Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE GHOSTS OF THOUGHT

  In the ensuing silence, as the unbroken seconds dragged themselves on,Durkin called himself a fool, and, struggling bitterly with thatindeterminate uneasiness which possessed him, pulled himself togetherfor some immediate and decisive action.

  He could waste no more time, he told himself, in foolish spiritualisticseances with his own shadow. He had too much before him, and too shorta time in which to do it. His troubles, when he came to face them,would be realities, and not a train of vapid and morbid self-vaporings.

  He advanced further into the darkness of the room, slowly, with hishands outstretched before him. He would feel for the friendly supportand guidance of the metal railing, and then grope his way onward. Foras yet he had only carried the enemy's outposts. Then, for a secondtime, and for no outward reason, he came to a dead halt. He felt as ifsome elusive influence, some unnamable force, was holding and barringhim back. Again he struck a match, recklessly, and again he sawnothing but the burnished metal railing and the dark mass of the vault.

  It was with almost a touch of exasperation that he stood there in histracks, and slowly, methodically, thoroughly, surveyed the fourquarters of the lightless room in which he found himself. Hescrutinized the heavy, enmuffling gloom with straining eyes, first inone direction and then in another.

  There was nothing to be seen, and not a sound reached his ears. He hadbeen in the room perhaps not three minutes, yet it seemed to him asmany hours. Then he peered about him still again, wondering, for thefirst time, by what psychological accident his eyes turned in oneparticular direction, slightly above and before him, to the right ofthe direction in which he was advancing.

  To rid himself of this new idea, and to decentralize the illusion, heshifted his position. But still his gaze, almost against his will,turned back toward the former point, as though the blanketing blacknessheld some core, some discernible central point, toward which he wascompelled to look, as the magnetic needle is compelled to swing towardthe North. Surrendering to this impulse, he gaped through the darknessat it, with a little oath of impatience.

  As he did so he began to feel stir at the base of his spine a tinytremor of apprehension. This tremor seemed suddenly to explode into amounting shudder of fear, flashing and leaping through his body untilthe very hair of his head was stirred and moved with it.

  The next moment the startled body responded to clamoring volition, andhe turned and fled blindly back into the outer passageway, with aludicrous and half-articulate little howl of terror.

  For growing out of the utter blackness he had seen two vague points oflight, two luminous spots, side by side, taking on, as he faced them,all the mysteries of all the primeval night which man ever faced. Hefelt like a hunter, in some jungled midnight, a midnight breathless andsoundless, who looks before him, and slowly discerns two glowing andmotionless balls of fire--who can see nothing else, in all hisworld--but from those two phosphorescent points of light knows that heis being watched and stalked and hunted by some padded Hunger lurkingbehind them.

  In the unbroken and absolute silence which seemed to mock at hisfoolish and stampeding fears, an immediate reaction of spirit set it.He felt almost glad for this material target against which to fling histerrors, for this precipitation of apprehension into something tangible.

  He groped through his bag, hurriedly yet cautiously, for his littlesperm-oil lantern. Then he took up the revolver that lay loosely inhis coat pocket. A moment later a thin little shaft of light dancedand fingered about the inner room.

  He could, at first, see nothing but the line of burnished copperstretching across his path and flashing the light back in his eyes.Behind this, a moment later, he made out the dark and gloomy mass ofthe black safe. Then he looked deeper, with what was still again aflutter of enigmatical fear about his heart, for that twin andghostlike glow which had filled him with such precipitate terror.

  But there was no longer anything to be seen. He played hisinterrogative finger of light up and down, and it was a full minutebefore his slowly-adjusting sight penetrated to the remoter and higherarea of the surrounding walls.

  It was then, and not till then, that he discovered the fact that thewall on his right opened and receded, some five feet above thefloor-level, into a dimly-outlined alcove. As he looked closer he madeout that this alcove had, obviously, been filled by the upper portionof a heavy iron staircase, leading to the floor above. The entirelower half of this stairway, where once it must have obtruded into thevault chamber, had been cut away. It was on the remaining upperportion of this dismantled stairway that his pencil of light playednervously and his gaze was closely riveted.

