It had sounded like one man running; now it was one man! The thudding came from my own slowing boots. The boots which had been in front of me had stopped. Worse than that! It was as if (I was rooted stockstill, aghast) — as if my slowing feet had carried me over the place where those other heels had halted. As if, in the absolute black of that tunnel, I had raced clean through the unseen fugitive. The Unseen had stopped, gone to mist in the blackness, and before I could check my pace, I had passed through the vacuum where the thing had been, and now it was behind me!
Every hair on my scalp was stiffened. I dead-stopped. I listened. All the nerve-terminals under my skin were sending feelers out through the blackness, and those feelers were telling me of another presence there. Was that whistle my own windpipe, or was someone there in the dark beside me, breathing?
I took four steps forward; reached out my right band and struck solid wall with the pistol barrel; threw out my left hand and caught a head of hair. Instantly the silence shattered into screams. I shouted; yanked. Nails clawed my mouth and raked my jaw. Fists beat at my cheekbones. I got an arm around a body and hooked a leg around a leg. An explosion of energy burst in my arms. Had I captured a catamount? The nails dug and slashed. Cloth tore in my fingers as we waltzed, wrestled, spun along a wall, plunged and rolled on a wooden floor.
I knew, then, I’d run out of the passage into a room, and I struck with the automatic in desperate fear, hitting blows at nothing. Then metal clanged on metal with a little scatter of sparks. Shock smashed on my knuckles. The gun, wrenched out of my hand, darted off into space. My dislodged fingers, snatching wildly, caught the smooth barrel of a rifle. I twisted and tore, trying to breathe through a smother of hair. Teeth or a bear-trap sank with the violence of steel in my forearm. I squalled. Crash! The rifle discharged with the jolt of Armageddon. Blackness gulped the gun flame; I rolled, blinded, in thunder and powder smoke while claws skinned ribbons from my forehead and a tiny voice was screaming—
“Cart — Oooh, help me — Cart — ”
I lunged away. “My God — ”
“Cart — ”
I bellowed on my feet.
Light streamed out of blackness and hit me like a blow between the eyes. That shaft of brilliance could have been a bolt from a star. I had to fling up an arm. The room, flashing into view, swam in dazzling topsy-turvy on my eyeballs. I shall always remember every detail of that chamber at tunnel’s end as it arranged itself in focus for my vision.
A squared compartment perhaps eight by eight, floor, walls, ceiling fashioned of rough-hewn planks, hard and bare as any monk’s retreat. Once it may have served as secret arsenal or hideaway against marauding Caribbean pirates; there was that cellarlike deafness in the walls and that long-hidden chill. The narrow door of the tunnel’s entry was cobwebbed with floating gun-fumes. Apart from a smell compounded of ancient timbering and earth was the sting of fresh-burnt cartridge powder.
The floor was covered by a carpet of loose dirt, not unlike that of an old-time barroom, and the sole article of furniture was a lonely table of the unvarnished kitchen variety standing near the door from the tunnel. On the table top (odd the homely touch invariable to some fabulous scene) was half a loaf of raisin bread.
And, flashlight tight in one fist, Springfield tight in the other, her eyes bright purple under a tangled ambush of hair, Pete was in rigid pose against the table.
I stood for a long time glaring at that mine-chamber, at the tunnel’s door, at Pete, before I uttered her name twice as if I’d never heard it before, and was trying to learn it and couldn’t believe the sound of it.
She stood the rifle against the table and leaned there, pushing clotted hair from her forehead with the back of a hand. Her frock was torn down the seam under her left arm, her stockings rent at the knees, her elbows bruised, and there was a vicious discoloration on her wrist where my fingers had twisted. She said she hadn’t been hurt.
“And it is you,” she said in a small voice.
I don’t suppose I was giving a good impersonation. I was black from hair to heels as a Pole from a bituminous pit. I gaped at Pete with my mouth like a mounted pickerel’s, hands hanging.
“Oh, Cart — ” The electric torch wavered in her hand, and she drew in her lower lip, fighting tears. “I’ve never been as — frightened.”
I stumbled to her, pawing and stammerous. “Pete, how in the name of — My God, if I’d only known it was you! That shot might have killed you!”
