enjoy killing again. But most of these murders are being done by dead soldiers—men of discipline. What would motivate them? I’m wondering if we have to consider the Two Impossible Things.”
    Crider looked puzzled. “The Two Impossible Things?”
    “They’re practically an obsession for ghosts,” Mel explained in a rush. “Approximately ninety-seven percent of living humans who die move on to heaven or the great unknown or whatever you want to call it. Their spirits, souls, essences are gone, vanished from this world and the ether. No one knows where they go or how. But the remaining three percent end up as ghosts.”
    “And the Impossible Things?” asked Crider.
    “The First Impossible Thing is to become alive again. The Second Impossible Thing is to pass over to the great unknown. No human or animal ghost has ever returned to life, nor passed from the