by Don Wilcox
“What was it, Archie?” Hetty was gasping. “It looked like a dummy.”
“A dummy with his throat cut. I’ve got him here. I’m dragging him in over the wall. Get back, Grace. Give me a light, Hetty. He’s about to slip outa my hands . . . Wait, I’m okay now. Never mind the light.”
Grace was sobbing now and Hetty tried to silence her. In the pitch darkness neither of the girls could quite realize what had happened. But things were clearing up for Archie.
He knew he had acted in the nick of time. He knew that this was not a well: it was a chute for disposing of murdered men. Undoubtedly the shaft led down to make contact with the deep storm-sewer that led to the lake.
“Quiet, you two. Listen. Drake’s talking. He sounds worried. Those two flashes of light—”
“I know I shouldn’t have taken those pictures,” Hetty whispered. “He couldn’t help seeing. He’ll know we’re down here.”
“Shssh! . . . Hear that? He saw red.”
From the low mumblings of Marcus Drake, conferring with his two henchmen, Archie was not convinced that the murderer knew what had happened. Rather, it sounded as if this deadly act always gave Drake a momentary hallucination of “seeing red”—and this time he “saw fire once or twice.”
“Not gettin’ weak knees, are you, Boss?” came Mac’s taunt.
“Weak knees, hell!” Drake growled bitterly. “It was that bad liquor I got at the tavern . . . Or it might have been something else, now that I think of it.”
“Where you gain’, Boss?”
“Never mind me. Get that garden hose into action and wash up the stains. And be sure you run plenty of water in the well . . . And don’t let me hear any more blab about weak knees. I’d like to see you slit a throat! You’d get mixed up and cut your own.”
All of these words might have been spoken in voices that were scarcely more than whispers. The cylindrical walls carried them perfectly. Again Grace began to whimper.
“Quiet!” Archie snapped. “Our lives aren’t worth a nickel if they find out what we’ve got on them. But if they don’t find out, we got the goods that’ll hang ’em.”
His talk only terrified Grace, and as her sobbing faded away into silence he knew that she was turning into a card.
“Are you still with me, Hetty?” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you go through all this—”
“Don’t mind me, Archie. You’ve got the goods on them. You’re taking a long chance, but your nerves are getting tougher.”
He understood. He hadn’t forgotten that during their first eaves-dropping adventure he had acted boldly because of Hetty. Even now, as he dragged the murdered body a little farther back into the tunnel, it was her presence that made him conscious of his daring.
He found the flashlight and turned its sickly orange glow on the bloody, water-soaked form. He recognized the face of the man he had seen in the tavern a few days before. The muscular neck was bowed, half closing the gash in the windpipe. Archie’s blood chilled at the sight. He turned the flashlight off, but kept thinking of Whiskey Phil’s description: the fellow would thrust his head forward like a snake when he sprang the point of a funny story.
A few moments ago this fellow had been in the midst of a story. Just now the two men at the top of the well were mentioning that fact, and Mac was muttering disconsolately because Marcus Drake hadn’t let the guy finish. “Damn it, we never will get the end of that story.”
“We’d better get to work with that garden hose.” Drake was irritable.
“I never saw him act so worried before. He’s so damned egotistical he thinks he’s takin’ no risk. Just because nobody’ll ever find a body in this well—”
The voices faded out of hearing. Presently there were sounds of the hose stream shooting against the rock railing. Splashes of water came chasing down the walls. Soon the well was refilling.
“We’ll have to wait right here, Hetty, until they—Hetty, are you here?”
“Sorry, Archie,” came a low gasp. “That sight was too much . . . I’m passing out.”
“Gee, I’m sorry. But I’ll take care of you, Hetty. You know you mean everything—”
Archie broke off, a little surprised at what he was saying. He doubted whether she heard. By this time she had become a card, waiting to be packed away in his book. It was just as well. Getting out of this hole was going to be difficult enough for one. It would be much worse for three. He groped for the flashlight, intending to pick up the two cards and deposit them in his book. ‘
He found only one card.
