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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Dime Mystery Magazine, August 1934, with "Eat, Drink And Die"
Stannard Bliss, men said, was slightly mad, but harmless.... Small warning, that, for those hapless guests who, unsuspecting, accepted invitations to his charnel party.
KNOWING the reputation of his host, Owen Meredith had expected the party to be rather out of the ordinary, but he was not prepared for the ghastly jest it actually turned out to be. Before the night was over, in fact, the japery had long been forgotten and tragedy leered down with hideous eyes on the tattered remnants of a half-mad orgy. Stannard Bliss, the host, surveyed the six of them blandly. He was a round, moon-faced man of ageless appearance. He might have been twenty-five or he might have been fifty. His eyes were coldly merry and his effusiveness struck a false note. His millions accentuated rather than hid the sinister underground rumors about him and about his castellated retreat in the Ramapos. Meredith had only a nodding acquaintance with the man and it was curiosity more than anything else which finally overcame the strange reluctance he had felt on receipt of the invitation.
The great clock high on the wall of the paneled library bonged twelve times. Silence descended on the guests, cocktails paused half way to lips. They had only just arrived, and already they felt uneasy, constrained. Conversation had been forced, and died down quickly. They looked at each other askance.
A large, powerfully built man with ruddy bulldog face and thick fleshy nose crossed over to where Meredith stood, slightly aloof. He was Horace Lenz, owner of a chain of newspapers and the only one present whom Meredith knew at all well.
"There's something funny about this party," he growled. "Noticed it, Owen?"
The young man crushed the sparks out of his cigarette stub before replying. His slim, smoothly muscled form contrasted sharply with the burliness of the other.
"The atmosphere is a bit unhealthy, if that's what you mean," he agreed. "And I can't say I like all the guests Bliss invited, either."
Lenz lowered his voice. "That's just it. You may not know it, but there's a hell's brew simmering underneath the surface. Almost everyone here has good cause to hate everyone else." He grinned suddenly. "Take yourself for instance. I hear you're writing a book."
"I've written quite a few," Meredith pointed out.
"But this one," Lenz insisted, "according to gossip, is going to expose the secret lives of our prominent people; rake up a lot of scandal; that sort of thing..."
"Maybe," said Owen, non-committally.
"Don't do it," the publisher advised. "They say Bliss is in it—and others. You'll ruin their lives. There might be danger to you. Bliss, for instance, is a desperate, wild-headed sort."
Meredith smiled. "I'm not worrying. If anyone should write such a book, I think it would be a public service. These whited sepulchers, I've always claimed, are a menace to society.
Lenz shrugged in resignation. "Well, there you are. Now take the others..."
The last stroke of twelve thudded ominously away. Stannard Bliss lifted his hand. Lenz's voice trailed off. All eyes fastened uneasily on their host. Some of his reported pranks bordered on—well— the thin edge.
Bliss's smooth face seemed puckish. He rubbed his hands with a dry crackling sound. "The party's going to begin now, people. It's the most unusual party I have ever given—and I have a reputation for doing the unusual. In this I have surpassed myself." He chuckled, but his humor was not contagious. "You will dream of this party; you will awake suddenly in the middle of the night to scream out—"
Gloria Albright breathed through parted crimson lips that were a vivid gash against a dead white face: "I love to scream in the middle of the night. Get on with the party, Stan."
"Impatient as always for the next thrill, my dear," the host reproved. "This time even your bottomless desire will be fulfilled."
"I don't like this," Lenz said in a low voice. Meredith noted that his ruddiness was gone, that his features were twitching. "Bliss is mad; I've always suspected a streak in him. We'd better go before—"
"I didn't know you had nerves," Owen told him. "Wouldn't we look silly to make off now?"
BLISS was saying: "I picked yon six with care." His coldly merry eyes swept to Meredith. "Owen Meredith for instance: He writes the most blood-curdling, spine-freezing horror tales of our generation."
Owen bowed, smiling wryly over Bliss's effusive words, but already Bliss had fastened on a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a high, egg-shaped head that was absolutely hairless. "And August Blemons. Most of you don't know him, but he is a fanatic on rare poisons which kill without a trace. The Borgias were amateurs compared to him." He giggled without moving a muscle of his face. "Careful how you shake hands with him; he wears a ring."
Blemons lifted his right hand and stared with lusterless expression at the blood-red ruby on a claw-like finger.
A girl sucked her breath in sharply. Her beautiful face was drained white, her wide-spaced eyes were filled with fear.
Bliss swerved on her. "May I present my secretary, Christine Larrimore. Isn't she lovely?"
The girl shrank back. A curious look had crept into her employer's face. Gloria Albright leaned forward, her dusky langorous eyes glinting dangerously. Her purring voice dripped poison. "So lovely, and so good! A pity, isn't it, Stan, that the good—die young!"
The woman, Meredith recognized instinctively, was dangerous, seething with repressed rage. Lenz whispered in a shaky voice. "Bliss had better be careful. I know Gloria. She used to be my mistress and I was damned glad when she took up with Stan. If he's giving her the go-by for that little blonde secretary of his—"
Meredith whispered back: "Good Lord! That poor girl's scared to death. She doesn't belong in this crowd."
Bliss said coldly: "Keep quiet, Gloria, you're out, and you know you're out! Don't try your tragedy queen stuff with me."
Owen, watching closely, saw the fathomless fury in those dusky eyes, and felt a chill. Murder was here, in the making. But Bliss, seemingly unaware, mocked on. "You all know the voluptuous Gloria Albright, of course. The actress who has played a hundred vampire roles in make-believe and tried them, but with less success, in real life." Blood dripped slowly from the woman's crimson lip where sharp white teeth had clenched in spasmodic repression. A faint uneasy stir swept over the room.
"Now we come to Corey Wells," Bliss rattled on. The short dark man with the gashed irregular scar which ran from cleft chin to ear and twisted his face into a perpetual grimace, grinned sourly. "The famous traveler, the explorer who was the only white man to penetrate into the heart of the Devil-Worshippers' country in Arabia. Rumor has it he joined the sect himself and underwent the full initiation. You know, of course, of one of the ceremonies: eating the raw, bleeding heart of a man you killed with your own hands."
Meredith watched the shuddering pallor of the blonde girl, Christine. She looked faint. Owen was not exactly squeamish, but even he felt a little sick at the cold brutality of the man.
