Sunlight was pouring in through the window in the roof, striking the room at an angle which, had he been able to reason it out, would have told him that the day was far advanced. Stray impressions, dim and very remote, trudged through his brain. Now it was a laugh—a soft, gloating sort of laugh. Now it was something about a coffin—Pharaoh’s coffin. And now he heard those piercing sounds again.
“Somebody screaming,” he thought, but the thought made no impression. It was only two meaningless words that his brain refused to take hold of. But the laugh seemed a tangible thing, though several hours had passed since he heard it And the allusion to Pharaoh’s coffin was coupled in his mind with a picture of a very white face impressed with a shadowy smile.
And then he remembered. Yes, Carstairs had tricked him very cleverly. Good actor, that Carstairs. He had almost convinced him that black was white and that white was black. Very subtly, without apparent effort, he had conveyed the idea that Carmody was the black sheep and he, Carstairs, the white one. It was the effortlessness that put the impression across. He had only been playing for time, of course, temporizing until Stoddard could come to his aid. And Stoddard had come to his aid with a bludgeon.
Harrington felt his head. There was a swelling on the left side. Now it throbbed sharply, now it was only a dull ache, but all the time it made his thoughts spin around in circles. They swung from a gloating laugh to a coffin, and then to a succession of loud cries.
And now, of a sudden, those loud cries seemed to drive all the other things into the background. He lay very still. A film oozed away from his brain. The cries, composed of one high trembling note after another, formed pictures in his mind, and the outstanding picture was one of Theresa Lanyard with her small, lovely face, her lovely gray eyes, and her lovely black hair. All at once his disordered thoughts crystallized in a single sharp impression.
It was Theresa who was uttering those cries!
The thought was like a lash on his nerves. He tried to jump up, but something held him back. He could not move his arms or legs. His arms were tied behind his back, and his legs were incapacitated by cords applied just above his ankles.
He groaned and his head sank back to the cot on which he was lying. And now the screams rang out louder and louder, shriller and more piercing. His imagination pictured a scene of horror. The fiends were torturing her!
A cold sweat broke out on his face. He strained furiously at the cords. His lungs were bursting, not from the physical exertion, but with an agony evoked by mental pictures.
And then, as he lay on his back, feeling as if the cries were being wrung from his own bruised body, an incongruous feeling crept upon him. He listened intently. He gauged the pitch and swell of the cries. Somehow they sounded less terrifying now. They were not really cries of suffering, he thought. Rather they sounded as if they had been produced for vocal effect. But why should one cry like that if one did not suffer?
Even as he debated the question, the cries ceased. There was only silence now—silence and an acute bewilderment. He wondered if his mind was still wandering and if that was why he had got such an odd impression of the cries. And then, as he heard the door open, he quickly closed his eyes and feigned unconsciousness.
Footsteps approached, and in a moment someone was standing beside him. As he simulated the uneasy stupor of a person with a throbbing head, he felt a pair of eyes searching his face. He kept his own closed, but his imagination pictured the white countenance and the shadowy smile of Roscoe Carstairs. He fancied the man was quietly laughing at him. It was an uncomfortable moment, and he was glad when a sound at the door drew Carstairs away.
“Well, Stoddard?” Carstairs said.
He stiffened for an instant, and the cords gnawed at his wrists. It was Harry Stoddard, the dark and dapper man with the resonant and yet vaguely unpleasant voice, to whom he owed the swelling on his head.
“No luck,” Stoddard reported. “Either she doesn’t know, or else she won’t talk.”
“Oh, she knows,” said Carstairs in his mellow voice. “Surprised at you, Stoddard. Thought you had a way with the ladies. Can’t you captivate them any longer?”
“Not when it comes to coffins.”
Harrington started where he lay on the cot Pharaoh’s coffin again!
“So Miss Lanyard wouldn’t talk,” Carstairs was saying. “With your profound knowledge of feminine wiles, you realize, of course, that when gentleness fails one must try more drastic measures?”
