RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Horror Stories, Dec 1938-Jan 1939,
with "The Corpses' Christmas Party"
Christmas is a time of peace and good will; but for Phoebe Dale it will always be a time of unutterable horror and dread—for she remembers when the waxen dummies in the great store came to ghastly life, and Death stared from each sightless eye!
IT was Christmas week, a time of peace and good will. Sibley's Mammoth Department Store was ablaze with lights and color. The Toy Department, on the sixth floor, where a series of extra-special tableaux had been arranged, was all activity and bustle as store officials hurried about, arranging the last details.
Phoebe Dale, slim, lovely, her eyes dancing with excitement, squeezed her escort's big brown hand. "It's a grand show, isn't it? Dominick Rizzo certainly was a find. I've never seen anything quite as realistic."
"Neither have I," Lee West agreed, but there was no enthusiasm in his voice. Instead, his troubled eyes frowned intently on the motionless wax figures.
They were in the midst of a select group, attending a preview of the show before the general public would be permitted to enter. Phoebe Dale, expert fashion designer of the store, had obtained leave for Lee West to be present. They were to be married within a month, and she had already given George Sibley notice that she was leaving.
The tableaux were arranged in a long series of rooms. They featured the various steps of the Christmas story, from the Nativity in the manger at Bethlehem through the betrayal by Judas in the garden. Wax figures, life-size, tinted with living colors, clad in real garments, and depicted all the passions of the ancient, but ever-living tale.
Lee had not joined the chorus of praise from the others as they had moved from room to room. The strange dread that had afflicted him in the very first dimly lit room, had deepened with each successive tableau, until now, in this final room, it had become almost a clammy hand upon his heart.
"A masterpiece!" chuckled George Sibley to a thin, sharp-faced man at his side. "We're one up on you with Rizzo, eh, Horace? Thought you'd grab all our business away with that new store of yours across the street, didn't you? Let's see you beat this show of ours!"
George Sibley was in his fifties, vigorous, well-built, and assertive—a successful business man. He had raised Sibley's Mammoth Department Store from a humble beginning to its present estate with a six-story building on Middletown's busiest corner. For years it had been the only great store in the city, but only a month before, the Gigantic Department Store, managed by Horace Fletcher, had opened its doors on the opposite corner.
Fletcher did not say anything at first. Instead, he stood coldly, a faint sneer on his thin lips, surveying this final scene that Dominick Rizzo, hitherto an unknown artist, had constructed for his rival. He knew Sibley had invited him to this preview in order to crow over him. But gradually, as he stared without a word, black eyes darting from figure to figure, a hush fell upon the others.
The excited talk, the enthusiastic praise, wavered, died down as all eyes turned slowly to follow Fletcher's gaze. It had become fixed, immovable, and wide with some inner fear.
THE tableau before them was a conception of one of the most dramatic events in all history. Christ on the road to Gethsemane, weighted down with the unbearable load of the Cross, stumbling along with infinite patience and infinite suffering. Behind him was a throng of gesticulating figures, their faces lifted in mockery and vindictive passion, their dark-stained features contorted with hate and envenomed cruelty. Their hands flung forward in derisive gestures, clenched fists raised over the central figure, lips snarled wide with voiceless imprecations. Every limb, every tiny muscle, was startling in its realism.
"You'd never think they're only wax dummies," Alex Hartwig, general manager of the Mammoth, had warned them before they had commenced their tour.
"What's the matter, Mr. Fletcher?" Phoebe whispered.
The manager of the rival store tore his fascinated gaze away, turned with smoldering passion on the dark-faced artist. "Matter enough!" he snarled. He took a step forward, shook his finger under Rizzo's nose. "Look at that thug you modeled in the last row," he shouted hoarsely. "Look at the fingers of his upraised hand. You've twisted them into the Sicilian death sign. I know it. I've traveled in Sicily. And it's directed out at us—at each and every one of us."
A frozen silence followed his outburst. Like puppets on a string, their eyes moved back to the dim-seen dummy whose fist lifted above the others. His waxen face was turned out toward them, his bony features seemed alive, and his painted eyes literally glowed with mad hate.
But it was the fingers of his lifted hand that brought a startled exclamation to Lee's lips. The thumb was pressed between the clenched knuckles, pointed directly at the stricken spectators.
George Sibley flushed, said quickly: "You're crazy, Horace. I never heard of such nonsense. It's just a gesture that Rizzo gave him."
Lee West held tight to Phoebe's hand. "Mr. Fletcher is right," he interrupted. "I've also been to Sicily. It's the traditional death sign of the Camorra, the terrible Black Hand!"
The flush died on Sibley's cheeks. He turned accusingly to the artist. "Well, Rizzo," he bit off his words, "what have you to say for yourself?"
Dominick Rizzo was breathing hard, his eyes filled with horror and surprise.
"Madre di Dios!" he gasped. "That figure—I made him different in the clay. The fist—it was clenched tight. The Devil has been here; has left this sign!" His voice was edged with sudden hysteria.
A girl cried suddenly. "Let me out of here!" She was Peggy Martin, dress model, a full-blown, voluptuous beauty. But Anson Jones, grey-haired, kindly-faced, purchasing agent for the Mammoth, and the most popular man in the store, caught her trembling arm, drew her back. "This is no time to become superstitious," he said soothingly. "Nothing will happen." All the girls went to him with their little troubles for advice and aid.
Hartwig, the store manager, said harshly: "If Rizzo's been trying to scare us—"
The Sicilian's eyes glittered. "But I tell you I didn't do it," he cried.
"He's right," Lee West broke in. "He modeled the tableaux in clay. Outside workshops make the final figures from his miniatures. Some workman must have put in that sign. It's just a silly joke."
A sigh of relief went up. Worried faces smoothed out. But Horace Fletcher did not unlock his somber countenance, nor did Lee, for all his explanation. There still was something strange and sinister about these tableaux.
They hurried out through the exit door in a compact group. Though they laughed to each other about their former fright, there were false notes in their merriment. Once the strong steel door had snapped into place behind them they seemed to breathe easier.
Lee West also felt the tight constriction of his chest loosen at the lights and cheerful bustle of the store. A crowd milled around the entrance, not ten feet away. Children, with the holiday spirit on their shining faces, tugged with tiny arms at their mothers' coats. Shrill voices raised in pleading to see the show. A man stood at the entrance turnstile, to take the tickets. The price of admission was ten cents.
"LOOK at that adorable little girl," Phoebe said delightedly. She had recovered her usual gaiety. Lee followed her glance. First in line, waiting for the opening, were a mother and child. The little girl was about six, with long, golden hair, round, Dresden-china cheeks, blue eyes and sturdy little legs. Eager anticipation sparkled in her eyes. Her mother was not over twenty-five, her form girlish, and her features lovely with happiness.
A great gong struck. It was the signal. The mother and little girl gave their tickets to the guard, clicked eagerly through the turnstile. Behind them pressed an excited mob.
Lee looked at his watch. "Good Lord! I've got to get back to the office."
"Wait a minute!" Phoebe begged. "I'd like to see their faces as they come out. Especially that first little girl."
Alec Hartwig smiled benevolently. "It's a grand show." Everyone seemed to have forgotten the sinister connotations of the last tableau. Even Rizzo, its creator, had lost his deathly pallor.
