by Jerry eBooks
We stumbled through a little office and into the bare garage. Borden and I both saw the light from a trap door. A mug was there trying to shoot us. My gun barked and it sounded like thunder in that empty place. Borden faded to one side and I spotted Johnson by the red lick of his gun.
Lead fanned by my cheek and I swore, crouching low and pushing forward. All of a sudden a dozen forms came pouring out of that cellar. Guns were barking like a full-sized battle. I fired at everything in sight, and I could hear Conners placing shots with the precision of a riveter.
The guys faded back in the cellar and we rushed the trap. For a while we were stalled. We couldn’t go down without getting plugged. Then Conners took a hand.
“Rex, we’ll drive ’em to cover and then you jump.”
I nodded and took a hard grip on my gun. Johnson, Borden and Conners poured a hail of lead down the steps and broke off suddenly. I jumped, my gun spitting at every step. Bullets whined at me, but somehow I made it. Our Axis pals were caught then, between my gun and the fire from up above. Conners came down next, and then things got hot and heavy.
I had a glimpse of a guy manacled to a steam pipe. Korne was racing toward the prisoner. His gun was leveled and Horace Quaid was going to be a goner. I sent two fast shots at Korne. He stumbled and his automatic clattered on the cement floor. He slowly doubled up and fell.
That did it. The rest of the mugs gave up. They dropped their guns and we took over. Korne was dead and Horace Quaid had passed out. But his explosive was safe for Uncle Sam, anyway. I found keys to his manacles in the pockets of a dead Gestapo man.
Conners wearily wiped his face. “Well, that’s it, Rex. You’ve done a good job.”
I sighed and wanted to sit down all of a sudden. “Luck, pal,” I said. “Luck and a good hunch.”
Borden pursed his fat lips and looked critically at me. “Cap, you’d better wipe the blood off your face. That telegram gal won’t like you all messed up.”
I raised my hand to my cheek and stared at it. A slug had creased my cheekbone and I’d been too excited to know it. Then I grinned. A bullet scar might give a brown-haired girl a lot of romantic notions.
HOUSE OF DEATH
Lew Merrill
“My husband’s going crazy!” she told the psychiatrist. And from all the symptoms, it looked as if she were right. And yet Dr. Gabriel had his doubts . . . To him the whole thing was a duel between himself and a disciple of the devil—
Doctor Gabriel was by no means the sort of man Marian Hartley had expected a professional spook-chaser to be. Under his name on the brass plate was the single word PSYCHIATRIST, and the office was a scantily furnished room above a florist’s shop on Lexington Avenue. It contained only two rather intricate pieces of electrical equipment, a chaise longue, a battered desk, and three chairs.
The doctor himself was a small man of about fifty years, with reddish-gray hair on the temples and a pair of piercing eyes behind the horn spectacles. The reddish beard was scant.
“I am Marian Hartley,” said the girl in some agitation. “I was recommended to you by a friend whom you helped—but of course you got my letter?”
“Indeed, yes, Mrs. Hartley. Please sit down.” Gabriel half-rose, and indicated a chair. His accent was foreign, but not Teutonic, his manner rather pleasing. “Tell me about your husband, Mrs. Hartley.”
“He’s going crazy—we’re both going crazy. I’d best start at the beginning. He’s a painter, and after he won the National Arts prize, he bought the farm-house near Wortley, Connecticut, to devote himself to his work. He’s overworked; he’s been burning the candle at both ends for a long time. For some weeks he’s been acting queerly. He told me that he was fated to kill me, and that it would be better to make an end of everything now—I mean, for both of us to die together.”
“You thing the overwork is responsible for this state of depression?”
