The Secret
PART VI:
Just then the sound of a door slamming had everyone turning to face the door. Higgins stood there, with an eerie smile on his face. There was someone else also behind him, some one burly and large. He was wearing a hat like thing on his head, which was pulled low so as to cover most of his face. "Who is that?" asked Ian in surprise. "No one is to come here, I told you that!" Higgins walked forward to them, still saying nothing. Then suddenly he pulled out his hand from his pocket, holding a gun. Every person in the room froze in shock at the sight of it. "What are you doing? Higgins, have you lost your mind? Put that down!" Rajesh cried out. It only served to infuriate Higgins more. "You, SHUT UP! I've been waiting for this for the last six months! No one is going to stop me now!" He made all of them stand against the wall, facing him, with their hands in the air. He came over to Quinn, all the while holding the gun to the others. "Give me your sliding device." When Quinn hesitated, he shouted out. "Give it to me, or I'll blow your head off!" He took Quinn's timer and placed it on a table at the other end of the room, and set another gadget, which looked similar to the timer, next to it. Ian exclaimed in anger, "You stole that from the storage unit! What do you want with that, and with us?" Higgins didn't reply, he just fiddled with machine which occupied most of the space in the room. The other man replied for him. He had a well modulated voice, sounded sophisticated, but there was an underlying tone of steel. "We've already got what we wanted, those." he was indicating the two timers. "Now all that remains is to dispose of you, and Higgins here has a superb idea. Similar to the way he disposed of the late Maximillian Arturo." He looked at the Professor. "It is amazing, I've gone on many trips now but never encountered you, I mean your doubles." He glanced around at the room, looking at the various equipment there. It was nothing like Quinn's basement. The sliding machine occupied most of the room, it was large, block-like and consisted of a mass of wires and spiral coils all over. The centre was a dome made of glass like material, and below it was a triangular arrangement of three tubes, at the core of the machine. He smiled a little, at least he seemed to, one could not really make out because of his hat. Addressing Higgins, he said, "I trust you will take care of this?" With this he walked out, taking the timers with him.
Higgins had said nothing up till now. He then said in a low voice so they had to strain their ears to hear him, almost conversationally, he told Ian, "Here's something for you to think about… your uncle, he did discover that one could travel between parallel dimensions. But did you know who invented this machine? I did!" At Ian's look of shock he laughed. "Don't believe me? Well it's true! Your uncle did most of the work at first, I'll concede that. But who worked out the kinks when he was stuck? That's right, I did! In fact on that first trip, when he tested the machine, I went with him." He smiled. "Didn't know that did ya? Here's something else, the machine was never faulty. It was perfect. I made it perfect! And what did your uncle want to do? Oh old Max wanted to use for the good of mankind yada yada yada… never would listen to what I had to say. If he had, none of you would be in this situation now." He gestured to the Professor. "Actually, if it weren't for you and your friends, this needn't have happened. But I couldn't just sit and let you fix this machine, could I? Not after the time I spent on making it NOT work! So I speeded up my plans a little. You would have, in time, forgotten all about the machine, and I would have quit this job and gone to spend my big bucks on some exotic islands in the Caribbean or somewhere else. But now, I've got to get rid of you first." He took out some piece of metal from his pocket. He stood up, brandishing the gun at them again. "You want to know why the machine never worked? I'll tell you why." Saying this, Higgins leaned against the machine itself and tapped the tip of the gun against his chin, as if he were thinking about what he was going to say. "You see this part here," indicating the piece of metal in his hand. "It's the most important piece of that contraption. Without it, nothing works! It fits right at the core, beneath that fibre glass, under the three tubes. The day I killed your uncle, I took it. Along with most of his notes...I even cleaned up that day. Couldn't leave blood splattered on the floor…"
Ian couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Why? Why did you do this? Why…." His voice trailed off in anguish. Again Higgins just smiled. "Oh, so that the machine wouldn't work, of course! What did you think?" his smile grew wider. It was as if he was enjoying himself more and more as time passed, as if he were relishing the thought of seeing them grovel before he killed them. His smile looked frightening, as did his posture. Waving the gun a little, he said, "That's probably not the answer you are looking for, is it? I did for the money. You perhaps know Stephen Kingston, the billionaire magnate. Telling you that now makes no difference, you will not be able to tell anybody. The man you just saw was him." At the sliders' look of puzzlement he said, "You would definitely not know him. He was already quite rich and powerful before, but suddenly a few months back, he became a billionaire. What no one in this room knows is that he had approached you uncle and me when we were working on this, wanted us to sell it to us, or work for him, at a generous salary naturally. I would have agreed, if it weren't for your uncle. He was adamant. 'The inter-dimensional device would be used only for good' he said. But Stephen offered us a very large sum of money for it. And even some shares of his company. But your uncle, predictably, refused. So Kingston employed me, to take bring the machine to him. Or build a new one for him. For that I needed Max's help. I spun him a cock-and-bull story and he bought it. After we built it I simply took it and gave it to Kingston. I wouldn't say steal, after all I helped build it too. However I had to kill Max for it, he would have under no circumstances let me get away with it. I killed him here, in this very lab and threw his body into the gateway………. it must have landed in some other world. It's quite an effective way to dispose of a body, don't you think?" he directed the last part of the question at the Professor. "You gave me quite a shock. But just when I realised that you weren't who I thought you were, I had a bigger problem on my hands. I consulted Kingston, and he has promised me a very good remuneration if I get rid of you all and give him your device too. So I am going to kill you all and do away with of your bodies the same way I did Max's. Everyone will assume that you all disappeared in an accident. Just like Max."