"He's going too far," the newspaper publisher growled. "Banks on his millions and reputation for eccentricity to protect him."
Bliss swerved on him with a wave of his pudgy, corpse-white hand. "And over there, the bull-headed man who is muttering indistinguishable things under his breath, is Horace Lenz, molder of public opinion. I dare not say what skeletons in his life admitted him to this select little party of ours."
Their gaze met and stabbed in silent challenge. Then Lenz laughed good-naturedly. Bliss said: "I have invited one more guest. He came because he couldn't help himself. You've never met him, I believe, but you will recognize him at once. He's my chef d'oeuvre, my masterpiece—the high spot of my career."
Corey Wells rasped out: "The trouble with you, Bliss, is that you talk too much. Get on with the party." His voice was like the grating of a rusty hinge. It matched the unpleasantness of his features.
The round moon face of their host was blankly merry. "Of course," he agreed readily. "It is but natural impatience." He turned around, facing the wall at the other end and clapped his hands.
Meredith had made his way over to Christine Larrimore. He was anxious about her. "A very pleasant party, isn't it?" he murmured.
She looked up and shuddered. "I—I'd like to go home. Mr. Bliss was never like this before. I've worked for him a month and—and—he always seemed normal. I'd rather—"
"If you feel that way," he said gently, "I'll get your wraps and drive you home myself."
She looked up gratefully. "Thank you!"
At that moment the panels of the farther wall slid open. It was fathomlessly dark beyond. Bliss stood at the entrance, rubbing his hands. "Come in, everyone. I guarantee you'll be surfeited with thrills." He saw Owen leaning over his secretary. "You, too, Christine," he called. There was imperative command in his tone.
The girl smiled wanly and rose. "I have to go in," she said hurriedly. "It means my job if I don't." Bliss waited until they all had moved into the pitchy darkness. They stood in an uncertain group, trying in vain to penetrate the mystery beyond. Then the panels slid noiselessly into place behind them, and the blackness was complete.
SILENCE—ominous, deadly! Thick stirrings and rustlings, and then a sound as of soft, dry whispering. Someone moved on padded feet.
"A swell moment for a murder," the voice of Gloria floated through the dark. Blemons dripped cold words. "A silly stunt! We don't scare easily." Lenz's growl seemed far away.
Meredith shifted his position, seeking the girl, Christine. He collided with an invisible body. Someone cursed, shoved at him violently. Staggering a moment, he lunged with angry heat for the discourteous assailant. At the same time a startled exclamation ripped through the Stygian pall. It was Blemons!
"Something's got me by the hand," he gasped. "I can't let go! What the devil. ..."
"Hah! ha-ha!" Obscene laughter racketed and echoed. "I was waiting for that. Blemons of all people to be caught! That's rich—ha-ha!"
Meredith stumbling over nothingness, cried out sharply. "The joke's gone far enough. Bliss. Turn on the lights!"
"Of course," returned the bodiless chuckling voice. Slowly, very slowly, a dim funereal illumination spread ghostly waves through an enormous chamber. It picked out strange, incredible, half-perceived blobs; then, as the light grew stronger, the blobs took definite shape and form.
CHRISTINE screamed and thrust a warding elbow before her eyes, and muttered exclamations burst from the others.
Bliss rubbed his hands. "Nice idea, isn't it?"
Gloria said throatily: "Marvelous! Superb! I could love you all over again for this, Stan." Eyes gleaming, she put a thin dead-white arm on the millionaire's shoulder.
Bliss shrugged it off. "Don't be a fool, Gloria," he snapped. His eyes sought the trembling figure of his secretary, narrowed. Meredith was at her side, supporting her. Lenz watched the people rather than the disclosed horrors. His eyes were bitter.
Christine moaned: "It's like the ravings of a madman, this—chamber. Now I know why he looked at me—like that— for days."
"Easy!" Owen soothed. "He would attempt something like this." But his eyes held in unwilling fascination. It was macaber, horrible, obscene, yet in its very gruesomeness the room was a marvel of depraved genius.
The enormous chamber, glowing with the ghastly green of the hidden illumination, seemed the interior of a charnel house. The walls were of rough slimed stone, green with the putrescence of decay; the rafters of the vaulted ceiling gibbered with live squeaking bats and red-eyed owls who glared motionlessly down at the astounded guests.
In one corner a scaffold loomed, a huge perpendicular beam with a crosspiece at right angles from which a slip noose dangled suggestively. In the opposite corner a guillotine reared its ugly head. The sloping steel blade glittered evilly in the slotted guide posts.
In the very center of the house of death and decay a huge coffin stood, waist high. Beneath its glassed surface waxen images rested, hands folded in similitude of death. On the glass top stood broken gravestones, each with a carved name. They were the names of the guests. Before each gruesome place-card was a chair; an exact facsimile of the electric chair, with electrodes and switch. The coffin was heaped high with food, served on black plates. Blood-red bottles of strange shapes filled every vacant niche.
At the head of the coffin-table was a larger chair, and a figure was strapped in it, a motionless wax-like figure in prison stripes and clothes. The death cap was on its head and the death mask on its face.
"The last invited guest," Bliss chortled, "A pretty thought, eh? Death at the feast! Sit down, everyone. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
Lenz said sharply: "Look at Blemons! What's the matter with him?"
The poison expert was standing near an upright grinning skeleton. The bony hands was extended and open. Blemons swayed slightly, and looked stupidly at his own hand.
"Just a little joke of mine," Bliss grinned. "He stumbled in the dark with hand outstretched against the skeleton's paw, There are springs holding the bones.
They contract and give a good, hard squeeze. He's all right."
Lenz was at the man's side, gripping his shoulder, peering into his eyes. He seemed worried. "Sure you're okay?"
The cadaverous man lifted his hairless head with an effort. His eyes were dull, unanswering. He spoke hesitatingly, thickly: "I'm all right. Let me 'lone." He pushed the newspaper publisher's hand away and stumbled to the table. He peered vacantly at the macaber place-cards and sank into his chair.
The other guests, their first reaction over, seemed to enter into the spirit of the jest. Gloria was especially vivacious. Her excitement was mounting; her eyes glittered. Death—by poison, by strangulation, by hideous and subtle means alike was her constant theme. Her feverish preoccupation was contagious. Corey Wells, the traveler, unbent after the third drink, and in dry, monotonous voice, narrated the most frightful tales of torture he had personally witnessed and participated in among Yezidees, head hunters, Chinese bandits and Hindu fakirs.