A minute passed; two minutes; five. Lee said: "I'm really sorry, darling, but I must—"
He was interrupted by a muffled shriek. Then the shriek was repeated, higher-pitched, and terrible; a childish treble, crying out in frantic terror.
Lee jerked forward. "Good God! It must be that little girl who went in first!" he ejaculated.
Already the huge floor was in an uproar. Mothers caught at their children, held them tight by their sides. Men raised their voices, came running. And through the turnstile, stumbling, pushing each other aside in mad haste to get out, came the erstwhile happy people who had entered. Their faces were blanched, their lips chattering.
"Someone locked the door to the last room," a man shouted. "There's a woman and child trapped in there!"
"Lee, you've got to help them!" Phoebe moaned.
But already the young man was catapulting against the steel exit door, battering against it with brawny shoulder and smashing fists.
"You can't get in that way," yelled Anson Jones, the purchasing agent. "It snaps on a spring. That fool, Hartwig, was afraid someone might slip in and not pay his ten cents. Come with me through the entrance."
But even as Lee turned to race after him through the milling, excited crowd, the door opened and the little girl staggered out. She would have fallen if Lee had not whirled to catch her. Instantly the steel barrier swung shut again with an ominous click.
Her tiny face was swollen with crying. Her blue eyes were stricken with unnamable horror. Her sobs burst forth in an uncontrollable torrent.
Lee held her tight, patted her disheveled curls with gentle fingers. "There! There!" he soothed. "You're all right now. Nothing happened to you."
But her sobs only increased in violence; her small body shook with an awful ague. "My mummy!" she wailed. "The bad men from the picture came and took her!"
Lee stiffened; his fingers tightened on the shivering little girl. "What do you mean?" he demanded hoarsely. "What happened to your mother?"
The child gulped down her sobs, looked up at him with blue eyes from which the blankness of utter terror would never lift. "The bad men who stood in the picture came to life and took her." She clung to her new-found protector suddenly. "Please, don't let them do what they were doing to mummy! Please!"
Lee thrust the whimpering child into Phoebe's arms, lunged through the clamoring mob toward the entrance. Grey-haired Anson Jones was at his heels, Sibley and Hartwig puffing in the rear. Fletcher moved at a more leisurely pace.
Lee vaulted the turnstile, raced through the several chambers. The light was dim and his pounding feet made strange echoes. To his overheated brain it seemed as if the wax dummies of the tableaux followed him with sardonic eyes.
Then he was before the closed door of the final room. Behind it lay—what?
Lee West hurtled forward, shoulder low, braced for a splintering shock. He went through sprawling and sliding. The door was not locked. Behind him the others froze in their tracks.
THE chamber was horribly quiet. Cleverly contrived lighting picked out the frightful details.
In the middle of the floor, sprawled on her back, lay the mother of the little girl. She was nude, stripped of every shred of clothing. The torn garments made a little mound close to her lolling head.
She was beautiful, even in death, but on her upturned, sightless face there was the imprint of such horror as Lee had never seen before. She had been strangled in monstrous fashion. Deep gouges encircled her slender throat; inhuman hands had crushed windpipe and spinal column. Her swollen tongue hung black from congested lips; her features puffed out of recognition.
"Santa Maria!" rose Rizzo's voice in a screech.
Fletcher's little eyes glowed queerly on the nude body. "I knew it!" he mumbled. "We're all doomed. I should never have come to this accursed store."
Tiny feet stumbled into the horror-chamber, and the little girl flung herself with a wild shriek upon the tortured form of her mother.
Phoebe Dale rushed into the room, her face pale, her lovely eyes dark with alarm. "Beth, darling!" she called. "You mustn't run away from me. I only want to—"
She stopped short at the sight of what lay on the floor, shrank back. A moan forced itself through her stiffened lips. Then she darted forward, snatched the girl from her unhearing mother, and held her tight in an agony of mingled pity and horror.
Lee sprang to her side. Something had clicked in his numbed brain. "Beth!" he said gently. "Who were the bad men who hit your mother?"
There was breathless silence again.
Slowly the child lifted her tear-stained face. Her pudgy finger pointed, her eyes widened with remembered horrors. "There they are!" she screamed suddenly. "Mummy and I were the first ones here. Mummy looked at them and started to shake. She said she didn't like their faces, and said we must hurry out. But they came down and grabbed mummy, and I ran."
The tiny accusing finger was pointing directly at the semi-shadows of the last row of the tableau, at the line of cruel figures with snarling faces and uplifted, threatening fists. It was pointing at the waxen image with fingers bent in the sign of the Camorra!
An angry voice pierced the silence. "But this is sheer nonsense," George Sibley shouted. "They're only figures of wax!"
But Lee was already upon the platformed stage, crashing through the crowded tableau, hurtling for that dim rear line.
"Hey, come back here!" yelled Rizzo in alarm. "You'll ruin the group. I worked months on it."
But Lee did not listen. A woman had been outraged and brutally strangled in this room while all doors were locked. He must find out once and for all, before—
The figures between which he stumbled were hard and cold. Their upraised, painted faces mocked him with frozen sneers. Then he was past them, flinging himself upon the motionless figures of the last dread row.
The neck yielded, seemed to crumble under his strangling grip. The body toppled from its niche, flung backwards. Lee grabbed in vain. There was a jarring crash. The waxen trunk splintered into a thousand shards. Lee stared foolishly at his hands. They held a severed waxen head between them.
From the chamber came a cry of rage. "Damn you!" howled the artist. "You've broken my masterpiece—the best thing I have ever done!"
Bewildered horror descended upon Lee. It was impossible—there must be men of flesh and blood among these molded images!
HE moved from statue to statue, ran trembling fingers over painted faces, over hard bodies beneath the draping garments. And everywhere he found unyielding wax, inanimate dummies wrought to seeming life by the skill of the artist.
Finally he stumbled down into the stricken group. "They're wax, all right," he mumbled tonelessly. His eyes avoided the crumpled thing on the floor.
Phoebe held the orphaned child closer to her breast. "But Beth saw—"
"She saw nothing," declared Alec Hartwig harshly. "The child's imagination ran away with her. Wax figures can't kill."
"But the woman is dead," Anson Jones retorted. "The couple in the back of them insists that the door closed in their faces. The outer door has a spring lock, and we had just left. There wasn't a soul in here; there isn't any place where anyone could have hidden."
Sibley nodded agreement. "That's true. This room is on a blank wall. It is absolutely impossible for anyone to have slipped in or out." His ordinarily dynamic assertiveness was gone. His shoulders sagged; he had the appearance of an old man. "This will ruin me!" he went on wearily. "We can't keep it secret, even if we wanted to."
Fletcher shook his head bodingly. "There's no escape," he agreed. "The curse is upon us all; upon the entire store."
Lee West shook with a fierce anger at these croakers of doom.
"Stop talking utter rot!" he flamed. "Human beings committed this crime; human beings with a dreadful purpose of their own. We've got to find them before it is too late. And by God, I'll find them!"
But once outside, he was not so sure. The police had come; had searched every nook and cranny of the great store in vain. Poor little Beth had been claimed by grief-stricken relatives; the broken body of her mother hurriedly removed.
"I wish, darling," Lee told Phoebe earnestly, "that you'd quit now; this very instant. I have a hunch that the Mammoth will be the scene of more dreadful happenings; that the strangling of Mrs. Seaton was only the beginning."
