by Otto Penzler
“Hurry, Mike,” says little Trixie unsteadily.
“Hold it,” I said. “I want to see what’s in a couple of these other rooms. I’ve got a hunch.”
“You idiot!” says Trixie, half-crying. “Can’t you ever forget you’re a detective? You’re half-dead now! Please come on, Mike! I can’t have anything more happening to you!”
“What’s happening to me—and who cares?” I said as I unlocked another door and opened it.
No soap. Unoccupied.
“One more,” I said to Trixie, who was all but hanging on my bad arm to get me started.
“Mike!” Trixie wailed. “Can’t you see what this is doing to me?”
“You sound worse than a woman in love,” I cracked. “Buck up, baby. It isn’t as bad as that. I’ll get you out of here all right.”
“Oh!” says Trixie. “Why you insufferable—”
“Holy cow!” I yelped. “Now will you shut up?”
I’d turned across the padded corridor and unlocked a door on the other side. Trixie cried out in pity. I felt a little sick myself as we forgot everything else but the man who was spread-eagled and handcuffed face down on the narrow bed in the center of the room.
A leather cat-o-nine-tails hung on the wall. The man’s back was covered with bloody weals. He lay there like dead—but the sound of my voice brought his head up with a convulsive jerk and a whimpering cry of fear.
He was young, unshaven, rough-looking and powerful. He might have been a dock-worker at one time, or a sailor. His arms were tattooed. But he had starved, suffered; ribs showed plainly and his face was haggard, hollow-eyed as he stared at us.
“All right, fellow,” I said. “We’re going to take you out of here. Tell us about it later.”
He wasn’t telling anything. He was like a man who’d had fear beaten into his heart and soul and was expecting more. I’ll never forget the fearful look of his eyes as he watched me free his hands. And the unbelieving, smoldering look as his hands came free and I moved to his feet.
I saw him eyeing Trixie and the gun she was holding as I unlocked the last ankle.
“We’re detectives,” I said quickly. “We’re taking you down to Hollywood to the police. Don’t get us wrong and make a grab for that gun.”
He shuddered and seemed to relax and all but collapse as he swung his feet to the floor. He hadn’t spoken; his voice was husky and strained as he stood up.
“Police? You’re police?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Come on. We may have to fight our way out of here. They’re wise to us. Can you run? How’ll you be in a scrap?”
He flexed his arms. The muscles bulged.
“God! Can I fight?” he gulped thickly as we started to the door. “All I want is that brown devil who whipped me every day and that old man who watched and mumbled like it was church service. I’ll kill ‘em both! I’ll kill ‘em with my bare hands!”
My club and knife were still on the floor of the room where Father Orion lay back on the pillows breathing stertorously. I was stooping for them when our man saw old Orion and jumped at him with an animal-like cry.
Trixie gasped: “Mike, he’ll kill him!”
And he would have too. His hands had plunged through the white beard and grabbed the throat. He was shaking that bony, drugged old carcass in a frenzy when I reached him.
“The cops’ll get him!” I snapped. “Come on!”
He wouldn’t listen. He was in a frenzy. Maybe he didn’t even hear me.
“I’ll shoot him!” says little Trixie. “Come on, you big baboon! You’re making trouble for us!”
Trixie got to him where I’d have failed. He looked at her angry little face and the gun she was holding on him, and batted his hand across his eyes and laughed sheepishly.
“I shoulda counted ten first,” he mumbled, looking down at the half-strangled heap of beard and bones he had dropped. “Come on.”
That inky black passage I led them into was like a trip through a macabre nightmare. The breech-clouted brown man had had time enough to call an army. The shrine might have held twenty men by now, waiting for us at any step. And I didn’t have much fight left. I was weak, wobbly and beginning to feel light-headed.
But the door at the end was there as I’d shut it. The starlight in the silent patio was bright by comparison. And when we were outside on the terrace I sucked in the cool night air thankfully.