Lenz chimed in with choice bits of scandal about hitherto spotless and respected citizens of the town. He seemed quite drunk. Bliss prodded them on, spurring them to more and more fantastic efforts, plying them with curious liqueurs and stranger foods, interposing deftly his own subtle obscenities and depraved touches. This was what he loved; lived for. The proceedings gradually assumed the wildest aspects of a feast of Heliogabolus.
AS the fever mounted, and the blood-red drinks took their strange effect, Christine shrank more and more into her seat. Her face was pale and her breathing rapid. Bliss, opposite her and next the unstirring ghastly figure of the condemned criminal in the electric chair, watched her speculatively. There was a strange light in his eyes. Gloria's stealthy glances were murderous barbs. She seemed more than ever the bloodless vampire. Wells devoured Gloria's sinuous form with hot avid expression, and Lenz, lolling with drink, nevertheless held everyone under surveillance.
Meredith had tasted the first drink offered him and refused any more. Its curious potency astounded him. He had an uncanny feeling that the night and this strange orgy would not end normally. He was next to Christine—a deft switching of gravestones made certain of that.
Blemons too, was not a participant in the proceedings. He slumped in his chair, eyes half closed, chin sunk on bosom, and he answered vaguely and with muttered thickness any remarks thrust his way.
Meredith waited for the break. He knew it was coming.
And then it came!
Gloria tossed off another drink and started violently from her chair. Her hand darted snakily into the bosom of her breast-high evening gown. It came out with a long curving razor-edged knife. Face distorted, she swooped around the coffin and plunged for Christine.
"You filthy little blonde witch!" she screamed, "you will try to take Stan from me, will you?"
The glittering blade poised for the downward stroke. The table seemed afflicted with a strange unmoving paralysis. Christine cried out. That released Owen. He threw himself forward and clawed for the knife. Its keenness seared down the flesh of his hand. Then he twisted and the weapon went whirling through the air. It smashed into the figure of a knight in dark armor, next the skeleton.
Gloria fought like a fury, her crimson lips spitting feline obscenities, but Owen held her tight. Bliss came rapidly around the table, balled his fist, and crashed it hard against her cursing mouth.
"You slut!" he said, low and hard, "You try that again and you'll wish you were never born."
Blood dripped from her lips. Owen released his grip. She stared at Bliss wide-eyed; without another word she walked back to her chair. Christine sat rigid, almost bemused.
"You shouldn't have done that," said Meredith.
"It was the only way to treat her," said Bliss. He raised his hand, and once more his voice was merry, as if nothing had happened. "Now another surprise. We've had Death with us at the feast to remind us, like the ancient Egyptians, that time is on the wing and we should seize our pleasures as and where we may. A pretty conceit, was he not?" He turned and bowed ironically to the seated representation of the condemned criminal at the head of the table.
"A stroke of genius," Wells declared.
"Not yet," Bliss corrected. "Now, however, it will be. For behold, Death itself will turn to life, to dangerous, forbidden life."
He leaned suddenly forward, and with a quick movement ripped off death cap and mask to disclose a jerking, twitching head. The hair was shaved close and the prison pallor was heavy on the sunken features. Animal-like eyes darted fearfully around the room.
"My masterpiece," Bliss cackled.
Lenz jumped to his feet with a hoarse cry. "Jim Marra!"
Meredith felt Christine's body shrink against him; her heart beat with rapid thudding strokes against his shoulder. Gloria thrust back her head and laughed wildly, the blood still dripping from her crushed lower lip.
"Splendid! A condemned murderer as a fellow guest! What a conception!"
Marra screamed: "You promised, Mr. Bliss, you wouldn't give me away."
Bliss said. "Don't you worry; I keep my bargains." His moon face wore a self-satisfied air as be faced his stupefied guests. "It was a happy accident. Jim Marra escaped from the death house three days ago. On one of my little excursions I discovered his hiding place while the police were searching the country for him. I saw at once his possibilities for this party, and broached it to him. He saw the light too; it was this or—the death house."
MARRA swung out of his hideous chair. "I was innocent," he cried desperately, shifting hunted eyes from one to the other. "It was a frame-up; I was railroaded. Don't give me up!"
Horace Lenz kicked back his chair. It fell with a crash. His powerful hands clutched at the table, his bulldog face was ridged in hard lines.
"You lie!" he shouted. "You killed John Wiley; the proof was unanswerable. He was a good friend of mine. Bliss," his voice cackled, "I'm going to call the police."
His host said smoothly: "Jim is my guest. I promised safety in return for this little tableau."
"To hell with your promises!" the publisher growled. "The man must get his just deserts. He's a killer. I'm going."
Meredith rose; his hand around Christine's trembling waist. "So am I," he announced calmly. "And so is Miss Larrimore. Your party is not to our taste."
Bliss surveyed them from bland eyes. "The doors are locked, Lenz, by an electrical contrivance of which only I know the secret. You might as well stay."
Jim Marra searched the publisher's countenance. "Lenz!" he screamed. "I thought I recognized you. It was your newspapers that hounded me to the chair!" He darted forward, murder writ large on his writhing features. Owen thrust quickly into his way, stiff-armed his puny body smashing to the floor.
"Thanks!" Lenz said, glaring down at the quivering wretch.
"We've got to get out," Christine moaned.
Meredith took a step toward Bliss. "Now listen here; you're opening those doors, or—"
He was interrupted by a strange sound. August Blemons, who had sunk further and further into the seeming stupor of the drunk, swayed slowly to his feet. His hairless, egg-shaped head pulsed with a greenish, glowing light. His lips drooled green-flecked foam. His mouth was set in a stiff hard line. A curious moaning whistle tore from his rigid lips. His long flaccid hands writhed with a strange life of their own, uncontrollably, as though they were dissociated from his body.
Then, as they stared in mounting horror, the writhing, snaking hands lifted, grasped the bulbous head, and tore wildly frantically. Nails ripped deep into skull and cheeks, gripped and pulled as if he wished to burst open his tortured head like a rotten apple. Without ceasing, the frightful whistle seared through the lock-jawed lips.
