The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  He was dead!

  Either shock or some quick and powerful poison which he had taken when he had realized escape was impossible had killed him. The autopsy will decide which.

  The whole tragedy had occurred in an almost incredibly brief time. Less than five minutes had elapsed between the first scream of the woman and the third death.

  But it was time enough to give the necklace thief his opportunity.

  Among the visitors at the museum was Mr. James Kirkham, the noted explorer, who recently brought to America the famous Yunnan jades which Mr. Rockbilt presented to the Metropolitan. Mr. Kirkham had been preparing an exhaustive report upon mining possibilities in China for a certain powerful American syndicate. He had been working on it for the last two days with intense concentration, and felt the need this afternoon of a little relaxation. He decided to spend a couple of hours at the museum.

  He had strolled into the Egyptian room where the necklace was kept and was studying some amulets in a case in a far corner when he heard the woman’s scream. He saw those who were in the room running and followed them. He did not see the killings, but was a witness to the capture of the second man.

  Preoccupied by the necessity of completing his report, and deciding that he had had enough “relaxation,” Mr. Kirkham started to leave. He had just reached the doors of the museum when a suspicion seized him. Trained by the necessities of his occupation to keenest observation, he recalled that while he was hastening to the entrance of the necklace room, following the others, some one had brushed past him going into the room. He recalled also hearing immediately afterward a sharp click, like the forcing of a lock. With his attention focused upon what was going on without, the impressions then carried with them no significance.

  But now it seemed that they might be important.

  Mr. Kirkham turned back instantly, and ordered the alarm to be sounded which at once closes the doors of the museum. As he is well known at the Metropolitan, he was as instantly obeyed.

  And it was that trained observation of his and quick thinking which beyond all doubt foiled the thief of the necklace.

  There followed an account of the discovery of the raped cabinet, the verification of the fact that no one had gone out of the museum either during or after the disturbances, the searching of everybody in the Curator’s offices, and the careful shepherding of them out one by one so no one could stop and pick up the necklace from wherever it had been hidden. It interested me to find that I had demanded to be searched with the rest, despite the Curator’s protests!

  I came to my interview, substantially the same in all the papers.

  “The truth is,” so I was quoted as having said, “I feel a bit guilty that I did not at once realize the importance of those impressions and turn back into the room. I could probably have caught the thief red-handed. The fact is that my mind was about nine-tenths taken up with that infernal report which must be finished and mailed tonight. I have a vague idea that there were about a dozen people in the room, but not the slightest recollection of what they looked like.

  “When I heard the woman scream, it was like being jarred out of sleep. My progress to the door was half-automatic. It was only when I was about to go out of the museum that memory began to function, and I recalled that furtive brushing past me of some one and the clicking noise.

  “Then, of course, there was only one thing to be done. Make sure that nobody got out until it was determined whether or not anything had been stolen. The entrance guard deserves great credit for the promptness with which he sounded that alarm.

  “I agree with the Curator that there can be no connection between the theft and the killings. How could there possibly be? Some one, and he can be no professional because any professional would know that there was no way of selling such a thing, had a sudden crazy impulse. His probable next thought was one of sincere repentance and an intense desire to get rid of the necklace instantly. The only problem is finding where he slipped it.

  “You say it was a lucky thing for the museum that I turned back when I did,” smiled Mr. Kirkham. “Well, I think it was a mighty lucky thing for me. I wouldn’t like being in the position that having been the first one out of the museum—and maybe the only one, for the theft would soon have been discovered—would have put me.”

  At this the Curator, despite his anxiety, laughed heartily.

  There was more to the story, much more; but that was all I was quoted as saying. The guard whom I had seen lying across the threshold told how he had been knocked down in the backward rush, and somebody “had kicked me in the ear, or something.” The second guard had joined in the chase. One paper had a grisly “special” about the possibility of the thief having crawled into one of the suits of armor and dying within it, of thirst and hunger. The writer evidently thought of armor as an iron box in which one could hide like a closet.

  All the accounts agreed that there was little chance of identifying the three dead. There was not a thing in their clothing or about them to give a single clew.

  Well, there it all was. There was my alibi, complete. There were Satan’s chessmen now all properly clicked into place, including the three who would never be moved again. It wasn’t nice reading for me, not at all. Particularly did I wince at the Curator’s amusement that my honesty could come into question.

  But again my double had done a good job. It had been he, of course, who had slipped by me as I had bent to tie my shoe, smoothly taking up my trail without apparent break. And it had been he whom I had passed at the obelisk as I had slipped as smoothly back into his. No one had noticed me come down the museum’s steps and enter the automobile that held Eve. The diversion on the sidewalk had made sure of that. There were no gaps in the alibi.

  And the three dead people who had furnished the diversion in the museum that had enabled me to steal the necklace? Slaves of Satan’s mysterious drug, the kehjt. The description of their strange eyes and their pallor proved that—if I had needed proof. Satan’s slaves, playing faithfully the parts he had given them, in blissful confidence of a perpetual Paradise for their immediate reward.

