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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Horror Stories, July 1935,
with "Vault of the Damned"
What thing of ghastly evil followed Emma Dale through the gloom-wrapped streets? What presence, unseen but horrible, lurked in her own bedroom? Did the dead man lying there come back to awful life and carry away her nervous, hysterically frightened roommate? Or did the flesh-fiend, sending his awful messages of severed hands, plan that she too must suffer the gruesome torture of slow dismemberment and death?
IT was one o'clock in the morning. The French heels of the two girls tapped with eerie loudness on the deserted pavement. The flanking apartment houses stared down upon them with silent blankness, and the long street was a canyon of shadows in which the spaced lamps made circumscribed pools of light.
Emma Dale shivered and unconsciously hastened her pace. The distance from the subway to their tiny apartment in the west eighties had never seemed so long. Of course the hour was late and the party had been a tedious bore. She was probably just tired and overtaxed. That was the reason for the strange sensation in the back of her head, for the queer feeling that hostile eyes were following her, were watching her every move. She shrugged her shoulders angrily. Soon, she scolded, she would be as panicky and given to hysteria as Olga Morrell, her chum, whose thin hand even now trembled violently against hers. She had always prided herself on being the stronger of the two, but now...
With a tremendous effort Emma resisted the impulse to look back. She yawned ostentatiously. "We'll never get down to the bank on time tomorrow," she observed with an attempt at casualness. The sound of her own voice startled her. For the first time she realized that Olga had said no word since they emerged from the subway; that her friend's grip had grown tighter and tighter in their hurried walking.
Olga pressed suddenly close to her. Her pace increased to a half-run. Her breath came in low, panting sobs.
"Why, Olga, what's the matter?" Emma cried. She was being pulled along with a strength she had not known Olga to possess.
Olga held her face rigidly ahead; a white pallor in the dimness of the street; her reddened lips parted in gaping fear.
"For God's sake, Emma, run!" she gasped. "We—we're being followed!"
For the moment Emma's heart stopped beating. The echoes of their pounding feet were ominously loud in the deathlike silence. She, too, had felt... Then she laughed, and forced her chum back to a walk. It had been Olga's fear that had infected her, had made her imagine things.
"Nonsense!" she smiled. "There's no one else on the street but ourselves. And even if there were, this is New York. We're not the only ones who stay out late."
Olga tore at her restraining hand with frantic madness. Her slight body jerked like that of a wild bird caught in a strangling snare.
"Let me go! Let me go!" she implored. The glare in her eyes was hardly sane. "You don't know; you don't understand! He's followed us all the way from the party I saw him in the subway, shielding himself behind a newspaper. He'll kill us both!"
"Who will?" Emma demanded, thoroughly exasperated. "I tell you there's no one behind us."
NEVERTHELESS she walked faster. She had read somewhere that delusions like this must be humored. It was impossible of course. If there was someone, she would have heard his steps. But her straining ears caught no sound save the staccato beat of their own rapid feet. The great city seemed to have withdrawn to a remote distance; silence brooded over the hushed buildings. Yet a tiny spark of dread kindled in her heart, grew... Without knowing what she did, she twisted her head around.
Not fifty feet behind, a corner lamp post made an oasis of light in the darkened street and flaunted defiance to the wavering shadows. Emma's blood froze suddenly to moveless ice; her throat constricted painfully.
A man was walking rapidly through the artificial radiance. His head was bent, and his face muffled in the upturned collar of a black topcoat. Yet it was May and the night was quite warm.
Emma laughed shakily to herself. What of it? He might have a cold, he might be immersed in thought. But why, an inner voice demanded, did he make no sound? Why did his tall, thin form glide along the stone pavement as if he were a wraith, a discarnate being?
The man looked up quickly. His face emerged from the shadows of his coat collar. His eyes clashed with hers. Emma swayed, held back the low cry that tore at her throat. Dear God! Never before had she seen such fathomless menace on a human countenance. His gaunt, cadaverous features snarled at her with twisted hate; a sneer of soundless triumph writhed over his lips.
Then, suddenly, he was gone. For an instant his form had bathed in the white flare of the arc light, and now it was one with the engulfing darkness. Not a sound marked his coming, or the swift passage of his going. A little strangled cry burst from Emma's throat. Had she actually seen the man, or was he but a chance distortion of shadows brought into being by her fevered imagination?
She swung her face forward without a word. Her pace was as fast as her companion's, now. It was silly, but...
"You saw him, didn't you?" Olga said despairingly.
Emma fought to keep her voice steady. "Why, Olga, I'm surprised at you. You're making a great fuss over nothing." To herself she calculated rapidly. One more long block to the avenue, then two short blocks north to the remodeled four-story house in which they lived.
"But you did see him," Olga persisted.
Emma cried half angrily. "A man happened to be walking behind us. He turned up Columbus Avenue. What has that got to do with us?"
Olga's eyes were pools of dreadful torture. Her voice was a hopeless whisper. "He is going to kill us. I feel it—here." Her thin, gloved hand went to her breast.
A COLD wind breathed down Emma's neck. They rounded the corner. She glanced surreptitiously down the long street over which they had just come. It was quiet and unstirring as the grave. The man, or apparition, was nowhere in sight.
She took a deep breath. Unacknowledged relief flooded her being. Down Amsterdam Avenue, a block south, a blue-coated figure moved stolidly along. The hooded light from the store windows flicked on the brass of his buttons, on the burnished wood that swung in his hand. A policeman, emblematic of peace, and order, and safety.
"Look, Olga!" she said. "If you're really so much afraid, I'll tell that policeman, give him a description of the man."
Olga whirled like a cornered rabbit. Her thin fingers clutched desperately at Emma's coat sleeve. Her eyes were black pools in the corpse-white paleness of her face. Her voice was husky with frantic urgency.
"You mustn't," she whispered. "Emma, do you hear me?" She shook her friend's arm with uncontrollable panic. "Not the police! Not anyone. No one must ever know."
Emma stared at her in surprise, even while she allowed herself to be pulled hastily along. There was no question about it now. Olga had always been neurotic and subject to hysteria, but never as bad as this. The doctors had a long, frightened name for such delusions. Her heart squeezed with pity. Poor Olga! Tomorrow she would insist that her friend see a doctor about it. He would no doubt prescribe a vacation rest. Olga had been working too hard of late. Mr. Borden, the bank president to whom Olga was private secretary, was a hard taskmaster.
Aloud, she said: "Of course, dear. I promise not to breathe a word about it."
They turned into the tiny lobby of their house. In spite of her belief that her friend was suffering from delusions of persecution, Emma's eyes darted up and down the avenue before they entered, searched half fearfully among the shadows of the dim-lit hall. No one on the street. Even the policeman had disappeared. Far off, an elevated train rumbled, and a nighthawk taxi tooted its horn. Pleasant, familiar sounds to one born and reared in the city.
And no one within the lobby. The single elevator was self-service, and there was no doorman. The house was a four-story brownstone, formerly private, but now converted into small apartments, two to the floor. They lived on the fourth floor.
Olga looked a bit easier now. Color tinged her sallow cheeks. She seemed shamefaced about her outburst. Nothing was wrong with the lobby; there was no place where a man could hide.
Emma pressed the button for the elevator. The little spot of dread was gone now. Even the thought of the man's frightful countenance under the street light had faded from her mind. How silly of her to let Olga's delusions infect her. She hummed a little tune. Lord, she was tired, though! And tomorrow would bring work, again.
She frowned and pressed the button once more. Strange! The red signal did not light up, nor was there the familiar whir announcing that the cage was in motion. Again she pressed. The silence in the small lobby suddenly became fraught with menace. The queer feeling of tightness around her heart returned.
She turned to Olga with a laugh that had a catch in it. "It looks as though the mechanism is out of order. We'll have to walk up. Lucky we're not on the twelfth floor."
Strangely, Olga seemed gay. All her former fear had disappeared. Her eyes gleamed as they hadn't for almost a week now. "I don't mind," she cried. "It'll be good exercise. Come on."
Together they climbed the narrow, rarely-used stairway. Dim, dirt-encrusted electric bulbs seemed to accentuate the gloom. The turns of the stairs were wholly in darkness. As Olga's spirits seemed to rise, Emma's as unaccountably sank. She did not like this. The self-service elevator had never been out of commission before. Only that Sunday the janitor had proudly explained its fool-proof qualities.
The shadows on the stairs grew deeper and deeper. Once, where the steps twisted and made a recessed pool of darkness, something brushed lightly against her. She was certain she heard a sharp indrawn breath.
Her body seemed suddenly sheathed in ice; and for a moment she stood paralyzed by numbing fear. For the space of a heart-beat she could not have moved even though her life had depended upon it. Then her will came to the rescue and, clutching Olga by the hand, she ran with frantic haste up the remaining stairs, burst through the door which opened onto the corridor where their apartment was located, and fell back against it, breathless with terror.
OLGA looked at her friend queerly. The shadow of an overlaid fear flicked through her eyes, vanished "I'm sorry," Olga muttered. "It's my fault, getting you scared. I—I was mistaken about—being followed. You thought a man was lurking on the stairs, didn't you? Forget it, Emma."
There were only two apartments to the floor. The long, narrow hall had no recesses, no corners. It was well-lit. The bronze door of the elevator gleamed dully in the glow. Emma followed her friend, angry at herself. To think that Olga should have to comfort her.
Olga bent over the lock. Her key rasped in the mechanism. Her face was hidden.
"You and Mr. Carr get along pretty well together, don't you?"
Emma flushed. There was a peculiar intonation to the simple question that she did not like. Olga and she were both private secretaries in the National State Bank. Olga worked for the President, William Borden, a hard, brusque, driving man. Her boss, on the other hand, was James E. Carr, the vice-president and general manager. There was a world of difference between the two men. Carr was in his early forties, kind and thoughtful and especially decent to her. As a matter of fact it was he who had given her her present job.
"I don't know what you mean," she retorted warmly. "Mr. Carr has been very nice to me."
Olga's face was still hidden. She seemed to have difficulty with the key. "And Dick Weston?" she asked cryptically.