Owen sprang for him, too late. The weaving hands had reached the mouth, caught at either side, and yanked. The flesh yielded with a gurgling tearing sound and a bloody gash grinned rawly at the assemblage. The full throated shriek of the damned gushed forth, burbling with blood and green foam, higher and higher, sending the roosting owls in the rafters into flight, until a horrible retching came, and August Blemons fell headlong to the floor. He twitched once and then lay very still. He was dead.
"God!" Christine whispered. Gloria wiped her bleeding lip and drank in the sight with voluptuous intake of breath. Bliss gripped the edge of the coffin-table.
A puzzled frown disfigured his ageless skin. Jim Marra was on his feet again and cowering away from the motionless body.
Horace Lenz shouted in stentorian tones. "Damn you, Blemons was poisoned!"
Bliss wiped his face clean of expression. "His ring, that's it! He must have pricked himself."
"A pretty alibi. Bliss," Lenz sneered, "but it doesn't work." His jaw was jutting. "You pulled the trick yourself."
The millionaire eyed him curiously. "How?" His voice was gently.
"That damned skeleton!" The publisher strode angrily to the grinning white form, pressed open the phalanges of the outstretched hand. "Look!"
They crowded closer to view the damning sliver of needle imbedded firmly in the bone. Lenz swung around. "Bliss planted that for Blemons. There was an East Indian poison on the needle. I know the symptoms."
Bliss fell back a little from his accuser. "It's not so. I admit the needle. But it was clean; a joke—just to prick the skin and make the victim jump. The skeleton was there for anyone to touch. I had no reason—"
"No?" Lenz said sardonically. "You thought yourself a modern Borgia, and flattered yourself you got away with it. My papers have been investigating you. There have been several unexplained deaths among your friends. Blemons concocted the poisons and sold them to you. He was getting scared, and was going to talk. You thought up this method to shut his mouth!"
Bliss, for the first time, lost his poise. His moon face wrinkled hideously; he fell back staring. "You lie," he declared hoarsely. "I never did—" He stopped short, eyes wide. "Of course, I should have known." He turned swiftly to Jim Marra, corpse-white in his prison stripes.
"You, Jim, get—" His hand reached back on the coffin, groping.
Owen went for him in a quick dive. Lenz moved sideways, against the sable-armored knight. -
The lights went out!
MEREDITH crashed against a chair. Blackness dropped like a shroud. Men gabbled indistinguishable words; Christine cried out sharply. Gloria's wild laughter enveloped them all. Owen staggered dizzily to his feet as something whizzed past him, ruffling his hair.
"Christine!" he shouted, straining against the dark. No answer. That one cry had not been repeated.
He plunged blindly. There were scuffling sounds around, him, gruntings, heavings. He collided with fighting, threshing bodies, and they slid away from him. Someone gasped and choked off with a horrid gurgling noise.
"The lights!" he shouted. "Turn on the lights!" A mocking laugh answered him, a laugh whose source he could not trace. Something was being dragged heavily along the floor.
He groped blindly on, trying to orient himself. There had been a light switch near the entrance panel; he remembered that. And then, with sudden dazzling glare the lights went on. Lenz, panting heavily, his face flushed and angry, removed his finger from the trip.
"I had the devil's own job finding it," he breathed. "Whose fool idea was it to turn them off?"
Wells spun around hastily, his eyes blinking like an owl's. His reaching hand pulled back from the guillotine Marra crouched against the coffin-like table, opening and shutting his mouth in spasmodic constrictions. Gloria was back in her chair, her blood-red lips parted to disclose small sharp white teeth. Her neck undulated with swan-like movements.
August Blemons still sprawled unmoving, face downward.
It was Christine who made the horrible discovery. "My God!" she shrieked.
Meredith was swiftly at her side. Everyone swerved at her trembling finger. A shudder of horror rippled through them.
To the far corner of the room, swinging with slow ghastly motion, dancing with desperate feet in emptiness, strange dead fruit of scaffold and noose, hung the distorted, strangled body of the host, Stannard Bliss! Ensnared in his own trap, caught in the weave of his own peculiar jest, no longer would his fertile, sadistic mind conjure up novel sensations and macaber entertainments to startle and tickle jaded appetites. He was dead— murdered!
Lenz was the first to reach the swinging figure. The round moon face was blue with cyanosis, the lips snarled back from teeth like fangs, the cold merry eyes squeezed half way out of their sockets.
"Don't touch him," Owen cried sharply. "He must be left for the police. There may be fingerprints."
Lenz withdrew his hand, passed it shakily across his face. He was chalk-white now. "God! What a party!" he groaned. "First Blemons, then Bliss. Who is next?"
A strange access of fear carried him headlong to where the panel was. He beat with clenched fists against the solid wall. "Help! Let us out! Police!" But the walls were soundproof and the control for the sliding panels cleverly concealed. There was no answer.
Meredith's calm voice stilled the mounting panic. "We've got to think this out. We're locked in, ironically enough, by the man who is swinging there. We can't get out, possibly not until morning, when the servants will become suspicious. In the meantime, there is a murderer among us, a ruthless, fiendish murderer. Two are dead—there may be more before the night is over. We must find him out first, before—"
"I thought it was Bliss," Lenz muttered thickly, "but—" His morale seemed to have broken suddenly under the impact of the gruesome hanging of their host.
"Bliss couldn't have hung himself," Owen pointed out. "Now who else?" He turned slightly toward Jim Marra.
The escaped murderer flung up his hand to ward off expected attack. His voice rose to a scream. "I didn't do it! I swear I didn't!"
Corey Wells said coldly: "He had plenty of opportunity to coat the needle in the skeleton's bones with poison. He was all alone in the room before we came in. And Bliss was going to accuse him when the lights went out."
Lenz said harshly: "You're no saint yourself, Wells. The cult of the Devil-Worshippers exacts a curious price from its devotees."
GLORIA flung her arms over her head, exposing high pointed breasts above the line of her gown. "Don't forget me," she laughed wildly. "I hated that windbag strutting the air up there. I made a good thing of him for a while, but he was throwing me over. And how that silly waxen doll he was falling for— she was ninny enough to be afraid of him? Or our budding novelist himself, whose brain is addled by the tales he strings? We're all suspects!" Her laughter shrilled through the charnel house with tense, ripping sound. The men stood and snarled at each other like animals about to spring as fetid, blood-reeking hate enveloped them.
Meredith said, struggling for calm: "We're only making things worse. Everyone get away from the light switch.
