Weird Tales volume 31 number 03
Page 6
"Charles, obviously you don't know that Mary has been after me these past two weeks to go to Dmitri's with her. She hasn't asked me merely a few times; asked me incessantly. I've always refused—Gregorj, as you know, would disapprove—and since last Friday she hasn't asked me once. But last Thursday evening she went again to Dmitri's. Did you know?"
Ethredge's mouth was grim. "I didn't. no."
Priscilla Luce leaned forward and put her hands pleadingly on Charles Eth-iean strong wrists.
"This is going to be hard, terribly hard, to tell you. And please, Charles, please understand that I have not come to you because you are Mary's fiance; I am not as despicable as that. I have come to you because you are the Commissioner of Police, because, if anyone can, you can help her "
"In God's name." Ethredge whispered, "what is wrong? Tell me "
The woman's face was drawn with miser)'.
"Between Thursday last and last night Grandma Luce's brooch and tiara were stolen from my wall-safe. Only two pcr-,ow the combination to that safe, and of those two persons Gregory is automatically absolved "
"You . It was not a
question; it was a statement—flat, lifeless. And in Ethredge's heart was a slow-growing horror, for this thing Mary could never have done; yet he knew, knew already that her hands had taken the jewels. . . .
"Yes. Oregon,' has had private detec-V. T.— 3
tives—from Philadelphia. Mary's fingerprints "
There was silence in that room, then, while Ethredge stared at Priscilla Luce's slender, patrician hands, still clasping his wrists.
"It was not in Mar)' to do this thing, ' he said at last, quietly. "There must be some other explanation, however incredible. Mary could never steal."
The small hands touching his wrists trembled.
"Perhaps 1 was wrong about you, and Mar)'," Priscilla Luce said softly. "I was arrogant—and ambitious for her. I am sorry."
Suddenly her eyes welled with tears, the great drops falling like glistening diamonds on Ethredge's hands. . . .
6. Ethredge Asks Help
""pETERS, come to my apartment; I've JL got to talk to you."
Detective-Lieutenant Peters of the homicide squad, sitting with his square-toed boots outsplayed on the scarred top of his Detective-Bureau desk, listened, his face expressionless as stone, to the taut, nerve-racked voice of his chief. Calmly he spoke.
"O. K., Commissioner; I'll be right out." Carefully, leaning forward from his hips, he set the telephone down. For an instant he did not move; then he swung his feet to the floor and stood erect. His face, as he crossed the room toward the coat-rack, was still impassive.
Yet within his skull his thoughts were seething. Through an instinct born of long association and mutual trust he knew that the Commissioner had at last decided to confide in him; between the Commissioner and his subordinate there existed a peculiar—and by jnost persons unsuspected—friendship. . . .
WEIRD TALES
The distance to Ethredge's home was not great, and Peters, driving a police sedan, covered it quickly. The Commissioner, when he rang, let him in at once.
Definitely, Peters saw at once, Ethredge. looked ill. But Peters knew, too, that something far less easily defined than mere illness had kept the Commissioner away from his desk these past few days. . . .
"Drink?" Ethredge gestured toward a nest of bottles and an array of glasses conveniently at hand.
"Thanks." Peters helped himself to two ounces of whisky, downed it neat. The men sat down.
"Peters," Ethredge began abruptly, "I'm up against something that I can't jfight alone. And I can't use the police, because I've no case that would convince a jury; I'd be thought mad. Also, Mary is involved, and her connection with this affair must never become public knowledge."
Peters nodded. "Better tell me everything, Commissioner."
"Peters, can a hypnotist cure disease in another man through subconscious suggestion? Can an adept so control his subject's mind that that subject becomes his virtual slave, even to the extent of committing a theft? Can a hypnotist cause his subject to suffer and die from a disease which heretofore has not threatened him?"
Peters looked thoughtfully at the nest of bottles.
"Sounds like Dmitri."
"Yes," Ethredge exclaimed hoarsely, "it is Dmitri, damn him!"
Leisurely the Detective-Lieutenant rose, poured a half-drink of amber-colored whisky, sat down again.
