by Otto Penzler
I saw the last cars of Thea’s cortège winding southward on Park. Dully I watched them; they were bound for a cemetery in Brooklyn.
But the last—was that a glimpse of tawny hair I caught behind the curtained window—made a U-turn, and headed north. North! They had buried Andy in Westchester . . . and Bonny had said she was going to—her brother!
I taxied to my garage, took my car, and stamped on the accelerator. It wasn’t clever, half-blinded with dread as I was; for by the time I’d located Sergeant Connor, and had him explain me out of traffic court in Yonkers, it was three-thirty. I was at Hawthorne by five . . . and when I came to the cemetery night was on me. Night without a moon . . .
The gates were locked, so I clambered over the wall. In the darkness the tombstones were a glimmering reproach to one who would discover their secrets. I crept along stealthily to Andy’s grave. Once I saw a swinging lantern, and I ducked behind a monument, hugging the dank cold earth that was nourished on death.
But there were no lights where we had left Andy. There was a pile of fresh earth where his stone had been, and the grave-pit yawned wide open. With the cold sweat pouring down my face, I peered from behind the dirt-pile. . . .
Two hooded figures stood on either side of the unlidded coffin. And lying within, her pale hands crossed over the embalming sheet, her violet eyes alive with mad fear, was Bonny!
They were lifting the lid, ready to put it into place. . . . I jumped toward the nearest figure, caught him in a frantic half-Nelson, and pushed. Like a frightened ghost, the other figure leapt away.
“Barry, you don’t know what you’re doing!” shrieked Bonny. I didn’t listen. I kept pushing. Beneath the black robe, I felt that familiar puttiness.
Bonny stood up in the coffin, her hair falling over her shoulders, pure as a dream of heaven in her white dead-dress. “Barry, let me die. . . . This isn’t a hard death! It’s over so soon . . . not like the others. . . . Let me save you, Barry!”
DIMLY, THROUGH THE wild hate that throbbed in my brain, I knew that she was giving her life for my salvation. I didn’t want that, God, no! I pushed, a little harder . . . and the brain of the hooded thing splashed out of the rotted skull. I dropped the body. It fell with a soft whoosh against the coffin. When I snatched off the hood, I saw no face, only battered brain and bone. . . .
Bonny screamed. I turned, and saw the other hooded thing reaching down on me with the butt end of a revolver. No time to duck . . . I took it.
Later, I would remember, as though in a dream, that a black devil had carried Bonny away. But it would be no dream, because when I awoke, just before dawn, I was to find myself lying, cold and aching, across an open coffin in an open grave.
When I got back to town that morning, Suki handed me a single thing that had come by mail. It was a neat little invitation, black on white, asking me to attend my initiation at the Quadrangle Club that night, with the polite reminder, “Formal,” in a lower left-hand corner. I looked at it till the letters danced—and fell into a drugged sleep of nervous exhaustion.
I awoke toward evening. Suki had laid out my soup and fish. I felt fresher, freer to think for the first time in days. That card . . . they’d rushed it, I thought . . . and I wondered if there were not some connection between last night’s episode at the grave, and this morning’s invitation. Either last night I had blundered on too much, or else . . . and another thought made me pause . . . or else the whole thing had been deliberate, that glimpse I’d caught of Bonny, luring me to witness a witless scene in a graveyard.
Too many horrors had forced themselves on my awareness in the immediate past. As I dressed, I thought how incredible it should be that I was going to the Quadrangle Club to unearth the grisliest of imaginable horrors . . . the Quadrangle Club, that had been for fifty years a guarded haven of wealth and prestige. It was almost insane, but then, my world had been insane for days.
Even as I drove over, the thought persisted that I was going on a fool’s errand. I wondered why . . . somewhere at the back of my head a gap persisted, something I should have known, that eluded my dulled senses.
I pulled myself together, and went through the brownstone portals.
Old-generation tone. Cut-glass chandeliers, and the gentlemen taking their port in the card room. That was the Quadrangle Club. I recognized most of the members of my own set, the moderns and their would-be modern mammas and papas.