There must be no more darkness. As for Marra, he is a condemned murderer. He must be safely tied, and held for the police. Perhaps—"
Marra sprang back. His hand darted out to the coffin-table, to the broken gravestone in front of the host's chair, where Bliss had reached before his death. Christine cried out and clung to Owen's arm. A flat automatic gleamed like a thing evil in the greenish light.
"I'll never go back alive!" There was the glare of desperation in his sunken eyes. "I'll kill the first one who makes a move."
Meredith gently shook off Christine's clutching hand, balanced himself easily on the balls of his feet. Lenz moved sideways with imperceptible movements; he was close to the knight in black armor. Gloria's hand slid stealthily along the table.
"I mean it," Marra cried, swinging the pistol threateningly. Corey Wells dived suddenly, and the gun crashed. Then, without warning, the light blinked and was gone.
Meredith had barely time to wonder at the enveloping dark when his forward spring brought him crashing into a second spurt of flame and the echoing report of the gun. He swung at the spot where the flame had lanced. There was the thud of flesh on bone, a scream of pain, and a metallic object slammed against the floor.
Christine was crying: "Owen, where are you? Are you hurt?"
Gloria screeched in insane hatred: "Let me get my hands on you; let me get my claws into your face, you—!" Then suddenly, she was still.
Meredith, feeling his way blindly in the thick blackness, felt a sudden sinking sensation. If only he could find that light switch in time.
"Everyone of you! Speak up!" he shouted. There was no answer; only a silence more deadly than any noise. Good God! Was every one dead? His outstretched hand pounded against solid wall. It moved feverishly along until it contacted the switch, and he tripped it. Illumination, green glowing, lit up the shambles, the morbid japery of the charnel house that had long since passed beyond all jesting.
Blemons still sprawled face down on the floor, the green foam drying on his lips; Bliss still swung hideously from the gibbet. But the others? Christine? His frantic eyes searched the room. There she was—a huddled mass near the sable knight. He ran toward her, knelt at her motionless side with frantic haste. Fear drove him with scorpion whips. Her face was calm and drained of color. He felt her pulse. Thank God, it beat slowly, but steadily.
He lifted her gently to her chair, dashed water from a carafe over her pallid countenance. Everything else was forgotten. She shuddered under the impact of the cold fluid, breathed deeply, and opened her eyes. They were filled with brooding terror.
"Owen!" she whispered. "Someone caught me by the throat in the dark. I tried to cry out and couldn't. Then— then, I felt myself dropping, and everything went black." There were purple bruises against the white of her skin.
"You're all right now," Meredith assured her. His eyes were stormy.
The voice of the newspaper publisher rose in a weird hoarse cry. "Good God! Gloria!"
Meredith spun around, dreading what he would see.
IN the farther corner of the room, a bright keen blade hung suspended as before between the slots. But the brightness was dimned with dripping gore. It ran down the steel, beaded into dark red globules, went drip, drip, splash, on the frightful thing that lay across the wooden block—the kneeling, half prone, headless body of a woman! Gloria Albright! Her slender, swanlike neck ended horribly in a straight sharp slice of flesh. Gouts of blood oozed slowly from the gaping wound, and made a pool on the platform of the guillotine. The once beautiful head, with tresses sheared into a sinister bob, lay face upturned, at the opposite end. Blood smeared the delicate veinings of her cheeks and the sensuous red lips gaped wide.
Lenz hid his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved convulsively. After all, thought Owen, he had once loved the woman.
"We've got to get out! We've got to get out!" Christine repeated tonelessly. Accumulated horrors had mercifully dulled her perceptions.
Meredith dared not answer. First Blemons—poisoned by a skeleton; dead on the floor. Then Bliss, the host, hung on his own scaffold. Now Gloria, decapitated under the guillotine. Human hands had dragged them there, strangled them to keep them from crying out, worked the gory instruments. Even as human hands had impregnated the needle with poison. It must be so, he insisted to himself. Yet how was it possible—who among them could be the slayer in the dark? Who among the survivors—Marra, Lenz, and Wells? Or was there some unseen, inimical influence in the room. Something disembodied and unearthly in the evil atmosphere that played with human lives. Had Bliss in his mad striving for shocking, terrifying effects, evoked a monster hidden in some unknown crypt, and died, another Frankenstein in the grip of the thing he had called into being?
He shook off these shuddering speculations with grim ferocity. If he didn't get a good grip on himself, he too would go mad.
Jim Marra rose slowly from under the gibbet on which Bliss dangled and danced. He held his right arm stiffly and moaned. He did not seem to notice the headless body of the actress.
Corey Wells lifted himself from his prone position on the floor. He stared vacantly around. "I was shot," he muttered thickly.
Meredith reached him in two strides. At his feet was a glint of metal. He stooped, picked up the automatic, thrust it into his pocket. Then he raked the explorer with swift, sharp glances. "Where were you shot?" he demanded.
Wells made a vague gesture. "I don't know," he said. "It seemed to me—maybe not. I must have bumped my head."
Owen averted his eyes from the ghastly dead. "Now listen to me, all of you," he commanded. "Three of our number have been done to death—horribly. One of us is the killer!"
WELLS was staring with a kind of fascination at the blood-dabbled trunk of what had once been Gloria Albright. "There are devil-demons," he said without expression, "who kill like that."
"Supernatural nonsense," Owen said sharply, to hide his own uneasy qualms. "The murderer is human, and in this room. And I know who he is!"
Lenz took his hands away from his face. "Tell us then," he implored. His fists worked powerfully. "I'd kill him barehanded."
"It isn't time yet," Meredith answered shortly. "First we've got to find a way out."
Lenz hurled himself against the wall again. It would not give. He seized a chair, swung it with all the force of his massive shoulders. The sturdy rungs splintered and crashed to the floor, but the panel remained unmarred.
"Don't stand there like mummies," he snarled. "Give me a hand!"
Corey Wells made no move, but stood watching with smoldering eyes. Jim Marra lifted his right hand stiffly, let it drop again. Christine walked slowly along the wall, seeking the hidden spring. The blood pounded so in her temples she could hardly see.
Meredith said: "A battering ram is the only idea. How about the cross beam of-the gibbet?"
Lenz said earnestly: "I wouldn't go near Bliss with a ten foot pole. Damn him and his house and his parties! You couldn't hear the explosion of a ton of dynamite outside. And his servants know from bitter experience not to intrude on any of his parties until he summoned them."