Phoebe shook her head, though her eyes were shadowed and her ordinarily firm fingers were trembling in his. "I can't, dear. I've got to stay. This is Christmas week, the best season of the year. It's on the sales we make now that the store shows a profit or not for the entire year. I can't let Mr. Sibley down."
It was true. Even Lee West, chilled to the bone though he was with what he had seen, had to admit it.
The place was jammed with customers. The aisles were black with shoppers, all eager for the bargains that Sibley had advertised. It was the greatest sale in the history of the store. Women chiefly, of all shapes and sizes, with laughing, merry-cheeked misses released from school for the holidays, little children dragged unwillingly along, punctuating loud protests with demands to be taken to the Toy Department to see Santa Claus and the advertised show; a sprinkling of sheepish men in the tow of masterful wives.
An hour before, gruesome tragedy had struck on the sixth floor; a mob of frightened people had fled screaming to the streets. But these new customers did not know, had no suspicion of the horror that had invaded the store. George Sibley, by superhuman efforts, and with a return of his old aggressiveness, had hushed it up temporarily. The show had been closed up; its doors padlocked and sealed by the police. His large fist had smacked resoundingly into the perspiring palm of his other hand. His steely eyes blazed. "By God!" he had rasped to the tense little group, "we'll beat this thing. If anyone wants to quit, they can go now—but it'll mean the end of the store. If you'll stick by me, we'll pull through somehow!"
Everyone had promised that they would stay and do their best.
"I suppose you are right, honey," Lee asserted unwillingly. "But I won't let you stay alone. I'm sticking by you until closing time."
THE girl's clenched fingers relaxed. The color seeped back into her cheeks. "That will be grand, darling," she whispered. "I really am scared a lot. But with you around—"
A salesgirl bustled up to her. "Oh, Miss Dale!" she trilled. "Would you please come over to the fitting booth? I have a customer who insists on consulting you personally."
Phoebe smiled wanly at Lee. "You see, darling, how it is. Wait for me; I'll be back." Then she was gone, vanished into the whirl of pushing customers.
With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, the young man leaned against a counter. He hated to have Phoebe out of his sight. The thought of her lovely body, her slender limbs, tortured the way that poor young mother's had been, sent icy fingers probing along his spine.
Through a rift in the throngs he saw Peggy Martin, the dress model. She was turning slowly before the critical gaze of two hatchet-faced women. Her large, voluptuous form was statuesque in a daring evening gown of black velvet. The close-fitting sheet flaunted every line of her curving hips, of her shapely thighs. The gown was backless, cut away in a deep V, disclosing soft, milk-white flesh. Lee noted the death-like pallor of the girl's face; the dread that haunted her baby-blue eyes.
"She's a good looking girl," someone said over his shoulder. "Too good looking for her own sake, I'm afraid."
Lee started, whirled. Anson Jones, the purchasing agent, was shaking his head gravely. His grey eyes, almost the shade of his hair, were troubled.
"What do you mean?" the young man demanded.
Jones looked stealthily around, lowered his voice. "I've a hunch that Mrs. Seaton's death was only a starter. I feel something brewing in the air of this store; something foul and sinister." He shuddered. "And when it comes, it'll strike young and beautiful girls like Peggy."
The man's frightened words plucked like bony fingers at Lee's nerves. He himself had the same eerie sensation. Suddenly he wished he had not permitted Phoebe to go with that salesgirl. It struck him with sinister force that there had been something artificial about her trill. Had she been a lure, to entice Phoebe away? Certainly the girl he adored was far lovelier than Peggy ever would be.
He started from the counter with a sudden exclamation. His whirling fears demanded instant action.
"Here, where are you going?" Jones ejaculated.
"To the fitting rooms," Lee said grimly. "Phoebe's been there too long. I'm scared."
"But you can't go there," Jones protested. "Wait a second; I'll send a girl to find out—"
Then they both stopped dead in their tracks as a piercing scream rose above the clamor of the crowded floor. Down the long, narrow aisle that led from the fitting rooms a girl was running.
Blindly she raced, heedless of the blocking, panic-stricken customers, battering her way through their close-pressed bodies. Her head was flung back, her long black hair streamed wildly, her eyes were blank with horror. From her open mouth a single toneless scream poured forth, steady, unceasing, frightful in its unvarying pitch.
"Great God!" yelled Jones. "That's Lily Green. What's happened in the fitting booths?"
But already Lee had jerked forward, a great fear clutching his heart. Phoebe was in there...
PANIC spread through the store. Women shrieked, men swore, children cried out in terror. But high above everything else pierced that dreadful scream.
Lee caught the fleeing girl as she raced past, forced her roughly to a halt. She tugged with surprising strength at his grip, glared at him with unrecognizing eyes. And still she screamed.
"Stop that, Lily!" Anson Jones caught her other arm, snapped at her roughly. "What's wrong with you?"
She stared up at the kindly, well-known face. Her shrieks ceased; the blankness left her eyes. More human terror flooded their shallow depths. "I—I needed Miss Dale," she gasped. "She was in the fitting booth, and I went in, and there—oh God!..." She stopped, choking.
Lee shook her in a frenzy of fear. Around them milled excited customers, salesgirls. "Speak up, girl! What did you see?" he demanded.
"I—I saw," she chattered through blue lips, "the—the wax model that stands in the corner, leaning over the bloody body of—oh-h-h!"
She sighed, went limp in Lee's arms. She had fainted.
"Phoebe!" Lee cried out in a terrible voice. He flung the unconscious girl into the hands of a frightened bystander, dived through the struggling, screaming people who filled the aisle. They fell to the right and left at the sight of his death-like face, his flaming eyes. Behind him came Jones. In the distance he caught sight of Sibley and Alec Hartwig, the manager, running from the executive offices.
He ripped through the scared salesgirls who huddled near the entrance to the fitting rooms, crashed through the swinging door. "Phoebe!" he called in terror.
He found her on the floor of the outer anteroom, where ordinarily the customers waited their turn for the use of the inner booth. It was deserted, ominously quiet, except for the sprawled body of the girl.
But even as he raced to her, every fiber quivering with anguish, she lifted her shapely head, looked at him with feeble awareness. A little lump was forming on her forehead, as if she had been struck.
He caught her in strong arms pressed her to his thumping bosom. "Thank God, Phoebe!" he said brokenly. "I never expected—"
The surprised look in her lovely eyes gave way to sudden, leaping terror. She clung to him with a little scream. "I remember now!" she cried. "I went into the fitting booth with Ethel Strong. But there was no woman there. Ethel said: 'That's funny. She said she'd wait.' Just then I heard a noise, as though stiff limbs were moving, limbs that had never moved before. I looked up."
She caught the young man's arm with feverish strength. "Lee! You must believe me! We have a wax model of a woman in there, lifelike. Lee, darling, the figure had moved from its niche; its hand was clenched over my head, like a club. I tried to duck; it caught me a glancing blow on the side. I felt myself fainting; I used all my strength to stagger out. Then everything went black."
The deserted anteroom seemed suddenly full of stealthy shadows. Another dummy had come to life; had tried to ravish the girl he loved! It sounded incredible; yet...
