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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Dime Mystery Magazine, June 1936, with "The Devil's Night Club"
(Note: The title on the magazine cover is "Satan's Nightclub")
Crashing through the false, fantastic walls of the dim house of horror to seek the soft arms of his bride, fear-maddened Clive Merritt screamed in hopeless anguish to find her white young body tortured in unspeakable ways while lust-mad lechers leered and gibbered.
"THIS way, please," beamed the apartment house manager effusively, as he ushered us off the elevator and into the silent, luxuriously carpeted corridor. "I'm sure this room's exactly what you're looking for."
Wanda hesitated a moment, clinging to my arm, before she followed his broad, retreating back.
"It—it looks rather expensive, don't you think, Clive?" she whispered doubtfully.
I inwardly counted the loose change in my pockets. The exterior of the house had appeared quite ordinary; no different, as a matter of fact, in any detail from the long row of sister buildings that extended along the narrow block. A dingy, rather down-at-the-heel neighborhood where we had decided rooms might be found to suit my modest pocketbook.
When one has come to the big city for the first time to look for a job, with the one girl in the world—who has been miraculously his for all of a month—it is not wise to look along Park Avenue or Sutton Place. And the sign outside, prominently displayed for all to read, had announced:
"Light housekeeping apartments, for young girls and young married couples. Rents very reasonable."
But this—the lavish interior once the shabby, paint-peeled door had opened noiselessly to our ring, the swanky foyer, the smooth running elevator with its silent operator whose massive body bulged under his obviously new uniform, and whose scarred and battered face sent an unaccountable chill running down my back—why, it just didn't fit at all; neither with the outer street nor with the few poor dollars between ourselves and starvation.
I shrugged with a confidence I did not feel. "We can take a look at it at least, darling," I suggested.
The manager had turned abruptly. His flesh was smooth and pink and shaved to the quick. But the hand that he extended in our direction—well-manicured though it was—sent a little shiver of repulsion through me. It was white, like the belly of a dead fish, and the fingers with their pointed nails curved as if—and I shook off the feeling angrily—as if they were curling in anticipation around some dainty throat.
"This way, please," he repeated, his fleshy red lips parting in an ingratiating smile. He inserted a key into a lock, turned it with a little clicking sound, thrust open the door. "There you are!" he beamed.
Wanda entered first. I was about to follow. The manager's eyes had lifted over my shoulder, were staring with a meaningful flicker of the lids directly past me. Instinctively I turned. As I did so the elevator whirred, shot downward in swift acceleration. The man had been watching us—I was positive of that. That was a minor matter. Mere idle curiosity, perhaps. But the long corridor down which we had just proceeded was flanked by a dozen doors, each leading no doubt into an apartment.
I stared at them in bewilderment. I could have sworn, as I turned, that the doors had been ajar, that faces had peered from each shadowed aperture at us. Men's faces, every one, evil, dark with morbid eagerness, aflame with calculating lust.
Yet now there was nothing. Only the blank smooth grain of the portals, tight closed, even as before. Not a sound breathed through the silence of the corridor; only the light, quick step of my wife.
"Oh, Clive!" she was saying delightedly, "come in! Isn't this lovely?"
I shook myself free from my bewilderment. It must have been an illusion, a trick of the lights and shadows, I decided. "Coming, darling!" I sang out, and entered. But I couldn't shake off a certain feeling of vague dread.
Those staring masks, distortions of my imagination though they obviously were, had seemed too frighteningly real. The manager's eyes were on me as I went in. I hadn't noticed before how frozen and cold they were; that they didn't smile even though the muscles of his face were crinkled into effusive laughter.
IT was indeed a lovely room. Wanda was positively clapping her hands—she was so excited. Its walls were paneled wood, of light, expensive walnut. Twin beds, delicately carved and fluted, stood at the other end. A dressing table for her and chest on chest for myself, gracious in their lines and authentic Sheraton pieces, flanked them on either side. The wine-red rugs, the club chairs of deep damask, the modern radio in the corner, the drop leaf table of rosewood, the excellent prints on the walls, even to the tiny kitchenette with its gleaming ivory—everything pointed to perfect taste and well-bred luxury.
Wanda looked up at me. Her eyes were starry, her cheeks flushed. She was breathtakingly lovely.
"It's simply perfect," she burst out.
I had to admit that to myself. But my heart sank. This of course was not for us. I shook my head gravely. "Sorry!" I murmured. "It won't do." And strangely enough, deep inside of me, something was glad—glad that I could not afford this obviously perfect room.
The luster died out of Wanda's eyes. "I'm really afraid so," she said dully. She was a brave girl and she understood.
The manager had not removed his gaze from her. The glance was unexceptionable, yet somehow...
"But Madame just now thought it was beautiful," he protested.
Wanda faced him.
"I still do," she told him. "But you see—well—Mr. Merrit—we—" Then she burst out. "It's just that we've come to New York only today and Mr. Merrit is looking for a job. We don't know a soul here—and our funds are—well—"
The manager held up his hand.
"I understand, Mrs. Merrit," he declared. "Not another word. You are afraid the price is too much?"
Wanda nodded wordlessly.
He smiled, and again his eyes remained bleak, though I was sure they left out no detail of my wife's delicate features, the sweet curves of her body, set off as they were by the thin silk of her gown.
"For such a charming, lovely young couple as yourselves," he flicked his gaze sidelong to myself and back again to Wanda, "the price is very reasonable. Shall we say—ah—five dollars per week?"
"Five dollars a week?" Wanda repeated incredulously. "Darling! Surely we can afford that?"
Of course we could! But the price seemed ridiculous. I might have come from the sticks, but rents in New York—especially for accommodations like this—there was something wrong about it all! The faces in the passageway, the elevator man, the manager himself—the uneasiness grew in me. I was determined to reject this overwhelming bargain, get Wanda out of there as fast as possible.
I opened my mouth to say so, but Wanda, thus confronted with this easy vision of a bride's Paradise, was already crying out:
"We'll take it, Mr.—uh—"
The manager bowed.
"Albee," he murmured, then rubbed his dead white hands together with a peculiar scraping sound. "That's settled. I am very glad. Just give me your trunk checks," he said to me, "and I'll have them delivered for you. As for your most charming lady—" and again his eyes were tight on Wanda—"she must be tired. Allow me to have sent up your evening meal as a gift of the management. It will save tiresome shopping. The first day, you know—it is wiser to rest, and not to pound hard sidewalks."
Then he was gone, with the door soundlessly shut behind him, leaving me gaping like a fish.
"Darling, I don't like this—" I began.
But Wanda was not listening. She was cooing and making ecstatic sounds as she danced around the room, straightening a pillow here, shifting a vase there, already the young housewife. Her cheeks were rosily beautiful, her eyes pools of delight. I gulped and stopped. After all, I had nothing to account for my uneasiness except a few vague things, none of which could stand the test of reason. So I weakly said nothing more.
I went to look for a job that afternoon. I am an architect, and in New York surely—Wanda hardly heard me go. She was like a child with a new toy; absorbed in the possession of this wonderful room. I could not forbear darting quick glances at the ominously closed and silent doors on either side as I waited for the elevator. But there was nothing—nothing at all! The elevator man took me down in silence, his thug-like face stony toward the shiny grille of the swiftly descending cage.
I breathed somehow more freely as I fronted the semi-squalor of this street of grimy humanity and the dirty sun-glare of the sidewalks. I hesitated, almost tempted to go back, to insist on Wanda leaving at once. Then I shrugged my shoulders. I was acting like a small-towner, unused to the ways of the big city. And I had warned Wanda to keep the door tight locked; not to open it to any stranger.
I took a last look at the sign, seeking the number of the house to impress it on my memory. It would be so easy in the dark to mistake one grimy, yellow-bricked facade for another. "One hundred" stared back at me in bold, black letters. Easy to remember; large enough to be read even at night. I could not make a mistake.