She wailed, “I nearly killed you. Look at your arm — ”
“Damn my arm. I just missed breaking your head with the pistol.” It lay against a table leg, and I retrieved the revolver, thinking an adequate curse. I was scared and domineering. “Pete, why in God’s name didn’t you stay put in that bedroom? I almost put a bullet in you. If I’d ever killed you down here, I — ”
“I heard you coming up that awful tunnel,” she whispered, “and I was going to shoot. I didn’t dare snap on the flashlight. Then I heard you come to a stop, and when you touched my hair I was panic-stricken. The — the gun fired off by itself. ‘We must have kicked the trigger.”
I looked at the rifle, startled. “Where’d you find that gun?”
She scrubbed at a smear on her cheek, eyes large, bewildered. “I just picked it up. Honestly, Cart, my head’s spinning so I can hardly remember where. I — is your arm all right — where I bit you?”
It was hurting like the devil and I was glad of it, after the roughing I’d given her. I pulled the flashlight from her fingers, set it on the table and drew Pete under my arm, trying to be gentle as I scoured her cheek with my handkerchief, at the same time looking over her shoulder at the Springfield and puzzling it through my comprehension.
“Don’t worry about a little bite. You can’t hurt an artist’s feelings,” I babbled nervous jocularity, “not after what happened at the judging today.”
“Cart dear, if that gunshot had struck you — ”
“Pete, where? Where the Almighty are all these rifles coming from? Can you tell me where you found this one?”
She drew a shuddery breath. “Remember when shooting broke out in the hall? You ran out of the bedroom, telling me to stay behind.”
Queer. It hadn’t happened two hours ago, yet it seemed in memory I must grope back as many years. “Toadstoo1 and his mother,” I told her. “Shot it out on the staircase. Riddled. Blew each other to sponge before my eyes. Old Tousellines lay under the telephone knocked out. I couldn’t stop the thing.”
“I saw it,” Pete said throatily.
“You saw it?”
“After the gunshots stopped you called to me, and I heard you run down the stairs. I had to see what was happening. I crept out on the balcony to look. Toadstool and the Negress were dead and you were questioning the lawyer about the Widow’s revolver.”
“Mighty odd about that,” I was reminded to snarl. “Tousellines began to tell me the Widow was a witch; the pistol she was carrying — this revolver — had flown through a window into her hand, or some similar cockeyed story.”
“Well,” Pete described huskily, “I was going back into the bedroom when — I don’t know why, Cart, but I — you know the feeling someone’s looking at you? Eyes on your back?”
“I’ve had that feeling since the minute we stepped inside the château.”
“It was like that. Just as if someone I couldn’t see was watching me. Only it was intensified and it seemed to be eyes in the door of — of Uncle Eli’s bedroom.”
“What?”
“Yes. Then I supposed it was nothing. Nerves. Anyway, I went to his bedroom door and looked in. Nobody there, of course. But you know the wardrobe where Sir Duffin was killed, the inner door leading into a wall-passage that goes down to the office. That whole dreadful house must be honeycombed. I — I walked into Uncle Eli’s room and went into the wardrobe — ”
I shook her arm. “Pete, you didn’t!”
“I wanted to see,” she insisted. “The passage w
as empty so I went down. You were down in the hall, and I’d be right there in the office.”
“The whole place crawling with murderers and you walked into that dark passage alone!”
“It’s only a flight of steps. It opens through a panel next to that old iron safe in there. So I stepped out into the office and was intending to run straight out into the hall when I noticed that big desk had been shoved away from the wall, and there was a panel on that side, half open, and another passage. That’s where I found this rifle.”
“Why, it was propped against the half-opened panel. The flashlight was on the desk. I was going to call you from the hall, but I heard you somewhere away in the back of the house beating at a door and shouting for Manfred.”
“Thought I’d round up what was left standing of the gang, where I could watch them,” I clipped in, through shut teeth that were gritty with tunnel-dust and made my mouth thirsty. “After that artillery battle on the stairs I told Tousellines I was going to take charge.”
Pete put a hand on the table to steady herself, looking back at the tunnel-door in anxiety. “It’s been horrible — ”
“I knew the En-sign and Dutchman wouldn’t sit in their rooms and wait. When I found the sailor and the German had busted out and weren’t to be seen, it scared the daylights out of me.”