He combed the walls and floor looking for the other one.
He rolled the dead man over, thinking that a card might have slipped into the heap of wet clothing. The card wasn’t to be found. In desperation he even searched the ceiling. No card.
However, he noticed something that had previously escaped him. There was a shelf overhead that might have been cut for the storage of tools. For the narrow space of three feet the ceiling of the tunnel was formed of three wide planks planted crosswise, and a narrow opening had been left in front of these to give access to the storage space above them.
The little overhead cavern proved to be empty. Archie shrugged and returned to the business of searching for the lost card.
Could it be that one of the girls had not reverted to the card form, but had retreated through the tunnel?
Archie acted on this hunch. He followed back toward the pit, studying the tracks carefully. By the time he reached the low ledge of stone that had given him the tight squeeze he was certain that no one but himself had passed this way.
At this point sounds filtered through from the pit where he had descended. Sounds of hammering. So Marcus Drake had suspected something! And now he was at the top of the pit, no doubt, mending the broken ladder.
That changed Archie’s plans completely. No more patient waiting for the men to finish up and knock off for the night. It was high time for him to find a way out of here—for his own sake and the sake of the card he held in his hand.
He hurried back to the well. The hose was still spilling down the wall. The voices were droning on, recounting some of the stories that the latest victim had told. Presently Mac was again grumbling over Drake’s failing to wait for the point of the last story.
Archie cupped his hands to his mouth. He called out in a weird, mournful voice:
“Come on down and I’ll finish the story.”
The mumble of voices from overhead became quieted whispers. Mac was sure that call had been for him. Krug refused to believe his ears.
“It couldn’t be. Dead men don’t talk. Besides, he’s gone on down by this time.”
Archie gave out with another low moan. “Listen to me, you two. I’ll give you the finish of that story. And then I’ll go away and leave you alone. But you’ve got to do me a favor.”
“It’s him!” Krug gasped. “He wants us to do something. He’s still alive.”
“It’s him, all right, but he’s dead,” Mac declared. “You can tell it by his voice. He’s comin’ back to make trouble. I been afraid o’ this all along.” The two men listened incredulously. Slowly the instructions carried up to them. They were to act quickly. They were to find a long ladder or, if necessary, two ladders together, and let them down into the well.
As Archie listened to the nervous reactions to his demands, his hopes rose and fell by turns. The men wanted to run, but they dared not. They wanted to report to Marcus Drake, but Archie gave them a ghostly warning to forestall that. He would stand for no delays, and if they wanted to be spared his haunting—
“We got you,” said Mac. “Krug’ll get the ladders right away.”
“And you,” Archie called, “you stay where you are, Mac. I need your company.”
Archie took this precaution for fear he would never recover his ghostly grip upon these two if they both got out of range of his voice at once.
In a few minutes the spliced ladders were dangling down the inside of the wall
. Archie could hear the two men immediately descending.
His plan was simple. He had dragged the body of the murdered man several feet into the tunnel, so that the curving walls hid it from the opening into the well. That would enable him to hide on the shelf while the men followed the tunnel beyond him. When they came upon the body, he would have a clear path to the ladders.
He barely had time to ascend the shelf, which was well concealed from their direction. He called to them once more. “Come back this way. I’m waiting for you in the tunnel.”
Now he could hear them struggling to cross from the end of the ladder into the tunnel opening. Bright rays of a flashlight swept the floor beneath him. Presently they came, trailing along on hands and knees, Mac with a flashlight, Krug with a pistol.
“Damndest thing I ever heard of,” Krug whispered.
“It just goes to show you,” said Mac, “that Drake should’ve let him finish that story. His ghost can’t rest easy till he gets it told.”
“Drake don’t know everything,” Krug muttered. “We sure as hell won’t tell ’im about this.”