“If we could get an auto,” I said, “it’d be easier. Paige is in town. Might be we could get the cops back here before he returns—or meet him on the road somewhere. Or if we could find a telephone around the joint. Trixie, know where the phone is?”
“No,” says Trixie. “In the shrine there somewhere, I think. I didn’t have a chance to see much. I was looking around outside when that Eddy Voss slipped up on me. He and that gobbling mute who got away from us were looking around out there as if they expected someone to come along.”
“Paige!” the boy with us growled. “That’s the name of the fellow who got me into this! Picked me up on Pershing Square and said he had a job working around his estate. Brought me up here himself—and I was locked up before I knew what was happening.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the idea?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I thought they were all crazy—and then I thought I’d go crazy when I found what was happening to me. That old man talking to me by the hour about his dirty heathen gods, and how he’d been to India and Egypt and Tibet and Africa and learned all there was to know about everything. And how the great crystal springs of truth could only come from eternal pain and punishment. And then he’d stand there with his eyes wild and talk and yell stuff I couldn’t understand while that brown-skinned devil whipped me! Ten days I’d been there and only fed half the time—and I got the idea from things he said that there’d been others before me and if I died there’d be others after me. I was going nuts. A day or two more was about all I could have lasted. I knew I didn’t have a chance. I was just Joe Clark, on the bum and nobody even knowing I’d drifted into California. Mister, what’s all this about anyway?”
“Joe,” I said, “I’m not sure about it all myself. After we get out of here, we can sit down and put the pieces together.”
“We’ll get out now! Hell, we’re as good as out!”
“There’s a fence around here that a monkey would have a hard time climbing over,” I said.
“And the top wire is charged with electricity, I was told. Or warned. The gates are chained and guarded. Figure the percentage yourself.”
“What sort of a place is this? Ain’t there any law around here?”
“Sure there is,” I said. “If we can get past that fence and down the mountain to Hollywood. Keep your fingers crossed until then.”
We had been talking under our breath as we hurried across the smooth clipped lawns toward the cabin I’d occupied. The gate was in that direction. I didn’t want to get any further away from the gate. And I looked around for a parked automobile that we might have a chance of taking.
It was Trixie who said huskily: “Over there, Mike! Running towards us!”
I looked over to the left and saw ghosts!
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT TRUTH
They looked like ghosts at any rate. Haifa dozen of them running across the lawns toward us. They’d evidently been heading for the shrine when they spotted us. They were coming without warning other than their white togas against the night.
“Scram!” I jerked out. “Toward the gate! It’s the only way out I know! If there’s only one man there we can handle him very easy! Save the cartridges in the gun!”
We were already running. Thank heaven, Trixie’s sharp eyes had spotted them soon enough to give us some start. I expected them to start shooting; but they didn’t; and then I remembered the club the guard had carried around my cabin and decided they didn’t go armed with guns. Maybe someone thought the brand of fanatics around the place weren’t to be tru
sted with guns. Clubs would do just as well most of the time—and they wouldn’t be heard outside the estate by strange curious ears.
We ran. I ran too, weak and wobbly as I was. The idea of being caught and locked up in one of the padded cells was enough to bring double strength.
“Don’t leave him!” Trixie panted to Joe Clark. “He’s wounded and almost helpless!”
That to a man who’d been through ten days of hell as had this Joe Clark. But he didn’t have any idea of leaving us.
“Gimme that club!” he blurted at me.
So I gave him the club. I had the knife left. Trixie had the gun. That only made the odds two to one against us—if you could forget we were a woman and two half-dead men.
Down through the black, lonesome shadows under the trees, with the crunch of our steps the only sounds.
They made no noise; they didn’t even shout; but twice when I looked back the flutter of their white togas was there in grim ghostly pursuit.
Then the gate, with the floodlights glaring from the stone gate posts and the stout iron gates closed. The guard was there, the same big guard with the bulging muscles and curly brown beard.
He had heard us coming or was expecting us. He stood there before the gates in the full glare of the floodlights, holding a club ready for trouble.