THE chamber filled with running men. Their faces were pale with a terrible dread; their lungs gasped for air. Anson Jones, George Sibley, Alec Hartwig, and Dominick Rizzo, the artist.
"What the hell's going on here?" shouted Sibley angrily. "That girl Lily Green out there is having a fit. Can't get a word out of her."
Lee tried to steady his voice. "Another one of your wax dummies has come to life. It tried to get Phoebe. Fortunately—"
"You're crazy!" Hartwig snarled. "You can't make me believe—"
Lee's eyes hardened, flicked over all their staring faces. "Someone," he told Sibley softly, ignoring the heated manager, "is trying to ruin your business. I don't believe in supernatural explanations myself." He shivered in spite of himself. "Even though these wax figures that Rizzo makes—"
The Sicilian's dark face took on a murderous tinge. "I had nothing to do with these clothes dummies. They've been here for years. That's Mr. Hartwig's affair."
"That's true," assented the manager. "Don't try and pin everything on Rizzo."
Lee whirled on the haggard store owner. He did not look at the manager. "In any event, the salesgirl, Ethel Strong, is an accomplice. She lured Phoebe in here—"
Phoebe started. "Oh my God!" she cried suddenly. "Poor Ethel is still in there! I forgot all about her."
Anson Jones jerked forward as if he had been shot. Fear and anger showed on his good-natured face. "You've been accusing Ethel of something she never did. She wouldn't harm a fly. And all the while she may be—"
He choked off, ran for the door of the inner room. But Lee beat him to it. Had he made a mistake?
Ethel Strong would never tell them what she knew.
She lay outstretched on the floor, wholly naked. Every shred of clothing had been ripped from her, scattered in strips around the tiny room. Indelible horror was imprinted on her babyish features. Long, red gouges ran down the length of her bosom, dark blood welled from her mutilated flesh. Gouges that no human fingers could have made; only the steely claws of some monstrous beast.
Lee tore his horrified eyes away, leaped toward the figure who stood in a niche at the farther end. Soft floodlights rimmed her round with eerie luster.
She was big and mannish, with hard, painted cheeks under a wig of coal-black hair. Her form was hidden beneath a severely tailored suit of the latest cut that Phoebe had designed. A grim smile seemed to animate her lips.
"Hey!" called Hartwig sharply. "Don't go smashing another one of the models, West. They're expensive."
Lee skidded to a halt. His ears pounded with rushing blood, the pit of his stomach seemed curiously empty. He knew without grabbing it, that the model was lifeless; made of brittle wax.
"Look at her fingers!" he said hoarsely.
Strangled little cries burst from pallid lips. The waxen woman had both her hands lifted slightly, at an angle, so as to show the trim lines of the suit to the best effect. The fingers were long and tapering, and ended in manicured similitudes of nails.
But now the nails, the fingers themselves, were gruesomely incarnadined. A dark, sticky liquid dripped slowly from the pointed tips, splashed into a little widening pool of red beneath.
"Blood!" gasped Jones, his grey eyes wide. "Blood from poor Ethel's body. God!"
THE room seemed to sway around Lee. Waxen figures coming to robot-like life, attacking with fiendish lust the soft bodies of women, butchering them horribly! "How could wax nails have made those wounds?" he heard himself cry out.
"Easy!" muttered Rizzo. His swarthy face was pasty with superstitious terror. "The finger nails are actually steel sheaths. They are inserted into the wax when soft. They take a more permanent luster and they don't chip off."
Phoebe made little whimpering sounds in her throat. "I—I can't believe it yet," she stammered. "Even though I saw—"
Old Sibley stepped forward. "Neither can I," he said. His jaw was hard and craggy; his voice rasped like sandpaper. "This is all nonsense, about the store dummies coming to life. I agree with West. Someone is trying to ruin my store—the business that I built up with my blood and the sweat of my brow." He whirled on them all, as if they were in some way responsible. His great hands clenched and unclenched. "I won't give up!" he shouted suddenly. "I'll stay open, if it's the last thing I do on earth! Do you hear?"
His passion was magnificent. Lee felt a surge of battle ardor rise up in him; die down. How could they fight figures of wax?
His eyes raced around the tiny room. No one could have sneaked out through the front entrance. Phoebe had fallen there! Lily Green, the girl who had run screaming through the store, had entered that way. His glance fell upon a small draped door in the rear.
"Ah!" he breathed grimly. "Whoever it was slipped out through that door."
"No!" said Sibley tonelessly. All the passion had ebbed from him; once more he was a haggard, defeated old man. "That door has been locked for over a year. It leads to some storerooms in the basement. There's only one key to it."
"Which I have," Hartwig interrupted hurriedly. "I carry it always in my pocket, with my other keys."
A little speculative light glowed in Sibley's eyes.
"You still have it, Alec?" he asked softly.
"Sure!" The florid man dived into his pants pocket, came up with a key ring of jingling hardware. "Here it is. Never left my possession."
Sibley caught at the ring with a quick motion, slipped off a large brass key; shoved it into his own pocket. "You won't be needing it any more, Alec," he said in a hard tone of voice. "Your contract expires on the thirty-first, and it's not being renewed."
The manager's face turned white, little lights flickered in his deep-set eyes. Then a mask fell into place. "Okay!" he said without heat.
Heavy shoes pounded on the padded carpets. The room filled with police. "For Pete's sake!" croaked Sergeant Sweeney. "What's going on here? This is the second—" His eyes fell upon the butchered nakedness of Ethel Strong. "Jeez!" he swore, and took off his cap. It seemed suddenly stifling hot in the little fitting room.
THE lights were blazing brilliantly, but they served only to accentuate the deep corner shadows, to point up the sinister silences of the huge store. It was two days before Christmas. The other stores, the streets, were brightly illuminated. Shopping crowds pressed gaily through cheerful thoroughfares, intent on last minute purchases; street cars clanged along between rows of tooting automobiles. The Gigantic Department Store was jammed to the doors, and Horace Fletcher, immaculate in grey, striped pants and frock coat, beamed with satisfaction. The new store which he managed was doing a business beyond all expectations. But, at Sibley's the vast floors were silent and almost deserted.
Lee West walked slowly by the side of the girl he loved down the aisles of the Dress Department on the third floor. He moved close to her, his fists ready clenched, his eyes jerking nervously from side to side. Ever since the second tragedy in the fitting room he had not left Phoebe even momentarily alone.
"Darling!" he pleaded for the hundredth time. "This is mistaken loyalty on your part. Let me take you out of here before it is too late. It was only a miracle that saved you before; next time you won't have a chance."
She shook her shapely head wearily. There were dark rings under her eyes and her body trembled slightly. "I can't, dearest," she repeated with patient determination. "We promised Mr. Sibley to stick until closing time. If I go, the others will hurry to follow my example. They're jittery enough as it is. You understand, if the store shuts its doors before ten tonight, it might as well close down forever."
Lee groaned. "It's deserted enough right now," he exclaimed. Only a skeleton force of the army of salesfolk had heeded Sibley's frantic pleas and remained. They clung two by two behind the vast counters, terror imprinted plainly on their faces, leaving long aisles unattended and vacant. The scattered footfalls of the few hardy customers who had ventured into the store of gruesome murders brought responsive twitchings to their jerking faces. They spilled more merchandise to the floor than they showed.