"Commissioner, hypnosis, the powers of the will, the depths of the subconscious, are to a great extent unknowns— and limitless unknowns. I cannot say that
I would definitely disbelieve anything, anything at all, you might tell me concerning them. Dmitri? Certainly I believe the stories I've heard about Dmitri. Tales of men dying of loathsome diseases after willing him their money—tales of strange thefts and inexplicable gifts of which he seems invariably the beneficiary."
Ethredge leaned forward.
"Yet we can do nothing—legally."
Peters shook his head. "No, nothing— legally."
Ethredge spread out his hands and looked helplessly at them.
"Peters, I went to see the man. He has Mary under his control; I've been watching her, following her about for days. She doesn't know, and I'm tired, tired almost to death; I've had to do it all myself; I dared trust no one. Peters, a week ago Mary took her cousin Priscilla Luce's jewels, and brought them to Dmitri; God knows what he's done with them. Since then she's been trying to persuade Mrs. Leeds—Arthur Leeds' widow—to go to Dmitri's with her. God, I knoiv that the man's a monster, yet I'm helpless against him."
Ethredge paused, and slowly his hands knotted into fists, relaxed.
"Peters, when I went to see him he laughed at me. More, he said that so long as Mary had access to wealdiy homes he would continue to use her, and that if I so much as attempted to interfere with him he would make her suffer, horribly. She was my vulnerability, he told me, and she was his chattel."
Peters lifted his drink to his lips.
"A venomous fellow," he said softly, "and a strategist, as well."
"Yes," Ethredge muttered. "I'm afraid that he can do everything he says."
Peters set down the small glass, empty.
"You are right. Undoubtedly he can do everything he says. And yet we are
THE THING ON THE FLOOR
291
men, and when men meet a poisonous serpent they squash it, and we must squash Dmitri as pitilessly." He paused, then slowly continued, "There might even he a certain poetic justice in the method by which this may most safely be done. Yes, I think so. I think that on Thursday evening you and I will be included among Dmitri's guests, and then we shall see what we shall see."
The Spider's Lair
Charles ethredge sat, alone, in Dmitri's small, first-floor consulting-room. He sat poised tensely on the very edge of his hard, uncomfortable chair. As the minutes slowly passed his fingers drummed, now and again, with a nervous, jerky rhythm on the top of Dmitri's massive table. Occasionally he glanced swiftly about the barren room, but there was little to attract his attention -within that tiny chamber; even the cryptic lamp in the center of the table was dark and lifeless. And Ethredge was not really concerned with the room in which he sat; his whole attention was focussed on the room adjoining, the theatrically oriental reception chamber from which came, faintly, the sensuous sobbing of Dmitri's balalaika orchestra and the muffled murmuring of departing guests.
One by one the voices dwindled, and at last even the music of the orchestra ceased. There was the sound of brief confusion as the musicians packed (heir instruments and took their departure, and then utter silence.
The door opened, and Dmitri, wearing his invariable lounging-robe and slippers, entered. With slow, waddling shuffle he crossed behind the table to his personal chair, and carefully eased his flabby bulk into its capacious depths.
"Very well, Commissioner Ethredge; we are alone together, as you requested.
My guests h
ave gone; my orchestra is already drinking vodka within some wineshop; only my servant remains within the house. You see that I am not afraid of you,"
Abruptly he paused. For the door behind Ethredge's shoulder had opened, and a man had stepped swiftly into the room, closing the door behind him.
Dmitri's cruel black eyes were suddenly war)-.
"Who are you? I recognize you; you were among those at my demonstration, but—you disappeared. What are you doing here?"
Peters grinned reassuringly at the Commissioner, spoke almost soothingly to Dmitri. "There is a narrow space between your orchestra dais and the wall, uncomfortable, yet a sufficient hiding-place. Who am I? He shrugged slightly. "1 am—of the police. Afraid that you might not agree to grant us a joint audience, I took the precaution of concealing myself."
For a moment Dmitri sat still. Then his fat shoulders heaved in a billowing shrug, and he spoke almost scornfully.
"One or two or a dozen of your kind; what does it matter? With your mujik here to lend you courage. Commissioner, what do you propose now?"
