by Don Wilcox
Ross noted that the guards now stood stiffly in the living room doorways, keeping a watch on this old man but making no effort to direct him or prohibit him from going where he pleased. Apparently he had the run of the house.
The old fellow was dressed in bedroom slippers, old gray trousers, a heavy white woolen sweater with a collar pushed high around his gaunt brown throat. His long bony fingers combed feebly through his smudgy gray hair.
Hank was right, the man was walking in his sleep. At least his eyes were only half open, and the leathery webs of wrinkles were gathered so closely around them that they seemed to repulse the outside world. The rather large head held up with an air of dignity, almost nobility. This loftiness of carriage seemed strange in a man so feeble.
The man paused to stretch his hands toward the dead fireplace, and for a moment the light of the green shaded floor lamp was full on his face. His long sharp nose, his thin lips, his pallid cheeks were highlighted. The light covering of white whiskers did not hide the gauntness of his jaw or the deep-cut lines surrounding his mouth.
“He doesn’t see us,” Hank whispered.
The old man crossed slowly to the right side of the fireplace and with much care settled himself in an old yellow chair before a table of checkers. There he sat for several minutes, resting his lofty head in his hands.[*]
Finally he looked over toward Ross and Hank. He looked their way three or four times in the minutes that followed, never seeming to see them, yet seeming slightly disturbed at the inescapable fact of their presence.
At last he spoke a few deep guttural words that were directed to no one in particular.
“Is Doc around? . . . Tell him I’ll play one more game . . . I’m pretty tired . . . I’ll have to go soon . . . But I’ll hold on . . . long enough . . . to play . . .”
The guards kept sharp eyes on the old man during this monolog. But no one spoke.
“I can’t understand,” the old man said finally in a low sad voice, “what’s keeping Doc.”
Ross wished he were close enough to whisper to Hank. He wondered if Hank shared the strange sensations that suddenly flooded through him. He was moved by a fathomless sympathy for this old man.
There was something so strong and fine about that deep-lined face, and yet something vastly troubled. Back in the Transient Hotel days, Ross had ministered to more than one man hungering for human comfort in his dying hours. So many of those poor fellows during the Depression years had fought their way step by step across the country from one night’s lodging to another with death but a short distance behind.
The mark of death, gray and hollow, was stamped on the face of the sleeping man, thought Ross.
Abruptly, the sleeper turned toward Ross and Hank and addressed them.
“You are strangers. Did you come to help dig my grave? . . . I think I’m ready . . . Doc isn’t coming . . . Now would be a good time . . .”
The old man started to bend his head down on his folded arms.
A guard moved halfway through a door and a little bell rang. On the instant the old man’s whole attitude changed. He drew his head up abruptly, stiffly. The webs around his eyes distended, his eyes grew bright, almost luminous.
“Wide awake,” Hank muttered.
Ross drew a sharp breath. The man’s sudden change of demeanor stunned him like an electrical shock. It was the same face, indeed, but it was different. The mouth had hardened, the eyes had assumed a glow of hatred. There was something snakelike in the old man’s bearing as he arose from his chair.
“So this is Graygortch!” Ross said to himself. “Strange—”
The old man moved out of the room feebly. The guards at the doorways relaxed. The night hours passed on . . .
Morning brought the dreaded trapdoor disciplinary ceremony.
Everyone excepting Graygortch, Vivian, and the sailors on gate duty assembled on the overhanging porch. Ross and Hank, still bound to their chairs, were pushed to the northwest corner of the rectangular floor. A stiff sea breeze swept in across the porch railing and whipped their hair across their faces.
Rouse marched back and forth, waving the arm that wasn’t bound up with bandages, keeping his sailors on the jump to obey orders.
Within a few minutes Rouse called for a chair. His side was troubling him, and his arm was a painful weight. But once settled, he carried on with a vigorous roar that was calculated to scare guilt into the most innocent of his inferiors.
While the line was being chalked along the floor parallel to the rail, Rouse tried out the trapdoor mechanism. He had a sailor stand on the square section of floor, walk across it, jump on it. The square was obviously solid. Then he warned everyone to stand back while he plugged in the electric switch cord. He pressed the switch. The doublewinged doors that formed the floor-square swung downward, remained open for a second, flew back to re-form the solid floor.