“Yes, and I tried them.”
“H’m.” Carstairs moved about the room, and presently he stopped again before the cot Harrington gave an imitation of an unconscious man’s groan. “You performed a thorough job on this poor devil.”
“Oh, that was simple. But the other thing—Well, it goes against the grain, you know.”
“Ah, chivalry!” Carstairs’ voice was still mellow, but now it contained a faint sneer. “I hope you weren’t too chivalrous?”
“I wasn’t. I didn’t like it, but I hurt her. She made quite a fuss. You must have heard her screams.”
“Yes, I heard them,” said Carstairs in a queer tone. “I was trying to read, and they disturbed me. From the volume of them I gathered she was in mortal pain. But volume is one thing and quality is another.”
“What do you mean?” asked Stoddard uneasily.
Carstairs chuckled. Harrington opened his eyes a trifle. He was conscious of a dynamic strain in the air.
“I mean they sounded—what shall I say?—a bit theatrical. Yes, that’s the word—theatrical. I don’t believe Miss Lanyard was as badly hurt as she tried to make out.”
He spoke in a whimsical tone, but Harrington sensed something unpleasant underneath. Evidently Stoddard felt it, too, for a look of alarm was creeping into his dark face. For a few moments no word was spoken.
“It’s bad, Stoddard,” said Carstairs at length. “There’s a weak strain in you. A pretty face raises the devil with you.” He laughed musingly. “And so you conspired with the lady to fool me. You told her to let out a few loud yells so I would think you were putting the screws on her. Too bad she isn’t a better actress. Are you in love, Stoddard?”
“Love,” Stoddard laughed scoffingly, but with a tremor.
“No? Well, that’s a relief.” Carstairs’ voice was gently sarcastic. “What will you bet that I can make her talk?”
Stoddard said nothing, but Harrington, holding his eyes open a narrow slit, saw a look of aversion on his face.
“You see, Stoddard,” the other went on, “I’m not hampered by chivalry, and I know several cute tricks that are guaranteed to loosen the tongues of lovely ladies. Care to make a bet?”
“Ah, Carstairs, what’s the use being crude? Why don’t you try subtlety instead of violence?”
Carstairs did not answer for a long time. Harrington trembled and strained at the cords around his ankles and wrists.
“Stoddard,” said Carstairs softly, “you’re a liar and a coward. I’m going to see Miss Lanyard now. But first—”
His hand swung out and crashed into Stoddard’s jaw. The man spun around and, with a gurgling sound in the throat, went to the floor. For a moment Carstairs stood looking down at the inert figure, then walked softly out.
Harrington tore furiously at the ropes, but to no avail. Evidently they had been tied by an expert He worked in a blind, savage frenzy, his mind tortured by horrible visions, until he realized that he was only wasting his strength. Any moment now a scream might pierce the awful stillness, and it would be a different scream from those he had heard a little while ago.
Exhausted and perspiring, he glanced up at the window in the roof. It was already growing dusk. Gloom was descending over the desolate hilltop, and there was no hope in any direction. His glance traveled to where Stoddard lay. Whatever the man might be, he had at least shown human feelings. But there was no hope there, either. Stoddard might lie there for half an hour, and in the meantime—
A cold shudder convulsed him
. He strained his ears for sounds which he dreaded to hear. It seemed a little eternity had passed since Carstairs departed on his diabolical mission, yet it could have been only a minute or two. Within the next sixty seconds the hideous performance might begin.
In a delirium of horror he tore at the cords, but he was only bruising his flesh. His blood ran cold, but his skin was bathed in clammy perspiration. The biting of the cords into his flesh became a physical torment, but the visions that streamed through his mind were more agonizing still.
Of a sudden he lay motionless. He had heard the sound of a door opening. A dwarfish figure slunk out of the dusk and approached him.
“Huh! All trussed up. Fretting yourself into a stew. Not so good, eh?”