Owen said: "There must be a way. The murderer isn't through yet. There's another one of us on his slate."
"How do you know?" Lenz glanced fearfully at the two men in the rear.
"Just a hunch," Owen answered evasively.
Lenz cried out suddenly: "The knight in black armor! I saw him move!"
He thrust past Meredith, face grim and set, and leaped for the sable figure. Everyone in the chamber of death swerved at his outcry. The publisher grabbed for the steel-mailed neck, and staggered back with an even sharper cry.
There was a swift whir. Something seemed to yawn in the Stygian breastplate, and a hiss of metal lashed through the air. Meredith jumped barely in time. The thunderbolt of death ripped through his scalp, thudded with a smacking noise into the deep wood of the wall. Then the green illumination went out with a rush.
Owen shifted his position silently. He knew he was marked for death. He prayed only that Christine would keep silence, and not disclose her whereabouts. He strained every faculty to penetrate the barrier between himself and the others in the charnel chamber. What had moved inside the armor of the grim black warrior? But strain as he might, no answering message came back from the outer darkness. Everyone, everything in it, seemed stricken with a strange paralysis. Yet he knew that even now, somewhere in that room, the weapons of horrible torturing death were being forged for him, that even now the murderous being was advancing stealthily upon him. The pounding of his heart came to him with explosive sound; every nerve shrieked against the unknown danger. Half crouched, he moved stealthily forward.
He lunged into a chair and overturned it. He leaped back in quick fright at the abrupt noise, whirled, and faced the black void with panting gasps. Someone, far off it seemed, gasped in sympathy.
A voice pierced the insupportable silence; a hollowed, muffled voice. To Owen's fevered imagination it seemed to issue from the helmeted head of the suit of armor. It rang in his ears with the thudding strokes of remorseless doom: "Owen Meredith! Owen Meredith! Your turn has come. Blemons, Bliss, Gloria— and now you! Your allotted fate is awaiting you! Prepare!"
The young man, perspiration clammy on his forehead, said nothing. He held the automatic with a desperate grip, and backed slowly and warily toward where he thought the light switch was.
Christine shrieked: "Owen, be careful!"
His fuddled senses strove desperately to disentangle a certain important point: Who among them had eyes that could penetrate the dark?
Lenz cried out despairingly: "The switch doesn't work!" And in Owen's ears the empty, fruitless click was terrifying in its finality.
Meredith stumbled slightly; his foot made a scuffing noise. Something launched itself through the air at him Too late he recovered and swerved. Steel-hard fingers contracted round his throat, hot fetid breath flamed on his cheek. Bright stars crashed in ruining desolation all around, and then he was swimming in a sea of blackness.
From far off he heard a faint scream, the dim patter of heels. The strangling sensation around his throat loosened, and he thudded heavily to the floor. Christine's sobbing cries mingled with muffled imprecations; there was the scuffling sound of a struggle. The girl had sprung to his rescue and was even now beating with small fists at the unseen form of his assailant There could be only one outcome !
His throat felt torn and clawed; his temples burned with searing fire, his limbs were still half immersed in the befuddling blackness into which he had fallen, yet he swayed unsteadily to an upright position. The girl screamed once and the sound trailed off to a thin gurgle. There was a noise like a dragging sack across the floor. Men's scared shouts pierced the darkness.
"Christine!" he cried in anguish, and tottered on liquid feet. A horrible, un-human laugh answered him, and bit off sharply in mid-flight. Owen fell forward, face downward. This time the dark sea overwhelmed him completely.
"MEREDITH! Meredith!"
Urgent voices, calling him, plucking him back from the depths of the overwhelming ocean. Little by little they pulled him, slipping and heaving, until awareness came to him. His tongue was a furry animal many sizes too big, his head was a lake Of fire, his throat a painful noose. He opened his eyes.
There was nothing, just blankness. He closed them again and groaned.
Invisible voices were a confused murmur around him. Then: "Thank God you're all right!" The familiar tones of Horace Lenz growled. "The beast almost got you, didn't he?"
"Lights!" Owen muttered drowsily.
"The switch is dead. And we haven't a match between us."
Meredith sat up shakily in the dark. He could see no one. "Us?" he echoed. "Who's us?"
"The three who are left." The publisher's voice was edged with suspicion. "Marra and Wells got to you first when you fell. Luckily I was right behind them. It was a job finding you in this hell-hole."
"What do you mean—lucky?" the unseen explorer asked venomously. "Are you trying to insinuate—?"
Marra cried: "He means me; I'm the goat! If I ever get out of this alive—"
The angry voices pierced Owen's consciousness like swords. He came scrambling to his feet, collided with and almost knocked someone over. "Christine!" he rasped. "What happened to her?"
"Eh? Christine?" Lenz's tone was blank. "Why, by God, of course! Where is she? Where has that devil taken her?"
Hot and cold spasms alternated over Owen's body. Christine had saved his life, and in doing so had lost her own. He remembered that strange dragging noise; the unhuman laugh that had bitten off sharply. He cursed and swung on the others. "We've got to find her."
"Easier said than done," Wells said coldly. "We can't see a thing."
Owen swore furiously. If only he had a flash, a match, anything—yet he shrank from the gruesome sight it might disclose. The thought of that lovely body tortured, swinging, decapitated somewhere in that chamber of horrors... The darkness was more merciful.
Lenz said suddenly: "The knight in black armor! It's got something to do with all this. I heard it whir and jumped back just in time when I grabbed at it before the lights went out."
Any activity, no matter how aimless, was better than this gruesome waiting in the darkness, waiting for the next blow to fall. And Christine—Maybe ...
Meredith reached out with his hand. Marra cried out in terror. "It's only I," said Owen. "I'm trying to get placed."
"Here's the table," advised Wells. "The knight stood about ten feet from the end chair."
"The skeleton's right next to it," Marra said fearfully. "With that poisoned needle."
"We're all of us going," Meredith told him with grim intonation. "Step by step, touching arms, together."
"Who, me?" cried Marra. "Not in a thousand years! I'm scared."
"Yes, you!" Lenz growled. "What are you scared about. The death house waits for you outside; you'll lose nothing."