The customers were few enough. The news had been bruited around. Only the fact that Sibley, in desperation, had slashed prices to unheard-of levels, brought the more daring bargain hunters within the cavernous interior. But even they purchased in haste and hurried feverishly out into the night as if pursued by menacing devils.
Lee and Phoebe, without quite knowing it, had paced down the echoing aisles to the farther wall. Here the counters were wholly deserted; the lights unaccountably out. Only the filtered radiance from the central illumination pierced the shadows.
"Look, dearest!" Phoebe broke the oppressive silence. "Over there is my masterpiece. The figures are of course regular store dummies, but the setting and the dresses are mine."
Lee lifted his head, stared. Phoebe was trying desperately to be casual; to distract his thoughts and her own from the creeping menace that had invaded the store. Then his interest awakened.
It was quite an idea, beautifully executed. On a raised platform, surrounded by soft floodlights, of which only one bulb was lit, Phoebe had traced the evolution of women's clothes from the dawn of history down to the very latest fashionable creation of her own designing.
To one side crouched a cave woman, realistically savage, a tiger's hide diagonally across her brawny shoulders. An Egyptian beauty in barbaric breast plates of gold and sheer drapes that hid her limbs but scantily, smiled secretively at a fair Grecian, noble in flowing white garments. Then came the bright sheaths and ruffles of the Middle Ages, the gorgeous peacockery of the age of Queen Elizabeth, the sweeping hoopskirts and coy lace pantaloons of Victorian time; and, in the central position, a damsel of 1938, perky, smart, gowned in a ravishing creation with Phoebe's distinctive mark upon it.
"It's really beautiful," Lee assented.
But Phoebe was not listening. Her gaze had wandered to a figure a little to the left of the central figure. A puzzled frown puckered her smooth forehead. "That's funny!" she exclaimed. "There's a new figure in the picture. I never put it there; it spoils the symmetry, and the dress is out of place. I wonder—"
"Perhaps Hartwig thought to improve upon your idea," Lee suggested.
She shook her head. "He'd never dare do that without consulting me. Besides—"
He saw it now. The single floodlight picked it out with unerring aim. The dummy's features were more lifelike, more realistic than the others. She leaned stiffly against a pedestal, as if propped, and her glassy eyes were uplifted to the central theme. Her clothes were 1938 model, of common material, cheaply made and fashioned. The dress was a glaring inconsistency in that series of exquisite styles.
A little tremor of fear crept into Phoebe's voice. "There's something strangely familiar about that face. I'd almost say—"
Little pulses began to hammer in Lee's temples. Now that Phoebe had called his attention to it, there was something weirdly familiar about the dummy. Where had he seen those features before?
Phoebe's choked cry broke the silence. Her hand went up to her throat; her eyes were wide and unbelieving. "It looks exactly like Lily Green!" she gasped.
LEE sprang forward with a rasping curse. Now he remembered. The girl who had fled screaming through the crowded aisles, who had babbled hysterically of a robot dummy leaning over the mutilated form of Ethel Strong. She had been taken to the store infirmary on the sixth floor.
It was incredible, of course; a mere resemblance. But the roaring in his blood only increased as he hurtled on the platform, plunged toward the motionless figure.
His stiffened fingers reached out, touched the wax-like dummy. Slowly, as if it had but awaited an alien touch, the figure toppled, slid in a twisted heap to the floor. There was no sharp thud, no crashing of fragments of brittle wax; only the infinitely more gruesome plop of soft, warm flesh on hard wood boards.
Lee knelt in grim haste. Stilling the repulsion of his own aching flesh, he ran exploratory fingers over the painted face. Soft skin, barely cooling, met his touch. Paint, skillfully applied in similitude of flesh-colored wax, rubbed off, disclosed the pallid features of Lily Green!
"Dear God," whispered Phoebe. She had come like a ghost to Lee's side; her cheeks were pale as any wraith's.
Her scream, the pounding of Lee's quick dash, had echoed through the half-empty store. Salesfolk deserted their counters, customers dropped their bundles, came clamoring toward this new horror. Doors flung open from the executive offices farther down, spewed forth their quota.
They formed a tight knot around the once gay tableau, now grim with frightful doom. Hartwig cried out: "Great Heavens! It's Lily Green! She was propped up to resemble a dummy."
Little hard lights flared in Lee's eyes as he arose. "Worse yet," he said tonelessly. "Her eyes have been gouged out, and glass eyes such as are used in your dummies, inserted into the empty sockets."
A shudder of tight fear ran through the crowded circle. Customers and salesgirls alike broke and ran panting and sobbing down the aisles; clattered down dark stairs, raced out into the streets, spreading the news of the new horror. Only a few remained, beside the executives, torn between dread and a loyalty toward the stricken owner. Included in their ranks, holding herself barely erect, was Peggy Martin, the seductive model.
"How did the girl get here?" Sibley cried. "She was in the infirmary. Alec Hartwig was taking care of her."
The store manager mopped his brow. "She said she was well enough to go home. Rizzo offered to see her through."
All eyes turned to the dark-faced artist. His complexion had turned pasty. "I offered to," he muttered. "But she said she could make it alone. I had work to do in my studio, so I didn't press it. That's all I know. I swear to God that's true!"
THE police came again. Sergeant Sweeney was not as red-faced as before. He seemed frightened. "Now look here, Mr. Sibley," he said respectfully, "you'd better close up the place before every one of you gets wiped out—or let me put a dozen of my best men on each floor until close of business."
Sibley said grimly, "We'll see this thing through on our own. I don't believe in banshees. Someone is out to ruin me, and if I close up, the Mammoth might as well stay closed for good. Only by keeping my doors open will I be able to reassure the public. Who will stand by me?"
There was a moment's hush. Then Phoebe's clear, steady voice arose. "I will, Mr. Sibley," she said without a tremor. Ashamed, others added their quavering responses.
Lee caught the girl's arm. "Phoebe!" he almost snarled. "You're crazy!"
She looked up into his angry face. "You must, darling!" she declared. "Don't you see it's the only right thing to do?"
"I suppose so," he admitted unwillingly. He knew how she felt. He swung violently on the others. His seething emotions had to seek explosive outlet. "Okay!" he rasped. "Miss Dale and I'll patrol this floor. The rest of you parcel out the other floors. And remember two of you must always stick together—a man and a girl preferably. Under no circumstances leave each other alone for a single instant."
"Good idea," approved Anson Jones. "I'll take the fourth floor with Peggy Martin."
Rizzo pushed forward, his ravaged features inscrutable. "No; I'll take that, with Miss Martin."
The blonde model seemed to shrink away, started to say something. But Jones spoke first. For a fleeting instant his kindly face had snarled at the Sicilian, and then he said with a shrug, "It makes no difference to me. I'll be glad to patrol the main floor with Mr. Sibley."
"Okay!" said the owner. "Only let's get going."
Sergeant Sweeney took off his service cap, scratched his head. "By rights," he said doubtfully, "I oughta close you up, or put my men—"
"Don't worry," Sibley broke in with incisive authority. "I'll take care of everything. Come on, Jones."
PEGGY MARTIN was afraid, deathly afraid. Her full bosom fluttered like that of a wounded bird. Her stealthy footfalls were like thunderclaps in her ears. She would have screamed if only anyone could have heard her; would have answered with hearty human accents.
