Thorp McClusky

“ Across the long expanse of this almost flamboyantly oriental downstairs room in which Dmitri's guests had assembled she saw the man. He was seated in a massive, ivory-armed, dragon-footed chair, and he was talking to a group of three or four women. But he was looking beyond them, speculatively, at Mary.
"Helen, I'm afraid of him. He's—he's evil—blasphemous!"
Helen Stacey-Forbes only laughed. "Blasphemous?" she echoed. "Nonsense! He's only years ahead of his time. Never fear—his interest in you will vanish as soon as he learns that you can't pay his outrageous fees." ”

“ Peters nodded. "Better tell me everything, Commissioner."
"Peters, can a hypnotist cure disease in another man through subconscious suggestion? Can an adept so control his subject's mind that that subject becomes his virtual slave, even to the extent of committing a theft? Can a hypnotist cause his subject to suffer and die from a disease which heretofore has not threatened him?"
Peters looked thoughtfully at the nest of bottles.
"Sounds like Dmitri."
"Yes," Ethredge exclaimed hoarsely, "it is Dmitri, damn him!" ”

“ I guess I liked Pierce more then than I ever did, before or since. The drinks had killed that nervousness of his for the time being; he wasn't listening and cringing all the time anymore; he seemed normal as hell. And after a few more shots I did the unpardonable; I asked him point-blank what was the matter with him, why he had such a terrible fear of the sound of piano music. That's what too many drinks can do to a man's discretion. ”

“ Slowly Peters smiled. "Mary Roberts, at Commissioner Ethredge's request, is waiting in a small restaurant not far from here. I will telephone her." He rose, took a step toward the table.
The colossus seemed to swell in his chair like an infuriated toad. "Stop!" His chest heaved, and from his cavernous interior there issued a half-shriek, half-bellow that beat in that small room like the scream of an ape. "Stepan! Stepan!"
Peters' hand flicked to his hip. But Dmitri only smiled, smiled and shook his monstrous head. ”

“ Always in the hotel dining room I heard it—not when the orchestra was playing, of course; only when they were silent between pieces. But I heard it other places, too; through an open window as I was hurrying to catch a subway, a fragment of Dancing in the Wind hitting me in the face from the swinging doors of a saloon as I walked past, even from the orchestra pit of a theatre—God!—anywhere and anytime! I haven't gone inside a theatre since, that had a piano; I haven't dared. . . . ”

“ Ethredge stumbled to his feet, stood swaying drunkenly, his hands outstretched; he had utterly forgotten the servant Stepan. For an instant the little man struggled to rise, then sank back weakly.
The obscene colossus grinned. "Do not fear; she will live a long time. Her nerves will tire; then she will relax for a moment. She will breathe more easily, then."
And, as though the prophecy were a command, Mary's body went suddenly, horribly limp, melted against the barren floor as though death had abruptly collapsed every straining muscle. ”

“ Loving husband—wife, fine pianist, dies—husband can no longer bear to hear piano music as he had heard it so many times in his home, soft and loud, fragmentary bits, practising, the human side of music that's somehow missing on a record or over the radio. ”

“ Ethredge spread out his hands and looked helplessly at them.
"Peters, I went to see the man. He has Mary under his control; I've been watching her, following her about for days. She doesn't know, and I'm tired, tired almost to death; I've had to do it all myself; I dared trust no one. Peters, a week ago Mary took her cousin Priscilla Luce's jewels, and brought them to Dmitri; God knows what he's done with them. Since then she's been trying to persuade Mrs. Leeds—Arthur Leeds' widow—to go to Dmitri's with her. God, I knoiv that the man's a monster, yet I'm helpless against him." ”

“ It doesn't necessarily follow—that if you, or I, or both of us, hear this—ghost music—tonight, we're consequently demonstrated the reality of Alicia's spirit—and, naturally, of a whole spirit world. For telepathy does exist; we know that—and I can see no way in which we can eliminate beyond doubt the possibility that whatever music we may hear—might not have come to us direct from Pierce's brain at the moment of death. The human brain sends out strange and powerful impulses when it is about to die ”