I squared my shoulders and hurried off. There were some leads I had—big architectural offices recommended to me by the professors at school.
DUSK had already muted the raucous city as I took the stairs three at a time that led out of the underground hole of the subway. I was happy, breathlessly so. Gone were all my premonitions, the strange unease that had dogged my footsteps earlier in the day. I had found a job! In the very first architectural firm I had visited. The pay was not much to start, it is true, but we could manage. And there were chances for advancement.
The street seemed shabbier than ever as I hurried down its squalid length. The street lamps blinked up, but they were only tiny yellow pools in the crowding shadows. A strange silence brooded over the monotonous blank facades of the houses. The noise of the city seemed far off.
But I hardly noticed these things. I was so preoccupied with the thought of my Wanda, of the warm, soft pressure of her lips, of the ecstasy with which she would greet the news of my success. I turned suddenly back with a grin. I had overshot the house. The sign was down—"They rented the room to us", I reminded myself with satisfaction—and it would have been so easy to mistake one house in the row for another. But I remembered—it was the third from the corner.
I mounted the high stoop with a rush—noticing only out of the corner of my eye that in the basement, hidden by a deep areaway, was a place with tight green shutters and a stout metal door with tiny peephole. I rang the bell. It made no sound that I could hear. But the paintless door swung silently open to my pressing hand, and somehow, that invisible response chilled the warm enthusiasm of my return, revived the queer doubts of the earlier day.
But I went in. This was the place, of course. The foyer with its Ispahan rug, its shaded candelabra, and the gleaming elevator cage beyond. There was no one in the hall. The manager was not there to greet me as he had greeted us when we came room hunting.
The door had swung silently shut behind me, and again I had an absurd desire to run back, fling it open, and make my escape while it was still time. I almost laughed aloud at that. Wanda was upstairs, waiting anxiously for me, and I was playing the coward to a silly feeling. I pressed the elevator buzzer.
There was no answer. The cage was not in sight, nor its incongruous operator. I whirled suddenly. I was almost certain I was being watched stealthily—you know the prickling feeling one gets on the back of his neck. But the several doors that led off the foyer were tight closed, blank. I rang again, and swore. If this was the kind of service—
"What do you want?" I jumped. The voice was gruff, threatening, and came from directly behind me. I had heard no one approach. I spun around, to see the elevator operator, his uniform bulging, his face a sinister mask in the half glow from the shaded wall lights.
"Oh!" I gasped, "It's you." Then anger seized me. I didn't like his tone. "Why don't you tend your elevator?" I demanded sharply. "I can't wait all day for service."
His eyes bored into me. They were cruel and alive with crawling flames. He did not move. "We don't permit strangers in this house," he answered in flat, even tones.
"Strangers?" I flared. "What's the matter with you? I'm Mr. Merrit. You saw me only this afternoon—three hours ago. I rented Apartment 6E. Enough of this nonsense," I continued angrily. "Take me up—and at once!"
But still he made no move.
"I don't know you," he repeated dully. "Never saw you before."
It was with an effort that I withheld my temper. The lights seemed to have dimmed slowly and the man's face was a gargoyle of unspeakable things in the deepening dark. Somehow I was sure that each door held its stealthy listener; to my suddenly fearful eyes they seemed to be inching open in imperceptible arcs.
I admit it—I was afraid. Something was damnably wrong. It was impossible he could have forgotten me so soon. God knows he had stared enough at Wanda when he took us up. Wanda! Great God! My wife was up there, in the apartment— our apartment—waiting!
I took a quick step forward.
"Whether you know me or not," I ground out, "you're going to take me up to Apartment 6E—to my wife. Do you hear?"
His eyes slithered past me, questioning. As if someone were far in back of me, from whom he was awaiting an answer. I dared not turn—it was an old trick—but confronted him, taut, fists balled, not knowing quite what to expect.
Suddenly his eyes met mine in sideway glance. To my heated imagination it seemed as if he had received his answer.
"If you wish to go up, sir, I'll take you," he said tonelessly. "But Apartment 6E ain't rented—to no Mr. Merrit, or nobody else. There ain't no one there."
I don't think I quite understood it—even then. It was too enormous, too horrible for my sense to take in all at once. The man was drunk, of course; or possessed of some form of amnesia. That was it, to be sure. I clung to the thought desperately. Aloud I snapped.
"Get going!"
We went up silently, quickly. Yet to my hammering pulses the movement of the elevator seemed dreadfully slow. Of course everything was all right. Wanda would meet me at the door with her soft, warm arms about my neck...
THANK God! We had reached the top floor at last. I flung myself out of the cage without a backward glance. I almost ran along the long, dim corridor—the lights here had also gone unaccountably low. I stabbed in hot haste on the push button to my one room apartment "6E" read the legend on the door. There could be no mistake.
The bell made hollow, reverberant clamor within. I tried in vain to still the crashing beat of my heart. Wanda was going to open the door, was going to greet me with that adorable light in her limpid blue eyes, enfold me with the perfumed warmth of her yielding body.
I rang again—impatiently, pressing the button into long continued vibration. Little pulses clamored in my temples. Wanda was busy—dressing, preparing dinner for my expected homecoming. That was why it took time for her to get to the door.
Suddenly I leaned weakly against the solid frame. Dinner? The manager, Mr. Albee, had promised to deliver it already cooked, hot and piping. The gift of the house, he had said. Didn't want Wanda to go out of the apartment the first day. A perfectly innocent, touching attention, I had thought at the time. But it was now suddenly fraught with hideous undertones. No one in the neighborhood knew she lived here, knew that I lived here. No butcher, no grocer, no baker, who might otherwise have delivered her shopping orders!
I lost control of myself then. I pounded on the door; I shouted aloud, "Wanda! Wanda!" Over and over again. There was no response. Yes, there was! A faint snickering laughter behind me, pregnant with unutterable meaning. I whirled. The elevator man stood beside his empty cage, impassive, like a graven statue. His eyes were gloating, mocking. The laughter was not his. But the dozen doors were open this time. Only an inch, a mere slit into unfathomable darkness. Hot eyes that I could not see followed my every move. Hot, sinister mouths had breathed that unspeakable laughter.
I went berserk. I smashed at the door until my fists bruised and dripped with blood; I swung in a frenzy on the immovable monster who witnessed my torments with watchful face. "What have you done with my wife? Answer me," I cried, advancing on him threateningly.
"I don't know you," he repeated, as if it were a lesson he had learned by rote. "There ain't nobody in that apartment. It ain't been rented to no one. You made a mistake."
I lifted my fist to batter at that stolid, gloating mask; to beat the truth out of him. But his hand was hidden under his unbuttoned coat, and there was the bulge of a shoulder holster beneath. The listening doors too, had opened another inch. I could almost feel the impact of snouting guns in the darkness. I gulped, lowered my fist. Then a sudden saving thought struck me. I grasped at it eagerly, and forced my voice to quietness.
"Let me see the manager, Mr. Albee."
Again the elevator man's look slid past me, questioning. "Okay," he said finally. He raised his tone. "Mr. Albee," he called. "A gent wants to see you."
I could have sobbed out my relief. For the moment I had really thought it was all a mistake; that I had only imagined seeing this place before; that Wanda was somewhere else. New York is a big city, and we were not accustomed to long stretches of deadly monotonous houses. Even the man himself before me might have been a twin, a double, a freak of sportive nature. But there could not be two Mr. Albees!
He was advancing from one of the spying portals. It was he without a doubt. But there was no effusiveness about his bearing now. His smooth pink skin had somehow a ghastly vampirish look about it; his lips were too red, and his hands... My flesh crawled, but I forced myself forward. The vision of Wanda, somewhere—calling on me helplessly—made me frantic. Surely he knew me, could help...
Albee's eyes studied me coldly, without expression. Then they went inquiringly to his henchman.