“Listen!” Mac stopped short. “Thought I heard someone stompin’ around.”
The two men proceeded cautiously. They were ten feet beyond Archie now. A little farther and it would be safe—But they came to a dead stop. From their station they could undoubtedly see the figure of the murdered man in their path. Mac turned the flashlight back and forth along the walls. He spoke in a voice that was choked with fear.
“Well, here we are.”
The walls gave back no answer, and Mac and Krug exchanged uncertain glances.
“I dunno ’bout this,” said Krug. “I can’t figure out how he got back here—unless Drake didn’t do a good job of it.”
“He looks awful dead,” Mac whispered. Then he raised his voice in another effort to connect with the spirit. “Are you here? Where’d you go?”
“Ssssh! I did hear somethin’. Someone’s comin’ through the tunnel.”
Archie’s chance had never come.
Now he was on the verge of making a dash, but just as he started to climb down from the shelf the two men began backing down the path toward him. He hovered at the edge of the plank and held his breath. “Cover your light,” Krug was saying.
Then Archie saw that another faint glow was approaching. The two men were paralyzed with the uncertainty of their situation. Would the approaching ghost carry a light? Of course not. They wanted to retreat, but they were afraid of disobeying that voice.
The approaching light burst full in their faces and the guttural voice of Marcus Drake barked at them.
“Why, you damned dirty double-crossers!”
CHAPTER XVIII
Elevator Going Down
Marcus M. Drake was almost too mad too speak. Archie would not have been the least bit surprised if he had opened fire with his brand new pistol, if only to kick up some dust at his henchmen’s heels.
Like a pair of punctured balloons those two unworthies began to sputter and puff and cough. Together they succeeded in putting across exactly nothing. Their stammerings about ghosts and voices glanced off their steel-tempered boss like drops of water off a brick wall.
“Dirty double-crossers.” was about all that Drake could utter. He was appalled to think that such inferior thugs would dare to sidetrack one of his carefully dispatched victims. There could be only one reason for their doing such a thing, he decided. They meant to give him the works and run out on him.
“Honest, boss, we never dreamed of such a thing. Shoot us dead if you want to, but I swear to high heaven—” Krug was begging for mercy.
“You got us all wrong,” Mac couldn’t hold the flashlight still, and his free hand was pressing against his sagging jaw. “He ain’t dead, boss. He was callin’ to us. He made us come down, honest.”
Marcus Drake kicked at the corpse. “He’s as dead as your dead brains. How’d he get into this tunnel? Not by himself.”
“He called us in here. That’s where we found him.”
“You’re talking like idiots,” Drake snarled. “Who’s down here besides you?”
“I dunno,” said Krug. “We only got this far when we heard you comin’ toward us. Is there someone else down here? We never passed no one. Did you?”
Drake disliked being thrown on the defensive, and he checked his impulse to glance back over his trail. “If there’s anybody working with you hams, he’s on your side of the body, not mine. I’ve just cleared the tunnel, and nobody got by me.”
“We came down through the well,” said Mac weakly. “Nobody got by us.”
“I think I got it figured out,” said Krug. “Someone on top musta threw his voice down the well.”
“Very likely,” said Drake sarcastically. “And it scared the corpse into jumpin’ into the tunnel. That smooths out everything, don’t it? Except why the hell the body didn’t shoot-the-shoots on down to the storm sewer. Explain that, can you? I know damn well I pressed the button, and I heard the water carry off.”
“You can’t blame us for that trouble, boss. We was up here with you then. You admit that, don’t you? Remember, you walked off—Hey, what gave you the idea of comin’ down here?” Mac saw he was on the trail of something now, and his voice stiffened into accusation. “By George, you musta knew you’d slipped off with your shears. You came down to check up.”
Krug followed through. “Then he was alive.”
“He was dead,” Drake snapped.