  For there, above his natural line of vision, half-hidden back in theheavy shadows, his startled eyes made out a huddled and shadowy figure.It was a woman's figure, in black, and motionless. It was bound handand foot to the iron stair-stanchions.

  He did not notice, in that first frenzied glance, the white band thatcut across the lower part of her face, so colorless was her skin. Butas he looked for the second time, he emitted a sudden cry, half-pity,half-anger, for slowly and thinly it filtered into his consciousnessjust what and who that watching figure was.

  And then, and then only, did he speak. And when he did so he repeatedhis earlier cry.

  "My God, Frank, what is it?"

  There was no response, no answering movement or gesture. He called toher again, but still absolute silence confronted him.

  As he crept closer to her, step by step, he saw and understood.

  The two luminous eyes, burning through the dark, had been his wife's.She had been imprisoned and tied there; but bound and muffled as shewas, the strength of her desire, the supremacy of will, had created itsnew and mysterious wire of communication. Some passion of want, somesheer intensity of feeling, had found and used its warning semaphore.She had spoken to him, without sound or movement. Yet for what?

  Yet for what? That was the thought that seemed to dance back and forthacross the foreground of his busy brain. That was what he wondered anddemanded of himself as he clambered and struggled and panted up thewall into the narrow and dusty alcove, and cut away the sodden gagbetween her aching jaws. The tender flesh was indented and livid,where the tightened band had pressed in under the cheek-bones. Thesalivated throat was swollen, and speechless. The tongue protrudedpitifully, helpless in its momentary paralysis.

  "Oh, he'll smart for this! By heaven, he'll smart for this!" declaredDurkin, as he stooped and cut away the straps that bound her ankles tothe obdurate iron, and severed the bands that bruised and held herwhite wrists. Even then she could not speak, though she smiled alittle, faintly and forlornly and gratefully. She struggled to say oneword, but it resolved itself into a cacophonous and inarticulatemumble, half-infantile, half-imbecile.

  "Oh, he'll pay for this!" repeated the raging man, as he lowered her,limp and inert, to the floor below and leaped down beside her. Shesank back with a happy but husky gasp of weakness, for the benumbedmuscles refused to obey, and the cramped and stiffened limbs wereunable to support her.

  All she could do was to hold her husband's hand in her own, in agrateful yet passionate grip. She must have been imprisoned there, hesurmised, at least an hour, perhaps two hours, perhaps even longer.

  He started up, in search for water. It might be, he felt, that a leadwater-pipe ran somewhere about them. He would cut it withoutcompunction.

  He took two steps across the room, when an audible and terrified noteof warning broke from her swollen lips. He darted back to her, inwonder, searching her straining face with his little shaft of lanternlight.

  She did not speak; but he followed her eyes. They were on theburnished copper railing refracting the thin light that danced back andforth across that dungeon-like chamber. He questioned her fixed gaze,but still he did not understand her. She caught his hand, and retainedit fiercely. He thought, from her pallor, that she was on the point offainting, and
he would have placed her full length on the hard cement,but she struggled against it, and still kept her hold on his hand.

  Then she took the tiny lantern from his fingers, and bending low,tapped with it on the cement. Durkin, listening closely, knew she wassounding the telegrapher's double "I"--the call for attention, implyinga message over the wire.

  Slowly he spelt out the words as she gave them to him in Morse,irregular and wavering, but still decipherable.

  "The--railing--is--charged!"

  "Charged?" he repeated, as the last word shaped itself in hisquestioning brain.

  He took the lantern from her hand, and swung the shaft of light on theglimmering copper. From there he looked back at her face once more.

  Then, in one illuminating flash of comprehension, it was all clear tohim. With a stare of blank wonder he saw and understood, and fell backappalled at the demoniacal ingenuity of it all.

  "I see! I see!" he repeated, vacuously, almost.

  Then, to make sure of what he had been told, he crossed the room andpicked up the bar of steel that had fallen at his feet as he firstentered the door. This bar he let fall so that one end would rest onthe metal vault-covering and the other on the rail of copper.

  There was a report, a sudden leap of flame, and the continued hissingfury of the short-circuited current, until the bar, heated toincandescence, twisted and writhed where it lay like a thing of life.He drew a deep breath, and watched it.

  That was the danger he had so closely skirted? That was the fate whichhe had escaped!