"You called me, Joe?" he demanded.
The man saluted with a thick grin.
"This here fellow," he reported, "is nuts. Insists he lives in 6E—that he rented it a coupla hours ago. Says his wife's in there now. I tried to tell him he was crazy—gentle-like, but it don't do no good."
"Surely, Mr. Albee," I was trembling now with a strange anxiety, "you recognize me. It was you rented us the room. Mr. and Mrs. Merrit, don't you remember? You even said you'd order up a cooked dinner for us—gift of the house."
I was actually pleading, imploring. Wanda was waiting for me somewhere, and—perhaps I really was a bit mad, crazy, as the elevator thug claimed.
Albee looked me over attentively with his frozen eyes. Behind each door I could hear heavy breathing, hot, gloating anticipation. Then he shook his head briefly.
"I'm sorry, Mr.—uh—Merrit," he said. "I never saw you before, and I don't know what you're talking about. Apartment 6E is vacant; has been vacant for months. We don't care to rent it."
I staggered back, holding my pounding head. Good God! Was I actually crazy? Had my brain snapped under some inexplicable stress. Was I really Clive Merrit—and Wanda? I stopped there. No one could have invented the miracle of Wanda from addled illusions. This was all a hoax, a damnable, horrible japery. I must find out, at once.
"Very well," I said cunningly. "If the apartment isn't rented, surely you'd have no hesitation about opening the door and showing it to me. If my wife isn't inside, if it isn't the apartment I rented from you only a few hours ago, then I'll know I've made a mistake. I'll be willing to apologize even."
The manager studied me again.
"We've no time to waste with madmen," he said at last. "Joe, take him out, and don't ever let him in again."
A wild exultation coursed through my frozen veins. Then I wasn't mad; I was right— right! He was afraid to show me the apartment. Wanda was in there, held prisoner, gagged, for some horrible purpose. "Damn you!" I screamed, leaping. "Give me back my wife, you fiend!" My clawing fingers caught at the pudgy softness of his throat, squeezed. "Give her back, or I'll choke the breath out of your filthy, lying mouth."
HIS face purpled; he cried out in strangled accents; "Help!" The dozen apartment doors flung open and a horde of creatures padded out. My eyes popped out of my head; I hardly felt the stunning blow that crashed on my skull from behind. Joe! My hands forgot their function; they dropped like dead weights from Albee's windpipe. The breath froze in my lungs; my heart seemed to have stopped its beating.
"Good God!" I whispered, and shrank back.
The blood dripped from the wound in my scalp—I did not notice. Nor did I mind Joe's lifted gun, or the hoarse bellowings of the manager, reprieved from my choking fingers. They were human—understandable. But that dreadful horde, slithered ever closer, swarming at me with outstretched hands and doubled bodies.
I screamed and fell back at their awful advance. I barely heard Albee's cry to Joe:
"Don't shoot, you fool! I need him." All my being was concentrated on the things before me. Things! That's what they were. Once they might have been human; but now...
Their bodies bent forward at a sharp angle as if their spines had deliberately been broken. Their arms were long and twisted, and the fingers with which they clawed at me were wasted talons, with inch-long, razor-sharp nails. Their matted hair—grey and filthy—straggled down their hunched shoulders, framing faces, yellow and puckered, like the broad idiot visages of the savage orangutan. Their pendulous lips disclosed rotting stumps of teeth; their eyes blazed with insane hatred.
"Get him!" Albee screamed. With apelike chattering they whipped over the carpeted floor.
I screamed again, and raced blindly back. The way to the elevator was barred, but the dark well of the stairway beckoned. Anything, anywhere, to escape that monstrous rout!
I catapulted down the echoing flights, the swift clatter of pursuit lending wings to my bounding feet. I took the dark stone stairs five at a time, banging heedlessly into unyielding walls; careening, bouncing, tumbling, not breaking my neck only by a miracle. Far above, like a whispering swish, I heard the starting elevator.
How I reached the bottom I do not know. The pad of pursuit was faint. The elevator shaft whined with the descending cage. I whipped past its shiny grille, caught at the handle of the outside door, and tumbled, rather than ran, out into the street again.
Blessed street! Blessed shabbiness! Blessed roar of a city alive with lights and normal humanity! I was safe!
I started to run, thinking only of what I had escaped. I must have been crazy with fear then—I admit it readily. I do not pose as a brave man. But up the deserted street a new sound penetrated my whirling brain. A steady, even slog—slog, of heavy boots, idling, taking their time. I lifted my bloodshot eyes. As I did so the slogging stopped. A policeman, enringed in the beating illumination of a street lamp, was eyeing me curiously, suspiciously.
The sight drove some sense into me. Fear laid its cold paw upon my heart again, but not for myself this time.
"Wanda!" The name rose to my lips in a spurt of anguish. My wife was still in that haunt of monsters, subject to God knows what dreadful things. Fear—and at the same time a burst of thanksgiving! Before me stood the embodiment of the law—of the mighty forces of normal humanity.
I raced up to him, breathless. "They've got my wife," I gasped. "They're holding her. Help me!"
The policeman eyed me suspiciously. I suppose I must have looked wild enough, with my pallid face and the blood still trickling from my head.
"Hold it mister," he rasped. He was a solid, substantial man in blue, with a broad red face and an air of settled stupidity. "Who's got what, 'n where?"
I pointed. "Over there!" I cried in an agony of impatience. "Hurry, man, before it's too late. My wife's been kidnapped."
I almost dragged him after me. We must catch them red-handed, before they could spirit Wanda away. He followed me unwillingly, tugging at the heavy gun in his holster. As I raced up the high stoop, in blind desperation, I heard faintly his startled "Hey!" behind me, but already I was lunging against the dingy door.
It gave to my thrusting shoulder, and I catapulted into the smartly equipped foyer, blinking for a moment in the blaze of candelabra. What had been eerie dimness before was now an even, shadowless glow. Behind me came the heavy thud of the policeman, muttering and grumbling.
For a second I stopped, thunderstruck. Seated at the desk that faced the switchboard, bent with seeming diligence over a sheaf of papers, was Albee.
He looked up inquiringly, frowning at the interruption to his work.
"What can I do—?" he started, and then seemed to recognize me. "Ah, so it's you again," he finished calmly and rose from his desk. His gaze flicked past me; he smiled cordially.
"Hello, Tim!" he greeted. "What brings you visiting?"
The policeman thrust his gun hastily back into its holster. His blue cap came off in respectful obeisance. His broad red face was confused; it turned a mottled hue.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Albee," he muttered. "I didn't know—It's this guy, sir. He meets me in the street with a story—an' I didn't see at first it was your house."
I RECOVERED from my initial stupefaction. The policeman—the embodiment of the law—was actually apologizing to this monstrous kidnaper for our intrusion! I cried out in dismayed anger. "Officer that's the man! He's holding my wife prisoner. He and his elevator man. I want you to arrest him, to help me break open the door. It's apartment 6E."
The policeman shuffled sheepishly.
"Well, now, Mr. Albee, I don't know what—"
The manager smiled. I could have smashed that calmly superior, understanding smirk.
"This man," he pointed to me, explaining in reasonable, half-pitying accents, "barged in on us wild-eyed a while ago. He spoke incoherently, ramblingly, the way he is doing now. We had never seen him before. When I tried to explain it soothingly to him, he grew threatening, even went so far as to assault me."
The marks of my fingers were still red against the pasty white of his throat.
The policeman, Tim, saluted while I was sputtering with incoherent wrath and a mounting terror.
"I getcha, Mr. Albee." Then he turned to me, swinging his stick with significant gesture. "Gwan outa here," he rasped, "afore I run ya in. Gwan!"