Meredith heard the quick intake of breath on the part of the condemned man; then silence. They went forward, shoulder to shoulder, hands outstretched, groping in the strange, clammy darkness where not even dim outlines showed. Somewhere in that unearthly gloom lurked the killer; somewhere was Christine, dead, or perhaps worse—alive! Owen shuddered and hastened his pace. He broke contact with the others. Wells, on his left, muttered angrily, and was gone. Marra, on his right, made scuffing sounds. Then he too was gone.
"Steady!" Lenz said. "Marra's just slipped my grasp. I tried to hold him, but he twisted out. , Where are, you, Owen?"
"Here!" His hand collided with corpse-bone. He snatched it away. Had he touched the lethal needle?
Lenz called out: "I've got the knight.
Careful—there's something wrong about him—Look out!"
His hoarse cry of anguish beat and reverberated around Meredith's ears. Pounding feet, stertorous breathing of panic flight, and an invisible bulk slammed into him, sent him skidding along the floor. He threw out his arm to save himself from falling, and caught hold of something solid. The last thing he remembered was the thought that this was the similitude of the electric chair at the head of the coffin-table. Then the ground seemed to open beneath and he was catapulted downward into the black void. A dead weight descended on his head, and for the second time he lost consciousness.
He had no means of telling how long he had been out. The side of his head felt as if it were caved in, and his mouth was sticky with dried blood. He tried to move his arms and could not. Was he paralyzed? In instinctive horror he opened his eyes. Flooding light made him blink; it was warm, yellow light, not the former ghastly green. He moved his head. He was not in the great vaulted charnel chamber but in a smaller room of bare concrete walls.
He looked down with still-bleared eyes. He was strapped to a chair, tall-backed, metallic. Something pressed heavily on his head. It too was cold and metallic. His eyes bulged; his mouth gaped in terror, for his chair was the death chair in which Marra had sat, and the death cap was on his head!
GHASTLY realization flooded over him. He cried out and tugged with all his might at his bonds. They bit cruelly into his flesh but would not yield.
"I see you've got the idea finally."
He twisted his head around as far as it would go, straining against the clamped electrodes. Where had he heard that muffled disguised voice before? Out of the corner of his eye he saw him, over to the left—a great, armored figure "The Black Knight!" he burst out involuntarily. "Who are you?"
"You will never know," the man in armor rasped. "In two minutes you will follow in the footsteps of Blemons, Bliss and Gloria."
"But why? What have I ever done to you? I don't even know who you are."
The encased figure laughed sardonically. "Yon know me well enough. I am one of the three who survived." The muffled tones took on a deadly note of venom. "You were in my way, even as the others. You must die."
"Why did you kill the others?" Owen asked. Now that he knew the thing that had struck in the dark to be a man, he was coldly calm. His mind raced along at top speed, trying to pierce the disguise, to seek a way out.
The murderer seemed to read his thoughts. "It won't help you, trying for delay," he boomed. "This chamber is as soundproof as the one above. Bliss had an elevated platform arranged to drop the chair; he wanted to work a stunt, to thrill his guests. His thrill days are over."
There was fierce, blasting hatred in that statement. "It all worked into my hands," the armored figure pursued. "It was I who placed the poison on the needle; it was I who dragged Bliss to his well-deserved death by strangling; it was I who decapitated that slinking trollop. Blemons, I admit, was an accident. The trap was set for you or one of the others; he blundered into it. You avoided that one, you managed to jump out of the way in time when the cross bow inside the hollow suit of armor twice shot its steel missiles. This one I'm wearing is a duplicate Bliss had in reserve."
Meredith laughed mirthlessly, tugging stealthily all the time at his straps. "You're trying to scare me. This chair is a harmless imitation."
The black-clad figure chuckled obscenely. "It's real enough. Bliss had it made to order. He intended sending small shocks through his guests. He was very humorous that way. It's a pity I had to use the gibbet for him; that was pure window dressing, but I was a bit rushed at the moment. I would have liked to see him sizzle slowly, just as you will. But first—"
THE Black Knight clamped out of his straining range of vision. Meredith immediately tugged furiously at his straps. Was it imagination, or had the leg bonds actually yielded a bit? Then the creature in armor was back, dragging a limp figure by the shoulders. He dumped the soft body directly in front of Owen's horrified vision.
"Christine!" The name tore from his throat.
The girl lay unconscious, only the regular movement of her white breasts showed that she was dive. The light blue evening gown was torn from its shoulder straps, and the upper half of her gleaming slender body was exposed. Her silky hair stretched in a tousled halo around her pale white face; her firmly modeled form was faultlessly beautiful.
The sinister knight, great metallic legs straddled, bent his closed helmet downward. Owen sensed hot avid eyes inside boring lustfully at the exposed nudity of the girl.
Owen tugged at his bonds.
The Black Knight started forward, away from the prone body of the girl. One greaved arm was raised as if to strike. "Damn you! " His voice was hoarse with passion, natural.
Meredith did not flinch. "So it was you all the time," he said very low. He was not surprised.
"You'll never live to tell what you know." The metal-clad hand reached for the switch in back of the chair.
Owen heaved. The leg-strap burst. He put all his strength into a last agonized effort. There was a ripping, tearing sound, and one arm was free. But the other held and in split seconds the juice would be turned on.
With a last despairing glance at the unconscious girl, he hooked his free arm around, clawed at the sable gorget. The man jerked from the impact, cursed, and lashed out. The blow caught Meredith across the mouth. His lips crushed in against his teeth; warm salty blood made a channel down his chin. But he did not mind; a fierce overmastering exultation filled him. The last body-strap had snapped.
He threw himself forward and out of the chair just as the switch knifed into position. Blue flame arced between the electrodes, sputtered and whined at the loss of its victim.
The killer in armor swung around with an oath. His great, steel-clad arms closed around the plunging man, jerked him upright, and compressed with crushing force. Owen fought vainly to wriggle out; he lashed his fist again and again into the helmeted head, tearing his knuckles to ribbons on unfeeling metal. The steely arms went tighter. He felt his ribs caving under the terrific pressure, the strength was slipping out of his tortured body. Hot breath whistled on his cheek; flaming half-mad eyes bored out of the visor's eyelets.
With a muffled roar of triumph the sable knight lifted his limp form, raised him high to throw him directly into the chair. It met his fascinated eyes like a hideous mythological dragon with open devouring maw. Blue lightning sparked and roared between the electrodes; the metal frame pulsed with thousands of volts. Life in its close embrace would be but a matter of moments.
