Hamilton Craigie

“ But that velvet black before her was, as she knew, most terribly endowed with motion, sinister, alive, awaiting merely the spark, the pressure of rigid finger upon trigger, the touch of hand against hand, the faintest whisper of a sound, to dissolve in a chaos of red ruin—and with it the ruin of her world.
Abruptly, again she heard that muffled ticking, this time close at hand, and with it, as she fancied, the faint breathing of a man. But even as she heard it, it receded, died; there came the faint snick of metal upon metal, like the snick and slither of a steel blade ”

“ But the man in the black Stetson continued to study the big fellow through the holes in his newspaper: the hard face, tanned a rich saddle color; the nose, flattened to a smudge of flaring nostril; the cauliflower ear.
He had heard the name, "Ellison" once or twice; somewhere, deep down, it had set vibrating a chord of memory that brought with it, incongruously enough, an altogether different setting: a padded ring under twin, blazing arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, bruitish, broad, fists like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very eat for quickness. ”

“ THE ONE HOTEL in Dry Bone was the Mansion House.
Annister, crossing the lobby, was aware of a veiled hostility in the stares directed at him from the group of loungers in the doorway; they gave ground grudgingly, as he came in, with a sort of covert truculence.
Here, as he could see, there was a curious mingling of the Old West and the New: men, whose attire would have created no remark, say, even in New York; others, booted and spurred, cartridge-belted and pistolled—but all, as he noticed, with, for headgear, the inevitable Stetson. ”

“ And it was then, as he stood, turned a little from the safe and facing the heavy door giving on the lumber room, that he straightened, tense, bending to the keyhole.
The door was sound-proof, as were the walls, but abruptly, as a sound heard in dreams, he had heard it: At the keyhole, a sound, or the shadow of a sound, faint and thin, but unmistakable, like the beating of a heart. ”

“ Fear beset Gerald Marston at the very moment of his entry into the chamber—an intense, gripping horror which laid an icy hand upon his forehead and fingers of a damp coldness about his heart.
It was as if one invisible from within had reached forth to make him prisoner to its atmosphere, which, heightened physically by the slimy walls, the velvet darkness, and the ceaseless, slow dripping of liquid upon stone, chilled his soul with a nameless foreboding, a daunting menace of unutterable dread. ”

“ Annister, backing nimbly before the giant's rush, realized that he must avoid a clinch; at in-fighting the giant would have the edge; those mast-like arms and massive shoulders, the huge bulk—they would, at close quarters, with the drumming impact of the great fists, have spelled a quick ending with the sheer, slugging power of the attack.
He heard Rook snarl as, side-stepping like a sliding ghost, he countered with a long, curving left.
So far, he had been holding his own. If he could keep the giant at his distance, he might wear him out. ”

“ The presence in the room of another than himself was a physical impossibility, unless, indeed, there was, after all, a fourth dimension, into which as a man passes from sunlight into shadow, the intruder had stepped perhaps now regarding him sardonically from that invisible plan: A living ghost!
Absurd! And yet, there was that other fact—he had seen it: the silent, the voiceless, yet moving witness—the positive and irrefutable proof of a presence other than his own. ”

“ But mostly it was a fight in silence and darkness, with the quick, hard breathing of men at the last desperate urge of their spent strength.
With her finger again upon the light switch, again she hesitated, and in that flash of time she heard all at once a quick, sobbing breath—a groan—then silence.
Somewhere out there in that midnight blackness her husband might be lying wounded—dead—above him the beast whom she had known as Ronald the Debonair, turning his face now toward the girl who, shivering and defenseless, crouched forlorn upon the bed. ”

“ He had bad news from Mojave: the dentist had identified the insane man as his patient by means of his chart, but, with that face, the man could not be Banker Axworthy—it simply could not be. And yet he was!
It was something of a riddle, and more, even, than that, for the thing savored of the supernatural, of necromancy, of a black art that might, say, have had for its practitioner a certain personage with the eyes of a damned soul and a black, forking beard, curled, like Mephisto's; Annister thought that it might. ”