“Gun!” I gasped to Trixie.
She shook her head. By the way her eyes had kept turning to me, she expected me to fall any step.
Joe Clark sprinted ahead. It might have been fear or fury; he went ahead anyway despite all he’d been through. He charged that burly guard as if it were all in the day’s work.
They came together swinging clubs. I swore helplessly as Joe Clark reeled aside from a blow on the head.
“Don’t try it, Mike!” Trixie cried.
But I’d have tried anything. I had the knife. I kept going.
So did Trixie. She darted in front of me and brought the gun up before I realized what she was doing.
He was a bearded, fanatical, challenging figure as Trixie ran in close and pulled the trigger. And he screamed and collapsed like a sawdust dummy that had lost stuffing.
Trixie had shot his knee—little Trixie who went to target practice two and three times a week when she had the chance. I’d kidded her about it—and look now.
The guard was howling, writhing on the ground when I reached him. The gate key on a length of thin chain was attached to his belt. I tore it away.
Trixie had turned and fired a shot as I whirled to the chain and lock that held the gates. Joe Clark had jumped to her side on unsteady feet.
My hand was shaking so that I had to try twice to get the key in. Trixie fired another shot. Maybe it was the last one in the gun. I hadn’t looked at the clip. And when we were outside the gate—then what?
Hollywood and help were miles away. What chance did we have after all? I wouldn’t be able to stagger another quarter of a mile.
Trixie fired a third shot as I got the lock open …
Joe Clark howled: “Keep back or we’ll shoot every damn one of you!”
“Come on!” I yelled as the gates swung open.
And I looked back over my shoulder and saw four of them scattered out and coming after us. And Trixie’s voice was agonizing in its helplessness.
“The gun’s empty, Mike! What can we do?”
“Run!” I said. “Duck off in the woods beyond the light! Clark and I will hold ‘em!”
“No!” Trixie gasped, and I knew she meant it.
One of them yelled in triumph as they burst through the gate after us. We were almost out of the lighted area when Joe Clark’s hoarse cry of despair drove sick helplessness right through me.
“More of’em ahead!”
I saw the two figures charging up the road toward us.
“Get over in the trees!” I cried … and a moment later I yelled: “Wait! They’re not trouble!”
Lew Ryster had been wrong. I had been wrong. Jake Dennis and Larry Sweet were the finest fellows in the world. I loved them—I’d always love them after that moment when I recognized them running up the road toward us, guns in their hands and looking for trouble.
Jake Dennis fired a shot in the air and waved the gun threateningly as they came close.
“What the hell’s going on here? Hands up!” And then Dennis recognized me and bawled: “It’s that doublecrossing little Blaine guy! Look at him! So help me I never seen—”
“Hold it, Jake!” Larry Sweet snapped. He turned to me. “What’s all this about? Who are those comics who ran back through the gate?”
“Turn in a riot call and collar the whole bunch!” I panted. “It’s murder and torture, kidnapping, blackmail and God only knows what! It’s big—and you’ll have to move fast to get everyone!”
“It’s a laugh by the way you three look!” Jake Dennis sneered. “I knew Ryster was stalling when he said he’d work with us. I knew he had a slick trick up his sleeve. And when you flew to Chicago I had a buddy in the department there pick you up and keep an eye on you. What d’you think of that?”
“Fast work,” I grinned, breathing easier and wanting to slap that big red-faced dick’s back and shake his hand.
“We give you a chance to let us in on it,” Jake Dennis blared indignantly. “And did you hand Sweet an’ me a tumble when you stepped off that plane tonight?”
“I wondered how the hell you happened to be there,” I admitted.
“So we hadda tail you up here in the mountains,” Jake Dennis snorted. “We had to hang around down there in the bushes slapping at the bugs and wondering what the hell all this was about! All because of a dirty—”
“Hold it, Jake!” Larry Sweet broke in. “Who are these two, Harris?”