I held my ground desperately. "It's true, every word of it," I cried. "Don't listen to Albee. He's smooth; a villain. I demand you come with me upstairs. Even now, perhaps, Wanda is—"
I broke down and sobbed. The vision of my darling, her dear body struggling in apelike hands, was so strong upon me it was insupportable!
But Tim, the cop, was not impressed. His stupid face was wrathful. He advanced threateningly on me. "I'm warning ya," he ripped out. "Get going while ya got the chance. Another peep out of ya, and, so help me, you'll be tellin' it to the judge."
I backed away from him slowly, fists clenched. I was beyond reason now. Officer or no officer, I was going up there, going up before it was too late. Tim suddenly lunged at me, skidded to a halt at the smooth, even tones of the manager. I listened in stupefied surprise.
"Perhaps we'd better humor the poor fellow," he was saying soothingly. "They get ideas, fixations you know, and there's only one way to get rid of them." He turned in fatherly fashion to me. "You're sure your wife is in apartment 6E?"
"Sure?" I threw back my head and laughed wildly. "As sure as I'm Clive Merrit and you're the devil himself!"
He disregarded that.
"Perhaps," he told Tim silkily, "if we prove to him she's not there; if we appease his poor, clouded mind with the thought that he—was mistaken, he'll be all right and go away peaceably."
"It ain't necessary, Mr. Albee," the policeman growled protestingly, but the manager held up his hand. "It's better that way," he interrupted.
I stared at him suspiciously. He was trying to make out I was mad, of course. But why was he taking this chance? A horrible thought squeezed my flesh as in a vise. Had he already done away with Wanda? Was the apartment even now bare of her presence? I clenched and unclenched my hands in grim despair.
"Come on, then," I said and started for the elevator. "Show me the room."
Surely in that short time they could not have hidden all traces of our occupancy. There was another idea too—a cunning one, in the back of my brain.
Joe, the elevator man, took us up. To my heated mind there seemed a malicious, faintly triumphant grin on his face. But all my faculties were concentrated on what lay ahead, on what I was going to do.
We stepped out on the sixth floor. It was the last stop. The corridor was well lit now, but silent. Every door was closed, immobile. I stared at them with remembered terror. Were even now the deformed monstrosities lurking behind their smooth externals, ready to leap out upon us at Albee's signal? But there was a strange feeling of emptiness about the place I did not like. Less so even than its former peopled, material terrors.
"Get going," Tim growled impatiently. "I ain't got all day for nuts."
He was obviously uncomfortable, even though Albee had suggested the idea himself. Albee evidently was influential.
My heart pounded as I moved quickly toward that one room apartment in which I had left Wanda such short hours ago. And now...
I HELD back the sob. At the door I stopped. Albee was fumbling with some keys, taking a long time about it. I was sure by this time Wanda was no longer inside. But I had a plan and I put it into execution.
"You say you never saw me before, Albee?" I queried, fighting to keep my voice calm.
He looked up in surprise.
"That's right," he admitted. "Until you rushed in like a madman demanding a non-existent wife."
"And you never showed me this room?" I insisted.
A glimmer of seeming understanding spread over his pink, smooth cheeks. He snapped his dead-white fingers. They sounded like scraping sandpaper.
"That's it, Tim!" he exclaimed, and positively beamed. "I should have thought of that."
"Of what?" the policeman asked, puzzled.
"That apartment," said Albee, "hasn't been opened to visitors in some months. We never cared to rent it. Now, in order to convince our young friend here that he's suffering under a delusion," he thrust me a side glance that was positively unctuous, "I'm going to ask him to describe it for you. Surely, since he rented it, that should prove an easy task."
Tim slapped his thigh admiringly.
"By golly, Mr. Albee, you sure got a head on yer shoulders," he chuckled hoarsely.
I stared at the manager, thunderstruck. That had been my plan! I had just been ready to challenge him to that test when he sprang it first. There was something terribly wrong about his readiness. Could it be he was sure of himself, of my inability? Good God! Either Albee was crazy, or I was!
I shook off the sudden chill that froze my marrow. I'd show him!
"Of course I can," I retorted confidently. I closed my eyes a moment to visualize the interior. "It's a single room, furnished. The walls are paneled in light walnut. There are twin beds, a dressing table, a chest on chest. Club chairs in damask, a radio, a kitchenette." And I went on, describing the furnishings with painstaking minuteness.
Tim listened to me with growing doubt. I could see his lowering glance at Albee. He was thinking that perhaps I was right, after all. Exultation coursed through my veins. The too smooth manager had gambled and lost. I even tensed my muscles as I watched the blank doors of the corridor. In his desperation he might invoke those hellish creatures of his. But I was not afraid now. Tim, stupidly slow in his mental processes, was nevertheless competent to handle physical menaces.
But Albee did not seem at all perturbed.
"Just what I thought," he remarked, fitting his key into the lock. It clicked and the door swung open. "Okay, Tim. You go inside with the gentleman. Take a good look around for his alleged wife."
I must have cried out. I do not know. For my head seemed suddenly to swell and shatter into a thousand shards. Everything misted before my eyes; my ears roared and pounded, my blood was a viscid jelly.
This room was not the room we had rented; it was not the room in which I had left my wife!
With an inarticulate, animal-like cry I raced trembling out, stared with hot, unbelieving eyes at the door. There, exactly as when I had first seen it, was the number. "6E!" Like a hunted beast I whirled around, trying with a desperate effort at sanity to discover what was wrong. There was nothing that I could discover. It was the end door of the corridor, facing the hall, on the right hand side from the elevator, exactly as before. And it was the correct floor, also! With another smothered groan I fled back in again. Had my eyes deceived me for the first time?
It was still the same. The room was brightly decorated with a wallpaper of flowered design. There was no kitchenette. It was not even a bedroom. It was a dining room with a long, oaken table, stately, high-backed chairs, a Welsh cupboard with lovely Staffordshire ware at the farther end.
A thin patina of dust covered the polished surfaces, as if the room had been untouched for a long time. But what made me reel and grip the back of the nearest chair for support was the sight of an open door, showing a vista of other rooms beyond. It was a real apartment, not a one-room affair!
I dashed in, panting, thinking in my madness that somehow the rooms had been reversed. But the other three rooms were normal, ordinary affairs. Full kitchen, bedroom, living room—and everywhere the faint odor of dust pervaded, the odor of long disuse.
"Wanda!" I cried loudly. "Wanda, darling, speak to me!" But no one answered. How could she indeed? It was not our apartment!
"So you see," Albee was saying silkily, "the poor fellow was suffering from a delusion." He shrugged his shoulders to the policeman. "It's a pretty common complaint. The doctors at Bellevue have a long name for it."
The roaring in my head increased. I was mad, insane; yes, I knew it now. But Albee, that devil, was real! Somehow he had taken my Wanda, had addled my brain. I saw him grinning through a red, distorting haze. With a howl I sprang on him. My fingers sank into his throat. I squeezed. I'd go to hell, yes, but I'd drag him down with me.
Something crashed against my skull, exploded. Dizzily I let go, turned. A heavy hand was twisted in my collar. The blue of a policeman's uniform wavered before me.
"I'm gonna take him in," Tim snapped, "He's dangerous, Mr. Albee. That's the second time."
The manager rubbed his neck. His lips twisted into the painful effort of a placating grin, though his eyes held murder. "Let him go," he said. "I don't want to make trouble. If he comes back again, then you can take him."
"Didja hear that?" Tim growled, his beefy face threatening over mine. "Lucky for you Mr. Albee's got a heart. Now get, and stay away. If I see you once more on my beat, it'll be just too bad."
I permitted him to collar me down the elevator. I was in a daze; a hell of mingled anguish and despair. Was I really crazy? Was I in fact Clive Merrit? Had I ever had a wife named Wanda? Wanda! A moan rose to my quivering lips. In God's frame, had the whole thing been the phantasm of a gibbering idiot?
I felt myself shoved sprawling to the sidewalk. Tim prodded me with his nightstick.