But we were stiff and strange with each other. Incense burned almost overpoweringly everywhere, but it was not enough to hide that other smell. . . . Half the faces were chalky and tragic, the other half like polite masks over real terror. Nowhere did I see Bonny.
“So you’ve joined too, Barry,” Mona Wells said to me. She was a charming kid, lithe and dark and vibrant, recently married to a friend of mine, Martin Wells. But here, for a reason I could not fathom, her brown eyes were pools of sorrow.
I said, “Where’s Mart? Haven’t seen him around for a while.”
The wine-glass in her fingers cracked at the stem. Her eyes grew mad. “Martin’s been ill,” she whispered. Then, “He shot himself at seven this evening. I left him lying in his blood.”
“My God, Mona! What are you doing at—a party?”
“Party!” Her voice was the voice of an animal being tortured. “It was my invitation to join. . . .”
When I tried to follow her, she lost herself among the guests.
IT WAS ALL I could do to keep from running berserk among the guests, shaking them like rats to get the information I wanted. They were all people in whose families there had been recent tragedy—like Mona. Had Martin told her before he died? Was that why he died? And where was Bonny? Did she know . . . too much, too?
Music came from the dim hallway, and in the glittering drawing-room, guests were dancing. What a dance that was! Like the slow waltz of decaying corpses, who had entered hell in evening dress!
I stood and watched vainly among them for a girl with tawny hair. I felt a light tap on my shoulder, and there stood the portly butler, with Mona Wells, white and shaken, at his side.
“Mr. Amsterdam, if you please, I’ve received word that the initiation is to begin. Won’t you come upstairs for your interview?”
We followed him up the winding old-fashioned staircase, Mona still refusing to look at me. At the end of a corridor, the butler swung open a door, and deferentially waited for me to enter. “In here, sir . . .” I paused, for the room was in darkness. Then I shrugged my shoulders. Nothing much was left to lose. . . . I passed the obsequious figure and went into darkness.
I heard the click of a lock behind me, and footsteps fading down the hall.
I found a wall by groping, and leaned against it. A voice, muffled as though it came through a filtered microphone, said, “That will do nicely, Barry Amsterdam. You may stand as you are.”
I answered, “Who the hell are you?” My voice sounded grim, as though it were echoing from wall to wall of that small room, as though the room were a catacomb. . . .
“I am Justice, if you like a name.” The voice, I told myself, in spite of the stiffness of those short hairs at my nape, must be human. Again that pestering gap! It was a joke. . . . I said as much.
“This is not a joke,” the voice went on. “Justice has long been due to you and your kind—parasites, despoilers, fatteners on the land! There is in each of your lives, or in the lives of those you pretend to love, some crime too ugly for public knowledge. But Justice knows!”
Of course it was a human voice! Damnably human! That pestering thought at the back of my head was beginning to click . . . in a moment, I’d have my finger on it. I said, “What is this? Blackmail?”
As though it had not heard me, the muffled voice continued, “And you, Barry Amsterdam . . . we have waited for you a long, long time! Too long you have escaped the fate you merit, but you will not escape now.”
The thing had clicked. I knew the name of the man behind that voice. It had been so evident, all along, that I’d m
issed it! Exultantly I realized that at last I was one step ahead of him, because I knew who he was, and he didn’t know I knew it. I couldn’t blurt it out now. It might have been my death sentence.
To keep my voice steady, I yelled, “So what?”
“You will mail to the Quadrangle Club in the morning a check for one hundred thousand dollars. You will shun the society of friends. You will do our bidding, come at our call, and respond out of your generosity to any further call for funds.”
“The hell I will!”
“You will do these things, or else the death that rots before it kills will come to Bonny Carter.”
I shouted, “You dirty perverted murderer!” I wanted to hit something, hard, but you can’t hit at a voice.