“Then he’s still hauntin’ us,” said Mac, shrinking back from the body.
Marcus Drake muttered uneasily to himself, and when Mac asked him what he’d said he refused to repeat it. Instead, he gave his thugs their orders. “Drag him to the well. I’ll take your flashlight. There, move him along.”
As the party passed beneath Archie, Drake missed bumping his head on the planks by a fraction of an inch. Another moment and one of these three was sure to recall this place of hiding. Archie made ready to slip down. He didn’t straighten his clothes, though he felt sure that the rope and hook lumped between his ribs and the shelf were tangled up with his coat.
Darkness was in his favor for the moment. It was all a matter of timing. With the splash of the body into the well Archie bounded down and raced through the tunnel toward the pit. On hands and knees he ran, his shoulder brushing the walls to guide him.
Already the light had turned, and its dim glow seeped around the curve. Then Archie was ahead of it, into the welcome blackness again. But the rumbling of voices had suddenly gone quiet, and Archie knew the men were listening. His thudding hands and knees had made too much noise. He cut his speed, slipped along as noiselessly as he could.
This sharp curve he remembered.
Just ahead he would run into the narrow passage under the low ceiling of rock. If he could get through it undiscovered—
“Who’s there?” Drake’s voice rolled through the tunnel like thunder. “Who’s there?” The storm was coming closer. So was the light.
Archie turned and backed into the narrows. If they crowded down on him he would be facing the right direction. The pistol with the corrugated handle was in his hand.
He fought his way backward. But he wouldn’t make it. They were just around that sharp bend now.
“Who’s there?” came the challenging snarl.
Archie gave back in a voice that would have chilled the gods of death. “I’m looking—for—Marcus—Drake!”
“What the devil is that?”
“I—passed—over—him—once—but—this—time—I’ll—get—him.”
“Like hell you’ll get me!” Drake sneered. Archie could see his shadow forging ahead of the flashlight. He must have been on his knees and one hand; the shadow of his gun arm moved steadily along the wall. The gun came in sight at the turn, its short barrel glistening. There it stopped.
Archie held his breath and waited. He could hear Drake whispering to his men to come closer. The party fell silent as if waiting f
or another call from the unknown voice. Archie wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Another step and they would discover him. Then gunfire would do the bidding of Fate.
The shadow moved. The gunhand became an arm and shoulder, the broad cheekbone and narrowed eye and bulldog jaw of Marcus Drake. His twisted lips whispered something. Archie thought he was calling for more light.
Archie’s fingered tightened. He was about to shout something, but Drake hadn’t seen him yet. And then, suddenly, a strange something happened that turned Drake’s head.
A voice called, “Whoo-oo-oo-ooo . . . where are you?”
It might have come from the well. At least from somewhere back in the curved passage that Marcus Drake and his party had just covered.
“There,” came Krug’s low voice. “I told you so.”
“It came from this way before,” Drake growled.
“Now maybe you’ll believe us,” said Mac. “The damned thing has gone over us.”
“Sounded to me like a female; maybe spirits sound that way when they’re in pain.”
“It’s a trick,” said Drake. “Come on. Ten to one we’ll find someone crawlin’ the ladder.”
The three men turned back. Archie followed them. It made no difference now that he had a clear course for an escape. His responsibility was plain. That voice was the girl he had lost—he wasn’t sure which one.
Or was it? His hand plunged to his coat pocket. The book was hanging like a flap. What had caused that? The leap from the shelf? He had been in a tangle with the rope and hook. The one card must have spilled out and come to life.
He synchronized his creeping steps with the thud of Mac’s hands and knees, and kept barely in sight of the retreating figures. Another call from the girl had urged them on. The round echoes of her voice left Archie still uncertain which girl. But the fact that she was calling—not sobbing or shrieking in terror—led him to believe it must be Hetty.
“By George, it is a female,” he heard Drake declare. “And a damned good-looker. Am I seeing things? . . .