“They might kill us all,” she whispered. “They’ve got it in for you, Cart.”
“Never mind me.” I could be bold now that everything was over. “Gave me a chill when I couldn’t find them, I admit, and when I dashed up to the front bedroom and you were missing, I blew up. Didn’t you hear me yelling?”
She seemed confused. “I thought you’d gone out back — ”
“I went through those upstairs rooms hollering my head off. I went through every room in the house. You weren’t in the office when I looked in, and I guess I was too jittery to notice the moved desk or anything. Then I set out to tear up Haiti by the roots out of doors. Lord! That cur of an En-sign was hiding by the side verandah with a billiard cue in his hand. I’d have shot him on the spot if I hadn’t suddenly spied Manfred. The two of them out there in the rain, and each one laying for the other.”
Pete’s eyes rounded, blue, alarmed. “Manfred? Out there in the rain?”
I gaped. “Didn’t you see the German?”
“Didn’t I see him?”
“He was over behind those coconut palms,” I chattered, “with a knife as big as New York in his mouth.”
“But I couldn’t have seen him there,” Pete cried, “because —”
“Because you mistook me for Manfred,” I explained to her, brightly, “and you snapped a shot at me where I crouched. That was me. Don’t worry, I seem to have a charmed life this year. The bullet went by, and so did Manfred. He went down the compound like a terrified elephant, and from the look of his face, I don’t think he’ll come back. You’ve eliminated them both,” I congratulated, taking Pete’s hands in mine, “and the little game’s over, thank God. And you, too, Pete. Thanks for saving my life.”
She stood in the white, electric torch-light that circled us with its unshaded glare, and Mice at the end of her Wonderland Tunnel couldn’t have been as open-eyed, bewildered. “Please, Cart! What do you mean about me saving your life?”
“Why, the En-sign had me spotted. That rifle I had was unloaded. There I was trying to shoot an empty gun. He jumped up to throw his javelin, and he’d’ve speared me like a codfish—”
“Don’t!”
“But you killed him,” I cried. “You shot from the verandah just in the nick—”
“I didn’t kill the En-sign,” Pete said rigidly.
“‘Whaaaat?” It came up from under my ribs.
“I’m trying to tell you, Cart. I didn’t shoot the En-sign. I wasn’t on the side verandah.”
Something cold and hollow invaded my insides. “You didn’t find that Springfield rifle in the office and run out on the verandah and shoot the En-sign through the vines? You didn’t run back into the house and down this tunnel with me after you, thinking it was someb — ”
“No, Cart. No, I didn’t. I never went out of the office.”
“But I thought — ”
“When I heard you and Tousellines banging at Manfred’s door, calling to him, I — I thought I’d explore this new passage by myself. I picked up the rifle and the flashlight and — and went down the tunnel, followed it — to this room. The tunnel must be over a mile long. I — I kept thinking it would end.”
“Let me get this straight,” I flung at her. “You ran down here all by yourself?”
“I wasn’t running,” she insisted. “I walked all the way. Then I came to this dead-end room — there was nothing here — I was on the point of turning back when I heard you coming along the tunnel. I heard you running. I didn’t know who it was. There’s no way out of here, and I was terrified. Afraid I was trapped.”
Wordless I stared down at her.
She whispered, “So I switched off the flashlight and just waited. The sound of a man running came nearer and nearer and then —t hen stopped short in the blackness right in front of me — grabbed my hair — it was you.”
“But I was chasing somebody!” I gasped out.
“Somebody — somebody else?”
“I wasn’t chasing myself!” I blattered. “Somebody was right in front of me. My God — somebody who gave me the laugh. Yes! Then we were running in step so it seemed like only one of us in the dark. And all at once I had a feeling I’d gone right by, right through the thing!” Nerves came unstitched in my throat, and the torch-lit dugout swam on my eyeballs. “When I found you down here I thought you were the one I’d been chasing! Nobody could have turned and slipped around me in that passage. I was blocking it behind him. Pete, where the devil? Where could he go?”