She was alone on the vast fourth floor. The floor of the Men's Shop, of rows and rows of tailor's dummies, sporting the latest suitings for the delectation of customers.
But there were no customers.
Nothing but those rows of frightening figures, and huge, terrible spaces where anything might lurk. The silences oppressed her, weighed on her heart like a physical load. If only Dominick Rizzo would return! She had not liked him, had not liked the way his smoldering eyes had turned on her. But now, in this place of deathly stillness, even he would be welcome, a human being, a man, to defend her from the crowding terrors that peopled the untenanted counters.
He had quit her with a muttered explanation almost as soon as their patrol had started. Something about a fire he had left unguarded in his studio workshop on the seventh floor, where he had fashioned the figurines for the Christmas tableaux. Before she could protest, he had vanished, with a hasty promise to be back right away.
But that was over ten minutes ago!
Warily she walked down the center of the aisles, hoping desperately by movement to foil the evil things that lay in wait. The shadows deepened; the lights seemed to grow dim. In another moment she would scream; would run down the aisles toward the stairs, toward the companionship of others.
"No!" she moaned to herself through set teeth. "I'm being a fool! There's nothing here; and soon Rizzo will be back!"
At the crossways of the next aisle stood a dummy. A tall, fierce figure, built like a prizefighter. His face was set in a mold, with the placidity of wax upon it. Rough tweed garments draped his burly frame. He seemed in motionless stride, to be directing non-existent traffic. His hand was uplifted, fingers stiff and pointing.
Peggy moved slowly up to the dummy. Anything to take her mind off the inner fears that assailed her. She came closer, to examine it.
The figure did not move, but the eyes seemed to peer back at her. An illusion, of course, but a frightening one. Her heart pumped a little stronger. She forced herself to come even closer.
She had been mistaken. Those waxen features were as chiseled, as motionless as before. But the eyes! They glowed at her, seemed to rake the lusciousness of her breasts as they peeped over the cut of her garment. It was silly, of course, absolutely ridiculous...
A cry tore at the muscles of her throat, died unuttered. Something had twitched in that painted jaw. The glow in the eyes had deepened, had taken on a lustful gaze. The calm placidity was subtly vanishing; was turning into an unholy snarl. The pointing finger seemed already to be lower; closer to the white line of her throat, her throbbing bosom.
She fell back in an agony of terror. There was no mistake now. Stiffly, as though it had never walked before, the robot moved creaking feet toward her. Its lips retracted, showing yellowed teeth. The hands reached out.
Choking, stammering with terror, Peggy crouched away, tried to flee. But an arm whipped out, caught her by the shoulder. Inhuman metal ripped her dress, gouged deep into her tender flesh.
The garment fell away. She screamed.
As if in answer, feet drummed up the aisle behind her. With the strength of madness she tore loose from the robot horror, swung fainting toward the newcomer. A cry of joy burst from her unlocked lips at the sight of her rescuer.
"Thank God you came!" she sobbed. "That awful figure—"
Her voice died suddenly. The man was almost upon her. He had stopped short. His features, that she knew so well, were strange, terrible. His eyes clung to her undraped charms. "Why—why do you look so—" she started to stammer. A new, more dreadful fear was forming in her breast.
He did not answer. Instead his eyes lifted past her to the once more motionless figure of the robot. And as if in answer to a signal, remorseless fingers of metal crushed around her neck.
She screamed again, agonizingly. The scream choked off. Her head jerked to one side; her body slid unheeded to the floor. The two murderers, one human, one a waxen dummy, stared at each other, motionless. The human figure smiled.
IT was Phoebe who had heard the scream. Faint, muffled it had been, seeping down through the thickness of the floor. She clutched at Lee's arm; her slim form shook. "That sounded like Peggy Martin," she whispered.
The young man stiffened, listening intently. There was no other sound. "You imagined you heard a noise," he answered with a shake of his head.
"But I'm positive," she insisted. "Oh, Lee, we must do something. Peggy must be in terrible danger."
"Rizzo is with her," he retorted gruffly. "She's safe enough. We mustn't allow ourselves to be lured from our patrol."
"She wouldn't have screamed like that," the girl urged feverishly. "If we don't hurry..."
"All right," he grumbled. "We'll take a look. We'll have to go up the stairs. The power has been shut off in the elevators."
In spite of his assurances, Lee was more worried than he cared to admit. Unconsciously he quickened his pace. By the time they flung out of the dark stairway into the dimness of the fourth floor, they both were panting.
The huge floor was like a tomb. No sound, no motion!
Phoebe shivered. "Look how low the lights are," she whispered. "Lee, I'm terribly afraid!"
He raised his voice, called. "Rizzo! Peggy Martin! Where are you?" He was surprised at the tremor in his tone.
The names went crashing down the long, shadowed aisles, rebounded from showcases and racks of clothing. The lines of tailor's dummies remained motionless.
"I know something terrible has happened to them," Phoebe whimpered. "Maybe we'd better go get help."
Lee shook his head stubbornly. "They must be down at the other end. Perhaps they didn't hear us. I'll go find out."
Their footfalls were ominously loud in the deserted central aisle. Without knowing why they did it, they held to the center of the path, close to each other, hearing the beating of their hearts. Unknowing, they walked even as Peggy Martin had done!
A row of tailored figures stared at them from either side. Waxen models dressed in infinite variety—sport clothes, lounge suits, business sack coats, dinner jackets, cutaways. The strangely dim lights overhead barely pricked out their tinted faces.
Phoebe suddenly had a sensation of enveloping eyes; of stealthy glances that stripped her bare, exposing her naked form to sensuous view.
She clung to Lee. She bit her lips, forced a frightened whisper through them. "Lee, darling!" she gasped. "I feel—as though—those figures were alive; that their eyes turn to follow us as we walk by them."
The young man peered searchingly on both sides. The models were behind the showcases, rigid, unmoving. Their eyes were fixed on far-off places. "Don't start imagining absurd things," he warned. "They—"
Phoebe screamed, swayed unsteadily. Lee choked on the following word, gagged.
Before them, where the two main aisles crossed, lay Peggy Martin, voluptuous even in death. Her round, deep bosom was exposed to view, the swell of her hips showed enticingly through the ripped shreds of her dress. But her head was twisted at an awkward angle, and her neck was crushed as with a giant vise.
DIRECTLY behind her fallen figure stood a realistic model of a man in rough tweed suit, his hand raised dramatically, as if directing traffic. Sick horror invaded Lee. Even before he raised his eyes he knew what he would find.
Blood still dripped slowly from the steel-tipped finger nails!
Lee caught hold of Phoebe's shaking body. "We'd better get out of here, quick," he said hoarsely, "before—"
The girl crouched against him, wide-eyed. "It's too late," she whispered. "They're coming for us now."
The young man whirled.
Down the aisle they had just passed, an eerie army was tramping. Waxen robots, stiff of face and limb, walking with angular movements from their pedestals, moving in close array upon the paralyzed man and girl.
Lee's fingers dug into Phoebe's arm. "The other way! Quick!"
But even as they swung around, the lines of dummies creaked into the other aisles, converged on them.
They were trapped!
The muscles ridged on the young man's jaw. His fists clenched. "By God!" he swore. "Alive or figures of wax, they'll never take you from me."