"Get up and git. An' remember what I told you," he added.
I WEAVED unsteadily to my feet. For the last time I stared at the shabby entrance, where Wanda had somehow been taken from me. My eyes widened. There was no sign, but on the dirty glass ventilator above the door, faded black lettering mocked at me. 142! The number, displayed on the sign, of the house we had entered—my wife and I—had been 100!
I clutched the policeman's sleeve. "Officer, for God's sake, tell me!" I gasped. "Where is Number 100 on this block?"
He looked at me queerly, then shook free. "There ain't no such number. It starts wid 101. Now git!"
I did. It was dark now. I could feel Tim's darkling gaze on me as I shambled away. There were people on the streets; hurrying, vague figures. They looked at me curiously, and went on, heads bent upon their normal, everyday concerns. But I—I was a homeless wanderer, bereft of my wife, of sanity, of hope!
How long I wandered in the teeming loneliness of New York I do not know. I know that I went up and down street after street, peering at numbers, entering halls, being shooed out by wrathful janitors or swanky superintendents, fighting the gnawing fear at my heart. Perhaps it was some other block, some other house. But nowhere could I find any sign or evidence of Wanda.
I shambled hopelessly along, until with a start, I looked up to find myself on the farther corner of the street where Wanda had vanished. A deep-toned clock boomed somewhere—twelve times. Midnight!
I ground out a bitter oath. I was getting nowhere, and Wanda was at the mercy of Albee and those ape creatures. I would never see her again—never! A light glimmered in the corner store. I looked in. It was a locksmith, working late. An idea came to me. I had been shown Apartment 6E by Albee, but something smacked damnably wrong about it. He had been too eager, too ready; had not even wanted me arrested. In the police station, perhaps, my story might have gained greater credence; have enlisted the services of detectives more intelligent than Tim—or myself, for that matter.
I squared my shoulders, wiped the dried blood off my face, and went into the store. It took a deal of arguing and lying, as well as every cent I possessed. But at last I emerged, with a bunch of master keys in my pocket, a flash light, and a small cold chisel.
I hurried up the block, watchful, wary. The street was dead now, a thing of shadows. Tim was nowhere in sight. But in front of Albee's house several cars were parked—long, luxurious, expensive cars. I wondered dully at that, but my mind was too much in a whirl and too busy with my plan.
I crept like a thief to the house next to Albee's. Its exterior was equally dingy, equally plain. I tried the creaky door. It opened to my hand. Inside, the interior did not belie its outer looks. Dilapidated stairs led crazily upward. There was no elevator. Stealthily I climbed up and up through dim, untenanted passageways. The sixth floor! A moment's half-hoping glance. There was not even an apartment 6E. Then up a narrow ladder to the skylight. Cautiously I thrust it open, and was out on the roof.
Swiftly, quietly, I made my way across a coping to the neighboring roof. This was the one I wanted. The glass skylight was latched on the inside, but a minute's work with the chisel sprang it open. I took a deep breath and climbed down. Then I looked around. It was dark as the interior of a cave; no lights anywhere. My footsteps made muffled, thumping sounds on the rug, but no louder than the trip-hammering of my heart. Every moment I expected to hear doors slide stealthily open, and bare feet pad slowly toward me. Not a sound, however. The stillness, the close oppression of the grave.
With a shiver of grinding anticipation I went to work. My flash thrust a pencil of light on the door behind which, somehow, my bride had vanished into the horrible stillnesses. I used my master keys. The third one clicked—loud as the clang of doom in my ears. The door swung noiselessly in.
I entered cautiously, played my flash around. All was silent. Nothing had been changed since the time when Albee and Tim had flanked my entrance. The wild, insane hope that had clamored in my breast, died suddenly. It was exactly the same. It had not been a queer, mad distortion of my senses. If I were crazy then, I was still insane.
Cautiously I picked my way about, seeking, searching. The dust still lay untouched, unmarred on the furniture. I went through the other rooms. The musty odor was there, the same layers of dust. Even thicker—on floors and walls.
They were solid, rigid, immovable. No chance for a revolving mechanism such as certain modern stages employ for their scenes. I knocked cautiously on the walls, testing for hollownesses, for signs that something was wrong. Nothing!
MY sense of utter despair increased. It was impossible, but it was true. This was not the apartment, in spite of all the other incontrovertible evidence of my senses. A groan escaped me. I would never see Wanda again. The thought of her lovely body, of her tender lips and warm eyes, now clouded in God knew what dreadful agony, was driving me hopelessly, irremediably mad.
Suddenly I crouched close to the wall in the dining room. I heard a vague, confused rustling. I strained my ears, first snapping off the light. The noise increased, grew to a trampling of bare, muffled feet. It was coming my way, masked by the apartment door. The hair bristled on my body; and the breath soughed in my lungs.
They were coming for me, out there in the hall, coming for me with eager tread and outstretched, clawing fingers! Bent over in hideous deformity, shambling along on twisted legs—coming for me, their second victim, even as they had come for Wanda before! Blood pistoned through my veins and spread in a fiery mist before my eyes.
It was a trap. I saw it now. Albee had cunningly let me go, knowing that I would return. Now he was sending his rout of demons after me. The sound of his voice re-echoed in my ears like thunder:
"Don't shoot, you fool! I need him!"
That was to Joe. He had wanted me alive. Like Wanda!
I started convulsively, slamming against the wall in my dread. Already a key was turning in the lock—I had locked the door behind me. Soon they would be pouring in, slobbering over me, raking my flesh with their hideous talons...
"Never!" I cried.
My shoulder dug into the flowered wall paper. It was the spot where there should have been the kitchenette, with gleaming stove and bright sink and spotless cupboard.
The outer door was opening, creaking. In the pitch darkness I could not see, but I could hear the eager shuffling, the slither of bare feet over carpet. My hand clawed back desperately for support against the wall, ready to catapult myself as from a springboard into the oncoming horde.
There was a little whirring sound. Something suddenly gave. With a cry I fell backward, seemingly into a void. Voices snarled in front of me, angry, astonished. Bodies hurtled forward. There was another whir as I staggered to regain my balance. Then all sounds ceased—cut off as with the solid intervention of a wall.
In a daze I snapped on the flash I still clutched. I was in a narrow passageway, musty and foul with stagnant air. As the sharp pencil of light bored around, I saw that a steep, close-walled stairway plunged directly down into the bowels of the building. Where it led to I did not know.
But already ominous sounds were penetrating the thickness of the wall. Thumpings, the fumbling of questing fingers. Unwittingly I had touched off the spring of a secret panel.
Cautiously I went down those narrow, endless stairs. My nerves were jumpy, I admit. God knew where they led to; what things of dread awaited me below. Glittering eyes flared suddenly into being in the path of the funnel of light, fled with a sound of squeakings and scuttlings of feet. Rats! Cobwebs brushed like tangled hangman's rope against my face, edging my teeth, ridging the hackles on my flesh. Down, always down!
Then another sound came to me; a sound that caused my finger to press convulsively on the latch of the flash. The staircase took a sharp turn ahead, and something, someone, was ascending invisibly the other side of the bend!
The place plunged into thick, viscid darkness. I crouched against the side wall, holding my breath. The mounting thing was coming steadily, directly for me. I flattened myself as much as I could, but I knew, with a horrible, sinking feeling, that there was no room for two to pass. He must inevitably crash into me. For a moment I thought wildly of retreating the way I had come; anything rather than risk that physical contact, that sureness of discovery. My flesh crawled as my brain shrieked out its prescience of the oncoming creature.
I groped around stealthily, not daring to snap on the light. Then another sound came that froze me into immobility. A whirring noise, directly above! The panel in Apartment 6E had finally opened. Even as I caught the full implications of that I heard weird ululations of triumph—inarticulate cries that no mortal larynx could ever have formed; then the pounding of down rushing feet. Below me, the thud of approaching doom grew louder and louder. I was trapped, held as in a vise, unable to twist or turn.
