A sickening horror convulsed Harrington. In a flash he saw the full extent of the diabolical idea. He understood now why Theresa was sitting there in a stupor of dread, watching the instrument in the fire with a look of hypnotic horror. It was a thing more revolting than slow death. A searing touch with a white-hot iron, and her loveliness would be hideously scarred for life.
“You skunk!” Harrington gritted, and then he leaped, seething with an impulse to crash his fist into that white, faintly smiling face. His hand, fired with a savage frenzy, shot out—and was neatly caught around the wrist. A laugh, a playful twist, and his face went gray with pain. And then, without apparent effort, Carstairs flung him across the room.
“Don’t be a nuisance, Harrington.” He spoke as if remonstrating with a willful child. “You see it’s absolutely no use.”
Harrington leaned weakly against the wall. His body was a mass of shooting pains. He stared groggily at Carstairs’ hand. It was a soft, white hand. He had a feeling that it was diabolically inspired. He had experienced its subtle and devastating cunning in Carmody’s house, and now the experience had been repeated.
He cast a sultry glance about the room. Faint wisps of smoke were curling about the glowing Sides of the stove. Overhead, through the little window in the roof, a single star shone in the velvet sky. By the stove, arms crossed, stood Carstairs, gazing patiently at the protruding handle. And at the wall sat Theresa, looking as if enthralled by a vision of horrors.
Why didn’t she run? The door was unlocked. But of course Carstairs, standing within a single leap of the door, would stop her. Perhaps she had already tried and, in doing so, experienced the fiendish magic of the man’s fingers.
Harrington stiffened abruptly. Very leisurely Carstairs was putting on the glove again. Now, with the same casual movement, he drew the iron rod from the fire. He held it appraisingly to the light The point was white, and infinitesimal sparks sizzled around it. Very slowly he came forward.
A dull, ragged cry broke from Theresa’s lips. Quickly Harrington stepped up beside her. The white-hot point of iron came closer and closer, a horrible, crawling menace beyond which the face of Carstairs loomed white, composed and smiling.
Terror, abomination and stupefaction dashed in Harrington’s brain. Carstairs was proceeding as if he had no fear of an interruption. Did he think that any man would remain idle while such a hideous thing went on? Did he trust the diabolical deftness of his fingers to that extent?
Theresa sprang up and pressed shudderingly against the wall. Nerves crawling, Harrington watched for a sign of the slightest distraction on Carstairs’ part. He was in the position of a soldier who had but one shot and could not afford to waste it.
“Just once more,” said Carstairs, stopping before the girl. “Will you tell?”
She shrank away from the horrible thing in his hand.
“I can’t!” The words were flung out on a fear-choked scream. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t. Oh, God!”
“Sorry,” said Carstairs with a shrug. “In that case—”
He raised the sizzling implement. The girl edged back along the wall until she found herself caught in the corner.
“Splendid!” Carstairs murmured. “Exactly where I wanted you.”
The hellish thing rose in his hand again, its white point already turning red. Harrington stood motionless, waiting his one chance.
“Wait!” he cried hoarsely. “What do you want to know?”
“It’s a little matter concerning a coffin,” said Carstairs calmly. “Better keep out of this, Harrington.”
The coffin again! Harrington’s brain lurched wildly. And then, as Theresa wedged herself frantically into the corner, with the menacing point of fire close to her face, something within him burst loose. He struck out savagely, but the thrust stopped in midair. Fingers played lightly around his wrist—lightly but with terrible effect. And this time the fingers did not let go after the one body-racking twist. They held him at arm’s length, administering another twist whenever he tried to move. And all the time the hideous thing in Carstairs’ hand crept closer and closer to Theresa’s face.
A series of split screams dinned in his ears. Horribly fascinated, he watched the point of iron. It seemed to swell to monstrous proportions, to sweep everything else out of sight. There was an insanity in his brain, but his tortured mind revolved around a single thought. His left hand was still free. It was only his right hand that was caught in Carstairs’ monstrous grip. But it was a despairingly slight advantage. Just another playful twist, and his body would be a writhing bundle of agonies.