“ Marston stood for a moment, with groping fingers extended into the void about him; his head sang, his eyes blurred. The velvet black became suddenly, as it were, endowed with life and movement, mysterious, whispering. Near at hand there sounded abruptly a horrible, fetid panting—a gross intake of whistling breath which, in a sudden overmastering panic, he did not recognize as his own labored breathing. ”

“ He was just weak enough to render futile any effort to dislodge those clinging fingers, and just strong enough to continue his progress, like a mole in the dark—and that was all.
He must go on and on until flesh and blood could endure no more, the victim of his own contriving, the veritable bond-slave of his passionate soul. And when at length he should fall, no more to rise, then would come, not swift oblivion, but death, indeed, lingering, horrible, unthinkable, even for a beast. ”

“ Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding insolence which there was apparent a certain mockery, his eyes in a veiled gleaming, like the sun on water. For a long moment their glances engaged, in a silent duel, like rapier points; then the giant with the cauliflower ear vented a sound between a grunt and a snort, turning to the window, his gaze outward across the flat levels of the adjacent prairie in a kind of sightless stare. ”

“ But he could see merely the face, behind it a black well of darkness, velvet black, save for the dim loom of a lofty building just across.
Quarrier did not know how many there might be, lurking there in the blackness, nor did he greatly care. The locked door; the face of the man at the wheel; the unfamiliar street—shanghaied by a land pirate, at the very least! There could be no doubt of it.
But it was no time for hesitation. If he were in the wrong, and it was all a mistake—well, he could afford to pay. But—the face of Marston arose before him, suave, sinister, smilling. . . . ”

“ The scream, lodged in her throat now, seemed like a bird beating against bars; in a moment the silence would be ripped from end to end, as a sheet is ripped from point to point, with the tearing impact of that scream, rising heavenward with the first defiling touch of those groping fingers. Armitage's face on that evening had been the face of a satyr, high-colored, the nose sharpened to a point of greed, the eyes in a wide, avid staring upon the perfect curve of her shoulders, her neck. ”

“ When he became stronger he would bury it, hide it. Years might pass—perhaps a chance party might discover in one of the innumerable corridors a moldering skeleton—but the body of his guilt would be a corpus delicti—there could be no conviction without evidence, and no murder without a victim produced as of due process of law.
But in a moment it seemed this thought gave place to the overmastering panic terror of escape. Instinct alone held him to his course. If there had been light one might have seen the foam which gathered on his lips, the glassy stare of his eyes. ”

“ Then, standing in the doorway, Annister's eyes narrowed; he stood rigid, tense.
For the man facing him across the stained and battered desk, lean head like a vulture’s set upon wide shoulders; mouth like a straight gash with its thin, bloodless lips; cold eyes fixed upon him in a silent, ophidian brightness—was— the "third light," as he had called him —the man whom he had met for a moment back there in the smoker of the Transcontinental. ”

“ There, in a locked, bolted, impregnable chamber, unmarked by the least sign of entry—a main door which did not have a key, responding only to a combination known only to himself—a secondary door most obviously locked, and from the inside; windows of thick glass, triple locked with the latest patent catches—someone or something had entered, passing, as it seemed through bolts and bars, through walls, through steel and stone and concrete, like a djinn, or a wraith—through the keyhole? ”

“ It must be a nightmare that would pass, a waking dream that would presently dissolve in the sanity of peaceful slumber, She strove, as a drowning swimmer fathoms deep in dreams, to scream a warning, a command to the man—her man—silent now upon the threshold of life, or of death. ”

“ Annister gave an exclamation.
"The Indian!" he said. "Well, Rook was the 'Third Light,' sure enough!"
Again he was seeing the lean, avid face in the vestible of the smoker, the lighted match; himself, and the conductor, and Rook, the lawyer's pale eyes brooding above the glowing end of his cigarette . . . And again, as the picture passed, he was aware of the white face at his elbow as Mary Allerton, her hand in his, behind her the golden hair and the wide eyes of Cleo Ridgley, turned to Childers with a smile that yet had in it a hint of tears. ”

“ Rigor mortis—that was it—the unbreakable hold of those implacable fingers: Pillsbury’s vengeful fingers, reaching out, even after death, in a dreadful cincture of doom!
But Marston rose slowly to his feet, staggering, swaying beneath that frightful burden whose fingers wrenched by a superhuman effort from his neck, bit into his shoulders like hooks of steel. ”