  I read the stories over again. At eight o’clock the reporters were sent up to my room. I restrained myself severely to the lines of my early interview. Their visit was largely perfunctory. After all, there was not much that I could say. I left the report that had “preoccupied” me so greatly lying where they could see it.

  I went even further. Taking the hint from my double’s remarks, I sealed and addressed it and asked one of them to drop it into the Post Office for me on his way back to his paper.

  When they had gone, I had dinner sent up to my room.

  But when I went to bed, hours later, it was with a cold little sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. More than at any time, I was inclined to credit Satan’s version of his identity.

  For the first time I was afraid of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Early next morning, the telephone rang, awakening me. The clerk at the desk was on the other end. There was an urgent message for me, and the bearer had instructions to wait until I had read it. I told him to send it up. It was a letter. I opened it and read:

  “You have done well, James Kirkham. I am pleased with you. Visit your friends at the museum this afternoon. You will receive further instructions from me tomorrow. S.”

  I phoned the desk to dismiss the messenger, and to send me up breakfast and the morning papers.

  It was a good story, and they had spread upon it. It surprised me, at first, that they had given so much more space to the theft of the necklace than they had to the murders and suicide. Then I realized, inasmuch as there was no suspicion of any connection between them, that this was sound newspaper judgment. After all, the lost lives were only three among millions. They had been—and they were not. There were many more.

  But the necklace was unique.

  That, I reflected, was undoubtedly the way Satan felt about it. Certainly those three lives had seemed to him nothin
g like so important as had the necklace. And quite plainly the newspapers agreed with him.

  The three bodies remained in the morgue, unidentified. The museum, after an all-night search, had been unable to find the necklace. That was all there was new, if new it could be called.

  I went downstairs, and carried on the inevitable discussions of the affair with various members of the Club. At one o’clock a messenger brought me another letter. The name on the envelope was that of an important legal firm of which the brilliant attorney was the head.

  In it was a check for ten thousand dollars.

  The accompanying note complimented me upon my report. The check, it said, was for that and further possible services. For the latter only, of course, in the nature of a retainer. Other work which I might be asked to do would be paid for commensurately.

  Again Satan had spoken the truth. He did pay well. But the “other work”?

  At three o’clock I went to the museum. I had no difficulty in passing the barricade. In a fashion, I was a hero. The Curator was unhappy, but hopeful. I, when I departed, was much more unhappy than he, and, so far as the recovery of the necklace was concerned, with no hopes whatever. Obviously, I was at pains to conceal both of these states of mind from him.

  The day went by without further word from Satan, or from any of his servitors. As the hours passed, I became more and more uneasy. Suppose that this one thing was all that he had wanted of me? That, now I had carried it out, I was to be cast aside! Hell might be his realm, but with Eve therein it was Paradise to me. I did not want his gates closed against me. Nor, cast out, could I storm them. I did not know where they were. What sleep I had that night was troubled indeed, swinging between bitter rage and a nightmarish sense of irretrievable loss.

  When I opened Satan’s letter next morning it was with the feeling that the angel with the flaming sword had stood aside from the barred doors of Eden and was beckoning me in.

  “I am having a house party, and you will find congenial company. You can have your mail called for at the Club, daily. On second thought, I won’t take no for an answer. A car will come for you at four o’clock. S.”

  On the surface, nothing but a cordial, insistent invitation to have a little holiday. Actually, a command. Even had I wanted to, I would have known better than to refuse.

  My conscience abruptly ceased to trouble me. With a light heart I packed a traveling bag, gave my instructions at the desk, and waited impatiently for the hour to roll around. Precisely at four, a smart limousine stopped in front of the Club, as smartly a liveried chauffeur entered, saluted me respectfully and, in the manner of one who knew me well, took my bag and ushered me into the car.

  Here I had immediate proof that I had passed my novitiate and had been accepted by Satan. The curtains were up. I was to be allowed to see where I was going.

  We went up Fifth Avenue and turned to the Queensborough Bridge. We went over it into Long Island. In about forty minutes we had struck the entrance of the Vanderbilt Speedway. We did its forty-five miles to Lake Ronkonkoma in a flat fifty minutes. We turned north toward the Sound, passed through Smithtown and out the North Shore road, A little after six we swung toward the Sound again, and in a few minutes came to a narrow private road penetrating a thick growth of pine and oak. We took it. A couple of hundred yards farther on we paused at a cottage where my driver gave a slip of some sort to a man who had walked out to stop us. He carried a high-powered rifle, and was plainly a guard. A mile or so farther on we came to another cottage and the process was repeated.

  The road began to skirt a strong high wall. I knew it was the one Barker had told me about, and I wondered how he had managed to evade these outer guards. At 6:30 we stopped at a pair of massive steel gates. At a signal from the chauffeur they opened. We rolled through, and they clanged behind us.

  Under the high wall, on each side of the road, was a low, domed structure of heavy concrete. They were distinctly warlike defenses. They looked as though they might house machine guns. Several men came out of them, questioned my driver, inspected me through the windows, and waved us on.

  My respect for Satan was steadily mounting.