“We are glad to accommodate with proof,” the voice slurred on. Then I had to grab at the wall, because the floor started tilting under me, like one of those crazy things at Coney Island. I felt myself slipping, gently, to a lower level in the building where there was light.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SCENT OF BURNING FLESH
I blinked a little. I was in a sort of cage, constructed by driving iron bars in a semicircle from floor to ceiling of a stone-walled room. The back wall of the cage was the section of the floor that had just swung down. At a height of ten feet there was a gap in the rails, through which I had fallen; and a sort of gate in front of me, latched on the outside.
The room beyond my cage was large and rectangular and had a platform extending across the far end. A big machine, something like a gigantic searchlight, occupied the left side of it. Wide cracks of light in the long wall to my left indicated a shut door.
There was a chair just in front of the camera-thing, a wooden chair, with leather straps about the legs and back. I peered, trying to find a sign of life in the purplish dimness.
Far to the left, in the shadows, two figures gleamed, luminously white. I cried out in sheer horror at the sight of them . . . they were women, nude, bound upright to stone pillars.
One of them was Bonny. Bands of adhesive covered her mouth.
Had I found her—too late? I went crazy mad, tried to force the steel bars that kept me from her, shouted insane challenges to the thing that had done this to us.
Two black-robed figures stepped from behind the machine. One of them stood guard over the helpless women; it was hooded, and I recognized it as the thing that had spirited Bonny out of her brother’s coffin, that had taunted me a few minutes ago in the dark room.
I was cold with despair, because I knew who he was. I knew, but my knowledge had come too late—I could do nothing. And Bonny in deadly danger . . .
The other figure was not hooded—it was the club’s butler! He descended from the platform and walked toward me, coming to a stop just out of reach of my arms. His robe fell open a little and I caught a glimpse of the heavy automatic that nestled in its holster under his shoulder. God! I thought. If I could only get my hands on that gun for thirty seconds!
The butler said, “Sir, the master wishes you to witness an exhibition. He trusts it will bring you around to his way of thinking.” He retreated, and while my heart went berserk in my throat, I saw him unbind one of the struggling nude figures, and strap her to the plain wooden chair.
Not Bonny, thank God! The girl facing that evil-looking machine was Mona Wells. Like a demon lecturer explaining his lantern slides, the butler continued suavely, “Mrs. Wells has also refused to accede to our wishes. She has one more chance before we accomplish her end—a little prematurely, to be sure.”
Mona shrieked in horror, “I won’t do it! You can’t make me, you murdering fiends! You got Martin, didn’t you? Well, you can send me after him!”
As though it were a step in a routine, the butler opened that door on the left wall . . . light flooded the chamber. There, behind a network of iron bars, like the door to a prison, their foul white faces mad with hatred of the fiend who had destroyed them, stood the legion of the cursed—the rotting! Beyond them, I saw the sad but still-human faces of the others.
“Mrs. Wells,” said the butler, “will do nicely for your education, Mr. Amsterdam.” He stepped behind the machine. I heard a whirring sound, and there was a sudden, blinding flash of light accompanied by the sickening smell of burnt flesh. Mona shrieked again. God, I’ll hear those shrieks in a dream the night before I die!
It had happened! That was all it took; a whirring sound, a flash of light, and you—started to rot! I joined her shrieks. Over and over again I screamed at the hooded monster and the inhuman butler: “You damned swine! You damned swine!”
Mona’s voice died to a whine, and became silent. She slumped in her bonds. The butler undid her straps and led her back to the pillar and tied her up again. Her head slumped forward on her chest—she was unconscious. I hoped that she was dead.
The butler glanced at her once and then came over and stood near my cage—a little nearer than before. I could have almost reached out and touched him. A sudden inspiration flashed through my mind. It was a slim and desperate chance . . . but it might work! If only I could get him one step closer . . .
The rotting corpses who once were my friends were silent now behind their bars—silent with hopeless terror and despair.
THE HOODED FIGURE turned toward me. An unholy chuckle escaped from under the hood. “Do you see your friends now, Barry Amsterdam? Do you see them as they are? As you will be soon? Their bodies are rotting now even as their souls rotted long ago. It is Justice and they are afraid of Justice. They are afraid of me! Those who have not yet felt the power of my—for want of a better name, shall we call it Radium X-Ray?—treatment, know that their time to face it will surely come.