Suddenly his brain stood still. There seemed to be a sickening reek in the air—something burning! The thought steadied him strangely, sent a quickening impulse to his senses. He stared at the red point which a few seconds ago had been white. Yes, it could have been only seconds, though it seemed hours. He sniffed. That awful reek was no longer there. It had been only his imagination. But any moment now the thing he had imagined might become ghastly reality.
He stared at the red point. His brain whirled dizzyingly. A mad impulse came, and it seemed that impulse and deed were encompassed in a split second. A moment’s insanity, a convulsive heave—and now the frizzing end of the iron, was in his left hand and a burning agony was tearing through his flesh.
It was nameless torture, but he laughed crazily as he flung the scorching iron from him. The reek of burnt flesh had become reality now, but the reek was coming from his own seared hand, not from the gray, drawn face he saw against the wall. A sudden sensation of relief made him weak, and then his relief turned to loathing and hate.
Carstairs stood motionless, with a stunned look on his white face. It was as if he had witnessed something unbelievable and stupefying. His face was the face of a man utterly dumbfounded, but Harrington saw only the face of a fiend. The reaction came in a blind, surging rage that dulled his senses to the scorching agony in his hand.
His smoldering eyes went to the iron rod lying on the floor. The red glow was slowing fading, but it was still sufficiently hot to form a black, smoking blister on the board. He snatched it up and, with a hoarse cry of rage and abomination, whirled on Carstairs.
“Take that, you devil!”
He was in a delirium. His hand swung out. In another moment a blister would have been torn across Carstairs’ cheek. But his hand stopped, and it was not Theresa’s horrified cry that stopped it. It was the look he saw on Carstairs’ face—the look of a smiling stoic.
“Go ahead,” the man said. “I don’t blame you in the least.”
As he spoke, he dropped his hands to his side and turned his face toward Harrington and the sizzling iron.
“It’s cooling off,” he remarked. “Perhaps you had better heat it.”
Harrington stared at him. The burning delirium oozed from his brain. It might be only a gesture of mock heroics Carstairs was making, but it was a magnificent one. No matter how thoroughly he deserved it, it was impossible to inflict torture on a man who faced it so coolly.
Harrington flung the iron to a far corner of the room. Of a sudden he became conscious of the agony in his hand.
“Better let me attend to it,” Carstairs said.
He walked out of the room, and Harrington made no move to detain him. The man seemed scarcely human. He heard a moan, and he saw Theresa clutching the wall for support. Now that the horrible ordeal was over, her nerves were giving way. He eased her to a chair and tried to make her comfortable. And then, unthinkingly, he kissed her. She smiled wanly and closed her eyes.
Presently Carstairs returned and applied a bandage to the injured hand. Harrington watched him in a daze, with a sense of mocking unreality. Whether he was inflicting torture or healing a wound, the man’s fingers seemed equally deft.
“You took me by surprise, Harrington,” he admitted, and his shadowy smile lit up his face again. “I never saw such a dare-devil stunt in my life.”
Harrington’s lips twisted into a cramped smi
le. It had not been dare-deviltry; it had been madness.
“And now,” Carstairs added, “I’m at your service.” Harrington stared at him groggily. A few moments ago he could have torn the man to pieces. Now he was rendered strangely speechless and diffident.
“I suppose I deserve almost any kind of punishment your brain can conceive,” Carstairs added. “Go ahead. I shan’t complain.”
He folded his arms and waited. Harrington did not move.
“I might add, though of course you won’t believe me,” Carstairs went on, “that I didn’t have the remotest idea of hurting Miss Lanyard. I wanted to frighten her and make her talk.”
“You chose a hellish way of doing it,” Harrington muttered.
“The only effective way. I knew it would make her tell, if she could. But a moment before you intervened in such a mad and stupendous fashion, I had become convinced that she couldn’t. I’m not apologizing. I’m no saint—far from it I And I know you won’t believe a word of what I am saying.”