Everything was ready.
Rouse called off the names of his sailors, one by one. Each man, as his name was called, marched down the chalk line until Rouse’s bark halted him on the trapdoor square. There he would stand, facing the breathless onlookers, waiting for Rouse’s further orders.
“No charges,” Rouse would say. “Forward march.”
Several sailors walked the disciplinary chalkline safely before Rouse called the name, “McLoogin.”
Four sailors dragged the dead body of Killer McLoogin to the trapdoor square. The body lay there, naked chested. One of the sailors had pulled the sailor middy up to cover the shapeless face.
“You’re charged with carelessness in the line of duty, McLoogin,” Captain Rouse snarled at the corpse. “You’re dead because you let yourself get slipped up on. But that don’t make you any less guilty. This is a bum mark for a man supposed to be familiar with the killin’ game. What’ve you got to say for yourself?”
Some of the sailors snorted at this exhibition. The captain was enjoying the effect.
“Nothin’ to say? Just as I thought. All right. You’re guilty. I consign you to the depths.”
Rouse held the electric switch cord in his hand, but he looked around to see whether the dead McLoogin had any friends who were going to object to this conviction. It wvas an old stunt of his to call on objectors to press the switch. His eye lighted on a suspect. He called the sailor over.
“Press it,” he said.
The sailor took the cord, pressed the switch. The trapdoor flew open. The dead sailor fell through.
Ross listened, thinking he might hear the body strike the water five hundred feet below. But all of the onlookers broke into an applause and it was impossible to hear anything else. Applauding seemed to be the proper way to square one’s judgment with that of Captain Rouse.
“That man next,” said Rouse, pointing into the corner. “The stubby one.”
Sailors cut the cords that bound Hank Switcher.
Hank walked the chalkline with difficulty.
“Halt!” said Rouse. “Right face.”
Hank was standing in the center of the trapdoor square, facing Rouse.
“You’re charged with trespassing the honorable Graygortch’s tower top. Guilty or not guilty?”
“Well, I—” Hank choked on his words.
“You’re guilty,” said Rouse. He cast an eye toward a group of sailors. “Come here, Schubert. The honor’s yours.”
Schubert swaggered over. The bit of melody from his teeth was barely audible to Ross. Ross fought to break his ropes. The cords cut deep. He felt the blood grow wet on his wrists.
Schubert nonchalantly pressed the switch. The trapdoor dropped open. Hank Switcher, scrambling wildly, fell out of sight. The trapdoor flew closed.
“The other fellow next,” Rouse growled.
The cords were cut from Ross’ arms and legs. Before he knew it he was walking the chalkline. Rouse halted him over the trapdoor square.
“You’re guilty on the same grounds,” said Rouse. “Press the switch, Schubert.”
Schubert press
ed the switch.
PART II
Graygortch, master of evil, draws his disciples to him at last. What is his purpose?
Synopsis of Part I
Flying under a starry sky to deliver a bomber to the British, ROSS BRADFORD, volunteer American pilot, and his writer friend, HANK SWITCHER, were disturbed by a strange radio warning of a midnight storm over the Flinfiord island. The girl’s ominous words, “Storm . . . Danger,” were followed by vast flashes of light stabbing out from a castle above the island promontory. The deadly rays caught the tail of the bomber, disintegrated it instantly. The bomber crashed down through a terrific storm, the two men barely escaped with their lives. Ross swore he would get to the bottom of this destructive phenomenon.
Hiking up to the castle, Ross encountered the brutal guards or “sailors.” One of them, SCHUBERT, welcomed Rose into the castle as a candidate for marriage to VIVIAN, the pretty spitfire niece of old BILL GRAYGORTCH, master of the castle. Ross disclaimed any such purpose, but he was charmed by this spirited girl who was putting up a valiant scrap against the castle’s hotbed of dangers. It was she who secretly broadcast the warnings whenever her aged uncle climbed the tower to unleash the mysterious storms and earthquakes. Occurring off and on for the past nine years, these storms were becoming increasingly violent in recent weeks.