Emma's flush suffused her shapely neck. What was the matter with Olga? She knew very well that Dick, third vice-president, and in line after Mr. Carr, cared more than a little for her. And that she, Emma, felt her heart beat rather rapidly when Dick's clean-cut, square-jawed features bent close to hers. It was a peculiar time to tease—if that were Olga's intention.
She opened her mouth to answer with some asperity, when the tumblers clicked, and the door swung open. The retort strangled in her throat; her lips froze on the unspoken words. Olga straightened, jerked violently, and staggered back against her with a sobbing shriek.
The hall light cast its shadowed reflection into the yawning black hole of their apartment. The door gave on a square foyer. Beyond it was the living room with its scattered easy chairs and the enormous grand piano that was her most treasured possession. To the left was the two-by-four kitchenette, while a short corridor angled on the right to their bedroom.
But Emma, her shoulder rigid against the backward thrust of her chum, saw only the dim, shapeless bulk that lay outstretched in the foyer. The feeble light showed a formless heap of black cloth.
OLGA clawed frantically at her restraining arm. "Let's get out of here," she screamed. Her face was a frenzy of fear. The light of madness burned again in her tortured eyes. "I should have known—I should have known," she sobbed.
Emma shook off the spell of her terror. Now that the blow had fallen, now that she was face to face with something tangible, and not with mere vague, shifting terrors, she was outwardly cool, efficient.
"Stop getting hysterical," she snapped. "It's only that bundle of cloth I leaned up against the wall this morning, and forgot to tell you about. It must have fallen when you opened the door."
It was a lie, of course, but justified. She knew what that terribly still, outflung thing on the floor was. She had seen, sticking out of the shadow, the tip of a man's shoe. But Olga must be saved from the knowledge.
Summoning all her strength, she pushed the screaming, clawing girl away from the door. Her fingers darted inside, to the left, questing. Strange how steady her hand was, how firm her voice had sounded, when her blood was a roaring mill-race and the skin crawled all over her body.
Who was this man who lay unconscious, dead, within their apartment? How had he entered: how had he met his fate? She steeled herself to the answers even as she flicked on the foyer light.
The yellow radiance flooded coldly over the unstirring body, brought out in gruesome detail each dreadful lineament, each fold of his clothing.
Horror exploded in Emma's skull. The blood that raced in her veins turned to lancing splinters of ice. A low, dreadful moan squeezed past her small, clenched teeth.
It was incredible, it was impossible! She had gone suddenly insane; her eyes were mocking her with strange hallucinations! Yet, as she fought back with choking breath to sanity, to reason, like a drawing swimmer heaving up out of the depths, she knew that it was no mistake, no phantasm of a disordered mind.
The man who lay there in terrible silence, face uplifted to the light, eyes closed in death, was the man who had followed them not five minutes before, stealthy and soundless; who had melted into the shadows at her backward glance. There could be no question about it. That gaunt, cadaverous face on which the triumphant grin of hate was fixed even in death, that black topcoat with its collar still upturned. It was unbuttoned now, as was the blue serge sack coat beneath. A great red strain spread over the front of his soft white shirt—as if a bullet, or a knife, had pierced his heart.
Too late she flung herself across the door space. Olga thrust her aside with madman's strength, glared with distended eyes at the thing on the floor. A great shriek tore from her stiffened lips, went echoing through the empty darkness. Her thin hands flew to her throat, her death-pale countenance was a grotesque mask of terror.
"It's he again," she whimpered. "I knew it; I felt it coming. Oh God, I can't stand it any more! George! George! I love you, but not even for you..."
Emma cried out: "Olga, what are you saying? What—"
The stricken girl half turned to her. Her lips worked soundlessly; they were blue and chattering beneath the carmine lipstick. Her eyes were large with horrible visions, and she did not seem to see her chum.
Emma sprang for her, clutched and missed. Olga had taken a blind step backward, swayed, and gone down with a thud across the outstretched form of the murdered man. Her head crashed against the telephone stand. Then she was dreadfully still.
EMMA never knew afterward where she obtained the courage, the strength of limb, to overcome the mad desire within her to flee as if all the devils in hell were after her. The ghastly face of the stranger leered up at her in twisted horror; her chum lay moveless and cold across his bloody chest.
Every nerve within her screamed against the gruesome task. The lonely hall, the shadows thick within the apartment, were heavy with menace and eerie dangers. But she clenched her teeth, and forced her shuddering body forward. With heaving, panting strength she dragged the limp form of her friend off that of the dead man. Her hand brushed the red stain, jerked madly away. It was icy cold and sticky.
Shivering, moaning, she pulled Olga to the sofa in the living room. Lights blazed under her trembling fingers. The old, familiar furniture mocked and taunted her. Everything seemed in place; nothing had changed. Yet the man who lay in the foyer, murdered, had been out on the street, following them with soundless tread, only minutes before. How had he come here before them? How had he entered? Who had killed him? In God's name, where was the murderer now?
Emma forgot Olga, forgot everything else in the sheer horror of that thought. He must still be somewhere in the apartment, lurking behind the furniture, hiding in a closet with deadly weapon gripped tight in blood-dripping hand, waiting, waiting...
Whimpers of fear fell from her lips. The blood cascaded in her ears, made sounds like the rustling of stealthy feet. She looked wildly toward the door. The extended body was an immovable barrier over which she dared not flee. She stared toward the window. It was locked, even as she had made sure in the evening before they left. The other windows faced on sheer stone walls. Perhaps if she screamed for help...
The sound racketed madly around the walls, stunned her straining ears with its clamor. No answer! Not from the hidden, crouching killer, not from anywhere else. The city seemed a tomb of death, from which bony, strangling fingers soon would issue, reaching for her throat.
Olga lay pale and moveless. Her thin, haunted face was composed as in a death mask. Her blue-veined lids were closed. A jagged gash across her high forehead slowly trickled blood.
Emma chafed her hands, called on her to awaken, to speak to her. Her pulse fluttered, but she did not answer. Emma jumped up. She would go mad if no help came. Her trembling glance fell on the telephone. A great sob burned her throat. Fool! Why hadn't she thought of that before? She would call the police, an ambulance. A radio patrol would be clattering up to her rescue in two minutes. Big, brawny, comforting men would come to shield her from the sinister thing that lurked in these rooms, from the ghastly corpse that threatened her even in death.
She tottered to the phone. Her shuddering glance slid away from the murdered man who barricaded the door. She lifted the receiver, dialed frantically.
A little warmth coursed through her veins. The gruff voice of the Headquarters sergeant—what blessed music it would be to her ears! Oh God, if he'd only hurry up! Didn't he hear the phone ringing, didn't he know the desperate urgency of this call?
Silence, blank, immeasurable! The first little chill of comprehension shivered up her spine, froze her to icy marble. The telephone was dead! There had been no buzzing sound. She jiggled the hook with stiff, frantic fingers; she spun the dial in an ecstasy of madness. God! They must answer. But the rasp of the metal was hollow as the tomb. Someone had cut the wires, had disconnected the line!
SHE fell back with a moan from the shiny mockery of the telephone. She would leap the bloody body that barred her escape, run shrieking into the hall. There were neighbors next door. They would help! Strange that they hadn't heard her cries, hadn't come out into the corridor to find out what was the matter.
She groped forward, and recoiled at the very sight of the ghastly stranger as remembrance smote her. Olga was still inside, unconscious. She could not leave her chum in here alone. The murderer still lurked in the rooms—waiting. It was impossible for him to have escaped.
Somehow Emma rose to the occasion. She must not weaken, now. Her friend's life—and her own—depended solely on her judgment and her self-control. She must think—calmly, coolly, even though hysteria plucked at her taut nerves.
She forced her dragging limbs back into the apartment. Olga still lay motionless and pale on the sofa.
A weapon! She must have something with which to... Emma's glance fell on the decorative bronze poker that hung next the imitation fireplace. She tore it loose from its hook, gripped it with white-knuckled hand. Slowly, very slowly, dragging her shrinking body into nightmare movement, she searched the apartment. Underneath the beds, in every nook and cranny, in the darkest reaches of the closets. No one, nothing; not a sign that anything had been disturbed. The windows, too, even those fronting sheer walls, were tight locked.
Emma staggered back into the living room. The first moment of shivering relief had given way to even greater horror. Almost she would welcome the sight of a crouched marauder. She pressed her fingers to her throbbing forehead. What dreadful, unseen forces had swept through their apartment? She glared wildly around. The body still lay in the foyer, where it had fallen from the murderous blow. Olga still lay limp on the couch. Her face was waxen pale, and her lips were drained of color. Perhaps she was dying! She must get help, immediately—now!
She forced her flaccid muscles into action. She leaped over the frightful barrier in the foyer, ran madly down the hall to the other apartment. Her fingers stabbed at the bell, again and again. The buzzer clamored within. Emma leaned limply against the door. Why didn't they hurry? She did not even know her neighbors. New York was like that. The hollow reverberations went on and on, mocking her. The apartment was silent as the grave. It was almost two in the morning, yet no one was home; no one answered the imperative summons.
She staggered back suddenly, her brain reeling. Perhaps the invisible menace had struck them down, too: perhaps even now, on the other side of the metal door, a body lay, stiff in grisly death.
With a choked cry Emma turned and ran blindly for the stairs. The air was thick with leering, grinning shadows. The light seemed dreadfully dim. They were coming for her, were coming...
Her hand caught at the door knob to the stairs, froze. That thing she had brushed against when they had climbed; that stealthy breathing! Oh God! She would die rather than descend those four shadow-harboring flights. With a moan she turned toward the elevator. She had forgotten. That, too, was dead, out of order.
Her heart hammered against her ribs with smashing strokes. Her lungs were a frozen torture. She was surrounded, hemmed in. Even now, perhaps, hideous things were gloating invisibly around her, playing with her, before dealing the death-stroke...
Arms outstretched, she groped back to her own apartment. If she must die, let it be with Olga. The door was open, even as she had left it in her wild plunge over the dead man.
The dead man! A sob of pure terror bubbled from her lips. Was she mad? Were all the dreadful happenings of the night but the ravings of a diseased mind?
The corpse was gone!
ONLY minutes before that dead body had sprawled there in the foyer, its shirt clammy with gore. Now it was gone—vanished as though it had never existed!