The words were goading, taunting, and swiftly Peters signed to Ethredge to remain silent. Almost gently he murmured, "What do we propose now? Well, Dmitri, we propose first that you release Mary Roberts from whatever enjoinments you have placed upon her subconscious."
He paused, for the obese colossus was smiling.
"Suppose that I refuse."
Peters literally purred his reply, "You are an intelligent man; I assure you that the police of this country have devised extremely piquant methods of making a
WEIRD TALES
man suffer, methods -which we would not hesitate to employ upon you."
For an instant the pupils of Dmitri's eyes dilated. Then, his voice blandly impassive, he said, "You forget that, even if I would, I could not, in her absence, release Mary Roberts' subconscious. I am not a story-book magician, and I cannot command her conscious to come here. She will not come here again, except of her own free will, unless she brings—another with her. And that will be only on a Thursday. She did not come tonight; would you wait here seven days for her to present herself?"
Slowly Peters smiled. "Mary Roberts, at Commissioner Ethredge's request, is waiting in a small restaurant not far from here. I will telephone her." He rose, took a step toward the table.
The colossus seemed to swell in his chair like an infuriated toad. "Stop!" His chest heaved, and from his cavernous interior there issued a half-shriek, half-bellow that beat in that small room like the scream of an ape. "Stepan! Stepan!"
Peters' hand flicked to his hip. But Dmitri only smiled, smiled and shook his monstrous head.
"Your weapon will be of no avail against my Stepan."
8. Stepan
ABRUPTLY the door opened, and the k- small, wholly self-effacing Stepan entered, glanced imperturbably about. He carried Dmitri's small automatic pistol in his right hand, and instinctively Peters' fingers moved, again, toward his hip, then paused helplessly as his mind recalled with sudden sharp vividness the incredible demonstration he had witnessed only a brief hour before. Too well he knew that his gun was, indeed, powerless to harm Stepan. . . . Dmitri was grinning broadly.
"Watch these men closely, Stepan, and usher them from my house. Should they attempt any tricks do not hesitate to shoot. After all, they are here against my will, and they have threatened me."
The servant Stepan, only a slight tinge of color in his cheeks revealing that he felt any interest whatever in the proceedings, gestured with the small automatic. And in that instant Peters whipped to the floor, his hands grasped the end of the strip of carpet on which Stepan stood, his body jerked backward.
His arms wildly flailing, Stepan plunged to his hands and- knees; the automatic skittered across the floor. And suddenly Dmitri, half lifting himself from his chair, was babbling unintelligible, fear-ridden words. Ethredge, as Peters rose to his feet, had pounced upon the outsplayed servant, pinioning him to the floor; Peters, his right hand at his hip, swung alertly toward Dmitri.
"I've — got him, Peters," Ethredge gasped, the little man beneath him no match for the Commissioner's sinewy strength. And chill, shuddery horror abruptly swept him as he realized that this man he touched, this squirming, writhing thing beneath his hands, was invulnerable to lead or to flame, a being that could be overpowered, but that could not be destroyed! "Wbat'H I do with him?"
Grimly Peters snarled, "Hold on to him. I'll handle this death-ridden diabetic!"
His service automatic a blue-steel menace in his right hand, Peters walked to the table. With his left hand he lifted the receiver from the telephone and dialed a number. Warily he stooped over the table as he spoke, presently, with Mary Roberts. Then he cradled the receiver and sat down, facing the colossus.
"She will come here, at once."
Seemingly, Dmitri had collapsed. His shapeless hands lay limply on the chair
THE THING ON THE FLOOR
293
arms, his great chest heaved gulpingly; only the snaky brightness in his darting ebon eyes warned Peters that his tremendous brain was thinking, planning, calculating with chain-lightning rapidity. The servant Stepan was only spasmodically struggling.
Peters spoke abruptly to Ethredge.
"When Mary comes someone will have to admit her. Can you keep this devil covered while I go to the door?"
Ethredge, crouching across the servant's chest, his knees crushing the man's shoulders against the floor, nodded. . . .
Silence, rolling on with interminable slowness, gripped the room. Gradually the rattle of Dmitri's breathing was growing quiet; he sat now in his chair like some obscene, waiting idol, his face an undecipherable mask.
