Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Larsen King demanded, frowning. “What’s that?”
    “This office of the President,” Bonnel explained, “has a hidden supersensitive microphone called an Ear. It picks up and records on steel tape every word spoken in here. That is so that every one of the President’s conferences with officials will be on record.”
    Curt Newton drew a breath of relief. For a moment it had looked as though suspicion would really rest on him. But the record of his conversation with the President would clear him.
    “The recorder of the Ear is in my own office,” North Bonnel was saying agitatedly.
    They all followed Bonnel back through the other offices into a contiguous room. The young secretary went to a secret panel in the wall. Opened, it disclosed a recording mechanism of the type that transcribed distant sounds electrically upon a moving steel tape.
    “Bonnel took the spool of tape out of the mechanism, placed it in a little boxlike instrument on his desk. He touched a switch.
    “This spool will have recorded everything said in the President’s office this evening,” he said. “First, you talk with him, Mr. King.”
    Voices issued from the little box. They were clearly recognizable as the voices of the murdered President and of Larsen King.
    The colloquy was short. King expressed his anxiety lest the return of Captain Future endanger his Moon concession.
    “You need not fear that, King,” Carthew answered. “The Government will not revoke your concession, now that it has been granted to you.”
    Curt felt puzzled. This didn’t sound like Carthew. There was a short silence. Then the recorded transcription of his own talk with Carthew began to come from the unwinding steel tape.
    Curt recognized his own voice. But to his amazement, it was saying things that he had never really said!
    “What do you mean by giving King a concession to the Moon radium?” Curt heard himself angrily demanding. “That radium belongs to me!”
    “It belongs to the System peoples, Captain Future,” replied Carthew’s voice. “You did wrong to hoard it secretly for your own selfish use.”
    Thunderstruck, Curt Newton heard his own voice storming on, reproaching the President for granting the concession, demanding its instant cancellation. And the voice of Carthew, angrily refusing.
    In a flash, Curt understood. This Ear record was faked! It had been previously prepared by clever imitation of his and the President’s voices. The phony transcription had been substituted for the real record.
    Larsen King’s work! King, knowing the President was about to revoke his concession, had planned this murder. He had had a confederate substitute the faked record, so that it would point to Curt Newton as the killer.
    “You’ll either cancel that concession or I’ll kill you!” the imitation of Curt’s voice was storming on the faked record.
    “No, don’t do that, Captain Future — Oh, God!” came the imitated voice of Carthew in appalled accents.
    There was a crunching thud, then silence. The Ear record had come to an end. Curt Newton spun fiercely around to expose the fiendish trick.
    Halk Anders was covering him with his atom-pistol! The bulldog face of the Planet Police chief was dark and grim. And the face of young North Bonnel was appalled.
    “Don’t move, Future!” rapped Anders harshly. “You are under arrest for the murder of President Carthew.”
    “I still don’t believe it!” flamed Joan Randall. “Captain Future never said things like that to the President!”
    “Of course he didn’t!” exclaimed Ezra Gurney disgustedly.
    “That Ear record was faked,” Curt said levelly to the Planet Police Chief. His eyes stabbed at Larsen King. “I know who faked it and planted it there. I know who killed the President by means of that telautomaton. Just give me a few hours to prove if, and I’ll —”
    Halk Anders laughed mirthlessly.
    “You’ll get more than a few hours. You’ll get a few weeks, down in our prison, until your