Emma clawed suddenly at her throat. Her mind rushed toward blazing madness. Her eyeballs started from her head. Olga, whom she had left pallid and unconscious on the couch, was gone, too!
Emma ran in aimless frenzy about the apartment, calling Olga's name. Lights danced before her eyes: hidden voices hummed tauntingly in her ears. And the walls returned the cries, distorted into febrile mockeries. She ran desperately back into the living room. Perhaps her eyes had tricked her—maybe Olga was still there—
No! Nothing had changed! There was no sign of a struggle, no sign that Olga or the ghastly corpse at the door had ever been. They had vanished into thin air.
Emma threw back her head and laughed. It was a demented cry. Then something snapped in her brain and she had a flash of spurious lucidity.
Of course! Olga had not come home with her. George Simpson had taken her out. He often did that. She had been asleep, awakened, drugged with some thick nightmare. George! Yes, she remembered now. Olga had said something about him, called on his name. What was it she had said? Queer how her mind fumbled!
Then she stared foolishly down at herself. Why was she dressed? She laughed again, but the laugh was more of a sob. People had been known to do that—dress themselves without knowing what they did. Her eyes traveled to the couch again, fixed in staring madness. There, where in her dream Olga's body had rested, was a deep depression in the cushion. Just such a sag as a human form would make.
Then it was true! It had not been a nightmare fantasy! Olga had lain there, unconscious; out in the foyer there had been a corpse. Now they were both gone. How? Where to? She had been in the hall all the time; nothing could have passed her. The living room window was still locked. They had passed into thin air, even as the killer, even as she would herself, if she stayed in this place of invisible menace.
She darted out into the hall again. Nothing moved or stirred. On other floors the tenants were peacefully asleep, not knowing of the horror near them. The stairs? Her flesh crawled at the thought. Hopelessly she pounded on the bronze elevator doors. Perhaps someone below might hear. Without knowing what she did she pressed the button again. There was a whirring noise. Incredulously she listened, eyes wide on the red signal flash. The cage was ascending, coming toward her...
THE policeman whom she finally found and brought back to her apartment listened to Emma's incoherent story, eyed her disheveled condition with suspicious look, grunted, and poked around the rooms, the hall, the stairs. He found nothing.
A badly frightened janitor came blinking from the nether regions and swore vociferously that he had neither seen nor heard anything amiss. The people next door? Why, they were away for the weekend. They had left the key with him. A search of the empty apartment disclosed nothing.
The policeman shrugged his broad shoulders, wrote out his report in his notebook. "Now listen to me, Miss," he said kindly. "I'd advise you to go to bed and sleep it off. Your friend is out late with her young man, and hasn't come home yet. You've been dreaming, and woke up scared."
"But, officer," Emma cried frantically. "I haven't been in bed at all. I—we—just got in when..."
The policeman looked at her queerly. "That so?" he said. "Then how do you account for this?" He led the trembling girl into the bedroom. "Look!"
Emma staggered back with a moan. One of the twin beds—her bed—had the sheets turned back. The pillow and the mattress were rumpled and pressed in, as though—as though someone had recently been asleep. Her eyes went wide on the filmy nightgown, crumpled and carelessly dropped on the floor. It was her own!
"So you see," the cop was saying through the roaring in her ears, "you had been asleep. You yourself told me you went through the place with a fine-tooth comb before these—uh—people disappeared, and nothing had been touched."
A leaden shroud encased her shivering form. It was impossible, yet... Sudden fear squeezed her aching skull. This was more terrible even than before. She must be mad, then. It was the only explanation. It had been no dream. Of that she was certain. It was the hallucination of a mind that had cracked. But the policeman must not know of it. He would call an ambulance, take her away, shut her up in an asylum. She must be cunning.
"Yes," she said very low, "it must have been a bad dream. Something I ate. Thank you very much and good night."
When he had gone, she locked the door carefully. Insane! Insane! The walls swayed toward her. When Olga came home, she would see it in her eyes, would run away from her. God, how heavy her limbs were, how tired and drowsy she was. She shuffled wearily to her bed—the bed she must have slept in, and retained no recollection. She pulled her pillow over to straighten it out. Something white fluttered from beneath. She picked it up with listless hand. More madness? But the paper crackled crisply beneath her cold fingers. There was writing on it—crude, printed letters. Her dull eyes tried to focus on them. Their meaning blurred, then suddenly they etched themselves with slashes of fire into her brain:
It is your turn now. Obey and no harm will come to you. Your friend refused—you know the result. Further instructions later. Speak of this to no one, on penalty of... DEATH!
IT was well after ten when Emma Dale walked unsteadily into the National State Bank. The day was already in full swing. People moved crisply about, stood in lines at the tellers' windows. Checks shoved under the grilles, sheaves of bright new bills shoved back. Everything was businesslike, everything normal—nothing like the evil horror of the night. If only it had been a dream; if only she were in fact insane! Anything would have been better than the grim reality.
Even the police believed her now. At dawn she had fled to the nearest police station in spite of the printed threat. The note they grinned at—the officer's report was already in. But Olga Morrell was still missing. And a telephone call to the house of their evening's hostess disclosed the undeniable fact that both Emma and Olga had departed homeward together at a late hour. They promised vague things, but Emma knew dully that they could do no good.
George Simpson looked up suddenly in the teller's cage. His face had a peculiar white pallor; his hair was cropped close to his head. His eyes were queerly evasive; they slid past one without frankness. Emma knew the reason for this. Olga had concealed nothing from her chum. But now his eyes clung to hers. He seemed worried. He opened his thin, straight lips to say something, but the man who headed the queue at his window tapped angrily on the bars. He wanted a check cashed. Simpson lowered his eyes, and counted out the bills.
Emma hurried on toward the rear offices. Her heart ached dreadfully for him. Poor George! He didn't know yet. Olga and he were in love; they were to be married soon. Olga had persuaded the bank president, Mr. Borden, to give him this job. She had even, in her love for him, faked certain references.
Emma stopped short, heedless of eddying people, heedless of the surprised stare of Tom, the grizzled guard. Great Heavens! Olga's despairing cry flamed suddenly across her consciousness. What was it she had screamed at the sight of the sprawled shadower?
"I can't stand it any more! George! George! I love you, but not even for you..."
George Simpson! The man who had served a term in the penitentiary for embezzling funds from the small Midwestern bank where he had been cashier! The man whom Olga had met six months before, and with whom she had fallen desperately in love. The man whose claim of innocence she had stoutly believed, even to the extent of procuring him this job. No one else in the bank knew his antecedents; only Emma. And Simpson did not know that she knew.
A terrible pattern swirled and formed in her brain. What was it Olga couldn't stand any more? What was it she refused to do, even for the man she loved? The black print of the note danced before her eyes in letters of fire. Your friend refused—you know the result.
Black horror seized her, forced her head suddenly around. George Simpson dropped his eyes quickly to his counter. But they had been fixed upon her with a strange intensity. Obey and no harm will come to you. Merciful God! What dreadful tasks awaited her? What had been done to Olga?
She opened the door of the executive vice-president's office with fingers that were stiff with fear. Voices murmured out to her.
James E. Carr looked up from his ornate, highly polished desk. His hair was slightly gray at the temples, but his body was compact, powerful. He believed in keeping himself fit. All the business of the bank passed through his blunt-fingered, competent hands. Borden, the President, blustered around and drove his employees, but actually accomplished very little.
Carr greeted her with a smile. "It's about time you showed up for work, Emma. I was beginning to think you had quit us for another job." Then the smile faded. Concern, alarm, took its place, even as the other man, who had been leaning over the desk, talking in low, confidential tones to him, whirled around. "Good Heavens, Emma, what's the matter?" Carr gasped. "You look like the very devil."
Dick Weston dived forward to catch the fainting girl in his arms. "Emma! What is wrong?"
THE girl shivered close to the man she loved. It was good to be in his arms like this. They were so strong; they felt so safe. But Carr had already dashed up with a paper cup of water.
"Drink this," he insisted. Reluctantly Dick let her go, and she gulped down the clear, cold fluid. It steadied her somewhat.
She sank into the chair that Carr solicitously offered.
"Olga Morrell is gone," she said tonelessly.
The two men looked at each other quickly. "Gone?" echoed Carr. "What do you mean? Mr. Borden was in here five minutes ago, fuming over the fact that she hadn't showed up. Has a lot of work for her to get out."
Emma explained falteringly. It was all so like a hideous nightmare, that here, in the practical atmosphere of the bank, it seemed wholly incredible.
The faces of the two men grew more and more grim as she went on. Dick's hand, flung with seeming carelessness over the back of her chair, pressed comfortingly against her shoulder. The touch warmed and heartened her.
"You poor girl!" he said in a low voice. His fists clenched and a strange gleam shone in his eyes. "If I could only lay my hands on the devil or devils who are responsible for this!" His hands unclenched at a sudden thought. "I had forgotten about George Simpson. He'll take Olga's disappearance pretty hard."
Carr glanced at him swiftly. "What has Simpson to do with her?"
Dick looked apologetic. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned it. He told it to me in confidence. It's supposed to be a secret that they're engaged."
For a fleeting second Emma lifted her head. Funny! Olga had assured her that no one else knew; that George had insisted on complete secrecy. If their engagement became known, Borden might think it proper to investigate the faked references, instead of taking Olga's word for their authenticity.
A sudden thought seemed to strike Carr. He sat down quickly at his desk, pulled out a drawer. He leafed through piled papers, calmly at first, then more and more feverishly. His face grew strained, preoccupied. He opened another drawer, and another.
"Can I be of help, Mr. Carr?" Emma asked, pulling herself together. She must forget for the while the anguished uncertainty as to her chum's fate, the dreadful menace that hung over herself. Her job as the vice-president's secretary meant the performance of certain duties.
Lines of worry puckered his brow. He shook his head, went on with his frantic pawings through letters and documents. The last drawer slammed tight with an ominous crash. He fell back limply in his chair. His mouth twitched. Fear leaped into his eyes.
Dick sprang to his side. "For God's sake, Carr, what's the matter with you?"