Still Harrington did not speak. He felt ashamed of himself for an inclination to accept the man’s words at their face value. He felt Carstairs, no matter what sort of villain he might be, would scorn lies and subterfuges.
Now Carstairs took out his watch. “In sixty seconds I shall walk out of this room, unless you choose to detain me,” he announced.
Harrington did not detain him.
CHAPTER XVII — The Dead Man’s Hat
The forenoon sun shone into the library and glimmered on Seneca Whittaker’s immaculate vest, which he was displaying to advantage by parting his coat and keeping his hands in his trousers pockets.
After a few hours’ sleep, a small group was gathered in the library of the Marsh country house. It consisted of Martin Carmody, looking a little grayer than usual; Theresa, whose face still showed the strain of a terrifying night; Harrington, whose ash-gray eyes seemed to say that life was all contradictions, and Whittaker and his indispensable assistant, the flint-jawed and thickset Storm.
From the table, on which several articles were distributed, Whittaker took a black derby and looked at the inside band.
“Mr. Marsh’s hat,” he explained. “He was wearing it when he walked away from the house. Miss Lanyard and the housekeeper saw him, and they’re positive he had his hat on. But an hour or so later, when Mr. Harrington looked into the mirror and saw Marsh sitting in the back of the car, the hat wasn’t on him.
It wasn’t found in the car after the murder. It had disappeared somewhere.”
He paused and twirled the brim of the garment between his fingers. Harrington recalled that he had stressed the point of the missing hat, but he could not see that it was important.
“Storm thinks it may mean something,” Whittaker went on, “and so I asked Mr. Carmody to come here and tell us how the hat got into his house.”
Carmody jerked up his tall, slightly stooping figure and stared. The inevitable bang of gray hair fell down over his left temple, giving him a somewhat rakish lode.
“My house?” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Whittaker gently. “Storm happened to see it when he called at your house late last night to inquire if Miss Lanyard was there. He found it on the floor of the clothes closet just off the entrance hall. You can see it’s been knocked about. Shame to treat a good hat like that.”
Carmody gaped and seemed unable to take his nervously flickering eyes from the hat.
“I’ll be dashed!” he exclaimed. “I never saw that hat before, and I don’t see how it got inside my house.”
Whittaker gave him a disappointed look, then turned to Storm as if hoping for an inspiration.
“Did you see Marsh the day he was murdered?” Storm asked in his blunt way.
“I did not. I hadn’t seen him for over a week.”
Storm looked highly incredulous, but asked no further questions. Whittaker turned to the table and picked up a slender instrument with a wooden handle. A little gasp sounded in the room. Theresa had turned white at the sight of the implement Harrington had brought it with him from the hilltop hotel, and he had handed it to Whittaker with a brief account of the night’s happenings.
“Anybody ever see this before?” Whittaker asked, holding the instrument aloft and running his sluggish eyes over the gathering.
No one answered, but several pairs of eyes hung on the object.
“What is it?” Carmody asked.
“Only an ice pick,” said Whittaker. “It turned up a short distance from where Marsh was murdered. Storm thinks it may mean something. The medical examiner, by the way, said Marsh was stabbed with some such thing as this.”
Carmody shivered and a look of dread shone out of Theresa’s eyes, but no one spoke a word. Just then Harrington recalled something Carstairs had said. Carstairs had advised him to ask Tarkin what he knew about the ice pick. As yet Harrington had had no opportunity to do so, for Tarkin had been nowhere in sight when he and Theresa left the old hilltop hotel.
With a despondent look Whittaker returned the implement to the table.
“There’s something else you may be interested in,” he remarked. “Especially you, Mr. Harrington. You remember those tracks outside Luke Garbo’s garage. They looked as if Garbo hadn’t gone back to the garage after his last trip out to the car. As far as the tracks showed, he should still be standing there. Garbo himself couldn’t explain it He was stumped. But this morning Storm found the explanation.”
Storm coughed and looked justifiably pleased.
“Did Garbo tell him?” Harrington asked, suddenly interested. The footprints outside the garage had been we of the most puzzling features of the mystery.
