by Philip Wylie
“It’s all right,” she answered. “Don’t worry about that. You didn’t tell me what you thought might happen because——”
“Because I wanted you to be comfortable until it did—and there was nothing we could do to stop it.”
“I know. He can come and go at will——”
“Not quite at will. He still has a body. He can’t crawl through keyholes——”
Daryl laughed a little. “It seems so absurd——”
“At first glance. The thing I really expected was to see you come out of your room all a-jitter because Carpenter was making you do it—taking you along, you know. I suppose he left because he is sure of himself. Sure we can’t get him. Sure he can get at us whenever he feels like it. And you say he was tootling around the Village in my wake to-day, eh?”
“Yes. He said he’d kill you if you and I didn’t stop——”
“Stop caring about each other?” Baxter combed his curly hair with his fingers. “Nice guy. Anyway, we know he’s about and we know that damnable experiment of his was perfectly successful. You couldn’t see anything? No blurs? No shimmers?”
“No.”
“No fogs, spots, swirls?”
“I looked everywhere and I couldn’t see a thing. I just heard him.”
“Heard him talk, what? Nice voice Carpenter has. Sounds like a fog horn.”
“And I heard him breathe—and sigh—and laugh—and rustle.”
“Poor kid.”
“And I felt him.”
“What!”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t lay hands on you——”
“Just one hand,” she answered slowly. “Over my mouth to keep me from screaming. And I grabbed his arm. And when he went he kissed me.”
Baxter cursed.
Daryl said, “Don’t do that now. I’m all right.”
Baxter spoke suddenly and with a vehemence that she had never seen in him. “All right? Sure. You’re all right. I’m all right. Damn it, Daryl, if you didn’t have more guts than a tiger you’d be dead right now from pure nervous shock. That devil doesn’t have the faintest idea of the sheer horror he can set up. Thinks it’s funny, I suppose. Thinks it’s feminine weakness.
“All right? We’re about as all right as if we were sliding down a greased chute to hell. Every time we open a door we give him the power to come into the room. He can take what he pleases. He can steal the pass key to this room any time he wants to do it. If you bolt it on the inside—that’s fine. He has to wait till you come out—no more. And we can’t live in locked rooms all our life. We aren’t that sort of people. That’s a laugh. And what can we do?”
“I think we ought to get the police.”
Baxter perceived that his denial of a statement meant merely to comfort him had hurt her feelings.
“Oh—when I make fun of your ‘all right’ I don’t intend to make you seem foolish. For twenty-four hours I’ve been trying to think. To think. To outthink Carpenter. To invent a way to get him. The police—well—I thought of that. But what would happen? You’d go to the police and tell him that there was an invisible man loose in the city. You’d say that there weren’t any traces of him—but you were sure of it. What would they do? Laugh at you. Arrest you and take you to Bellevue for observation. I don’t even dare go to the police. Not yet, anyway.”
“Can’t we hide?”
“You can. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Baxter grimaced. “For the simple reason that Carpenter mentioned a few principles of broad philanthropy and social revolution that he intended to set in motion. If he starts—and we begin to see evidences—well—I’ll be the only man and you the only other person who can make even a decent guess about what is going on.”
“Isn’t there anybody among your friends you could tell?”
He stood up and paced the floor. “Certainly. In a pinch I might convince a few good men.”
“Couldn’t you write them and then hide?”
“I did what I could. Last night while you were asleep I wrote out six copies of an account of the business at Mortland Farms. I’ll add to that account what took place to-night. And I’ll leave those stories sealed and addressed in a place I know. If he and I meet and I lose—then my executors will mail the letters. My untimely demise may help to set my friends on Carpenter’s trail. By the way—I didn’t want to ask you—but are you sure he went out?”
“Out of here? Yes.”
“How?”
“He spoke to me after the door was closed—from the hall.”
“Good girl. I was pretty sure myself. And another thing. After this we’ve got to be careful what we say on the telephone.”
Daryl nodded. “I will. What shall we do now?”
“Can you sleep?”
“I think so. Some, maybe.”