The vice-president looked suddenly aged. Panic was writ large in his eyes. He seemed to have lost his usual sure grip of himself. "The brown envelope!" he gasped. "It's gone!"
"What brown envelope?" Dick demanded.
"There were letters inside," Carr groaned. "Letters that involve me—and others. If they ever fall into the wrong hands, we're ruined." He hid his face in his hands. Emma felt quick pity for her chief. She knew the great care that he had always insisted upon in handling of that particular envelope.
"Think hard," Dick urged. "Where was it last?"
The Vice-President's face was haggard as he lifted his head. "I kept it in the vault. Along with all valuable papers entrusted by bank clients to my personal custody. Yesterday afternoon, just before closing, I had a peculiar telephone call." He hesitated. "No use going into details, but the call held a threat in it. A threat that could be parried only by certain statements in those letters. I wanted to see them, to make sure that my recollection was correct, before I did anything."
He turned to Emma. "You remember," he said, "you went to our 42nd Street Branch around two-thirty, and didn't return."
Emma nodded weakly. She could not trust herself to speak. She felt what was coming, felt it with every tearing fiber of her being. A dreadful net was closing in.
"There are only three persons who know the combination of that particular vault," the vice-president continued. "Myself, Emma here—and Olga. Because Emma was gone, I asked Olga to get it for me. She seemed highly excited when she placed the envelope on my desk. Then she went out. It was after closing time. I looked through the letters, found what I needed. Then I realized that it was after four, that the time locks had already closed on the outer steel doors of the vault room. I therefore placed the envelope in my desk, here in the top drawer, not dreaming that it would not be safe until morning. "Now," he groaned deeply, "it is gone."
Dick said in a queer, strained voice: "It looks very much, Carr, as if Olga had something to do with it. It means that the events of last night in Emma's apartment were directly concerned with your documents."
Emma jumped to her feet. Her eyes flashed. "Olga is my friend, Dick." she choked. "She never would have done such a despicable thing. Besides, the note distinctly said she had refused to do their bidding. That was why—that was why—" Emma broke down suddenly, and dropped blindly into the chair. Great tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Don't take it so hard," Carr said kindly. "I think Emma's right," he told Dick. "Poor Olga has paid terribly for her loyalty."
A SOMBER look crept into Dick's face. He shook his head slowly. "Everything that Emma told us about her actions, her increasing nervousness and hysteria, her positive feeling that they were being shadowed and that she was marked for death, are significant in the light of what has happened. Remember, too, how she absolutely refused to let Emma call the police."
Dick clenched his fist to make his point. "Those are the signs of a guilty conscience," he went on. "She had become involved with someone who was anxious to lay his hands on those letters of yours. She had access to the combination and was only waiting for an opportunity. It came yesterday, in a way that would not leave her open to suspicion. Either she or her accomplice remained in the bank after hours and took the envelope from your desk." Dick's eyes gleamed. "By Heaven, it begins to sound as if the unknown criminal is someone right here in the bank. Evidently, emboldened by his success, he made more demands on Olga. She was scared, or conscience-stricken, and refused. The rest we know."
Emma fell back into her chair. It was all too horribly plain. She had not said anything about Olga's outburst involving her lover George to them. If Dick and Mr. Carr knew of that—if they knew of George Simpson's past... She clenched her teeth. It looked desperately dark for her chum and her chum's lover, but she would not speak—yet.
Carr said doubtfully, unwillingly: "I'd hate to believe it. Besides, if your theory is correct, there'll be further attempts." His voice faltered. "Emma is the next proposed victim."
"Good God!" Dick groaned. "I'd almost forgotten about that." His arm went out to her shoulder. "She'll have to be guarded night and day."
"Of course," Carr agreed. His hand shot out to the telephone. In seconds he had the Police Commissioner on the wire. In seconds more he hung up.
"It's all arranged," he told them grimly. "A detective will trail her wherever she goes, and another man will be stationed all night in the lobby of her apartment house. There won't be a chance for any harm to come to her."
Emma smiled wanly. "And it will also put a stop to any possible chance of my obeying the instructions of the note."
Carr grinned. "Of course. I had thought of that angle, too."
DICK insisted on seeing Emma home that afternoon, detective or no detective. Yet he was oddly quiet all the way. There was something weighing heavily on his mind. Was it concern for her safety, Emma vainly asked herself, or was it—other things?
The elevator brought them swiftly to the fourth floor. No one was in the cage with them, no one loitered in the narrow hall. Yet somehow a shadow dropped like a shrouding mantle on Emma, pierced the marrow of her bones with icy cold. The door of her apartment stared at her with ominous blankness. A strange dread dragged at her feet, held her back. Inside, death had struck horribly; once—perhaps twice. Inside that door two bodies had vanished into thin air. What was waiting for her now?
She had already taken the key out of her bag, handed it to Dick. Its grating noise in the lock sent shivers of impending evil down her spine.
"Please!" she gasped suddenly. "Don't open the door. I—I'd rather go to a hotel to sleep."
Dick looked up in some surprise. "I know, dear, how you feel. But there's really nothing to worry about. The detective in the lobby has orders to permit no one past him who can't identify himself."
It was silly, of course, this eerie feeling that had swept over her. She must not give way to unreasoning fear like that. "You're right," she said with a wan smile. "I'll be brave."
Dick swung the door back quickly. For a tense moment they stood on the threshold, peering into the black maw of the apartment. Emma's hand clutched at Dick Weston's for protection against... nothing. Her lover looked down at his involuntarily balled fists, grinned shamefacedly, and stabbed the foyer light into yellow radiance.
"By George!" he laughed. "For a moment I was afraid something was wrong here. But, see, dear, everything's all right now. There are no dead bodies tumbling against the door; there are no hysterical..."
His voice faltered and trailed into choked silence. His eyes widened on something that gleamed oddly red on the waxed surface of the foyer floor. Emma followed his startled look downward, and shrank against his strong, lithe form. Horror crashed about her ears; the room seemed to sway and whirl before her fainting senses.
"Blood!" she shrieked. "Blood! Dick, what has happened?"
A little, gruesome drop of unmistakable human blood. And beyond it, another. And another. A sinister trail leading on and on, past the bright splash of illumination, merging indistinguishably with the shadowed recesses of the living room.
Dick jerked forward with an oath. His face was grim and craggy; his lips snarled defiance at the unknown menace that lurked within. He catapulted into the darkened room, punched the wall brackets into hooded luminance. He whirled around on the balls of his feet, fists knotted for impending action.
Nothing stirred, nothing moved. Nothing seemed out of place. But their eyes followed, with horrid fascination, the spaced droplets of blood that marched inexorably across the expanse of floor, the scatter rugs...
Emma held herself stiff and rigid against the wall. Her hand clutched at her throat. A great scream tore through her parted lips.
"Look, Dick! There, on the couch!"
A white dinner plate reposed on the overstuffed cushion, where the night before, Olga's unconscious head had lain. On its dead white surface, in grisly similitude of a hideous repast, extended—a human finger!
THE ghastly thing that lay on the plate pointed at them with dreadful accusation; its long, tapering whiteness was still moist and smooth. Raw, red flesh made a spongy pulp at its base as though an axe had cleaved through sinew and bone in one sheer stroke. A ring glowed purple under the lights, flashing in amethystine beauty on the lifeless knuckle.
The breath rattled like dry husks in Emma's throat. Her wide-staring eyes clung to that oblong of purple fire in unbelieving horror. She pressed against the wall as if she wanted to force her tender flesh into its rigid surface. Her lungs emptied in a frightful shriek.
"That ring!" she screamed. "Oh God, its Olga's!"
The lights seemed to darken, her knees crumpled like tissue paper. The slap of cold water on her pallid face and Dick's anxious pleading brought her eyes open again. She was on the couch, but the gruesome relic of her vanished friend was gone.
"Oh Dick!" she whispered, clutching at his sleeve. "It really was—"
Hard lights glinted in his eyes. "Yes," he said grimly. "It was poor Olga's finger, all right. I've put it away, out of sight, for the police." His hand tightened about her arm. His voice grew harsh. "There was something else, Emma. Something that I don't want the police to see."
Fear made her strangled whisper half inaudible. "What was it, Dick? Not another—"
"Not yet. But—well—it was a note, under the plate."
Emma's head fell back with a shudder. "For me?" she gasped. "What—what is in it?"
Dick looked down at her. There was pain, dread, blazing anger, strangely mingled in her eyes. He hesitated a moment.
"It is only fair that I tell you, dear," he said finally. "It says—" Then, instead of reading it, he handed the note to her. She read:
You have disobeyed. You told the police; you told others. The finger of your friend is token that we mean business. At ten sharp this evening proceed alone to Woodlawn Cemetery. At the northeast corner, near Central Avenue, you will find a mausoleum. Wait in front for further instructions. Remember our warning. Come alone and tell no one. Disobey, and the right hand of your friend will follow.
Dick crushed the paper in his white-knuckled hands. "The damned devils!" he exploded. "We'll have a flock of armed detectives hiding in the cemetery. They'll catch the fiends red-handed."
Emma struggled feebly to a sitting position. Her head was a flaming agony and her body was cold all over. Her lips were pale, but compressed. "You'll do nothing of the sort, Dick," she said softly.
He looked at her in amazement. "But dearest," he cried, "it's the best chance we have to put a stop to this horror."
She shook her head with desperate firmness. The words had difficulty in coming out, but their meaning was unmistakable. "I shall do just what the note says," she whispered. "Just—what it says."
She swayed upright, her eyes fixed on far-off things. "I must," she went on painfully. "For Olga's sake."
Dick caught her roughly in his arms. "You shall not sacrifice yourself," he told her fiercely. "I won't permit it. Olga is dead. It's a trap to get you, too."
Emma disengaged herself gently. "No, Dick," her eyes were pools of shuddering darkness, "Olga is still alive. The blood from her finger was still—fresh."
He strained her to him. "I love you, Emma." The words poured out tumultuously. "I won't let you go. Not for Olga, not for the whole world. I'll take you away, anywhere, where you'll forget and be forgotten."