Ross was at once embroiled in the castle’s dangers. He was warned that Captain JAG ROUSE, in charge of the “sailors,” would make short work of him; for Rouse, plotting to marry Vivian, had grown suspicious of the slippery Schubert’s intrigue to bring in candidates from the outside. Ross Bradford was forced to hide out.
By this time Ross realized that the castle storms represented something more deadly than a Nazi war instrument over a small patch of ocean. There was evidence that men of evil from all parts of the earth were strangely attracted to this place. The “sailors” were criminals drawn from everywhere; so were the dwellers of the eastern village of the island—men of evil who had failed to get through the castle gates. Indeed, Vivian insisted that Ross Bradford, too, must be a villainous person at heart, otherwise he would not have come here in answer to this strange power which no one but Graygortch himself understood.
Nevertheless, Vivian gave Ross the benefit of the doubt and helped him to hide. Captain Rouse’s pursuit grew hot. Ross escaped to the roof. He discovered that the smart crippled JIMPSON, who had miraculously survived the five-hundred foot death-fall from the trapdoor of the overhanging porch, made daily climbs by his secret passage up the promontory wall to receive food from FANTELLA, the cook. Ross and Jimpson exchanged messages; by a drop cord, Jimpson sent ropes up to Ross, Ross sent wire and some tools down to the cripple. Then Ross started for the tower that held the storm mysteries.
Meanwhile Hank Switcher, who stayed at the fishermen’s village, met SUSAN SMITH, a snappy American news correspondent, who had followed HINKO, a Japanese Hara-Kiri promoter to this island, whence he had been drawn by the mysterious, urge.
Hank and Sue followed the Japanese to the castle. In a fracas at the gate Hank shot and killed a “sailor”—much to his regret. Hinko fled. Sue was left outside the castle gate. But Hank was chased by the sailors and was in danger of being clubbed to death when Ross, perched on the porch roof, rescued him with a rope. The two men managed to throw off their pursuers and gain temporary safety in the top of the great storm tower. While Hank moaned over his killing, Ross caught sight of the huge circular metallic instrument that filled the whole circumference of the tower like a vast horizontal wheel.
A moment later Hank accidentally stepped on the top landing of the tower stairs, which caused the highest of eight loud gongs to ring out. At once Rouse and his sailors knew where the two men were hiding.
Machine guns on the roof forced Ross and Hank to risk descent by a rope within the blackness of the tower’s velvet draperies. Rouse was frustrated in his attempt to take the two men singlehanded, but they yielded to the inevitable capture and were bound hand and foot. Rouse, angry over bungling the job and receiving some broken bones in the bargain, announced a trapdoor disciplinary ceremony for the following morning.
Rouse was in the mood to dish out cruelty liberally. He hoped to be made the thirteenth disciple of Graygortch. He wanted to enter into that mysterious realm of evil through which this feeble old man somehow caused Hitler and his war gods and other lords of the earth’s evils to blend and merge their diabolical spirits.
That night Fantella, the good-hearted old German cook, brought Ross word that Vivian meant to take his advice and run away from this place.
Later in the night Ross and Hank got their first look at the legendary Graygortch himself. The feeble old man, walking in his sleep, entered his living room, asked for his old friend DR. ZIMMERMAN, who used to play checkers with him. “One more game before I die.” To Ross, old Bill Graygortch looked gentle and harmless.
Dr. Zimmerman, of course, did not appear, for he had said goodby to this castle nine years ago.
After a few minutes of waiting, the old man suddenly changed to his hard, cruel nature—the mysterious Graygortch that everyone feared—and tottered back to bed.
The following morning Captain Rouse conducted the trapdoor disciplinary ceremony. He forced Schubert, suspected of traitorous behavior, to press the switch that operated the trap in the floor of the overhanging porch five hundred feet above the sea.
Hank Switcher was marched across the floor, halted over the trap. Rouse pronounced judgment, Schubert pressed the switch, Hank fell through.