  He stood gazing at the insidious yet implacable agent of death,spluttering its tongue of flame at him like an angry snake; and, as helooked, his face was beaded with sweat, and seemed ashen in color.

  Then a sense of the dangers still surrounding them returned to hismind. He shook himself together, and, making a circuit of the room,found the switch and turned off the current. As he did so he gave alittle muffled cry of gratitude, for across the rear corner of the roomran two leaden water-pipes. Into one of these he cut and drilled withhis pocket-knife, ruthlessly, without a moment's hesitation. He wassuddenly rewarded by a thin jet of water spraying him in the face. Hecaught his hat full of it, and carried it to Frank, who drank from it,feverishly and deeply. It not only brought her strength back to her;but, after it, she could speak a little, though huskily, and withconsiderable pain.

  "Can you walk?"

  She signalled, yes.

  "We've got to get out of here, at once!"

  He could see that she understood.

  "Can you come now?" he asked.

  She nodded her head, and he helped her to her feet. Together, the oneleaning heavily on the other's arm, they paced up and down the alreadyflooded floor, until power came back to her aching limbs, andsteadiness to her tired nerves.

  "It would be better not to go together. I'll help you out and give youfifty yards' start. If anything should happen, remember that I'mbehind you, and that, after this, I'm ready to shoot, and shoot withouta quaver."

  Again she nodded her head.

  "But listen. When you get up through the sidewalk grating, keepsteadily on for two blocks, toward the west. Then turn north for halfa block, and go into the family entrance at Kieffer's. If nothinghappens, I'll join you there. If anything does occur to keep me back,give them to understand that you've missed the last train for your homein East Orange; put this five-dollar bill down and ask for a front roomon the second floor. From there you must watch for me. If it'sanything dangerous I'll signal you in passing."

  By this time he had led her down the narrow, tunnel-like passageway andwas helping her up into the rain-swept street.

  "Whatever happens, remember that I'm behind you!" he repeated.

  Their struggles, as he assisted her up through the narrow opening, wereungainly and ludicrous; yet, incongruously enough, there came to him afleeting sense of joy in even that accidental and impersonal contact ofher hand with his.

  Then he braced himself against the narrow brick walls where he stood,appearing a strange and grotesque and bodiless head above the level ofthe street.

  Thus peering out, he watched her as she beat her way down thewind-swept sidewalk. Already, through the drifting midnight rain, theoutline of her figure was losing its distinctness. He was reachingdown for his wet and sodden hat, to follow her, when something happenedthat left him transfixed, a motionless and bodiless head on whichstartled horror had suddenly fallen.

  For out of the quiet and shadowy south side of the street, where it hadbeen silently patrolling under lowered speed, swerved and darted awine-colored, surrey-built touring car with a cape top. Durkinrecognized it at a glance; it was Penfield's huge machine. Itsmovement, as it swung in toward the startled woman, seemed like theswoop of a hawk. It appeared to stop only for a moment, but in thatmoment two men leaped from the wide-swung tonneau door. When theyclambered into it once more Durkin saw that Frank was between them.And one of the men was MacNutt, and the other Keenan.

  He heard the one sharp scream that reverberated down the empty street,followed by the fading pulsations of the departing car, when with anoath of fury, he was already working his arms up through the narrowmanhole. As he did so he heard a second, hoarser cry, succeeded by theheavy tramp of hurrying feet, and then a peremptory challenge.

  Turning sharply, he caught sight of a patrolling roundsman, bearingdown on him from the corner of Broadway; and he saw that the officerwas drawing his revolver as he charged across the wet pavement.

  It was already too late to free himself. With an instinctive movementof the hands he caught up the manhole cover, shield-like. As he did sohe saw the glimmer of the polished steel and heard the repeatedchallenge. But he neither paused nor hesitated. He let his kneesbreak under him, and as he fell he saw to it that the rim of themanhole dropped into its waiting circular groove. Then he heard thesound of a shot, of a second and a third, from the policeman's pistol.But as he secured the cover with its chainlock, and dropped down intothe tunnel below, the reports seemed thin and muffled and far away toDurkin.

  A moment later, however, he heard the ominous and vibrant echo of theofficer's night-stick, on the asphalt, frenziedly rapping forassistance.