Her heart thumped wildly. She clung to him with wet salt cheeks. Their lips met. Then she tore herself away. "Now I can meet these monsters bravely, unafraid," she said. "Dick, don't you see? Olga is my friend. Somewhere she is being tortured. Great God! Her hand! Dick, how can I?"
A spasm distorted Dick's face. "I understand," he said softly. "You are a very brave girl, Emma." Tight lines ridged his jaw. "I shall not tell the police, but..." He left the sentence trailing in the air, his fists corded into hard knots.
A FROZEN moon stared stonily down on a city of the dead. White headstones glimmered with a ghostly light, granite columns pointed with gruesome mockery at the unheeding stars. The huge mausoleum was dark, unstirring, the habitat of generations of moldering corpses.
Emma shivered in her thin suit coat. In one more minute it would be ten o'clock. She was all alone, even as she had insisted. The blood pulsed coldly in her temples. Her teeth chattered and her throat muscles were stiff with fear. All around her were the earth-wrapped bodies of the dead, and there, in the depths of that shadowed vault, were inhuman monsters—fiends who had torn the living finger from her friend, who had threatened to do far worse if she did not do their bidding. God! What was it they wanted from her? What horrible things would they demand?
Far off, from the depths of the distant city, a church bell made muted sound. The blood congealed in her veins. Ten o'clock! Zero hour! Blindly she turned to run, to drive her terror-rigid limbs down the path, through the forest of gravestones, out on Central Avenue, where warm street lamps glowed and autos rolled, carrying normal human beings on normal human errands.
Her legs rooted suddenly to the ground, her body jerked to a stop. A sinister sound had whispered out at her; a dreadful scraping creak from the vaulted interior of the long-locked mausoleum.
It was too late! As in a dream she saw the rusted iron door swing open, and a figure loom in the yawning blackness. It was huge and shapeless and indistinct. A graveyard odor, fetid and foul, swirled out and enfolded the fainting girl.
"You did well to come," the figure spoke. Its voice was sepulchral, hollow, and queerly echoing. "The axe was eager for Olga Morrell's pretty little hand. It must wait now; wait until you fail to heed our summons."
Emma fought to keep her voice steady. "What—what is it you want of me?"
The dim figure chuckled hollowly. "Very little, my dear. Nothing that you cannot do. Obey and your friend shall live; disobey and her hideous fate shall be your own."
"I shall obey," she whispered through parched lips.
"Good! You are wise! Now listen to me carefully. You have the combination to vault B in the National State Bank. Only three know the secret. You and Olga and James E. Carr." The figure seemed to linger on the name of the vice-president with gloating satisfaction, with charged venom. "There are certain papers in that vault which you, and you alone, can get for me. I must have them."
A red haze swam before the girl's frantic eyes. She shrank against cold, unyielding marble. "I can't," she gasped. The vision of her Chief rose like an accusing angel before her. "They are Mr. Carr's private papers, as well as documents that were left in trust with him by clients for safekeeping. It would ruin him, ruin the bank."
The shrouded being laughed madly. "Who cares? I hate him, have hated him ever since—" He stopped short. His voice was muffled, strangely artificial. "You shall obey, Emma Dale. Remember your friend. Her hands, her tongue even, are forfeit unless you follow orders blindly, unquestionably. She was my first instrument. She was amenable. She brought me a brown envelope in which are letters. Letters for which Mr. James E. Carr will pay and pay until I cast him aside like a sucked orange. But there are other papers in vault B. I demanded that she get them. She refused, the poor fool! You have her finger. Do you wish the rest of her hand?"
Emma drew herself erect. The reproachful vision of Mr. Carr faded. In its place was the pallid, tortured, pleading face of her bosom chum. Her arms thrust out wide in desperate appeal. The moonlight clung with fearful fascination to the gory stump of her missing finger; a red line encircled the thin hand at the wrist, as if already it were marked for the chopping axe.
"I shall obey," she said, and the words seemed to choke off her breath.
THE moon and the stars seemed engaged in a macabre dance as the tortured eyes of the girl gazed up at them, as though pitiably praying forgiveness.
"I knew you'd be sensible," the dim figure chuckled with sinister intonation. "Now this is what you have to do. Tomorrow night, at nine o'clock, proceed to the bank. The door that leads into the vault room from Vesey Street will be unlocked. Make certain no one sees you enter. The door of the steel cage will also yield to your hand. A tiny wedge will hold the time lock loose in the groove. You will enter, open vault B, and place all its documents within a large manila folder which you will carry. Then lock the vault again, and return with all speed to your apartment. Further orders will await you there. But remember, wear no gloves when you open the vault!"
Emma fell back in horror. The whole dreadful, fiendish scheme swept across her consciousness. She remembered now. Mr. Carr had impressed upon her the value of a certain legal paper that only two weeks ago had been deposited with him for safekeeping. "This instrument above all," he had warned, "must be kept safe. Make certain every time you open the vault that it is there; make certain of its safety the last moment you shut the door. It's a description of a secret manufacturing process, embodied in the form of a contract between the inventor and the manufacturer. It's worth millions to rival manufacturers, and it can't be patented."
Her fingerprints would be there for all to find. Who would believe her story? Not the client who had entrusted the bank with the contract. Not the police. Not Mr. Borden, the pompous, slave-driving president. Perhaps not even Mr. Carr, her boss. In her mind's eye she saw the hurt, reproachful look in his face. He had placed her in her present job; he had always taken a kindly interest in her affairs. And this was his reward.
"I can't do it," she moaned. "They will know it was I. I shall be sent to jail like a common thief."
The shrouded figure chuckled horribly. "Of course. That is part of my plan. No one will suspect the true author, the true instigator. They will think your wild story the fantastic product of a depraved imagination. They will think you and Olga were accomplices, that you fell out, and that you murdered her. Already the police, the bank officials, are skeptical of that strange yarn about the vanished dead man in your apartment, and of Olga Morrell's strange disappearance. But don't worry. They can't prove the murder. You'll get a few years in prison at the most. You may even go free. What is that compared to the frightful torture of your friend, her gradual dismemberment; your own, too, if you falter."
Emma lifted a weary hand to her clammy forehead. "I'll do it, then," she choked, "if you promise to release Olga, not to harm her any more."
The figure in the yawning door said triumphantly: "I promise! Now remember! Nine o'clock, tomorrow evening." There was a grating, creaking noise, as if a long-rusty door were being closed. The shadowy being melted slowly into indistinguishable darkness.
Feet pounded suddenly. Huge, distorted shadows raced headlong across the frozen whiteness of the cemetery. Something catapulted past the fear-stricken girl, smashed like a thunderbolt into the closing orifice. Was that another form which flitted like a bat into the maw of Hell? The great iron door thudded into position with a crash of metal.
Shouts, cries, oaths, the thud of heaving bodies, filtered through the muffling barrier. Emma stared blindly around. She must get out of this place of corpses and demons and men who were worse than any fiends. But her limbs were paralyzed with terror: her muscles refused to do her bidding.
THE iron door slammed outward again. Its heavy metal clanged against the marble of the mausoleum. Two figures catapulted out of the heaving darkness. They threshed wildly over the turf and graves, against the headstones. The moonlight enfolded their struggling forms with a frozen halo.
"Dick!" Emma screamed. "George Simpson!"
The two men jerked apart at her cry as if they were puppets on a string. They crouched away from each other, fists clenched, eyes glaring.
"You!" They snarled simultaneously. Then they leaped for each other's throat.
Life flowed back into the girl. She darted between the frenzied men. "Stop it, both of you!" she demanded. "What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here?"
George Simpson lifted his colorless face. His eyes burned with strange madness. "I'd have had him if Weston hadn't interfered," he groaned. "I had my hand on his cloak when Weston piled into me like a wild beast." His voice rose to a thin scream. "He's in cahoots with him. He's after Mr. Carr's job, that's what he is. Take care, Emma Dale. They'll do to you what they did to Olga." All his fierceness seemed suddenly to ebb from him. A long, tearing sob racked his wasted frame. "Poor Olga, where are you now?"
Dick jerked toward him. His eyes blazed in the eerie light. "You are the man in back of this, Simpson," he raged. "You can't get away with it like that. There was no one else in the vault. Don't think I don't know what you are. Poor Olga! You made love to her so you could wangle yourself into the bank. Convict! Jailbird!"
Simpson fell back as if he had been struck across the face. His features distorted into a frightful mask of despair. "So you know that!" he said hopelessly.
Emma was in a whirl of conflicting emotions. It was impossible about Dick, as Simpson had accused. It was true; nevertheless, that Dick hoped some day to step into Mr. Carr's shoes. But only, she was certain, when the vice-president had moved up. As for George Simpson! Damning fingers pointed at him, mouthed, soundless accusations at his wasted form. Already Dick was moving toward him.
"Wait!" she cried desperately. "While you two are fighting, perhaps the real villain is in the tomb, chuckling at both of you."
Dick glanced suspiciously at Simpson, muttered something, and raced back to the door. The paying teller shot Emma a queer look and darted after him. Blackness swallowed them whole.
The girl waited with every muscle strained, every nerve-end shrieking. Had she sent Dick to his death? Was Simpson even now...
Sharp, scratching sounds issued from the murky opening. Flame spurted. Someone had struck a match. Feet banged hollowly on echoing stone. Another match flared into yellow fire. And another. Low mutters, grunts, drifted out to the trembling girl.
Then all light died, and both men came out, glaring at each other anew. Something squeezed Emma's skull. "Was there—was there..." she stammered.
"Not a sign of anyone," Dick growled shortly. "It's just as I thought."
"Sure!" Simpson said bitterly. "You'd blame me, naturally. But where is the cloak I was supposed to wear? How did that disappear?"
Dick stopped short. "Great Scott, that's right. I never thought of that."
The moon was slanting westward. Its long fingers of ghostly light groped along the inscription that stretched across the front of the mausoleum. Emma's eyes flicked over the graven letters, and stiffened suddenly in their orbits.
"My God!" she breathed. "Look!"
The two men stared upward. There, graved in enduring stone, were the words:
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
ERECTED IN MEMORY
OF HIS ANCESTORS
BY WILLIAM BORDEN
ANNO DOMINI 1917
EMMA spent that night in a quiet, inconspicuous hotel in the west seventies. Dick had insisted on that. "You can't stay alone in your apartment any more," he had told her. "Whoever is responsible has a duplicate key. And I still think its Simpson," he had added, "in spite of his plausible explanations."