“ A telephone rested at one end of the table, close beside an ambiguity that—save for its grotesquely large bulb, full of an uncommon multiplicity of filaments and several oddly shaped and curiously perforated metal vanes—looked like an unshaded desk-lamp.
Dmitri lowered himself into his tremendous chair. "Sit down," he directed abruptly. "Compose yourselves. You, Miss Roberts, may watch this experiment; it is in no way new, yet it is always fascinating. ”

“ The bulbous lips writhed in a half-smile. "You have been rude, my friend—should I decide to treat your carcinoma I will leave you the poorer man by half your fortune before you are cured. That prospect, at least, you can understand."
Mortimer Dunlop, his seamed face livid with rage, got hastily to his feet and strode to the center door. He jerked the door open, slammed it behind him as he stormed from the room.
Unperturbed, Dmitri continued, "Mind came before matter; mind is the great motivator. Mind can conceive matter; matter cannot conceive anything, even itself. ”

“ Carefully he tapped the coin with the pliers, knocking it from the man's wrist to the floor.
Around the coin's glowing rim smoke began to rise. . . .
Still smirking, Dmitri poured a half-glass of ice-water on the red-hot coin, and the water hissed and fumed as it struck the incandescent metal. There was a little puff of thick smoke from the burning wood, and now the coin was cold—cold and black and seared.
No scar marked the servant's white wrist!
Dmitri rubbed his great; shapeless hands together. ”

“ He shivered slightly, glanced fearfully at the banjo clock on the wall, gulped a big swallow of his drink and went on hastily:
"I struck up a sort of friendship with this Pierce right off. I'm an amiable bird anyway, and I couldn't help getting to know him; there're only about twenty-five fellows living here, and most of us take our breakfasts downstairs every morning, and our dinners at night, too, when we've nothing special on; it's like a sort of club, really. ”

“ Dimly, while his brain reeled and his soul retched as he gazed upon the ghastly thing on the floor, he yet realized that the same release that had, in the instant of Dmitri's passing, loosed Mary Roberts" nerves and muscles from the death-laden throes of convulsion, had also, and in that same awful instant, freed Stepan's subconscious from the enjoinment that his body was invulnerable to physical injury. ”

“ Just the sort of place for a wifeless young man—
Chambers mixed two whiskey-sodas, handed me mine, and sat down tautly on the davenport, across the room from me. He slept, by the way, on that same davenport—though no one would have ever guessed.
"Here's the story, Jerry," he said, sipping at his drink as he talked. "I haven't told you all of it before for fear you'd laugh. I waited, instead, until tonight. Whatever happens tonight—if it does happen or nothing happens at all, I mean; it'll be over in a hurry, and that'll be the end of it. ”

“ Not all the time; sometimes she plays only one piece, or just part of a piece, and then stops, as though she's been—called away. Dancing in the Wind, she plays a lot. She had a special arrangement of it. And—nobody else can hear her. Nobody else can hear her playing. Only me.
"'It can't be. Such a thing can't be. There aren't ghosts. There can't be ghosts. But when I get near a piano, sooner or later I hear her ghost playing. The night she died I heard her first, playing on the big grand downstairs in the living room. I went down—but before I got downstairs the music stopped. ”

“ It was not a question; it was a statement—flat, lifeless. And in Ethredge's heart was a slow-growing horror, for this thing Mary could never have done; yet he knew, knew already that her hands had taken the jewels. . . .
"Yes. Gregory has had private detectives—from Philadelphia. Mary's fingerprints——"
There was silence in that room, then, while Ethredge stared at Priscilla Luce's slender, patrician hands, still clasping his wrists.
"It was not in Mary to do this thing," he said at last, quietly. "There must be some other explanation, however incredible. Mary could never steal." ”

“ And who is your friend?"
"Dmitri—Mary Roberts," Helen Stacey-Forbes said formally. "Miss Roberts is the daughter of the Honorable James Roberts. . . . Ronald is well; he is very careful not to endanger himself."
Dmitri chuckled. "Ronald is being very careful, eh? Well, well—but accidents sometimes happen—and then there is only Dimitri." He stared fixedly at Mary. "You are very beautiful, my child; our Police Commissioner Ethredge is a fortunate man—indeed he is." ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1975, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 47 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors search the renewal databases and ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”