“No, I don’t suppose Garbo realizes even now how it happened. Storm didn’t talk with him this morning. He just watched him. As you know, people do all sorts of things when they’re nervous. Once knew a man who had a habit of looking out the window and counting the bricks in the house across the street. Another man was always spelling street signs backward. Still another, when walking along the sidewalk, always steps on the line between the squares of cement Now, a man can do a thing like that without realizing it That’s the way with Garbo. It seems he has a habit of absentmindedly walking in his own tracks.” Harrington gave him a long, puzzled look.
“Garbo did that very thing this morning,” Whittaker went on. “He walked out to the gasoline pump to make some sort of repair, and then he evidently discovered he had forgotten his tools, so he went back and fetched them. He made his repairs, then walked back inside the garage. Storm, who’s been wondering about him lately, had been watching him from the old shack across the road. As soon as Garbo was inside the garage, he went up to the gasoline pump. Now, the ground is still a little soggy. He could see the tracks Garbo had just made—but there were only three lines of tracks. There should have been four. There was only one explanation. Garbo, when he went back to the garage the last time, had walked in the same tracks he made when he went back to fetch his tools. Likely as not he did the same thing on the day of the murder.”
Harrington nodded. The explanation seemed very simple. For that matter, he had never suspected Garbo of having had a hand in the affair. In fact, he didn’t suspect any one. The deed itself was too mystifying to permit him to give much thought to the perpetrator.
He looked up to find Whittaker’s dour eyes fixed on his face. The gloomy look was accompanied by an equally gloomy smile.
“So that’s that,” said Whittaker. “We’ve cleared up one little side issue, thanks to Storm. Don’t know what I’d do without him. But that doesn’t get us very far. What we want to know is, who killed Marsh?”
“And how?” said Harrington unthinkingly.
“Yes, how?” said Whittaker. “Can’t you tell us, Mr. Harrington?”
Harrington smiled at the pointed question.
“Storm has a theory,” Whittaker added, addressing the gathering at large, “and it simplifies the whole question. After all, there is just one thing tha
t has made this case mysterious, and that’s Mr. Harrington’s account of how it happened. Storm says it couldn’t have happened that way. He thinks Mr. Harrington is mistaken.”
“That’s a pleasant way of calling me a liar,” Harrington remarked.
Storm gave him a hard, sarcastic look. Whittaker glanced down along the immaculate expanse of his double-buttoned vest.
“It’s deeper than that,” he said. “It’s so deep I can’t see the bottom of it. Unless a man is a fool, he doesn’t tell a lie that sounds like a lie. He tries to make it plausible. Now, Mr. Harrington, what you told us doesn’t sound at all plausible. A liar could have done better. That proves—“ He paused and looked helplessly at Storm. “What does it prove, Storm?”
But Storm seemed nonplussed. His hard, square face was a maze of wrinkles.
“Of course,” said Whittaker casually, “there’s such a thing as keeping one’s mind a jump ahead of the other fellow’s.”
Storm brightened. “This is how it looks to me,” he declared weightily. “Mr. Harrington here handed us an impossible yarn because he knew we would say to ourselves that only an innocent man would have the nerve to tell a story that sounded like a lie.”
Whittaker appeared to consider.
“Maybe Storm is right. Storm generally is. It takes his kind of brain to see through a mess like this. Now, If Mr. Harrington deliberately told a lie that sounded so impossible that he hoped it would be accepted as the truth, then it follows that—What follows, Storm?”
“That Mr. Harrington is the murderer,” said Storm glibly.
“Maybe so.” Whittaker pondered. “Yes, maybe so, Storm. If you’re right, then we have the answers to two questions—who? and how?”
“But there is still a big why?” a voice remarked. With a start Harrington looked up. He could hardly believe his eyes. A man was standing at the door, broad of body and white of face, with a dusky smile playing across his features. Roscoe Carstairs had entered so silently that no one had heard him.
Theresa started from her seat, then sat down again. Whittaker gazed bewilderedly at the newcomer. It was Harrington who attended to the introductions.
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