Simpson had told his story in short, quivering phrases. How the first he had known of the dreadful disappearance of the girl he loved had come from the newspapers. How Emma had evaded him when he sought for information. How he had gone almost mad. How he had determined to watch Emma, and had trailed her to the cemetery. Perhaps, Emma thought, he really was telling the truth.
"Now listen to me," Dick said to her before he left. "You can't help Olga now. They'll never release her. She knows too much. And by God, before I'll let you put your own head into that damnable noose, I'll wreck the bank myself." He was a very pale, very determined young man, and his arms were strong. "I won't let you go until you promise."
Emma closed her eyes, shuddering. Dick was right. Olga was doomed, no matter what she did. The anguished face of her friend rose like an accusing vision, faded away as Dick gripped her even closer.
"I promise," she said almost inaudibly.
CARR was in conference with Mr. Borden, the president, when she arrived at the office the next morning. Borden was in a towering rage. His heavy-set body quivered with anger. His broad, fleshy face was red and flustered. There were dark, heavy pouches under his eyes, as if he had not slept much the night before. His veined eyes gleamed curiously on Emma as she entered quietly, then they swerved back to Carr.
"I don't intend waiting another day," he exploded. "What do I care what happened to Olga Morrell! I have work to get out. I'm hiring a new secretary today, unless—" and his glance flicked oddly over Emma again, "you're willing to let me have Miss Dale in her place."
A vague tingle of dread coursed up Emma's spine. Carr looked up, saw the pleading look in her eyes. His own face was haggard. Poor man, she thought, the loss of those letters is preying upon him.
"Nonsense," he told Borden with an effort at joviality. "Miss Dale is my sole anchor to the windward in this whole damned institution. I'd feel lost without her. Besides, I wouldn't dare trust any newcomer with the combination to B vault now. You know, Borden, what tremendous value Hornstoffel puts on that contract I put in there. If anything should happen to it..."
"Yes, yes, of course," Borden muttered hastily. "Keep Miss Dale then. But I'm getting someone else in Olga's place, right now."
He stalked out of the room, still muttering. Carr fell back in his chair with a sigh of relief. "Pompous windbag," he said. Then he smiled at the girl in a tired way. "Sorry. You weren't supposed to hear that. Now tell me, please, were you molested any more? Sleep all right?"
"I didn't stay home," the girl answered. "I was—uh—a bit afraid. I spent the night at the Hotel Riviera."
"Very sensible idea," he assented warmly. "Just sit tight and I doubt if you'll be bothered any more."
Emma shut her eyes in anguish, forced them open, forced a smile on her face. She and Dick had determined that she was not to tell Carr or any one else of their frightful experiences of the night. Perhaps the unknown murderer had methods of discovering whether she talked or not.
"And you, Mr. Carr?" she inquired. "Have you found that package yet?" She dared not tell him that she knew he hadn't; that it was in the hands of a sinister, unscrupulous being.
The vice-president's face clouded. Fear sprang into his eyes. "No," he answered huskily.
He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more; then stopped himself with a visible effort. "But I'm not going to burden you any more. You have enough to worry about as it is... Here, run over to the branch office and check over these files." He shoved a slip of paper over to her.
Emma took it mutely. The words of sympathy died on her lips as she turned suddenly. She had felt a faint draft of air. The outer door of the office was softly closing. Someone had been listening. Who?
AT the Hotel Riviera Emma paused hesitantly at the desk for her key. She was alone. Dick at the last moment had received a call from a downtown client about an important matter. The clerk, a dark, sallow-looking man, did not even look up as he handed it to her. He was reading a newspaper under the desk.
Some inner voice warned the girl not to go up to her room. It had been bright and sunny outside, but in here, in the faded plush lobby, the shadows clung with sinister tenacity. She shrugged her shoulders angrily. Only Dick knew she was here. The door was locked. What was there to be afraid of?
She entered the elevator, got off at the third floor. Her room was the second down the hall. Her heart was strangely heavy. She turned to ask the elevator boy to open the room door for her, but the cage was already ascending rapidly.
"This is being silly," she told herself over and over again. But the palms of her hands were wet, and the roof of her mouth dry. The key trembled in her fingers. With an effort of will she flung the door open. Her eyes went downward, hypnotized, toward the worn carpet. Somehow she knew what they would find.
On the floor, a splotch of ghastly white against the faded red, was a hand. It reared itself in a tortured clutch at nothingness. The sticky blood from the severed wrist stained the rug a more gruesome red. The fingers groped upward in horrible seeking. All except one—the third finger. A clotted smear covered the severed knuckle.
The cry that strained the muscles of her throat strangled in its own birth. Waves of alternating heat and cold shuddered over her body in quick succession. A clamping shroud of horror squeezed her brain to madness. She swayed unsteadily.
"Oh God, I must not faint!" she moaned. Her hand went blindly back, steadied against the open door. She bit her lip until the blood gushed forth. The pain cleared her darkened mind. She must act swiftly, swiftly—before...
She steeled herself to what she had to do. She closed the door behind her; locked it. No one had been outside in the corridor. She was alone in the tiny room, alone with this gruesome relic of one who had been her dearest friend. The severed hand of Olga Morrell!
Her flesh crawled at the contact, but she forced herself to lift it up, wrap it hastily in a towel. Underneath, even as she had known, was the inevitable square of note paper. The black letters danced before her eyes, fell into a sinister pattern.
Once again you have disobeyed. You laid a trap, but I am not to be caught. Behold the token of your treachery. This is the final warning. Proceed with your instructions tonight, or tomorrow your friend's tongue will be ripped from her mouth, and your own finger will join it.
A wild light gleamed in Emma's eyes. She was beyond fear now, beyond any terror. Dick would never have recognized the grim, avenging madness of her face. Yes, she would go to the bank tonight; she would follow the instructions carefully, but...
With not a backward glance at the dreadful bulge in the towel, she opened the door, locked it behind her, and went downstairs. At the desk she inquired in a voice that was barely steady.
"Were there any calls for me today?"
The clerk mumbled over his paper. "None, Miss Dale." Then he looked up suddenly. "Yes, there was," he exclaimed. "I'd almost forgotten. A man with a package under his arm asked for your room number. Said he had a delivery to make."
Emma's heart stopped. She knew what that package contained. "Do you remember what he looked like?" she asked eagerly. Yet a great dread filled her that he might remember only too well.
The clerk stroked his sallow chin. "Let me see now. Yes, I've got it. A tall, gaunt, cadaverous-looking individual. He seemed to be sour on the whole world."
"Thanks!" She was barely able to squeeze out the single word as she turned and ran into the street. It was absolutely impossible of course. The dead didn't come back to life, not in the twentieth century. There was more than one man who answered that brief description.
THE downtown financial district was dark at nine o'clock. The tremendous towers were blank, gloomy walls, pricked only here and there by the light of a tardily-closing office. The streets were almost deserted. A chance wayfarer hurried through the narrow canyons, head bent low, looking neither to the right or left, anxious only to get home to wife and family. A policeman thumped stolidly along, checked in at the corner signal box, and went on his way.
Emma moved cautiously along the wall of the huge gray National State Building. The shadows were almost black. A feverish fire burned in her brain, the expiring embers of the madness that had possessed her all day long. Inside her handbag, faintly outlined, was the hard bulge of a tiny automatic. No one knew she was here. Not even Dick. She must fight this out alone. No one else could help.
She slipped into the side street where the heavy steel door connected with the vault rooms. It was closed, naturally, but it opened silently to her touch. The last of her madness left her suddenly. A wave of sick terror swept over her. Her heart pounded in her breast until it seemed as if it would burst. The inhuman monster had been as good as his word. Even now, perhaps, he was lurking somewhere around, waiting for her to do his nefarious work, and then...
It was too late to back out now. If Olga were still alive, she must do what she could to save her. As for herself... Iron had entered her soul.
Deliberately she descended into the black pit of the long steel corridor. A tiny flash with which she had provided herself showed her the way. The murderer had known enough of the bank's interior, not only to open doors, but to disconnect the burglar alarms.
Her tiptoeing feet made no noise on the hard stone. The light flicked eerily to the right and left, and disclosed nothing but rows of steel grilles and the somber mechanism of the gigantic vaults within. They were built to withstand fire, steel, nitroglycerine, and earthquake. All except the touch of fingers that knew the combinations, Emma thought bitterly.
It was gloomy enough during the day. But now the black shadows fled in front and closed in behind like inky waters. If she were caught by the watchman on his rounds, she would have no further chance. Perhaps, too, the shrouded figure of the mausoleum was peering out at her from some hidden corner, waiting until she opened the vault that was beyond his powers to open, waiting until she had abstracted the papers for which he had killed and maimed and tortured.
For the first time sickening realization came to her. It shrieked in long, rumbling echoes through her brain; it leered at her through a coruscation of blinding sparks. The pattern of the fiendish plot was complete. Once she emerged with the contract, once her finger prints were planted on the gleaming dials, he would kill her without pity, without mercy. In the morning they would find her body, cold and lifeless. He would not take the slim chance that her story would be believed. Dead men—and women—tell no tales...
She stopped short in the darkness, shuddering. How splendid her plan had seemed in the light of day. To take the contract, the other papers, to substitute for them at home envelopes of worthless newsprint. To await the coming of the archfiend; and shoot him down as one would a ravening animal. And even if she failed, still to bargain for Olga's poor, maimed life in exchange for the original documents. But now...
Panic gripped her with iron bands. She must get out of this underground dungeon of death, before... She stiffened suddenly to moveless marble. Back there, down the long steel passageway from the street, came faint whispers of sound. Someone, something, was inching his way forward through the darkness, creeping toward her with barely discernible tread.
A spasm of dread jerked her finger down on the flashlight trigger. The pencil of light was blotted out. Menacing darkness swept over her, enfolded her quivering form in its death-cold embrace. She shrank back against the steel bars of the grille. Withheld breath tore at her lips, expanded her lungs into bursting bellows.
