by Paul Ernst
_4. The Shell_
The house was serene and beautiful on the bay shore. The sun beat backfrom its white walls, and glanced in at the windows of the rear terrace.It shone on a grotesque figure there; a man with the torso of a giant,but with no legs--a figure that hitched itself along on the backs ofcalloused hands, using muscular arms as a means of locomotion.
But this figure was not as bizarre as the one to be found within thehouse, behind shades drawn to keep out any prying eyes.
Here, in a dim room identifiable as a library, a tall man stood beside aflat-topped desk. But all that could be told of the figure was that itwas male. For it was cloaked from heels to head in a red mantle. Thehands were covered by red rubber gloves. The face was concealed by a redmask, and over the head was drawn a red skull-cap with two smallprojections in mocking imitation of Lucifer's horns.
Doctor Satan!
In the red-gloved hands was a woman's gold-link purse. Doctor Satanopened it. From the purse he drew a thing that defied analysis andalmost defied description.
It was of metal. It seemed to be a model in gleaming steel of a problemin solid geometry: it was an angular small cage, an inch wide by perhapsthree and a half inches square. That is, at first it seemed square. Buta closer look revealed that no two corresponding sides of the littlecage were quite parallel. Each angle, each line was subtly different.
Doctor Satan pointed it at the library wall. The end he pointed was atrifle wider than the end heeled in the palm of his hand. On this widerend was one bar that was fastened only at one end. The red-coveredfingers moved this bar experimentally, slowly, so that it formed aslightly altered angle with the sides....
The library wall was mist, then nothingness. The street outside was nota street. A barren plain stood there, strewn with rocky shale, like alandscape on the moon.
The little bar was moved back, and the library wall was once more inplace. A chuckle came from the red-masked lips; a sound that would havemade a hearer shiver a little. Then it changed to a snarl.
"Perfect! But again Ascott Keane interferes. This time I've got tosucceed in removing him. An exploded heart...."
He put the mysterious small cage back in the gold-link purse, and openedthe desk drawer. From it he took a business letterhead. It was a carboncopy, with figures on it.
"Bostiff...."
On the rear terrace the legless giant stirred at the call. He moved onhuge arms to the door and into the library....
* * * * *
In his tower suite, Keane paced back and forth with his hands claspedbehind him. Beatrice Dale watched him with quiet, intelligent eyes. Hewas talking, not to her, but to himself; listing aloud the pointsuncovered since his arrival here.
"A few seconds after talking with Madame Sin, Weems was stricken. Also,the lady with the odd name was seen coming from the roulette room atabout the time when a party entered and found the croupier and eightguests turned from people into statues. But she was nowhere around whenWilson died in the conference room."
He frowned. "The watches were taken from all the sufferers from thisstrange paralysis, save Weems. By whom? Madame Sin? Weems' watch isabsolutely in good order, but it won't run. The ball on the roulettewheels stays on a slant instead of rolling down into a slot as it shouldwhen the wheel is motionless. But the wheel doesn't seem to be quitemotionless. It apparently moved a fraction of an inch in the forty-fiveminutes or so that I was in the room."
"You're sure you didn't touch it, and set it moving?" said Beatrice."Those wheels are delicately balanced."
"Not that delicately! I barely brushed it with my fingers as I examinedthe ivory ball. No, I didn't move it. But I'm sure it did move...."
There was a tap at the door. He went to it. Gest was in the corridor.
"Here's the master key," he said, extending a key to Keane. "I got itfrom the manager. But--you're sure it is necessary to enter Madame Sin'srooms?"
"Very," said Keane.
"She is in now," said the president. "Could you--just to avoid possiblescandal--inasmuch as you don't intend to knock before entering----"
He glanced at Beatrice. Keane smiled.
"I'll have Miss Dale go in first. If Madame Sin is undressedor--entertaining--Miss Dale can apologize and retreat. But I am sureMadame Sin will be unaware of intrusion. In spite of the conviction ofyour key clerk that she is in, I am quite sure that, at leastfiguratively, she is out."