My teeth chattered, my limbs froze. Then a desperate frenzy pervaded me. The demon rout poured down, confusedly. In another second they would be upon me. Below there was only one. I crouched, and whipped forward like an uncoiling spring. Straight down the blind stairway I catapulted, headlong into the mounting monster. I struck hard flesh with a resounding thud.
There was a cry of astonishment, a hoarse bellow of rage. My hands lashed out, caught hold of muscular, knotty flesh. Down we went in a heap, clattering and bumping. The thing beneath me squirmed and twisted and strangled, but I held on with the grimness of death.
Too late I let go, to spring up to meet the rush of descending menace. Foulness enveloped me, beat around my head, smothered me in a fury of repulsive arms and raking nails. Then the darkness exploded into a flare of bursting rockets.
I CAME to my senses very slowly. My head was a huge balloon, filled with little riveting hammers that beat a devil's tattoo against my aching skull. My limbs too seemed paralyzed, immovable; they hurt damnably and felt curiously detached from the rest of my body. A groan welled inside me, wrenched itself through pain-stiff lips. But no sound came. Heavy weights held my eyelids closed. Desperately, with all the strength of awakening consciousness, I forced them open. Then I found myself staring at an unbelievable scene.
I seemed to be at the small end of a funnel spout. All about me was darkness and smooth, close-pressing walls. But straight ahead the funnel angled out sharply. Within the circumscribed orb of vision were lights and faces and the mutter of conversation. A restaurant floor; a restaurant of sybaritic opulence. Blood red drapery covered the walls.
On them, depicted with startling realism, fleshy goat-eared Pans chased luscious, white-bodied nymphs; shaggy Silenus caressed with probing, lustful hands the yielding charms of naked, simpering girls. Other figures postured in unspeakable obscenities.
Little tables, seating four, dotted the expanse of floor. Set on spotless napery, crystal goblets of exquisite fashioning sparkled with amber, bubbling contents. Gold-encrusted plate groaned with rare and delicate viands. Waiters in scarlet dress, their tail coats gruesomely reminiscent of swishing demons, flitted silently, attentively, from table to table. Corks popped with explosive sound; steaming chafing dishes, aglitter with gold, were whisked in and settled softly before the guests.
The place was crowded. There was not a single empty seat. Men and women alike, expensively tailored and gowned; the men all fat and paunchy and mostly bald; the women ablaze with huge solitaires and diamond tiaras and emerald brooches and ropes of pearls. A strange likeness stamped them all; the hard, deep lines of furious living, of endless riot and dissipation. Just now all faces were turned in a single direction; pointing like setters with quivering nostrils and bloodshot eyes aflame with cruel, lusting anticipation.
Still in a daze, my senses yet befuddled, not knowing where I was, I followed the convergence of their strange ardor. At the farther end was a raised platform, a stage. A curtain, black as the bowels of the earth, cut off its inner view. A painted, dead-white skeleton dangled with lax articulation from a painted gibbet in the center of the screen. Above it, in letters of fire, sprawled the dread phrase:
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"
The bodies of the diners bent forward, their faces, hard, inflamed with evil living, were set alike in a waiting mold. They did not see me; could not. The light did not penetrate the darkness of my enclosure.
SLOWLY awareness came to me; the mists that enshrouded my senses were clearing. Then they were ripped away by the sound of a voice close by; behind me, at my very ear. It was low, aquiver with malicious satisfaction.
"Clive Merrit," it said. "You are a fortunate man. Not everyone is permitted to witness the performance that is about to begin. Those guests you see have paid well to enter; far more than your humble, purse could ever have permitted. You will enjoy it; I am certain. There are elements which you will particularly appreciate, much more even than the others. Welcome to Inferno!"
A startled cry ripped at my throat, died unaccountably at my lips. Only then did I realize that my mouth was sealed; that strong adhesive held it tight. I tried to throw my body around, to see who it was that had spoken. I could not; my limbs were bound immovably to a chair. The voice faded, and I was alone. Alone with confused fears and dim recollections.
Back in Horndale, strange rumors had filtered. Jenkins, the banker, had told Wanda and myself of the Inferno, after a business trip to New York he had made to discuss a banking merger with a New York man. He had told it to us under pledge of secrecy, and with much reminiscent smacking of his thick, fleshy lips and a queer, gloating look in his small, pale eyes. I never had liked the man, but for understandable reasons had maintained the acquaintance.
His business associate, he told us, had taken him to the Inferno. Only the very wealthy, and those personally vouched for, could penetrate its exclusive fastness. The food was superb, the drink divine, and there had been a show—well—he was very vague about that, but the glitter in his eyes, the way he smacked his lips, disgusted me. I had noticed that Wanda was shivering. When he left, my wife was still trembling. It was she who insisted that we have nothing more to do with Jenkins. And now I too was in the Inferno, a prisoner, solitary as if in a hooded box, awaiting equally with the guests the opening of the show.
A wave of dread overcame me. Why had I been tied like this, taped, made an unwilling spectator of what was about to follow? Where was Wanda; what had been done with her? Somehow I knew that there was a terrible connection, that I had been placed here for a frightful purpose. I tried to scream, to attract the fixed attention of the well-dressed horde in the restaurant. My lips tore at the tape until the salt blood trickled down my chin. It was too strong to be ripped like that. I heaved madly against my ropes, only to fall back, exhausted, my flesh cut and scored.
I could not escape; I had to sit and watch, equally with those others—thrill seekers, sadists—a performance every fiber of my being quivered against in anticipation. I knew I was going to see Wanda on that stage, that she was, even now, behind that grisly curtain; and a voice cried out within me that she were far better dead than a participant in that ghastly show; that I were better in hell than the spectator of that performance.
MUSIC had started somewhere. Moaning violins, squeaking flutes, castanets like the dry rustling of bones, trombones that gibbered and laughed in demoniacal accents, drums that thudded on quivering skins, and contrabasses whose eerie groans shivered through tortured flesh. The lights dimmed slowly; a sigh rustled and exhaled from the straining through—a sigh of premonitory gloating.
A cold horror invaded my being as the black curtain with its dangling skeleton and dreadful, bloody phrase rose slowly. I struggled and writhed, I tried to shut my eyes against what I feared to see. But a strange fascination, a compelling, consuming urge forced them open again.
The stage was a smooth round bore, a horizontal tunnel of dead black circumscription into whose depths I peered with frightened eyes. I knew it could not be more than a few short feet in length, but so cunning was the illusion that the scene it framed seemed of infinite remoteness. A merciless light pricked out the round and brought a fierce, unheard cry crashing against the tape that held my lips. But the men and women in the audience strained ever forward with desirous eyes, while a shuddering sigh of ecstatic contemplation rose into the hushed silence from their unfettered lips.
Against the pale yellow of a lemon sky a figure hung suspended on a cross. A girl, absolutely nude, every curve and contour of her voluptuous form exposed to the greedy, thrill-lusting gaze of the craning audience. Her head drooped on her swelling bosom; her ebon hair, un-bobbed, flowed like tortured serpents over the gleam of white shoulders. Her hands, outstretched, seemed nailed to the cross with huge iron spikes; her dainty feet clung transfixed to the nether bar. Blood, bright and red, seemed to well from the wounds and drip slowly to the ground.
Eager, gusty whispers rose from the throng. "It's perfect, my dear!" "Don't you actually see the blood?" "A marvelous illusion!" "How ever do they do it?" A woman, bedizened, haggard through all her paint, spoke sharply to her pop-eyed escort. "Stop staring so! You never looked at me like that!" To which he replied without removing his feasting gaze from the nudity of the crucified girl. "My dear, you've never looked like that." And chuckled hoarsely at his own wit.