“ The bolt seemed really unnecessary; the lock in itself, a spring-latch affair, was devised so that it held the stronger for pressure from without.
The snick of steel against steel rang startlingly loud in the speaking stillness; for a moment Quarrier had a curious fancy, a premonition almost, that it was a wasted precaution—that, in effect, he was locking and double locking that door upon an empty room—an empty strong-box. Pistol in hand, however, and starting from the door, he began his round. ”

“ And if he was any judge of men, here was one whom he could use: the acquisitive gleaming in the eyes; the hard, incisive mouth, the predatory, forward-thrusting tilt of the head—if he, Rook, was any judge of men, here was a man whom he could use.
Old Travis Annister had disinherited him: the son who had been a waster in the far places of the earth—that was an added reason. And at the thought there came a pale gleaming in the lawyer's close-set eyes, like the sun on water. Travis Annister . . . and Travis Annister had disappeared . . . ”

“ Then he was in the corridor, searching the thick-piled shadows, where, at the far end, a light hung between floor and ceiling like a star. A silence held, thick, heavy, mournful, daunting, as he began his advance—a silence burdened with a tide of threat, sinister, whispering, alive.
Just ahead of him was the first of the great batteries of elevators. A pressure upon the call-bell, and in a moment he would have with him men upon whom he could rely, men who would execute his least order without question. ”

“ But the man below would have the advantage of that midnight black; with the opening of the door, he would shoot him down with the ruthless, cold cruelty of a wolf.
But that was not all the reason. To Rita Daventry, alone now with this invisible menace of the dark, there had come, on a sudden, a thought to freeze her blood, the thought of Ronald Armitage.
It had been only the night before, at a studio tea, that Armitage had made the threat, or the promise, that came to her now with a sudden, cold prevision of tragedy. Armitage was young, reckless, debonair, of an engaging manner with women ”

“ A shot would bring discovery; they dared not risk it. Annister could see the great head, the wide ruff at the neck, the grinning jaws . . . Then, the giant's hands had gone up and out; there came a straining heave, a wrench, a queer, whistling croak; Ellison, rising from his knees, looked downward a moment to where the beast, its jaw broken by that mighty strength, lay stretched, lifeless, at his feet. ”

“ Ellison, almost out, stood, weaving on his feet, fronting his-adversary, a queer look of surprise in his face, and a something more. Annister, strangely enough, as has been mentioned, had, in spite of his encounter with Ellison in the smoker, conceived something for the man that had been close to liking. Somehow, rough as the man was; crooked, by all the signs; the tool of Rook and of his minions, he had the blue eye of a fighter—the straight, level look of a man who, though an enemy, would yet fight fair. ”

“ With the infinite slowness of exhaustion, his feet moved, dragged, went forward, while ever at his back those other lifeless feet rose and fell in a grotesque travesty of life, of movement, spurring forward his all but fainting soul. ”

“ But a glance at his watch told him that it was but nine-thirty; there was yet time to get to the hiding-place of those documents ahead of Marston, if, as he was now convinced, it had been Marston's thugs who had ambushed him.
Plunging along the shadowy alley, after five minutes' walk, made at a racing gait, he found a main-traveled avenue and an owl taxi, whose driver, leaning outward, crooked a finger in invitation to this obvious fare, appearing out of the dark.
Quarrier did not hesitate. The fellow might be a gunman or worse; he must take his chance of that. ”

“ Marston had brought with him a ball of stout twine as a necessary precaution in threading the uncharted deeps of the underground corridors. This he had knotted firmly in a clove hitch (for Marston had been a sailor) . There could have been no fear of its working loose, and less danger of its fraying out against the rough walls of the passageways, since at all times it would be loosely held. Like a thin snake, it spread itself behind them, and like a snake. ”

“ Annister rose, following the official outward toward the vestibule. And as he went he could feel those eyes, avid, curious, boring into his back. He permitted himself the ghost of a cold grin as the conductor, turning in the entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.
"I'm—sorry, sir," he said, low. "You getting off at-Dry Bone, aren't you?"
The words were less a question than a statement of fact. Annister nodded. The conductor, a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old-time line rider, shot a quick glance over his shoulder. ”