“It must be. Roger has always been what people call queer—moody and introverted, but he’s never before suggested—”
“You love him?” Dr. Gabriel’s gaze was keen. “Indeed I do. We’ve only one another to live for. I’ve shared his life and interests. Doctor, he thinks he’s under a spell, and you’re the only—”
“Professional ghost-hunter with a legitimate medical degree,” smiled Gabriel. “Don’t form too high an opinion of my talents, Mrs. Hartley. I merely make use of certain facts known to students of psychical phenomena, but not generally admitted by my colleagues. I have had some successes, and some failures. How long have you been married, Mrs. Hartley?”
“Five years.”
“No children? Well, can you think of any trouble, anything that might have been preying upon your husband’s mind?”
Gabriel could see that his visitor was hesitating how much to tell him. Already he had discovered that she was keeping one thing back, and, he suspected, there was another. He anticipated that she would be partly frank, and in another moment the words came tumbling out:
“I’ll have to tell you everything. I was in love, or thought I was in love, with another man, before I married Roger. He is a physician, Raoul Coriat. I think he is half French and half Mexican. He came to Wortley, my home village, to practice, when I was a girl, eight or nine years ago, but the people there didn’t like him, and he moved away after I had—”
“Rejected him?”
“I—well, I had practically promised to marry him, but thank heaven I realized in time it was only infatuation. I think he must have used hypnotic influence over me. When I told Raoul I couldn’t marry him, he said I’d never know what happiness meant. He said Roger would murder me. People had called him a devil, and it was then I realized he was one. I was foolish enough to repeat his threat to Roger.”
“Have you seen this man in the five years you have been married?”
“I have reason to believe that Raoul Coriat kept watch on me when we had our apartment in New York. I am sure I saw him twice, though he affected not to recognize me. And a month after we moved to Wortley, last spring, he came back and began practising again.”
“And what has been his attitude toward you?”
“He stopped in the street and shook hands with me, and told me he hoped bygones would be bygones. I don’t see that my having been engaged to Raoul can have affected Roger’s mind, except that he may remember the threat, and he may be hanging his delusions upon it.”
“Delusions?”
“He goes to Raoul Coriat’s new house at night, and—sees things,” whispered the girl fearfully. “It’s a new house—it isn’t occupied, but he-he sees—”
“I’ll come down and look into the matter,” Dr. Gabriel interrupted her. “My fee?” He smiled. “I’m still a student, and I fancy this case is going to be an interesting one. Suppose your husband paints my portrait, if I’m successful. He’s a portrait-painter, I know. I’ve seen some of his work. And I’d like to leave a portrait of myself for the benefit of posterity. How would this week-end suit you, Mrs. Hartley?”
“I think it would be—wonderful,” she stammered. “But what shall I say to Roger? You see, he doesn’t know I’ve been to you.”
“Tell him the truth, but be sure you make him understand he’s not being committed to an insane asylum. I like to start with my patients upon a basis of mutual confidence.”
That basis was established quickly enough, though Marian Hartley had merely told her husband that she had asked a friend to spend the week-end with them. Roger Hartley was more than eager to talk. In the attic of the old farm-house, which Roger had converted into a studio, the two men speedily found themselves on friendly terms.
Seated in the leaking, overstuffed chair, Dr. Gabriel listened, while he watched his host. Roger had certainly genius. Gabriel, who was a good judge of painting, admired the color and composition of the works about the room. But he was more interested in Roger Hartley.
Facing him, pouring out his story, Roger seemed to be under a terrific strain. His face was drawn and pallid,
the fingers were never still, there was a tic in one cheek, and a lack of luster in the eyes. The man was living in a dream, Gabriel thought, and even now he wasn’t quite awake.
“Do you believe that it is possible, not only to foresee, but to live in the future?” Roger asked.
“There are known cases.”
“How absolute is the future? That’s what I must know. Is there any possibility of averting the known future? Or is the course of events absolutely charted?”
Gabriel said: “That’s a difficult question to answer.
As I told you, I have known cases of the prevision of events that later came to pass. But I cannot believe that man is wholly the slave of destiny. I believe that, under God’s providence, the destined course of events can be changed. We have biblical authority for that belief.”
“Biblical? Where does it say—?”