From beyond the tight-closed door a bell faintly tinkled. Peters edged toward Ethredge, slipped his automatic into the Commissioner's outstretched hand. Then he was gone. . . .
Dmitri did not move. A minute passed; to Ethredge it seemed as though all the suspense of myriad ages was bound up in that brief span. Then the door re-opened and Peters, followed by Mary Roberts, re-entered the room. Mary's fair, oval face was a composite of bewilderment and apprehension; in the instant that she glimpsed the tableau within the room her slender body trembled violently and the color drained from her face, leaving it white as new paper. But then her straight, strong young spine stiffened and her firm little jaw set hard. Pale though she was, she glanced inquiringly at Ethredge.
"Charles " she whispered.
Shakily, Ethredge smiled. He nodded toward Dmitri, bloated, swollen, huddled inscrutably in his chair.
"I'll have to tell you—now, Mary," he said slowly. "Try to understand. On the
night that you came here with Helen Stacey-Forbes, Dmitri ensnared you. He cast a—spell over you. We have come here, we have asked you to come here—■ we are going to force him to release you."
Mary, staring at her sweetheart, was frowning. Almost musingly she spoke.
"I have had—terrible dreams," she said, her voice low, "dreams in which he told me to do—strange things; dreams in which I—obeyed him. But I believed that they were only nightmares. And yet, though I loathed him, I know that I have surrendered to the strangest impulse to ask others to come here with me —Mrs. Arthur Leeds -"
Ethredge's eyes, as he glanced at Dmitri, were suddenly cruel. Then, gently, he spoke again to Mary.
"We must free you now, free you from Dmitri—for ever. But Peters believes that you will have to go, once more, beneath his spell."
For a long moment Mary stood there quiet. Then, the words barely audible, she breathed, "Very well, Charles. I am ready."
Peters, who until this moment had been standing, hands in his jacket pockets, with his back against the door, advanced into the room, stooped for the automatic in Ethredge's outstretched hand, and dropped into one of the row of chairs that faced Dmitri's huge table.
"Very well, Dmitri," he said, gesturing significantly with the automatic, "let us waste no more time. Proceed, and understand clea
rly, that if you attempt to trick me I will certainly kill you."
Briefly the men's eyes met and clashed. Then, with surprizing suddenness, Dmitri rolled his flaccid shoulders in an expressive, acquiescent shrug; his loose lips split in a good-humored leer.
"Shall I confess that I am beaten, then?" he asked affably. "Yes, let it be so; I begin to believe that I have, in any
WEIRD TALES
case, overestimated Mary Roberts' value to me. If you will sit across from me, Miss Roberts, and look fixedly at the lamp "
Warningly Peters exclaimed, "Don't look directly at that thing, Commissioner!"
Did a flicker of disappointment cross Dmitri's face? Peters, as he moved from his chair to stand directly behind Dmitri, the mu2zle of the automatic inches from Dmitri's silk-swathed shoulders, never knew. . . .
9. The Spider Spins
Dmitri's fat fingers touched a small button set beneath the edge of the table. And instantly, though Peters forced himself not to look up, he felt, beating against his lowered eyelids, the incredibly soothing, incredibly beautiful monotony of whirling color produced by the fantastic lamp, Abruptly, then, the ceiling light went out. Except for the diabolically cadenced, leaping reiteration of pinwheel color dancing in the center of the table like some chromatic dervish, the room was dark. Grimly Peters kept his eyes averted, kept his gaze boring into Dmitri's black, pillar-like silhouette.
Slow seconds passed. Then Dmitri spoke, spoke in that vibrant, beautiful voice of his that was like the chanting of a cathedral organ.
"You are asleep, Mary Roberts?"
There was a moment's pause. Warn-ingly the police automatic in Peters' hand touched the sodden flesh at the base of Dmitri's neck.
Through the stillness came Mary's reply: "Master, I am asleep."
By not so much as a single, involuntary shudder had Dmitri betrayed even the slightest awareness of the cold gun-muzzle. Yet Peters knew that even now
the man was planning, calculating chance against chance. . . .
"Who am I?" The words boomed like great mellow bass notes.
Mary's answer came unhesitatingly: "You are the Voice that Speaks from Beyond the Darkness. You are the Infallible One."