“ Quarrier had never liked Marston; the man was elusive, like an eel; you never saw his hand: it was impossible to guess what moved behind the mask-like marble of his face, expressionless always, cold, contained.
But Quarrier had the "documents," or, rather, they were there, in that wall safe, in itself a small fort of chrome-nickel steel and manganese against which no mere "can-opener" could have prevailed—no torch, even.
Now, as he operated the combination, he was abruptly sensible of a curious sensation of strain; a shock ”

“ A fight with four-ounce gloves can be a bloody affair enough, but with nature's weapons, under London Prize Ring rules, it can be a shambles. Armed with the cestus or the mailed fist, Ellison might have wreaked havoc as a gladiator of old Rome punished his adversary to the death. As it was, Annister, his face a bloody mask, where that socking punch had landed, gave Rook and his supporters heart of grace. ”

“ The room was in itself a safe. It was like a fort: The windows were protected by sheet-steel aprons similar to the burglar-guards used by bank tellers; the main entrance door, through which Quarrier had entered, and which opened upon the corridor and the elevators, was of steel, with a patent spring combination lock; the other door, leading to the lumber-room, was also of steel, locked, however, with a huge, old-fashioned key, but this latter door had never been in use, since Quarrier's occupancy. ”

“ There had been something in that snarling speech to daunt a man less brave than the man on that narrow stair, but Annister went upward, lightly now, to meet whatever waited behind the door set with its narrow panel that he could see merely as a dark smudge of shadow in the encircling gloom. ”

“ Quarrier was a large man, and hard-muscled, a dangerous adversary in a rough-and-tumble, a "good man with his hands," as we have seen; young, and a quick thinker.
In the half of a second it came to him that Marston might have delegated his authority (at second- or third-hand, certainly) to some peterman, some yegg, say, to obtain possession of those documents. But the fellow would have to be a boxman par excellence; that strongbox was the last word in safes, and, Quarrier was certain, the final one. ”

“ Lunn, his fat face gray with a sort of eager pallor, was chewing nervously at an unlighted cigar; he glanced up now at Annister's entrance, turning to a big man on his right. At the head of the table, his veiled-glance like the stare of a falcon, sat Rook, but it was upon the big man next to Lunn that Annister's glance rested with an abrupt interest as the lawyer spoke:
"Welcome to our city, Mr. Annister!" he said, in a voice that reminded Annister of molasses dripping from a barrel. "I want you to meet—Mr. Bull Ellison; he's been right anxious to meet you, haven't you, Bull?" ”

“ That laugh would have struck terror to the swart soul of a lucivee, if lucivees have souls, for it was like an eldritch howling, faint and thin; like the thin, tinkling laughter of a fiend, without pity and without ruth.
Here, in the sanitarium of Doctor Elphinstone, there were secrets within seerets, walls within walls, downward, as in Dante's Seventh Hell, and from this monastery of the hopeless there penetrated, on occasion, outward from its battlemented walls, wild, frantic laughter, but there was nothing demoniac about it, because it was the laughter of the insane. ”

“ Annister, breathing heavily, thrust out his hand.
"A draw, ha?" he said. "Well—suppose we let it go at that."
For a moment Ellison appeared to hesitate; there came again the queer look in his eyes, as of surprise, wonder, and something more. There came a grating curse from Lunn; a sudden movement from the onlookers roundabout.
Ellison's great paw closed on the extended hand with a grip of iron, as Rook's voice rose, strident, under the lights:
"Bull—are you crazy? This man—he's just—a dam' dick!" ”

“ You see, I thought, for a moment, that you—ah—meditated a resort to—violence. And violence is something that I deplore, my friend; and here I am surrounded by violent men, 'sudden and quick in quarrel,' as the poet has it; sometimes they are difficult to control."
Annister had himself in hand. The veiled threat with which the lawyer had ended bothered him not at all. Now, casually as it seemed, but with the lightning riposte of a duellist, his hand reached out; there came a sudden wrench, a twist, a snarling oath from Rook; and Annister, pocketing the pistol, smiled grimly now in answer. ”