Then came Ross Bradford’s turn. He was forced to walk the line, was halted on the fatal spot. Rouse barked the fatal order to Schubert, who obediently pressed the switch.
CHAPTER XV
The jaws of the trapdoor swung halfway open—and stuck there. Ross Bradford, half falling fought to catch himself. His outthrust arms cracked down on the solid floor, for an instant his body dangled, then he swung himself up over the edge.
“Who snapped the juice off?” Jag Rouse, the big captain, bawled, jerking his head around as if to bite somebody. His bandaged arm was a white flash in the dimmed lights. At the same instant the trapdoor had caught, the decorative wall lights had gone out.
The irate captain flung a broadside of orders. “Tie that bird up! Go see about the lights! Find out who pulled the switch and send him in! Do something, somebody! Watch him, there! Look out!”
There was a wild scramble just beyond the trapdoor. A pudgy guard with a squint of inspiration had taken it upon himself to complete the job which the ailing trap had bungled. He flung himself at Ross Bradford, in the manner of a football player, intending to bump his victim into the half-open square.
It was an almost fatal mistake for the pudgy guard. His onrush was too low, Ross hurdled him, and the guard staggered off-balance toward the gaping trap.
Three other sailor-suited guards rushed forward to try to stop him.
But Ross didn’t stop to analyze their motives. He knew he hadn’t escaped the trap, he had just postponed it. Nothing short of a free-for-all fight with some lucky breaks could pull him out of this jam, he thought. And here the sailors came plunging at him—
He swung his fists, struck the first two assailants with the clack of a hammer smashing skeletons. The two went down in a heap, but others came on to swamp him.
Then it was a mighty dog pile, right on the ragged edge of empty space, for the gaping square in the floor looked straight down a full five hundred and fifty feet to the dizzy ocean. The wide overhanging porch trembled with the thump of tumbling fighters, the uproar of sailors’ voices.
The clamor lasted scarcely a minute before it came to a sudden deadlock with the victim somewhere near the bottom of the pile.
Captain Rouse’s ugly bellow thundered out over the muttering and gasping and punching of fists.
“Clear out of there, you hyenas! Get away from that trapdoor. I told you to tie him. Get up—”
The captain’s bellow choked off. His eyebrows ju
mped. As the dog-pile untangled itself, there was Bradford at the bottom of it, his arms hanging over the floor’s edge, clutching the wrists of a sailor who had almost taken the grand slip. The sailor was all out of sight but his blood-red fingers.
“Better give us a hand, here,” said Ross Bradford, “or you’ll lose another buddy.”
“Give him a hand.”
It was not Rouse who spoke the command. It was the deep sonorous voice of Graygortch himself, standing like an ancient statue in the corner doorway. All eyes turned on the aged mystery man for a startled moment. Ross almost lost his grip on the sailor’s wrists.
But the obedience to Graygortch’s command was immediate. The pudgy sailor who had opened the attack was hauled up, pale and breathless, from the hole in the floor.
“Close the trap,” said Graygortch quietly.
“Yes, close the trap, close the trap,” Rouse barked, as if that were the very thing he’d been trying to get done all along. But the electricity was off, and the trap wouldn’t close. However, Schubert came to the rescue by rolling a table across the floor and inverting it over the danger spot.
Everyone breathed easier, and the sailor who had so narrowly missed death gazed at Ross with a puzzled expression, whispered, “This doesn’t make sense, pal. I tried to bump you off. I overreached myself and was on the skids when my fingertips caught me. Then you broke off a fist fight to save me. And you’re the culprit that’s booked for death. It doesn’t make sense—not around this joint.”
No one spoke aloud. For Graygortch was still standing like an ancient carving of marble in the doorway. Everyone was waiting for him to speak.
“I saw what happened,” said the old, old man in his low dry-throated rumble. “You . . . I want to talk with you.” His arm lifted slowly, seeming to creak audibly; the fingers pointed toward Ross Bradford.
“You . . . come with me.” Graygortch’s arm slid part way down to his side, but turned with a slow sweeping stroke that referred to Schubert and three other guards nearby. “You four . . . accompany him . . . with respect