As if in answer to his words, the moving figures reached stiffly into the pockets of their coats, came out with pointed knives in their hands. Slowly, as Phoebe crouched ever away, moaning with terror, the robots ringed them in, sharp steel daggers pricking inward in a hemming circle. Lee whirled on the balls of his feet, seeking an opening, seeking a place where bare fists might have a chance.
Phoebe cried: "Lee, don't do anything! They'll kill you; and I'll be left..."
The words died in her throat. Remorselessly the knives firmed against their crawling flesh,—pushed them along. In front, the figures retreated, watchful with painted eyes; behind the steel pricked.
Down the long aisle they went, slowly, feeling always the jabbing of the weapons in the small of their backs; prisoners to an army of tailors' dummies come to hideous life.
Toward the farther wall they were shoved along, until they could go no farther. A wild hope flashed in Lee's mind. If he could spring suddenly...
A huge tapestry covered the wall. The dust of years was upon it. But without hesitation the forward robots lifted it, disclosed a door that swung rustily to their grasp. A dark hole yawned behind.
Down, down, interminably down, they stumbled, in a lightless well. An old, abandoned staircase!
"I've heard of this!" Phoebe whispered quaveringly. "This was the first staircase built in the store. But the Fire Department condemned it as unsafe; and a new one was built. Ever since, it has been closed, unused. Lee, darling, where are they taking us? What are they—?"
A reddish glow showed directly ahead. Lee sucked in his breath, bent his knees. Now was his last chance, while he had a little light by which to see. Somehow he knew that once within that cavernous opening from which the red glare came, it would be too late.
"Now, Phoebe!" he shouted in warning, and started to jump.
But even as he did, the back of his head seemed to explode. As in a dream he heard Phoebe's despairing scream, and hoarse, rasping chuckles. Then he heard no more!
LEE WEST moaned, turned his head weakly. His skull felt like a stuffed balloon; his brain was on fire. Then he blinked. Good God! Was he delirious; or was he dreaming?
He seemed in a huge cavern, filled with strange, rhythmic clamor and flickering red flares. At the farther end a great figure was seated on a chair. A round, jolly figure, clad in red costume trimmed with white. A fleecy white beard fell in a cloud around a jovial, rotund face, red and white with bursting humor and frozen merriment. Santa Claus, such as adorned a thousand stores and public shows, eyes twinkling benevolently on the scene before him.
But never such a scene as this!
A dozen gnomes, gnarled, wizened, bent with toil, not over three feet in height, stood each before an anvil. In their skinny hands were huge hammers. Beside them were iron braziers, in which charcoal glowed with white fire. Within the depths of the charcoal, buried in blistering heat, were iron rods, heating to lambent incandescence.
Deftly the dwarfs lifted the shapeless iron with tongs from the braziers, laid them upon the anvils. The hammers descended, rang out with ominous sound; a rhythmic, maddening beat, like a devil's tattoo.
The hot iron flattened under the pounding hammers, began to twist and take shape and form. Fascinated, still dizzy from the blow on his head, Lee watched. He lay on his side, bound hand and foot, his body an aching torture within cruel-twisted ropes.
"Watch them well!" said a hollow voice. "They are interesting instruments."
At first Lee thought the voice had come from the seated Santa Claus himself. But a quick look showed him that the great figure was in truth out of papier-mâché; an incongruous benevolence in this den of horror.
Then he saw the speaker.
He was tall and muffled in blood-red hood and cloak. Beside him stalked a slighter form, enshrouded in ghastly white. They seemed like giants among the laboring dwarfs.
"Who are you," demanded Lee, "and what is all this mummery?"
"Mummery?" echoed the taller figure sardonically. "Call you the workshop where our good Santa forges the presents he scatters with beaming countenance, a mummery? Take care my dwarfs do not revenge themselves on you!"
Lee squirmed within his bonds. A slow horror was growing within him. Those plastic bits of iron upon the anvil were beginning to take definite form. Then another thought blasted at his heated brain, wiped everything else away.
"Phoebe!" he shouted suddenly. "Where is she? What have you done with her, you devils!"
The red-cloaked figure clucked his tongue commiserating. "See!" he told his white-masked comrade. "This is gratitude! We, Santa's representatives on earth, are now called devils! But we are filled with the Yuletide spirit. In spite of this young man's insults, we shall still bestow our gifts upon the girl he loves."
"It is time to bring her in," chuckled the other. "The presents are almost finished!"
The tall man clapped his hands.
At the signal a door opened. Two figures, clad in ancient garments, waxen-faced, stepped into the room. Two figures from the final tableau that Dominick Rizzo had fashioned; two hate-filled thugs who had screamed imprecations upon Jesus as he staggered under the weight of his Cross.
But Lee barely saw them; his eyes were fixed in strange horror upon the chair that they rolled on wheels into the room.
PHOEBE DALE sat in the chair, naked to the revealing light. Flexible steel bands sprouted from the sides, the arms of the chair, clasped her slender body round with tight embrace.
Her head lolled a little to one side, her eyes were wide with ineradicable fear and shame. A scream ripped from her lips. "Lee! Help me!"
The young man gritted his teeth, twisted and hurled his body thrashing around. He shouted threats and imprecations, alike without result.
Even the tiny gnomes had stopped their dreadful work, were staring with hot, probing eyes at the nudity of the girl. Her breasts palpitated under the reddish glow; her writhing limbs shone with a silken sheen.
"Back to your work, you imps!" snarled the man in red. "The gifts must be made ready. There is no time to waste."
The dwarfs sprang back to their anvils. The hammers slammed down, the sparks flew upward from the white-hot metal. Skillfully, they twisted and shaped.
"Oh, God!" moaned the girl. "I want no gifts. I want only to be freed."
"She, too, is ungrateful," the red-cloaked man pretended to chide. "Yet no one must be permitted to refuse Santa's presents. Are you ready, my gnomes?"
A dwarf, smaller even than the rest, said in a deep, bass rumble, "Ready, Master!"
Each gnome plucked up with tongs from his anvil the metal thing on which he had been working. White-hot they glowed, sizzling and sparkling, shifting slowly to an angry red. The heat from them beat through the smoky cavern in waves of dripping moisture.
But it was not the moisture of damp heat that made huge beads upon Lee's brow. It was the sight of the metal ornaments that the gnomes held on high.
A round circle of flame, a diadem cleverly fashioned; bracelets and anklets of chastened fire; a pendant suspended from a glowing chain.
"Jewels for a beautiful girl," intoned the creature in scarlet. "Ornaments fashioned in Santa's own smithy. Not every girl is so fortunate."
"No!" chuckled the creature in ghostly white. "Think what a lovely sight she will make tomorrow morning when they come to open the store. Naked; bedecked with chilled metal sunk deep within her charred flesh. I think no further sign will be necessary. The Mammoth Department Store will be a thing of the past."
Wild horror exploded in Lee's brain.
He knew now what gruesome business was intended. Those ghastly ornaments were to be fastened to Phoebe's tender flesh!
But even as he screamed out his impotent despair, the unheeding gnomes advanced in a tight circle around the terrified girl. Her eyes were pools of madness; she cried and moaned in vain within the binding steel of her chair.
Inexorably they came, holding the grisly things high in their tongs. One tripped against his brazier, moved on with an obscene oath. Live coals flung out upon the stony floor, lay sputtering and hissing.