My tongue stalled on the question, and there it was. A little room like a rabbit’s den deep underground at a tunnel’s end. One door — the door I’d barged through. No windows, no shadows where one could hide. Blank, timbered walls and floor. A plain kitchen table and half a loaf of raisin bread. Pete standing there —
But somebody had shot a fusillade from the verandah, blown the En-sign galley-west and sniped a last bullet at me. Someone had sped into the house and down the office rat-hole with me racing after. Those quick-slippered feet and that abominable laugh. My brain gagged and stuck. I stared.
A one-way tunnel ending in an earth-boweled mine chamber, and someone running ahead of me. There was no other place for that “someone” to go, and, as far as I could see, that “someone” wasn’t there!
***
There arrives, I’m told, a time during mayhem, murder, war or any similarly related and cruel antic invented to rag the human emotions, when the abnormal assumes the guise of the norm, when horror wears into the absurd; the little safety valve on endurance blows off like a peanut whistle and iced nerves put on a winter coat of callus. So our sentimental war pilots grin cheerily at young men tailspinning under them in flames; our Babbitts frolic happily into bayonet practice, jilting Mother Machree for Mademoiselle from Armentières; our undertakers talk golf at their work; our city medical examiners light cigars at suicides. Maybe that’s why Lazarus laughed.
Murders? Up till two nights ago I’d called myself a portrait painter. Aside from a few unidentifiable objects festooning a barbed wire fence in France, the only murders I’d seen were hanging framed on walls of American art galleries. Then a murdered man’s funeral, and twenty-four hours of Saturnalia. A physician gunned down on a terrace. Sir Duffin killed in a wardrobe where he wasn’t waiting for a street car. A tongueless Dominican felled by a bullet through the top of his head in a locked storeroom. Ambrose javelined in a pool parlor. A widow and her boy merrily dissecting each other with lead on the stairs. Nice going.
Murder by that time was almost monotony, and I’d hardly grayed a hair at the En-sign’s execution.
But an Unseen who could vanish in a subterranean tunnel peele
d the callus off me to expose freshly every naked, jumping nerve, and I stood pretty near to panic as I sped a gaze around that under-earth chamber. What wizardish thing could I have pursued there? Could Manfred have beat me into the château, ducked down the passage? But Manfred hadn’t fired that blast at the En-sign. Nothing occult in that rum-preserved hulk.
Light-footed, quick-scurrying feet — only one other man left alive in the house —
I grabbed Pete so fiercely she winced; I shouted that survivor’s name. “Tousellines!”
“The lawyer!” she gasped.
“It’s got to be! Who else? Didn’t I leave him going out the front door? Listen,” I blurted, “who else could open the safe and get another gun? He — he’s the last one left of that bunch. Tousellines!”
“But if you followed him down the tunnel — where is he?”
Guessing that blue-lipped little Negro was one thing, and discovering him was another. The flashlight on the table illuminated every square inch of the room, and there wasn’t a shadow’s shadow of the man. No tracks on the dirt-spread floor, our hand-to-hand scuffle having obliterated footprints. Besides, where could footprints go in a dugout eight by eight?
Scratching and pawing, I went over that floor like an excited hen. We pounded the planking underfoot for a hollow spot. Pete stamped the rifle-butt while I knocked with numbing fists. We went over every sliver of the boarded walls, beating on timbers and hammering out nothing but the sound of solid earth behind. I went to the extremity of yanking the drawer from the kitchen table. Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines was not revealed. I looked under the raisin bread. I banged again on the walls. No resonant echo was summoned; the hollow sound in the room was the bumping of my heart loose in my ribs, less adamant than that earth-backed dugout timbering.
“Somehow he slipped by me, then. In the tunnel. Maybe there’s a side passage.” I wanted to get away from that stifling cellar. I sent the flashlight torching into the tunnel’s gullet. “Come on!”
There was no side passage in the wood-lined corridor. The narrow walls touched me on either elbow, planking solid underfoot, a hand’s clearance overhead until we reached the turns where the one-way passage made a channel chiseled through veins of limestone and packed earth. The white ray groped ahead of us to pick out the sharp bends, the places where masonry had ruptured and collapsed, the slag-mound where I’d slammed my head and the vanished runner had sent back a laugh.
Murder On the Way! Page 16