"_Figuratively_ out?" echoed Gest. "I don't understand."
"You will later--unless this is my fated time to lose in the fight Ihave made against the devil who calls himself Doctor Satan. AreChichester and Kroner in the hotel?"
Gest shook his head.
"Kroner is in the Turkish bath two blocks down the street. Chichesterwent home ten minutes ago."
"Madame Sin will be unaware of intrusion," Keane repeated enigmaticallyand with seeming irrelevance.
He turned to Beatrice, and the two went to the woman's rooms.
* * * * *
Keane softly closed Madame Sin's hall door behind him after Beatrice hadentered first and reported that the woman was alone and in what seemed adeep sleep. At first, with a stifled scream, she had called out thatMadame Sin was dead; then she had pronounced it sleep....
Keane went at once to the central figure of the living-room: the body ofMadame Sin, on a chaise-lounge near the window. The woman was in a bluenegligee, with her shapely legs bare and her arms and throat pale ivoryagainst the blue silk. Her eyes were not quite closed. Her breast roseand fell, very slowly, almost like the breathing of a chloroformedperson.
Keane touched her bare shoulder. She did not stir. There was noalteration of the deep, slow breathing. He lifted one of her eyelids.The eye beneath stared blindly at him, the lid went nearly closed againat the cessation of his touch.
"Trance," Keane said. "And the most profound one I have ever seen. It'sabout what I had expected."
"I've seen her somewhere before," said Beatrice suddenly.
Keane nodded. "You have. She is a movie extra, working now and then forthe Long Island Picture Company. But I'm not much interested in thisbeautiful shell. For that's all she is at the moment--a shell, nowemptied and unhuman. We'll look around. You give me your impressions asthey come to you, and we'll see if they match mine."
They went to the bedroom of the apartment. Bedroom was like living-roomin that it was impersonal, a standard chamber in a large hotel. But thisseemed almost incredibly impersonal! There was not one picture, not onefeminine touch. In the bath there were scarcely any toilet articles; andin the closet there was only an overnight bag and a suitcase by way ofluggage, with neither of them entirely emptied of their contents.
"One impression I get is that these rooms have not been lived in evenfor twenty-four hours!" said Beatrice.
Keane nodded. "If Madame Sin retreated here only to fall into that deeptrance, and did not wake again till it was time for her to venture out,the rooms would have just this look. And I think that is exactly whatshe has done!"
Beatrice looked deftly through Madame Sin's meager wardrobe. Keanesearched dresser and table and bureau drawers. He wasn't looking foranything definite, just something that might prove the final straw topoint him definitely toward the incredible goal he was more and moreconvinced was near.
He found it in the top of the woman's suitcase.
His fingers were tense as he unfolded a business letterhead. It was acarbon copy, filled with figures. And a glance told him what it was.
It was a duplicate of the financial statement of the Blue BayDevelopment Company--that statement which was held highly confidential,and which no one was supposed to have seen save the three Blue Bayofficials, and a bank officer or two.
Keane strode to Madame Sin's phone, and got Gest on the wire.
"Gest, can you tell me if Kroner and Chichester are still out of thehotel?"
Gest's voice came back promptly. "Kroner is here with me now. I guessChich
ester is still at his home on Ocean Boulevard; at any rate he isn'tin the hotel----"
"Ascott!" Beatrice said tensely.
Keane hung up and turned to her.
"The woman--Madame Sin!" Beatrice said, pointing toward the still,lovely form on the chaise-lounge. "I thought I saw her eyes open alittle--thought I saw her look at you!"
Keane's own eyes went down a bit to veil the sudden glitter in them fromBeatrice.
"Probably you were mistaken," he said easily. "Probably you only thoughtyou saw her eyelids move.... I'm going to wind this up now, I think. Yougo back to your suite, and watch the time. If I'm not back here in twohours, go with the police to the home of Chichester, the treasurer ofthis unlucky resort development. And go fast," he added, in a tone thatslowly drained the blood from Beatrice's anxious face.