“Miss Meehan, from my agency,” I said. “And Joe Clark, who was kidnapped and tortured in there. I’ve got Eddy Voss, an ex-con, locked up, and there’s a dead woman who seems to have taken poison, and the old he-goat of the whole outfit was out on a marijuana nod when we left. The guard at the gate there is shot through the knee. I left another fellow tied up. Miss Meehan shot a couple more times. I don’t know whether she knocked anyone over or not. It was a close squeak.”
“It sounds like a lunatic party!” Larry Sweet exclaimed.
“It was,” I said. “And you better get help fast.”
“There’s a car coming,” Jake Dennis said, looking down the road.
“Paige!” says I. “I’ll bet it’s John Paige, Father Orion’s secretary! We want him bad! He’s in the center of all this!”
“We’ll get him,” Dennis snapped. “Get back off the road!”
Headlights were flashing beyond the next turn as we faded into the underbrush. The car came into view fast and slowed for the gates.
Jake Dennis waited until it was almost to us and leaped out into the road waving his gun. The car surged ahead. Dennis was expecting it. Give that big cop credit; he knew what to do. He swung on the runningboard with an arm hooked through the front window, and his bellow reached us.
“You’re under arrest! Stop this car!”
A gun crashed—and it wasn’t Jake’s. Then his gun blasted twice before he fell off the running board. He stumbled, sprawled, staggered up a moment later as the big Caddy that had brought me from the airport swerved and hit one of the stone gate posts.
Jake Dennis was running unsteadily toward it when we caught up with him.
“He flashed a gun on me! I hope I killed the dirty rat!” Dennis cried hoarsely. “Shot me in the arm!”
Well, he hadn’t killed the man. The smash hadn’t either. John Paige was feebly trying to get out from behind the wheel when we pulled him out.
His face was gashed and bleeding, he had a bullet hole through his chest and a line of pink froth was on his lips as he choked and breathed hard.
“What’s this?” Larry Sweet said, jerking open the back door.
He dragged out a brown-haired young woman whose head lolled limply and whose eyes were wide and si
ghtless.
“Dead!” Larry Sweet said in a flat voice. “It must have broken her neck.” He laid her on the ground and turned to Paige. “Who is she?”
“My wife,” Paige said. His eyes had been rolling at me with a wild, questioning stare. He hesitated before making the admission, and then broke into a fit of coughing that brought more of the bloody froth to his lips.
Then he saw Joe Clark, unshaven, gaunt and menacing, and he cowered against the ground.
“His wife,” I said. “And there’s a girl in there who’s ready to marry him. And she’s lousy with money. What would he do with a wife who stood in his way of getting his hands on that money?”
I was thinking aloud and stooping over the dead girl on the ground at the same time.
“Sweet,” I said, “did you see this?”
Larry Sweet’s handsome face went hard and he cursed under his breath as he followed my pointing finger. She had been a pretty girl with fair delicate skin and a slender neck. The ugly, purple fingerprints on her neck might have been painted there.
“Killed her—murdered her!” Sweet said in a hard voice.
“Murdered her,” I said, “like he murdered the Farnson girl. Both women were in his way. They would have queered his marriage to a couple of million dollars. Eh, Paige? You wanted the money bad, didn’t you? Worse than you wanted my eight grand?”
He coughed, breathing with harsh rattles. “Damn you—who are you?” he gasped.
“A cop,” I said. “So is the young lady here who came with Nancy Cudahy. See this fellow you turned over to old Orion? Eddy Voss is locked up. It’s all over. I doubt if you’ll last until we get you to a doctor. Why did you think you had to kill the Farnson girl?”
I thought he was dying and it didn’t matter much. He thought the same. Keeping his mouth shut wouldn’t help now.
“She knew I was married,” he got out with an effort. “She’d known my wife at one of the studios where they worked together. She had me meet her and told me she’d tell Nancy about the wife if I didn’t make Nancy forget Orion and me and start back East. Had to get rid of her. She’d have ruined everything.”
“Who runs this joint—Orion or you?”