For half a bewildered moment I relaxed against my bonds. It was not Wanda! And I had heard the whispered comments. Thank God! It was only an illusion. Those spikes were clever pieces of rubber simulating iron, that dripping gore was a trick of the spotlight. No human being could have hung suspended like that and not have screamed aloud her agony. Then fierce resentment flowed through me; indignation at these loathsome sadists, these vicarious lechers for whom this damnable spectacle had been evolved. They were brutes, more degraded even than the things who had pursued me in the apartment above.
Suddenly a quiver rippled over the undraped body of the actress. Her head lifted with infinite weariness from her breast. I tried to shriek, but could not. No sound issued from my lips—nor from hers either. They were closed in a vivid red gash. Not even the slightest tremor distorted their perfect, too perfect lines. But I had seen her eyes. They were wide, staring pools out of which leaped all the tortures of the damned. Her rounded limbs writhed slowly, the muscles of her white, drawn face contorted, and mute agony flared in her glazing eyes. The blood welled and welled, and dripped with dreadful, unheard plops to the unseen floor beneath.
"What acting!" some one cried. "A superb tragedienne!" approved another.
A wave of nausea ripped through me. I struggled and panted in my bonds. If only my lips were free; if only I could shriek out to those lecherous fools the damnable truth. This was no acting; this was no illusion! It was real, real, as anything in the depths of hell itself! More horrible, more frightful, than anything Dante had conceived in that earlier Inferno.
That poor girl was actually nailed to the cross, to make a sadist holiday for these unknowing beasts; her life gore dripped away before their very eyes while they shivered and applauded. And her lips were sealed, even as mine. I saw now what it was. Flesh-colored tape, on which red, curving lips had been painted. All her shrieks, all her cries of pain, could not penetrate that immobile mask.
Suddenly her head sagged. Her limbs made a dreadful arc. She had succumbed to her torture; she had fainted, or died! The black curtain fell with noiseless speed, blotting out the tunnel of light and its gruesome contents alike. The lights glowed momentarily to a wild outburst of clapping hands. Trembling, fevered fingers thrust beaded goblets to avid mouths; the place buzzed with half-sated fervors. Then the lights dimmed again.
ONCE more the curtain rose. I strained forward in an ecstasy of dread. Wanda! Was she—dared they...?"
A rustle of sound drifted over the room. Within the tunneled circle a girl had darted suddenly. Her naked breasts heaved with wild alarm, her shining limbs spurned the ground in an ecstasy of dread. A beautiful girl with hair of spun gold and blue eyes dark with fear. She was a mere child, beautifully proportioned and delicate; she could not have been over sixteen.
For a moment she hesitated, bewildered by the beating glare of light into which she had emerged. Then, as she turned and exposed the slim virginity of her charms to the gloating impact of a hundred eyes, for the first time she saw the crowded restaurant, the gorged, tumescent faces. Instinctively she shrank back, her hands reaching to cover her nakedness, while the muscles of her throat swelled with a scream that could not pass the taped artificiality of her painted lips.
Then, even as I watched in fainting horror, flames leaped upward from the floor; enringing her in a fiery orbit from which there was no escape. Again and again, while my own flesh seared and sizzled in dreadful sympathy, I saw the trapped girl throw herself madly, insanely against the beating curtain of fire, only to fall back from their terrible embrace. The flames leaped ever higher, while incense billowed with sickly sweetness through the crowded chamber to mask the bitter tang of scorching flesh. Higher, higher, until they completely shrouded the roasting girl, and the curtain fell to thunders of applause.
I was sick, sick with a horror beyond all realization. I had seen a woman crucified; I had witnessed the fiery immolation of a mere girl-child; and that bulging horde in front thought it was merely a dumb show, titillation to jaded senses! I could not stand it again. If that curtain arose once more, I would go mad. Something within me cried I had not seen the worst. There were other and more fearful scenes about to be exposed. Even in my inmost thought I dared not name the name; I dared not visualize what was about to take place.
The audience, once more in the glow of illumination, buzzed excitedly, drank more of the fizzing champagne to dull the almost unbearable fillip their nerves had received. Then they shrugged themselves down in their chairs, breathless, silent, as the lights dimmed again. This time the climactic moment would arrive.
I sensed something of this: I gritted my teeth, hurled myself forward. The chair creaked, but the ropes did not give. A cold sweat burst out from every pore, drenched me from head to foot. I writhed and twisted and wriggled; I was insane, possessed of the strength of the mad. I could not survive the coming scene.
Slowly the curtain went up, for the last and final act. The cylindrical stage was aglow with a delicate rose flush. A wind of breathing passed over the audience. But I, I felt the knotted cords of my neck fill to bursting. Not even the close-binding tape could hold back entirely the torrent of agony that shrilled in my throat. A thin scream trickled out. But no one heard it. They were enthralled, engrossed on the lovely vision displayed to their hideous mental pawing.
On a little round platform, raised a foot from the floor, so small it barely held room for the two exquisitely tiny, bare feet poised on its surface, stood—Wanda! Wanda, my beloved, my wife, the girl for whom I would have died gladly rather than suffer her to be exposed to the slightest harm! Wanda, stripped stark naked, her glorious body bare to the grinning lust that flared now unashamed, openly in every man's eyes; that brought murmurs of envy to the hard, bitter mouths of the women! Wanda, who had been reft from me, for this!
I shouted and cried and struggled, but how could she hear? How could anyone hear? I could see the flush of shame rise in mantling waves over her dear, lovely body; I could see the mounting horror in her eyes as she sensed her dreadful predicament. Yet her lips, those strange scarlet lips that were never hers, that could not match with their cold perfection the warm beauty of her own, refused to open to yield the inexpressible cries I knew were swelling in her throat.
Below her, surrounding the circumscribed dais was a forest of up thrust knives. Keen, cruel gleaming blades of steel, tempered to razor edge and needle point, set in a close, confining circle, aglitter with an avid thirst for dainty blood. Wanda shrank back from the dreadful sight, swaying, fainting. Almost she lost her balance; she tottered wildly on the edge, hanging interminably over a torturous eternity, while I exploded into a delirium of frantic, smashing heaves against the restraining ropes. With a desperate effort she recovered herself, to the audible enthusiasm of the audience.
"An acrobat extraordinary!" glowed a woman. "What glorious limbs!" mouthed a man.
For a moment she stood there, exposed to the beating waves of lust that surged up to her in greedy embrace. She was trembling, twitching in every limb. Those knives were real! One single misstep, and their horrible edges would cut and slash and pierce her naked flesh, would rip her into bloody shreds.
The music swayed up again, obscene, quickening to a slithering tempo of the jungle. As though borne on its lascivious lilt, a file of Things slid stealthily into the lighted round, weaving and dancing with horrible hoppings around the outer circle of the knives. Puckered and hideous were their faces, matted and filthy grey their hair; their broken bodies an insane angle to their dragging limbs. And in each claw-like hand was a whip, long and curling and cruel.
The music stopped abruptly. At once the whips lashed out. They curled in frightful convolutions around the quivering body of my wife. Red weals rushed up to meet their cruel, torturing embrace. Agony stamped her brow, burned ineradicably in her eyes—but her poor, artificial mouth was a dreadful placidity.
She shrank away, she tried to turn and twist, to escape the serpentine thongs as they lifted and fell with grisly regularity. But there was no escape. On every side were the thirsting blades, avid for her tender body. The music crashed out again, beating a fierce rhythm, urging the slashing whips to greater and greater efforts. The degraded audience burst out into uncontrollable applause. It was a great show, instinct with realism. Why, the lovely nude writhed and her figure twitched as if she actually felt the bite of the whips!
THE last vestiges of my reason went rocketing and crashing. Wanda, my adored, was being tortured before my eyes! Already she was tottering, hurled from side to side by the merciless thongs. Soon she would fall, and then... With the hoarse bellow of a bull surrounded by its enemies I smashed headlong. What did the spurting blood of a hundred wounds matter? What did any thing...?