The whisper of feet grew to a scraping of leather on stone. The stealthy approach of a man groping through impenetrable darkness, trying to make no sound. Closer—closer—So close now Emma could hear the rustle of his clothes, the faint, panting exhalations of his breath.
SHE pressed frantically against the bars. Her flesh squeezed into ridged indentations. Her lungs were fiery torment, yet she dared not breathe. The slightest sound, the faintest whisper of air, would mean her doom. Dear God, she prayed, make him go on! Make him oblivious of my presence.
Rough cloth brushed against her arm. A scream tore at her vitals and died un-uttered. Her skin was a winding sheet of terror. Had he felt, had he sensed her presence?
For one dreadful moment the padding ceased. He had stopped, was though listening. The breath from his nostrils was strong in her face. Then the stealthy progress was resumed. He had not known then; he was going on. The noise retreated into the distance, died away.
Thank God! Tears of relief streamed down her cheeks. Now she would be able to race back into the street, into the dean air of the night. There must be a policeman within hail. He would raise the alarm, he would...
She felt her way frantically along the bars. She must get out quickly, before the silent marauder returned. There was a sudden click, startlingly loud in the darkness. A heavy door yielded to her pressing shoulder. Emma staggered wildly, lost her balance, and fell with a crash to the cold stone floor within.
For a long moment she lay in a huddled heap, hardly daring to breathe, straining for sounds that would prove that the nocturnal visitor had heard, and was returning to claim her as his prey. Once indeed, she thought she heard a muffled cry, the soft thud of a falling body. But listen as hard as she could, there were no other sounds. The stygian blackness of the vaults was silent as the grave. It must have been the pounding of her own blood, she decided finally.
She rose noiselessly to her feet. Her limbs were cramped and stiff; the pit of her stomach a churning queasiness. The darkness hemmed her in, oppressed her with an almost physical weight. She must have light, at whatever cost; she must know where she was.
The tiny flash sprang into flame at her touch. The white radiance impinged on massive tumblers and huge round dials, on all the shining mechanism of a sealed vault door. She shrank back with a whimper of fear. Her breath came in little frozen gasps. She was inside of vault B, the very vault that the sinister murderer had ordered her to rifle. The barred steel door had opened to her blind touch, just as he had promised it would.
She whirled in a frenzy of madness. She must flee this place of dungeons and unseen prowlers before it was too late. Already her clawing fingers were on the outer grill. Then she stopped, frozen in her tracks at a searing thought. Olga, her chum, her companion! If she fled like any coward, if she did not complete her mission, tomorrow, the note had promised her, the ripped-out tongue of the tortured girl would be sent her in dreadful token. The anguished face of the captive floated like a pallid will-of-the-wisp before her eyes, pleading, crying soundlessly for mercy.
With the supreme courage of friendship Emma forced herself back to her allotted task. She placed her handbag on the floor. She needed both hands: one to hold the flash, the other to spin the complicated dials. Her fingers moved feverishly over their faces. She must hurry—hurry...
THE tumblers clicked rapidly, one after another. She knew the swings by heart. Ah, there it was, the final click! With a hand that trembled uncontrollably she pulled the heavy steel open.
Inside was a lined steel chamber, barely large enough for a man to enter. To the right were the steel boxes, in which the documents were kept. Wills, mortgages, contracts, trust agreements, valuable papers entrusted to the bank for safekeeping. And among them the sealed and secret formula belonging to Mr. Hornstoffel. The formula that was worth millions of dollars to a rival manufacturer.
The beam of light bored into the black interior. Quickly she emptied the boxes of their contents, and thrust the crackling documents into a manila folder, just as she had been directed. Shivering, she closed the rifled vault, spun the dials back into position. Now, if she could only slip out of this subterranean place of fear, there might still be a chance—a slim chance of thwarting the fiend...
In the name of God, what was that? Muffled footsteps, padding stealthily through the bowels of the bank. Down the long, barred passage, sweeping the steel and stone of the strong room, came the questing eye of a small pocket flash. The sinister creature of the night was returning, coming for her openly!
Emma whimpered and crouched low against the farthest corner of the cage. She flicked her torch into blankness. The manila folder with its precious freight hugged tight to her fluttering heart.
On and on came the quivering tip of illumination, darting from side to side, alert, malign, seeking. It leaped avidly on her stricken form, enfolded her in its betraying rays.
From outside came a low exclamation. The door of the cage swung wide and a man thudded in. A strangled scream ripped from Emma's throat. The beating flame dazzled, blinded her. She jerked upright and sprang wildly for the steel grill.
"No, you don't," someone ejaculated. A large hand shot out of the dark behind the torch, pushed her stumbling and crashing back into the cage. She sank down to the floor, still clutching the envelope. She was doomed now, hopelessly. The unknown monster had come to claim the fruits of his awful crimes, to seal her tongue in eternal silence. She raised her eyes in dreadful despair.
The shadowed figure behind the gleaming flash fell back with a cry. "Emma! You! What are you doing here?"
She jerked like a puppet to that cry. She sprang to her feet, panting with incredulous relief. That voice! How well she knew it!
"Mr. Carr!" she breathed fervently. "Thank God it is you!" She was saved, saved! The frozen blood in her veins melted and flowed into warm life again. He would know what to do. She had been a fool not to have confided in him before.
But her chief held the flash unswerving on her body, on the package she still clutched with desperate tightness. "Emma, you have rifled the vault!" His voice was harsh, rasping. "The one person in the world I thought I could trust. So it was you all along."
The girl fell back from him. In the ecstasy of her deliverance she had forgotten the incriminating situation in which she had been found. With sudden overwhelming clarity she realized how halting, how unbelievable her explanations would be to an unfeeling judge, a skeptical jury. She had been caught red-handed, and by her employer. The man whose kindness and trust she had betrayed.
She clasped her hands over her bosom. "You must believe me, Mr. Carr," she pleaded desperately. "I can explain, if only you will listen."
THE vice-president turned. His face was hard and terrible in the reflected light, and his eyes held baleful lightnings. Emma had never seen him before like this.
"I never thought," he said harshly, "when I decided to make sure that everything was all right down here, that I would find you to be the thief. It's a terrible blow to me. But talk fast, if you have any explanation, before I hand you over to the police." His eyes glared at her bare hands, the envelope in their grip, flicked to the shiny tumblers of the closed vault behind her.
Emma poured out all her terrible, incredible story. She must convince him, otherwise... disgrace, trial, jail stared her in the face. And as for Olga—The words tumbled over each other; she was pleading with a strangely merciless judge, she was talking against time.
Carr stared down into her tear-drenched, imploring face. She watched every move of his still-shadowed features; she searched his eyes in vain for dawning understanding, for mercy. Then suddenly, as she reached the very end, hopeless of persuasion, a change seemed to come over his countenance.
"So you intended all along to double-cross the man who had given you these instructions," he said in a strange new tone. "You intended to kill him and to rescue Olga?"
"Exactly," Emma cried eagerly. "Oh, surely, you believe me."
For a long moment Carr did not talk. His face seemed distorted in the shadows. "Yes," he answered finally. "I believe you."
"Thank you! Thank you!" the girl breathed. Everything was all right now, everything would...
Carr extended his hand. "You'd better let me have that envelope."
Mechanically she held it out. Then her hand jerked back a trifle. There was something about his manner, his voice, that was not right. A little spot of dread glowed in her bosom. She looked up quickly. The reflected light from the burnished steel splashed into his eyes. Great God! She had never seen him look like that before. His pupils were pinpoints of glaring madness, of avid, overpowering lust. His round, smooth face was hideously like a demon's mask, and his thin, straight lips writhed in soundless hate.
Emma shrank away from him in a palsy of terror. What had happened to him? Why did he look that way? "Perhaps—Mr. Carr," she faltered, "I had better put them back in the vault."
The man's hand stiffened. It shot out with incredible speed. "Give them to me, I tell you," he rasped. His voice was suddenly like the snarl of a wolf.
Horror exploded like a million blinding rockets in the girl's skull. That snarling, incredible voice! Merciful God! It was the voice of the shrouded figure of the cemetery. James E. Carr, bank official, her employer, was a murderer, a torturer, a fiend in human form!
With a sob of terror she eluded his clutching grasp, sprang desperately for the door. If only she could slam through that grating in time! Her frozen hands tugged frantically at the heavy steel. It started to swing... Stone-heavy fingers pounced on her shoulder, dug in with tearing nails. Too late; too late!
"So you thought you'd double-cross me, eh?" the man snarled. His breath was hot on her neck. "You'll burn for that; you'll burn until you'll shriek for death to come, just as Olga does." He laughed madly. "That's how I deal with those who refuse to do my bidding."
She was lost! Sound proof walls, yards thick, separated her from the upper reaches of the bank, from the outer street. Carr seemed to sense her thoughts. "No one will ever hear your anguished screams down here, my dear," he gloated.
SHE clung to the bars with frantic strength, but her hands were slowly slipping. A wild idea darted through her mind. She would die, yes, but Carr must not escape to chuckle over his crimes. Her right hand dropped suddenly to the massive spring lock. Her fingers tore at the small wedge of wood that held the latch back in its socket. Carr swore a fearful oath. His balled fist crashed against her arm. There was a sickening snap, and her nerveless fingers fell away.
But the tiny wedge had already dropped to the floor. Emma kicked out wildly. The great steel door rocked, and swung forward into position. There was a sullen click. Latch fitted tightly into groove. The electrical circuit was complete!
They were both shut in, prisoners in the cage, until the time clock functioned in the morning. The guard was always present then.
"Now do your worst," she cried triumphantly. "I shall die satisfied, knowing that you will pay the penalty for your fiendish crimes."
Carr thrust back his head and laughed. It held a horrible intonation. "Very clever," he mocked, "but not clever enough."
She squirmed unavailing in his taloned grip. "What do you mean?" she panted. If only she could get to her handbag. Inside was the tiny automatic. But the five feet that separated them was like a million miles.