“In the second Book of Kings we read that Hezekiah, King of Judah, was warned that he was about to die; nevertheless, as the result of his prayers, his life was prolonged for another fifteen years, and the proof was the shadow receding on the sun-dial. We do not have to place complete credence in the old legend, but the meaning is clear: a man is not entirely enslaved by his destiny.”
“I don’t remember the story,” said Roger. “I’m not a student of the Bible. But this thing has got to be averted—this horror . . . I tell you I’m destined to murder Marian. I love her, and the thought is with me night and day.”
“Did Coriat tell you that?”
“He didn’t tell me, but I know.”
“You’ve seen the man?”
“Well—yes. I had pricked my finger on a rusty nail, and I had him give me a shot of anti-tetanus serum.
You see, he’d once been in love with Marian, and she didn’t want any hard feeling.”
“Did the shot make you sleep?”
“No, just a little drowsy for a minute. It was two nights later that I went to Coriat’s new house. I had to go . . .
“Marian was there with him. She—she looked older. I wondered why she had left the child behind. Dorothy’s been blind from birth. That was what—that devil meant when he said that Marian would never know what happiness meant. A child of seven, and born blind—”
He shuddered. “Of course, she isn’t born yet,” he went on. “She’s the child we’re going to have. A—a long time seemed to have passed, and my memory was confused, like now. I had lived through eight years in a few minutes, in that devil’s house. It’s what is going to happen to us—don’t you understand, doctor? The child we haven’t got is going to be born blind.
“It nearly killed me, thinking about the girl, and of my wife going to that devil’s home at night, to see him, and her leaving the child asleep unguarded, while I was painting in this room.
“Some instinct told me to go to the house. It was Summer when I left here, but it was Winter when I got to the house, the great brick house on your right as you enter Wortley. A fire was blazing in the grate. And Coriat was standing, facing Marian, his hands upon her shoulders. He kissed her, and she looked up at him the way a woman does when she’s in love.
“It wasn’t jealousy I felt. It was the knowledge that I’d have to save her soul from that devil. That was when I knew that it was quite true: I’d have to kill her.
“When I got back home, Marian was lying asleep in bed. All this time I’d supposed it was real—what I’d seen. I mean, my ideas of time had got mixed up. When I found her, I knew she couldn’t have got back before I did. It was then I understood that I’d been seeing into the future.”
“Have you been back there since?” asked Dr. Gabriel.
“Once—three nights ago. She was just entering the house, and I slipped in through the kitchen window. I found them together, sitting on a sofa, side by side. His arms were about her. I’d have killed her then. But the child saved me. She’d followed me, doctor, trailed me through the snow somehow. I heard her bare feet pattering in the hall. But Marian didn’t hear, because she was all engrossed with Coriat.
“I picked the baby up and carried her home. I’ve been brooding ever since. I thought, if there is any way in which the future can be averted-I’ll wait and see before I—kill her.
“And then she told me she had a friend coming down, and I guessed it was you, because she’s been talking about going to see you.”
Dr. Gabriel enjoyed Marian Hartley’s cooking. He had been watching Roger closely ever since their talk that afternoon. He could detect no signs of delusive insanity in his host—nothing beyond intense nervousness, and evidence of great mental strain. After the meal, when Roger had withdrawn, Marian said:
“I hope I haven’t made a blunder, doctor. This afternoon, while Roger and you were talking, the woman reporter for the local paper called, and said she’d heard that we had week-end guests. I told her we had only one. But I let her have your name. You told me that you didn’t want—that you believed in confidence.”
“That’s quite all right. When is the paper published?” asked Gabriel.
“Tuesdays. You see, you’ll have left Wortley before anyone knows you’ve been here. And then they won’t connect your name with that of the physician. I didn’t suggest that you were here professionally.”
“I’m sure no harm was done.” But Gabriel knew that Raoul Coriat would quickly learn of his presence, and of course he would connect it with the Hartleys. The battle between himself and Coriat was joined already.