Owen, in midair, twisted convulsively. The fierce grip tightened, and there was no disguise in the exultant growl from within the armor.
"Fry, damn you, Meredith!"
The young man caught a glimpse of Christine crawling painfully along the floor. Her body was startlingly white against the gray of the concrete. He closed his eyes, nerving himself against the first jolt of the current.
He was falling! The steel arms swung him down. Then, unaccountably, he was jerked violently to one side. The exultant voice changed to a cry of alarm. The man in the suit of armor stumbled, tried to regain his balance, tottered, and went crashing.
"Jump clear!" It seemed to Owen as if the voice came from a great distance. He had not expected to hear it any more in this world. Christine screamed frantic warning.
The grip on his body relaxed. He flung himself desperately to the left. The sleeve of his dress coat brushed the fatal metal and he slammed into the concrete, rolled over and over.
A scream of awful agony jarred him to a stop. The Black Knight had fallen athwart the two steel arms of the chair. Flame spurted with greedy, licking fingers along the sable armor. The body jerked and spun and writhed, but could not tear free. The lightning surged through the metallic form. Scream after scream rasped from the throat of the doomed man, the while his body danced in a frightful macaber dance. The odor scorching flesh and hair filled the chamber with its nauseating smell.
Meredith, half stunned, his breath still coming in gasps from the punishment to his ribs, tottered to his feet. He felt sick. So did Christine, outstretched along the cold concrete, her half naked form shuddering convulsively. Her last ounce of strength had gone into that dreadful slow crawl along the stone to reach out and trip the armored monster as he struggled with Owen.
Meredith swayed to the switch, jerked it open. He saw the black snaky cable that connected the death chair with the plug in the wall. The weird blue flames flickered and went out. The killer, with a clang of metal, sagged and fell to the ground....
TEN minutes later, fumbling, half paralyzed fingers managed to unclasp gorget, visor and helmet. Christine, with Owen's coat to cover her nudity, screamed and averted her eyes.
The face that looked up at them from the interior of the helmet was literally roasted. The skin had shriveled into crisp shreds, the uncovered flesh was smoking and charred. A black tongue, thick with sizzled blood, hung from a gaping snarling mouth. The eyes, pebbly white, protruded from engorged sockets. The putrid smell beat up in waves.... It was Horace Lenz!
It was dawn before the frightened servants broke into the simulated charnel house and the secret chamber beneath the trap door. The survivors held hasty conference before the arrival of the police.
"I suspected Lenz almost from the first," Meredith explained. "For one thing he knew too much about everyone; for another he was the only one present who could possibly have had reasons to wish for my removal. There had been a leak about my proposed book, exposing certain types of perversion among our most prominent citizens. He mentioned the fact early last night; warned me not to go through with it, and at the same time pretended not to know that he was among those being exposed. As a matter of fact, the only way that information could have come to him was through a man on one of his papers who supplied me with certain details about his boss.
"He and Bliss knew each other well; had been companions in debauches until Bliss stole Gloria Albright from him. He played with the idea of wreaking a fantastic vengeance on them both, while pretending not to care. It was Lenz who instilled the idea of this party and its macaber trimmings into Bliss's own perverted mind. It was he who caused me to be invited; he felt it was a good opportunity to get rid of me at the same time.
"When Bliss let us into the darkened room, as a sort of a scary joke, Lenz, who had seen the arrangements privately with his host before we came, slipped over to the skeleton, and daubed the needle with poison.
"Marra, as the last ghastly touch to the party, was Bliss's own personal idea. He was inordinately proud of it. It shocked Lenz at first, but he was a resourceful man. He was quick to see that he could turn the appearance of an escaped murderer to good account. Everything that happened would naturally be blamed on him."
THE puny man with the prison pallor nodded mournfully. His eyes traveled ceaselessly to the door, where the police might be expected to arrive any minute,
"Blemons' death was an accident," Meredith went on, "but Lenz's accusations of the relations between the victim and host were correct enough. It was then that Bliss realized the murderous game his friend was playing. He called on Marra to help him and went for his pistol. That hurried Lenz.
"There was a master-light switch at the base of the neck in the suit of armor —Bliss had intended playing around with a lot of practical jokes in the course of the evening. Lenz got to it, seized Bliss in the confusion, strangled him and dragged him to the scaffold. Lenz was a powerful man; I had always known that. It was another reason for suspecting him.
Gloria came next; Gloria, who knew Bliss was through with her because of Christine, and who, in her own tortuous mind, possibly thought she could lure Lenz back to her."
The girl shuddered and wrapped the coat closer around her. "Inside the suit of armor," Owen continued, "was still another practical joke; a crossbow that was to shoot soft darts. Lenz thoughtfully changed them for steel ones and tried to eliminate me with them."
"If you knew all this at the time," Wells interrupted, "why didn't you denounce him and put a stop to it?"
"I didn't know; I had suspicions, but I had no proof. I made my statement about having discovered the murderer deliberately. I wanted him to concentrate on me and leave you others alone. I thought I could handle him," he smiled faintly, "and almost lost out because I was not as clever as I had imagined. That trick of the trap platform underneath the electric chair fooled me. If it hadn't been for Christine—"
The girl blushed. "I was so frightened I didn't know what I was doing."
Jim Marra cast a last desperate look around the library. The panels to the house of horrors had mercifully been closed, waiting for the police. Beads of sweat started from his pallid forehead; his torn prison stripes were a ghastly mockery against the conventional evening clothes of the others.
"Let me go, for God's sake!" he begged feverishly. "Don't you realize, the moment the police step into this room, I'll—I'll burn in the chair just like Lenz did?"
Wells shrugged. The scar stood out boldly on his twisted face. "It makes no difference to me, one way or another."
Meredith looked at the feverish little man with the wasted body. "I think I can straighten everything out, Jim," he said kindly.
"What do you mean?" stammered the little convict.
"I went through Lenz's pockets after his—er—demise, and found certain papers in his billfold. They seem pretty positive proof that Lenz killed John Wiley himself. They were friends who had been two-timing each other. He framed you, the petty thief who had been seen in the neighborhood of Wiley's house, and used his newspapers to get a conviction. It gave him his out."
"Watch him!" Christine cried.
Jim Marra had slumped to the floor— in a faint.
The outer door to the library opened. The butler, ashen gray and trembling, appeared.
"The police are here, gentlemen," he said.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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