For once Harrington felt no loathing in the blackmailer’s presence, nor did he inquire how Tarkin had appeared so opportunely. The little man looked about him in the gathering dusk and saw the motionless figure on the floor.
“Stoddard, eh? Somebody must have handed him a good one. Never saw so many crazy goings-on. Carstairs is tearing around like a lunatic, and now he’s giving Miss Lanyard the works, and it looks as if—”
“Shut up!” Harrington cried. “And cut these damned cords.”
Tarkin’s shrewd eyes measured the cords that bound Harrington’s hands and feet and were wound in several layers around his chest. He took out his pocket knife.
“About twenty feet of cord,” he estimated, opening the knife. “It’ll cost you one hundred dollars a foot. That makes it an even two grand.”
“All right—but hurry!”
Tarkin contemplated him with a hurt expression.
“You didn’t play fair the other times,” he complained. “You kicked me and choked me and mopped the earth with me. I’ve got you now. Do I get the two grand?”
Harrington listened for a moment, wondering why the air was not rent by cries. Tarkin’s commercial instincts aroused no disgust now. He only fumed over the delay.
“Don’t be a fool! I don’t carry two thousand in my pocket. Now hurry, or I’ll—”
He groaned with a realization of helplessness, and the blackmailer giggled.
“Wonder what Carstairs is up to,” he mumbled as if to himself. “He’s been awfully quiet since he went into the other room. That’s a bad sign. When Carstairs is as quiet as that, there’ll be hell popping soon. Glad I’m not in Miss Lanyard’s shoes. She—”
“Damn you!” Harrington cried, heaving frenziedly against the cords. “Don’t you know he’s gone in there to torture her?”
“I had an idea maybe that’s what he was up to.”
“Well, then, aren’t you going to cut these cords?”
“Do I get the two grand?”
“You do.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It is.”
“You give me your word of honor?”
“I do, confound you!”
Tarkin lowered his head and considered.
“It’s a bad way to do business, but I’ll take a chance on you. Now don’t forget.”
He slashed the cords, which Harrington was straining in his anxiety to get free.
“Remember,” was his parting shot, “you owe me two grand.”
Harrington stretched himself, trying to ease his cramped muscles. He felt his hip pocket. The pistol was gone, of course. He felt a little giddy from his injury, and he staggered drunkenly from the room. As he had previously noticed, this end of the attic was partitioned off from the rest and bisected by a corridor with two doors on each side.
There was not a sound anywhere, and in this dark space he could scarcely see anything. He felt weak from his long confinement on the cot, and a sense of impending horrors threatened to swamp his reason. Unarmed as he was, he would have to proceed very cautiously if he were to accomplish anything. He looked up and down the dim corridor, and his eyes fell on a faint streak of light, evidently coming from an ill-fitting door.
He tiptoed over. There was an absolute silence within. He found the knob and gently pushed the door open. And then, blinking his eyes against the sudden illumination, he stood still and stared at one of the strangest spectacles he had ever seen.
CHAPTER XVI — Torture
Theresa’s face riveted his attention at once. It was a face frozen into the most appalling look of horror he had ever seen. Every line was taut, the lips rigid, the eyes round and glassy.
It was a room similar to the one he had just left, meagerly furnished and with a window in the ceiling. An oil lamp burned on a rattletrap table and cheap lithographs were pasted on the crumbling walls.
Harrington had eyes for nothing but Theresa. Her straining face, like an exquisitely carved deathmask, told him that she was suffering tortures. Yet no hand was touching her; there was no physical sign of the agony that was staring out of her face. She was sitting in a chair placed against the farther wall, and her eyes were fixed with horrible intensity on a point diagonally opposite.
He passed a moment or two in utter perplexity. Theresa had not even seen him. It was as if all her senses were hypnotized by something she saw across the room. He turned and saw Carstairs leaning negligently against the wall, a dusky smile of amusement tinging his white face. The man evinced no surprise at seeing him. Carstairs appeared to discount all eventualities in advance.
“Oh, you, Harrington,” he said casually. “How is the head?”