“They don’t know me, Barry Amsterdam, these sons and daughters of the four hundred. I am only one of the forty million. But they are afraid of me! They know that they are safe only so long as they obey me. They cannot escape, for no matter where they go, I can follow them—because they don’t know who I am. I can sit beside them on the train or drink with them at their houses, and they will not know that Justice has overtaken them. They will never know—until it is too late and their souls are roasting in hell!”
He stopped suddenly and gestured toward Bonny. “Perhaps another demonstration will convince you, Barry Amsterdam, that it is better to submit to me. She no longer has any money, so she can no longer obey my commands. It is time for her to meet the death her rotten soul deserves.”
It had come! I could wait no longer. The single card I held must be played—a slim, last, desperate hope. . . .
I shouted:
“No one else may know you now . . . but I know you—Duke Livingstone!”
The hooded figure uttered a roar of rage and sprang toward his fiendish machine. The butler, his face white with sudden fear, took an involuntary step toward me—started to draw his pistol.
This was what I had hoped for! At the same moment I had shouted Duke Livingstone’s name, I thrust my arms through the bars of my cage. My hands clasped behind the butler’s neck and with the strength of a madman, I jerked his head toward me. There was the sodden crunch of flesh and bone meeting hard iron and the butler’s form went slack in my arms.
Duke Livingstone had halted momentarily in astonishment at my sudden action, and that hesitation was all I needed. Holding the unconscious butler against the bars with one arm, my other hand darted to his half-drawn automatic. I fired two quick shots.
Duke spun heavily, reeled back a half-dozen paces, and slumped to the floor. I fired three more shots into his twitching body. It jerked convulsively and then was still. . . .
As the echoes of the shots died away there was absolute silence for a few seconds. I heard a high-pitched voice scream. “The butler has the keys!” and then all hell broke loose. Shrieking imprecations and crying for me to free them so that they might tear their former tormentors to pieces, the mob of living corpses beat frantically at the iron bars of their prison, while the yet untainted were almost hysterical w
ith joy.
I found the keys, but before freeing the others I released Bonny and held my coat about her head as we hurried from that hellish room so that she could not see the sickening and ghoulish fate of Duke Livingstone and the butler. . . .
“I SUPPOSE IT drove him crazy,” I explained to the reduced group of friends who had survived. “He was always saying that it got him, knowing the things he knew about people.”
“He was a devil!” moaned Jane Anders, Grant’s sister. “He got Judge Rainey’s wife, to keep the police off us. He played husband against wife, mother against child. He was a ghoul!”
“We mustn’t talk about it,” Bonny whispered. “Barry, take me home.”
She nestled against me in the car. “Barry, I tried to save you. That’s why, yesterday, when I caught a glimpse of you from the car, I showed myself, hoping you’d follow me. If you couldn’t rescue me at once, I thought at least you’d see that the mess was far too loathsome for you to bother with.”
My arm wound tighter about her. “You thought that would keep me away! Bonny, didn’t you know I loved you?” I thought for a moment of the inanity of women, and of the courage of this one. “But Bonny,” I said, “why did you leave my apartment the night I left you with Suki?”
She shuddered slightly. “Duke Livingstone called and told me Andy was alive, that he’d seen him. He seemed to think I knew more about it than he did, so I didn’t think anything was wrong, till I found myself his prisoner. He kept me gagged most of the time. . . .”
I swore softly at the dead. . . . “If I’d only realized what I should have realized a little earlier! I might at least have saved poor Mona Wells. It kept bothering me, what the tie-up was between the Quadrangle Club and the horrors. I was helpless before it dawned on me that Duke was the tie-up. He had to be the man. It was he who’d suggested it to me in the first place. If it hadn’t been for Duke, there just wouldn’t have been a tie-up—either in my mind or in the newspapers. I wonder why he didn’t try to keep it a secret?”