"First the anklets for those pretty legs," gloated the man in red.
Two dwarfs knelt; they took their dark-smoldering circlets of iron, fastened them around the tapering ankles.
A wild scream of agony tore from the tortured girl's lips. The hot metal scorched and sizzled on the milky skin; etched dark brown strips upon the quivering flesh.
"Now bracelets for those lovely arms," came the command.
Again two dwarfs bent, and glowing clasps clamped on her slender wrists.
Again she screamed, tonelessly, hopelessly. The odor of smoking flesh filled the flame-tinged cavern.
"And now, a coronet for her brow and a pendant for her white throat and beautiful bosom."
Fascinated, Phoebe stared at the approaching instruments of agony. "No! No!" she pleaded. "Not that! Oh God, not that!"
But the last dreadful ornaments moved closer.
DARK madness descended on Lee. The muscles of his straining body jerked and heaved vainly against the binding ropes. It was impossible to free himself. In a blurring haze he heard the girl's despairing shrieks, saw the smoke curl up from her poor, wracked limbs. And now...
His thrashings ceased; his brain cleared. He stared down on the ground, where a live coal, thrust out from the brazier by the gnome's awkward stumbling, still smoldered. Wild hope leaped within him.
Cautiously, yet with panting eagerness, he inched his bound form toward the glowing ember. God, would he get there in time?
Already the horrible diadem was lifting, ready to be placed upon Phoebe's head. Better she were dead than...
With a last feverish movement he flung his writhing body over the sizzling coal, held it tight.
Pain stabbed through him, smoke curled up, made a stench in his nostrils; every muscle cried out with agony, tried to twitch away. But grimly, painfully, he held himself rigid.
Then, with a furious movement, he broke loose; the parted strands sputtered on either side of him. With a wild yell he bounded to his feet, catapulted for the hideous scene before him.
The two hooded figures swung around at his shout; the dwarfs held their dreadful ornaments frozen in midair, unmoving.
The first wild lunge brought Lee upon the figure in white. His fist lashed out with superhuman fury. It caught the startled masker flush upon his muffled chin, jerked his head back with a dull, cracking sound. The hood tore loose, disclosed the snarling features of Anson Jones, purchasing agent for the Mammoth, father-confessor to all the girls. With a gurgling moan he stumbled back, went crashing.
With a cry of triumph Lee whirled for the man in red. But already the two waxlike creatures from the tableau and the grisly gnomes, recovered from their surprise, had thrown themselves upon his flailing form. He went down, fighting madly, overborne by gouging thumbs and raking nails.
"Good!" raged the mummer in scarlet. "Hold him tight while I blast his eyes out. He'll see no more to spoil our plans."
He snatched up a dazzling bar of iron from one of the braziers with a pair of tongs, brought it close to the captive. Lee tried to twist away; but cruel hands held him motionless. Horrified, he stared up at the white-hot metal. Far off, he heard Phoebe's despairing cry.
Closer, closer, until the heat singed his hair, burnt his eyes with searing pain.
"Just a foretaste," gloated the bending figure. "Now to give you—"
A dwarf cried out in warning, swung around. The cavern was suddenly a maelstrom of flaming light and short, sharp sounds. The red-cloaked man stumbled, crashed headlong across his victim's body. The blazing iron flung from his hand. The explosions increased; voices rose in frenzy, died suddenly.
Then, unbelievingly, Lee looked up into the horrified face of Sergeant Sweeney, and the grim, drawn features of Dominick Rizzo!
"Thank God!" ground out the panting Sicilian. "We found out this torture den in time!"
THE sullen gnomes, and a group of grotesque dummies, the wax half-smeared from their brutal faces, were herded into a corner. Grim-faced police guarded them closely. Phoebe, covered with borrowed coats, her burns hastily smeared with healing ointment, clung desperately within Lee's tight-holding arms.
"I'd never have guessed it could be Mr. Jones!" she shuddered. "He always seemed so kindly, so ready to help."
"They're sometimes the worst, ma'am," growled Sergeant Sweeney, wiping his broad brow nervously. "Besides, he was just the assistant, the decoy. Your boyfriend broke his neck with that sock of his."
Their eyes swung in awful fascination to the sprawled figure in red. The cowl was off, revealing the dead face of George Sibley, successful business man, owner of the Mammoth Department Store.
"That's even more incredible," Lee forced through painful lips. "Why should he have deliberately tried to wreck his own business?"
Sweeney grimaced. "Down at Headquarters they did some checking up. They found out that he had sold practically all of his interest in the corporation to a syndicate; that he was to remain for another year on a strict salary basis. Meanwhile, in the name of dummy stockholders, he had financed the Gigantic across the street, and put Horace Fletcher in as manager. Fletcher did not know Sibley was the real owner. Sibley figured if he could start a reign of terror in the Mammoth, he'd force it to close its doors, and his new venture would clean up all the gravy in town. He'd win both ways."
Lee looked up sheepishly at the dark Sicilian. It seemed as if some of the bitterness had ebbed from his starved countenance. "For a while I thought you were in back of this," he said apologetically.
The artist nodded. "I know," he said. "That's why I couldn't divulge my suspicions right away. I knew I wouldn't be believed. But I caught the pair of them snooping several times around my workshop, closely examining my work. No one else, with the possible exception of Hartwig, the store manager, could have smuggled those gangsters into the place, carefully made up to resemble my figures or the dummies that are always used in the store. As for these pretended gnomes, they're actually a troupe of circus pigmies, down on their luck, whom Sibley paid heavily for this job."
"But those figures in your tableau!" Phoebe protested.
"When we first entered, the ones in the back row were real thugs," Rizzo said grimly. "They killed that poor woman; then, before we could get in, they had darted through a trapdoor in the wall, yanked back the wax figures into place, and vanished. If you remember, all the crimes were committed in rooms against the southern wall of the store, where the old staircase was. The sign of the Black Hand was grafted on my model by a workman in the studio that Sibley bribed."
"And I suppose the rest of the murders were along similar lines," Lee said thoughtfully. "One of Sibley's gangsters doubled for the mannish woman model in the fitting room; Lily Green must have been lured into the staircase by someone she knew—very likely Jones—murdered, waxed up, and set up in Phoebe's pageant for us to find. One thing only, Rizzo, why did you leave Peggy Martin alone?"
The artist groaned. "I never thought anything would happen to her. I figured they were after Miss Dale instead, and that you could take care of her. I purposely volunteered when Jones offered to patrol with Peggy, so as to avoid the very thing that took place. He must have sneaked up from the main floor, where he and Sibley were supposed to be, and choked her to death. It was easy to smear blood on the fingers of the models.
"I thought to spy on the pair of them," he continued. "But when I found both missing from the main floor, my suspicions became certainties. I prowled around until I heard muffled clanking from the cellar. I ran out, phoned Sergeant Sweeney. He came with a squad, and we broke in."
"Just in time to save us," said Lee slowly. His eyes rose to the looming figure of Santa Claus. He shuddered. That benevolent jolly patron saint of good cheer, of peace and good will, only pointed up the horror of this den of evil over which he presided with unseeing eyes.
He held Phoebe's warm body closer to his. "I'll never be able to enjoy another Christmas festival," he whispered.
"But our children will," she told him, as their lips met.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.