Harrington marveled at him. If he was puzzled by his prisoner’s sudden release, he showed not the slightest sign of it. If anything, he appeared to welcome the intrusion.
“It’s just as well you are here,” he added. “This may interest you.”
Harrington looked about him, and then his eyes fastened once more on Theresa’s fear-frozen face. Yes, she was being tortured, but by whom or what? Again he traced her rigid gaze across the floor, and a new sort of bewilderment came over him. Her eyes, he now discovered, were not fixed on Carstairs, but on an object in the very corner of the room. It was a small sheet-iron stove, aglow with heat. The little door stood ajar, and now and then a little tongue of flame curled out.
He looked from the stove to Theresa and then back to the stove again. There was no question about it It was the stove, and nothing else, that she was regarding with such an unearthly horror. Unaware of Carstairs’ amused look, he stepped a little closer to it, and now he saw a small object protruding from the little door near the bottom. It looked like a handle of some sort. He raised his questioning eyes to Carstairs’ white face.
“Patience, Harrington,” said the latter. “You will see directly. It will be worth seeing.”
He stooped and pulled out the handle. Attached to it was a thin metal rod tapering to a fine point. The whole thing looked like an ice pick.
“Not quite hot enough,” Carstairs remarked, putting the instrument back. Harrington noticed that he was wearing a glove on his right hand to protect it against the heat.
Harrington’s brain whirled. For the moment all his thoughts were revolving around the instrument in the fire. Of a sudden he recalled a remark made by the medical examiner who had inspected Marsh’s body. The fatal wound, he had declared, looked as if it had been inflicted with an ice pick or a similar implement.
He stood rigid, staring at the handle protruding through the little door. Probably it meant nothing, however. There were millions of ice picks in the world. The only significant circumstance was that this particular ice pick should have appeared in a house situated near the scene of the murder.
“Where did you get that ice pick?” he inquired.
“Recognize it?” Carstairs asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Where did it come from?” Harrington insisted.
The other regarded him fixedly, and then a shadowy smile broke out on his white face.
“Ask Samuel Tarkin,” he suggested. “You know Tarkin, don’t you? Well, ask him. I’m not sure you will get a truthful answer out of him, but you might try.”
He drew the instrument out
of the fire, glanced at it, and put it back again.
“Almost ready,” he remarked. He cast a slanting glance at Harrington. “Curious you should ask that question. Did Tarkin tell you anything?”
“Not a word,” Harrington declared, wondering whether the blackmailer was by any chance within hearing distance.
“No, Tarkin wouldn’t It’s odd, though.”
He looked down at the red-hot stove, a puzzled frown between his eyes. It looked to Harrington as if the ice pick meant a different thing to each of them. In his own mind it was associated with the Marsh murder. In Carstairs’ mind—But it was impossible to determine what was going on behind that white face.
Finally the other shrugged as if to dismiss a problem from his mind. He turned to Theresa.
“Once more,” he said in his mellow voice. “Will you tell?”
She did not seem to hear him. Something flickered In her eyes as she kept staring at the stove. He repeated the question.
“I—I can’t,” she said in a small, cold voice. “I don’t know.”
Carstairs sighed. With his foot he thrust the instrument a little farther into the fire.
“What are you going to do?” Harrington demanded.
“Refresh Miss Lanyard’s memory. Incidentally I’m going to try my skill as a beauty specialist. Glad you happened in, Harrington. I want your opinion. Don’t you think a dimple in her left cheek would improve her beauty?”
He glanced meaningfully at the handle. A premonition, at once vague and horrible, made Harrington’s Mood run cold.
“It isn’t a painless process, you know,” the other continued, “but then Miss Lanyard won’t be the first woman to suffer in the cause of beauty.”
A choking cry of utter dread broke from Theresa’s lips.
“I only hope,” Carstairs went on, “that I can perform the job without bungling. I should hate to disfigure such a lovely face.”
The Back-seat Murder Page 11