  Fifteen minutes more and we were at the doors of the chateau. It lay, I figured, about ten miles on the New York side of Port Jefferson, in the densely wooded section between it and Oyster Bay. It was built in a small valley, and probably little if any of it could be seen from the Sound which, I estimated, must be about three-quarters of a mile away. So extensive were the grounds through which we had come and so thickly wooded, that I doubted if the house could be seen even from the public roads.

  Consardine welcomed me. I had the impression that he was curiously glad to see me. I had been shifted to new quarters, he told me, and he would stay with me, if I didn’t mind, while I dressed for dinner. I told him that nothing would delight me more. I meant it. I liked Consardine.

  The new quarters were fresh evidence of my promotion. There was a big bedroom, a bigger sitting-room and a bath. They were rather more than wonderfully furnished, and they had windows. I appreciated the subtlety of this assurance that I was no longer a prisoner. The efficient Thomas was awaiting me. He grinned openly at my bag. My clothes had been already laid on the bed. Consardine chatted as I bathed and dressed.

  Satan, he said, would not be with us this night. He had ordered Consardine, however, to tell me that I had fulfilled his every expectation of me. Some time tomorrow he would have a talk with me. I would find an engaging lot of people at dinner. Afterwards there would be a bridge game which I could join or not, as I pleased. We did not discuss the affair of the necklace, although Thomas must have known all about it.

  I wanted rather badly to ask if Eve would be at the table, but decided not to risk it. When we had reached the dining room, by three of the wall passages and two of the lifts, she was not there.

  We were eighteen, all told. My companions were all that Consardine had promised, interesting, witty, entertaining. Among them a remarkably beautiful Polish woman, an Italian count and a Japanese baron, the three frequently featured in the news. Satan’s webs spread wide.

  It was an excellent dinner among excellent company—no need to go into detail. There was no discussion of our absent host, nor of our activities. Back of my mind throughout it was a strong impatience to get to my rooms and await Barker. Did he know of my change of quarters? Could he get to me? Was Eve in the chateau?

  The dinner ended, and we passed into another room where were the bridge tables. There were enough partners for four, and two persons left over. It gave me my chance to avoid playing. Unfortunately for my plans, it gave Consardine the same opportunity. He suggested that he show me some of the wonders of the place. I could not refuse, of course.

  We had looked over half a dozen rooms and galleries before I was able decently to plead weariness. Of what I saw I will not write, it is not essential. But the rareness and beauty of their contents stirred me profoundly. Satan, so Consardine told me, had an enormous suite in which he kept the treasures dearest to him. What I had seen had only been a fraction of what the chateau contained, he said.

  We looked in on the bridge game on our way back. Others had drifted in during our absence, and several more tables were going.

  At one of them, with Cobham for her partner, sat Eve.

  She glanced up at me as I passed and nodded indifferently. Cobham got up and shook hands with great friendliness. It was plain that all his resentment was gone. While I was acknowledging introductions, Eve leaned back, humming. I recognized the air as one of the new jazzy songs:

  “Meet me, darling, when the clocks are chiming twelve—at midnight, When the moonlight Makes our hearts bright—”

  I needed no moonlight to make my own heart bright. It was a message. She had seen Barker.

  After a moment or two, I pressed Consardine’s foot. Eve was being deliberately impolite, yawning and riffling the cards impatiently. Cobham gave her an irritated glance.

  “Well,” she said
, rudely, “are we playing bridge or aren’t we? I’m serving notice—twelve o’clock sees me in bed.”

  Again I understood; she was underscoring the message.

  I bade them good night, and turned away with Consardine. Another little group came in, and called to us to stay.

  “Not tonight,” I whispered to him. “I’m jumpy. Get me out.”

  He looked at Eve, and smiled faintly.

  “Mr. Kirkham has work to do,” he told them. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He, took me to my rooms, showing me, as we went, how to manipulate the panels through which we passed and the lifts.

  “In the event of your changing your mind,” he said, “and wanting to come back.”

  “I won’t,” I told him. “I’ll read a while and go to bed. Truth is, Consardine, I don’t feel as though I could stand much of Miss Demerest tonight.”

  “I’m going to speak to Eve,” he answered. “There’s no reason for your being made uncomfortable.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” I said. “I’d rather handle the situation myself.”

  “Have it your own way,” he replied, and went on to tell me that Thomas would awaken me in the morning. Satan would probably send a message by him. If I wanted the valet I could call him by the room ’phone. The ’phone gave me an impression of privacy that the bell had not. Thomas, I inferred, was no longer on duty as my guard. I was very glad of that.

  Consardine bade me good night. At last I was alone.

  I walked to the windows. They were not barred, but they were covered with a fine steel mesh quite as efficient. I turned out all the lights but one, and began to read. My watch showed 10:30.

  It was very still. The time went slowly. It was close to eleven when there came a hoarse whisper from the bedroom:

  “’Ere I am, Cap’n, an’ bloody glad to see you!”

  Despite my absolute certainty that Barker would appear, my heart gave a great leap, and a load seemed to slip from me. I jumped into the bedroom and shook him by the shoulders.