Dr. Gabriel went out and strolled toward the village. It was a pleasant little New England village, with a long street bordered by rows of elms, differing in no material respect from a hundred other such villages. The doctor paused when he saw the new house of which Roger had spoken, and inspected the structure carefully before continuing on his way. Then he was in Wortley, and he saw Coriat’s shingle on a pleasant frame house upon a corner, and stopped again to inspect the set-up.
The door opened, and a woman came out, followed by a man who was evidently Coriat himself. The two stood chatting for a few moments, while Dr. Gabriel slowly crossed the road. Coriat was a dark-complexioned fellow, apparently in his early thirties, with a short, peaked black beard, and teeth that flashed as he smiled. The sort of man who would hardly win favor in a staid New England village. Gabriel passed the woman at the gate of the little garden.
Coriat, standing on his stoop, apparently waiting for him, waved a hand in greeting. “Come in, doctor,” he called. “I’m honored, I’m sure. Mrs. Willis—that lady who has just left me—apprised me of your visit. She’s the reporter for the Wortley Chronicle. Won’t you come in?”
Coriat’s white teeth were flashing between the black beard and the mustache. It was evident that he considered himself master of the situation.
The office was a typical country doctor’s office, the only unusual feature being the grinning stone figure, about five feet high, carved out of a blue-gray granite mass, that stood in one corner.
“My mascot,” said Coriat, continuing to smile. “The good people of Wortley were afraid of it at first, but now they realize that it fits in with me very well. A Maya god that has been in the family of my maternal ancestors for generations. You see, I’m half-Mexican.
The Mayas had quite an advanced system of medical science, but altogether different from our own. It was what you might call a spiritual science, as opposed to the physiological conception. I have partly deciphered it from some old fragments in the Mexico City Museum. Nice fellow, isn’t he?”
Dr. Gabriel looked from the man to the grinning god, and back. Now, slowly he began to see the resemblance between the two, though Coriat’s figure was slim, and this was a squatting stone travesty of the human figure. There was something about the idol’s leer that was very like Coriat’s.
“I see the neck’s been broken at some time,” said Gabriel.
Coriat’s smile faded. “It’s been in fragments. I’ve had it repaired,” answered the man. “It’s my family totem, if you understand.”
“Quite so, and I wish you better luck than he’s had. But let’s get to the point. I suppose you induced those hallucinations in Mr. Hartley by injecting cannabis indica?”
Coriat looked shocked. “I cannot permit my professional reputation to be aspersed, even in jest,” he answered. “I gave Mr. Hartley a shot of anti-tetanus serum.”
“And what are your terms for calling off this whole business?” asked Gabriel.
“There are no terms, and there is no business, as you call it. Mr. Hartley is the victim of overwork, and an overstrained imagination. Really, my dear Dr. Gabriel, are you not trying to interpret my prosaic, orthodox medical work in terms of your own—may I say not quite orthodox?—branch of our profession?”
He smiled again. “You know, Dr. Gabriel, I have followed your work with a good deal of interest. You are a follower of the modern European school of psychical research, in particular Schenk-Notzing and Bozzano. The Europeans are children, in comparison with the old Mayas. I have sometimes thought what a pleasure it would be to match my own small knowledge against your own. But of course such a situation is never likely to arise. Nevertheless, why not go back to New York and forget about poor Hartley?”
Gabriel ignored the challenge. “Don’t forget the immutable law, Coriat,” he said, “which is summed up in the old saw about curses coming home to roost.”
“My dear sir, I am sorry you adhere to those old superstitions,” replied Coriat, laughing. “But will you permit this interesting discussion to be resumed at a later time? I have a patient waiting in the next room.”
It was dark when Gabriel returned. There was a light in the attic, where Roger was at work. Marian Hartley was slumped on the sofa in the living-room. She looked up with a hopeless expression in her eyes as Gabriel entered.
“You’ve been to Wortley?” she asked. “You’ve seen—?”