"Just this, my dear," he chuckled. "I came prepared to kill you in this cage, after you had abstracted the papers. I could not afford to let you live. But I had intended your death to be a painless one. Now, however, because you thought to outwit me, first with the papers, and then with this silly trick of closing the time-lock, I shall prolong your tortures to unbearable lengths. Then I shall remove your blackened, twisted body, and dump it in a certain swamp I know of where it will never be found. Tomorrow, when the bank is opened, Hornstoffel's contract will be gone, and your fingerprints will betray you. They will search for you, and finally give it up as a bad job. While I, my dear, will make millions—millions, do you hear?—From those secret formulae."
Emma's brain reeled at the fiendish revelations. "But you never will be able to get out of this vault yourself," she panted.
"Won't I?" he cackled. "You forget. On the hook in the farther corner of the vault there always hangs an acetylene torch in case of just such an emergency as this. Its hot blast will eat through the steel bars like butter. But enough of talk. Time is getting short."
He heaved the shrieking girl smashing to the ground. Her head struck the steel flooring with a sickening smash. Then everything went dark.
AWARENESS came to her slowly. Her limbs seemed queerly stretched. Her eyes opened shuddering on a scene of indescribable horror. Ropes lashed her cruciform to the jutting knobs of the great steel vault. Her coat had been stripped from her body, and her dress torn from her shoulders. The thongs were cruelly tight and ridged her flesh into great welts.
The cage was in darkness. But out of the tar-barrel murk, forking toward her like the darting tongue of a deadly serpent shot a streamer of sizzling fire.
The heat of its lancing blaze shriveled her skin, seared her dress to smoldering ruin. Out of a nozzle it streamed, roaring with hell's own fires. An acetylene torch!
"I was waiting for you to come to life," Carr chuckled. His blunt fingers gripped the nozzle; his madman's face was etched in the bluish flare of the hideous blast.
He pushed the nozzle closer. The flame licked out, came to a focus inches away from the tender line of her shoulder. The heat was insupportable; the pain unendurable. She moaned and flung herself madly in her bonds.
"This is just a taste," Carr laughed mockingly. "Wait until the bright flame plays around your lovely eyes. Then you'll know what suffering is."
"You damned beast!" The crashing voice spun Carr around. The wild flame seared across Emma's arm in a scorching weal, but she did not care.
"Dick! Dick!" she cried. "Help!"
Dick Weston hammered furiously on the door. His face was a corpse-white mask in the devilish light; his head was clotted with blood. "Let her go, Carr," he shouted, "or I'll strangle you to death with my bare hands."
"So you've come to life again, Weston," the vice-president snarled. "I thought I had knocked you out for good back there in the passageway. Well, it doesn't matter. You'll have the pleasure of seeing the girl you love roast slowly to death. I'm sure you'll enjoy her dying agonies."
Dick crashed against the unyielding bars again and again. The blood streaked down his tortured face. "You can't get away with this," he gritted.
"No?" Carr seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. "Too bad I took your gun away from you, isn't it? How else can you stop me?"
"Hold tight, Emma," Dick yelled suddenly. "I'll get help from the street. There's a policeman—"
Carr shook his head in mock commiseration. "You can't get out. I locked the door after I hit you on the head as you were groping in the dark. I have the key. When I'm through with Emma, I'll burn my way out of this cage, and you won't be able to stop me. Because, my dear fellow, I have a gun. Two guns, as a matter of fact. And you will remain here all night with your beloved. Now make yourself comfortable and watch."
He swung back to Emma again. The horrible flame seared with a master's touch, just far enough away to save her from instant death, yet near enough for exquisite tortures. It swept over her shoulders, down her arms, while Emma moaned and shrieked for mercy, and Dick outside howled like a wild beast and threw himself in mad fury again and again against the steel.
"And now, my dear," Carr said unctuously, "we'll burn out your beautiful eyes. Not all at once, you understand. But one at a time, and very gradually."
Emma flung herself against the ropes. But they were strong and taut. The vaults reverberated with her cries and Dick's wild threats. The quivering point of fire lifted slowly, burning a red slash up the tender softness of her bosom. Oh God, let me die now, she prayed! Rather sudden, merciful oblivion than the searing horror approaching her eyeballs.
She twisted her head madly from side to side, trying desperately to avoid the creeping flames. Then she saw the handbag. It lay in a splash of reflected light on the floor. About four feet in from the bars where Dick pressed with dreadful eyes and imploring lips.
A wild hope flickered through her. The gun in the bag! If only she could make Dick understand, if only he could reach it somehow!
"Dick! Dick!" she screamed. She dared not mention the bag. Carr would pull it altogether out of reach. Yet Dick must be made to know.
"Scream all you want, my dear," Carr gloated. "He can't help you. No one can."
CARR played with her as a cat plays with the mouse it holds in its cruel claws. He sent the flame closer, closer. Her cheeks scorched, her eyes blinded with scalding tears. Searing agony smashed into her brain.
"Dick!" she screamed again. She forced her swollen lids wide, stared frantically down at the bag. Why didn't he see—why didn't he understand?
Dick Weston stopped his frantic hammering on the bars. Bewilderment swept over his lean, white face. His eyes dropped with hers to the stone floor, following their path. There lay the handbag. The bewilderment, the pain, seemed to deepen. A great, tortured sob burst from the girl. He had not understood! Within its black, silken cover was a bulge, faint but unmistakable.
Suddenly he stiffened. His eyes widened. He had seen at last! His hand darted through the bars, clutched wildly. His fingers pawed with terrible haste. But it was no use. The bag lay tantalizingly barely a foot away. So close to salvation, and yet...
Emma jerked her head wildly to one side. An instant later, and the flame would have roared into an eyeless socket. It was all over now. Before Dick could find anything with which to reach the bag, she would be blind, roasted alive.
The flame sizzled and leaped. Carr's hideously mad features etched unforgettably on her blurred vision. Soon he would tire of playing with her, and then...
She saw Dick draw back in dreadful, despairing anguish. Then suddenly, silently, like a shadow, he was gone. Gone to leave her to her fate! She sagged in her bonds. Let the monster do his worst now. It didn't matter. Dick had deserted her in her extremity.
What was that faint, scraping noise? Heedless of the agony across her cheek, she opened her eyes. Dick was back again flat on the ground. A fire-axe was in his hands. It thrust between the bars, reached closer and closer...
Wild hope flared through her tortured being. She shrieked, tonelessly, terribly, over and over. Carr must not hear those sounds.
The vice-president chuckled with terrible glee. "It hurts, doesn't it, my dear? Just imagine what it will be now when I lift the torch a bit. The left eye first."
Lightnings flashed and coruscated through her skull. Blinding heat smashed into her eyeball. Through the tight-shut lid red-hot needles drove. She shrieked in frightful agony. It was impossible to stand it any more! In another instant she would be blind... blind...! Goodbye, Dick! It's no use! Even if you have reached the bag...
The vault crashed with roaring concussions of sound. Gun shots! Scorching flame slashed horribly over her shoulder. There was the dreadful smell of charred flesh, of burning rope.
Then cold air rushed over her heated skin like a healing lotion. Someone shrieked. There was a dull thud, followed by the smash of metal on stone.
"Darling! Darling! Are you all right?" Dick's voice pierced the dreadful clamor, wild with anxiety.
She opened her eyes. They smarted and burned, but she could still see! Blessed light from the flash in Dick's hand.
"You were just in time," she whispered painfully through swollen lips. "Wait a moment!" She tore feverishly at her bonds. The smoldering strands ripped away from her body. She fell limply to the ground. She was free.
SHE rose again, tottering, her body a raw ache, every nerve-end shrieking. But she was happy, blissfully content. James E. Carr sprawled face down, motionless. Blood welled from a bullet hole in his back. The acetylene tank was a smashed and useless mass of metal.
The two lovers strained through the bars toward each other. Their lips met in warm, clinging embrace.
"We'll have to wait until morning for the time lock to operate, dearest," Dick said.
Emma laughed in a choked voice. "It doesn't matter, as long as I'm with you."
Dick stared past her at the dead vice-president. "But why did Carr do all this?" he asked. "He could have taken the papers easily enough himself."
"To cast suspicion upon myself, or upon Olga. My fingerprints are all over the dials. He boasted about it before you came. And I don't believe that brown envelope which he pretended had been stolen held any papers that implicated him. But that way it made him seem a victim of the thefts as well as the bank's clients." She shuddered. "Tell me, Dick," she asked hesitatingly, "what—what about Olga?"
His face went grim and hard. "Poor girl, she is better off as it is. Simpson traced her somehow to a vacant loft where she was being held prisoner. I trailed him, thinking all the time he was the master criminal in back of all this. But I got there too late. There had been a gun battle in which Simpson killed the man who was guarding Olga. From your description I recognized him as the fellow who had followed you that night, and whose body had sprawled in your apartment, seemingly murdered. He had raced around the block, and let himself into your place with a duplicate key they had compelled Olga to furnish them. He dabbed his shirt with red paint to simulate blood, figuring that you'd do exactly what you did. When you ran out for help, he carried Olga quickly into a closet. You didn't think of searching again. And when you ran out a second time for the police, he took the unconscious girl away with Carr's help. It was Carr who frightened you on the stairs."
Dick grimaced. "That way they killed two birds with one stone. They kidnapped Olga for refusing to do Carr's vile bidding any longer, and scared you to death, so you'd be amenable to their threats. Poor Olga!" he went on softly. "She died in Simpson's arms..."
Emma shivered. "And you! How did you get down here?"
"As soon as I saw what had happened, I phoned your hotel. They told me you had gone out early, and hadn't returned. I suspected then that you had broken your promise to obey those instructions. I rushed down here, found the door open, and was groping my way along in the dark, not daring to show a light, when something smashed down on my head."
"I'm sorry," Emma whispered. "But there's still one thing puzzling me. Why did Olga agree to steal for Carr in the first place?"
"Because Carr had learned somehow of Simpson's past, and used it as a threat. But when it came to looting the vault, she rebelled. She knew she was in dreadful danger, yet she could not talk. You see, George Simpson had escaped before his term was up. She didn't tell that even to you."
A vast pity overwhelmed Emma for her tortured, dead friend. She turned blindly to her lover. Their lips clung in a long kiss, while they waited, deep down in the dungeon-like vaults, separated from each other by iron bars, for morning to come.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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