Something gave. There was a ripping snapping noise. The chair to which I had been bound went splintering to the ground. The momentum of my last superhuman effort sent me catapulting out through the narrow blackness of the funnel in which I had been imprisoned, out into the startled audience of sadistic perverts.
Women shrieked and fainted, men cried out in hoarse alarm at my apparition. I must have been an awful figure, a vision of the wrath to come. My clothes were ripped to pieces, I dripped from innumerable wounds; loose ends of rope trailed from partly bound limbs, and tape hung askew from my cracked and bleeding lips.
Straight through the crowded restaurant I went, like a bolt of lightning; straight for that gruesome stage. Tables crashed before my plunging dive, men and women went toppling to either side like the swash of the sea. Then I was up on the platform.
The misshapen creatures had stopped at the commotion, whips suspended in midair. They saw me coming. Someone bellowed a command. At the word they sprang forward, ape faces distorted with frenzy, whips whistling. The cruel leather caught me on face and arms, bit deep into my flesh to bring the geysering blood. I did not care. A veritable fury of madness possessed me. I smashed out with both fists, heedless of the snaking whips, and felt unholy joy at the crunch of flesh and bone under my impacts. I caught crippled bodies in my arms, heaved and hurled them howling into the slicing circle of knives.
The tumult was indescribable now. Wanda held herself erect, her bleeding hands ripping vainly at the tight tape over her lips. The creatures fell away from me in terror; they dropped their whips and disappeared squeaking into the wings. For a moment I stood, dazed. Then I sprang forward, heedless of knives, seeking only my wife. With a last effort she had freed herself of the tape. Her eyes widened behind me; a warning shriek burst from her lips.
I swung around, just in time. Joe, the thug who had masqueraded as elevator man, was leaping for me with a glittering knife in his ham-like fist. It slashed along my shoulder like a red hot iron. I staggered and went back. Together we rolled through the cylinder out onto the platform, crashed down with sickening thuds among the tables. Men were milling, women were shrieking, but I did not hear. I was snarling, foaming at the mouth, filled with the lust to slay. Somehow the knife had fallen from Joe's hand. I pounced on it with a roar of triumph; it rose in my revengeful fist; I buried its bright steel deep.
Somewhere a whistle shrilled. A police whistle. The racket stilled. I lifted my head, dazed, seeking my wife, awaiting the onslaught of Albee's minions. But my wife was gone. The black curtain with its gruesome, dangling skeleton had fallen like a shroud, cutting off all vision of what was behind. Albee's crew had stopped in their tracks, left a wide circle around me. In back of them pressed horrorstruck faces, yet somehow thrilled. A police whistle gleamed in Albee's dead white hand. His round, pink face held a subtle smile. He had blown it!
"Here! What's going on in here?" Gruff, authoritative, commanding! The crowding people fell away from the broad, blue clad shoulders. I looked up, the bloody knife still in my hands, and gazed directly into the hard eyes of Tim, the policeman.
Albee came forward. "Arrest that man," he said, pointing a dramatic finger at me. "He just murdered Joe, my elevator man."
I stared stupidly down at Joe. He was dead! The blood was already clotting around the gaping wound that had pierced his heart. Then my brain cleared. I sprang to my feet, even as Tim's hand was heavy on my shoulder.
"Okay," he was saying. "It's the same guy, Mr. Albee, I warned you he was dangerous, but you were too softhearted. Come along, you!" he growled to me. "There's a nice hot spot waiting for the likes of you."
"Listen, officer," I pleaded wildly. "My wife's back there. They're torturing her. Already they've killed two girls; they'll kill her too. Come back there with me and I'll show you."
I sprang forward, but his huge arm jerked me back. "No ya don't," he snarled. "More talk about yer wife, huh? I've heard enough about her. Now come on without no more funny business, or I'll clout yuh, see?"
Albee said: "You were right, Tim. He's a homicidal maniac."
MEN in evening clothes pushed forward. They were angry, yet titillated by this unexpected thrill. A real murder where there had been only make believe! They added their voices. I had spoiled the show—a beautiful thing. I was crazy, had dived out of nowhere to kill a man before their eyes. The show was okay—nothing wrong with it—a mere pageant. Nonsense about any one being hurt.
A sudden frenzy swept me. I was not believed. I would not be—ever. A vision of an insane asylum—the electric chair—haunted my eyes. As in a dream I saw once more the naked imploring form of Wanda, dragged from me forever. Albee's eyes were bleak upon me, tinged with faint mockery. Already Tim was fumbling with his free hand for the handcuffs. In a second—
With a sudden twist I was free of his restraining hand. A confused jumble of shouts followed my plunging progress. A shot whizzed by me, and another. Police whistles shrilled. A door crashed somewhere. But nothing could stop me now. "I'll show you, fools!" I cried, and vaulted to the platform.
Head lowered, I butted through the concealing curtain, thudded heavily into a bullet-headed man. He swung on me, but I crashed my fist into his face and he vanished in a smear of gore. I found the counterpoise that controlled the curtain. I heaved on the rope. Up, up went the shroud, even as heavy feet clambered on the proscenium.
As it lifted, I darted through the tunnel to the accompaniment of a scream. Wanda was struggling in the arms of one of Albee's henchmen. The knives had disappeared; the stage was a smooth, blank floor. Everything had been hastily removed, made innocent, in case the police...
He saw me coming, tried to run with his squirming, lovely burden. Wanda cried to me in dreadful despair. "Clive! Help!"
I caught up with him in two swift leaps, my fingers clamped on his throat, tightened. They were like steel springs. He gagged and slumped suddenly. I caught my fainting wife just as they burst in on me—Tim and a huddle of blue coated officers. Guns snouted in their hands.
"My—my poor wife—tortured!" I gasped. Then I tottered and slid quietly to the floor beside Wanda.
WE awoke in the hospital, side by side in our beds. Tim was there, apologetic, explanatory. They had found the damnable evidence after we had fainted. The trick floor, with its various platforms, the knives, the nozzles through which the sizzling flames had leaped high. Also—and Tim's eyes were hard and his mouth grim—the poor, charred body of one girl and the crucified corpse of another.
Albee had made a good thing of his night club. Originally he had catered to his thrill-mad clientele with simulated brutalities and horrors. But they had tired of it. The actors and actresses could not depict with sufficient convincing realism the frightful scenes on which they doted. Business had dropped off. Then Albee had conceived the idea of substituting the real for the simulated. He raised his prices, but that did not stop the rush of the wealthy sadists. He was on the high-road to millions.
The furnished apartments above were the lure to trap his prospective victims, He waited for young girls, or young couples, new to the city, friendless. No one would care much about their disappearance. He used men also. Those hideous creatures of his, now herded into hospitals, were young men he had broken by tortures until their minds snapped. They were an added feature to his acts. The number of the house, displayed on the sign, was of course false.
"But how about Apartment 6E?" I protested weakly. "We both looked at it carefully. It was not the same."
Tim grinned. "I was dumb," he said sheepishly. "But so was you. We got the answer when we fine-combed the building. In another room we found the setup. Paneled walls, furniture, kitchen equipment, everything. Regular stage sets. Moveable. Could be installed in front of the real walls in a few minutes. The panels covered the door leading to the other rooms so's to make it look like a one-room apartment. When you left to find you a job, they hustled your wife by the passage down into the Inferno; moved out the other stuff, took down the panels, moved in the new stuff. They was careful even tuh' plaster a layer o' dust on everything. So when you came, you was crazy." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Albee's gonna get a swift trial, all right."
I leaned over to touch with my bandaged hand the swathing folds that covered Wanda. The nightmare was over! But I didn't have to lean far. She met me half way. And Tim already was tiptoeing from the room.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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