“I’ll go out—anyway. I presume the house detective wouldn’t care about my being here. Bolt the door on the inside. I’ll give you a revolver. If anything happens—shoot fast. It’ll wake me. Tomorrow I’ll get an adjoining room. We’re safer here in the middle of New York and in the middle of crowds than we would be in some lonely hide-out. Although I didn’t believe it was possible to live in the Clariena on Fifth Avenue and be in such grave and imminent trouble. Who would?”
His agitation left him and the “good night” he extended over the following five minutes was that of a lover rather than a worried body-guard. He walked down the hall. He unlocked his door and went into the room, carefully shutting the door close to his body. That short walk in the hall had been very uncomfortable. He opened a window and looked down into Fifth Avenue. The traffic lights shone like jewels. Traffic itself sent a ceaseless monody to his ears.
Across the street were the blank windows of a skyscraper populous only in day time. Baxter took a cigarette from his silver case and lit it. His hand trembled slightly—a hand he had never known could tremble. By and by he began to undress. He flipped his cigarette from the window and watched until it cast off minute sparks where it hit the pavement of the street.
On the inside of his door was a chain so arranged that it could be fixed open but not entered. He dropped the chain into its slot. His sleep on the previous night had been limited to three hours. On the night before that he had had none. He turned out the light and climbed into his bed. To catch Carpenter. He might make a pit in some room with a rug across it and Daryl on the opposite side—the sort of thing primitive man used for elephants—and dinosaurs, may be. He became more sleepy. Through half-closed eyes he could see the chain that held his door and beyond it a foot or two of red hall carpet.
He was looking at it idly when the voice came.
“Good night, Baxter.”
Carpenter was standing at his door, speaking through the crack.
“Good night, Carpenter,” Baxter replied. There was a silence. “Oh, say, Carpenter. Are you there?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Would you care to give me your address?”
“Sorry.”
“Like to come in a minute?”
“No. Thanks. Have to run along.”
“Well—don’t get run over. You’re apt to, you know.”
A soft laugh and silence. Baxter lay in the bed, sweat oozing from his forehead. Any action he could design for that insane moment would be dangerous to the point of folly.
Simeon Page sat in the library of his great house. His small brilliant blue eyes raced along the lines of a popular novel with the avidity of a ferret’s following the motions of a fowl. Occasionally his fat and childishly tiny hands brushed his greying forelock back from his bulbous brow. When he stirred his short limbs, his immaculate trousers formed new and impeccable wrinkles. The face, the attitude of the man was predatory. There was nothing amiable about him, very little that was pleasant. His languishing and expensive wife hated him. His only son was a drunkard and his two daughters referred to him before their titled husbands as a cash register and a marionette. For variety
they said charlatan.
He was reading the book because some one had told him it was obscene. He would have called the enterprise relaxation. Possibly he needed relaxation. He was one of the greatest wheat speculators in the world, a man many times a millionaire, a man detested by his enemies and distrusted by his employees. All his life he had been selfish and acquisitive. Stories were written about his brilliant career. In saying it was brilliant, they were wrong only because brilliance is ordinarily creative. Simeon Page destroyed whatever and whomever stood in his way. He called that hard-headed realism.
It was an unrecognized misfortune to have been one of the men who were responsible for the financial ruin of William Carpenter. He had forgotten about it. The sly gesture that had stranded Carpenter with a sea of wheat for which he had paid more than the market price was merely one of Page’s coups.
At twelve o’clock Page rang for his butler and ordered his glass to be refilled with Port. At half past twelve he reached the portion of the novel which had been outlined to him. At a quarter to one the butler asked permission to retire—and the permission was granted. Not many minutes after that a depression appeared in the leather chair directly facing Page. He read on, unmindful of it.
About one, a voice spoke to him.
“Page!”
The small man leaped up and stared around the room. His cheeks were pallid. He breathed puffily.
“Over here, Page.”
The head shot in the direction of the sound. Nothing there. He yanked open the drawer of the table in the library. The gun that had been there was gone.
“I took your gun out, Page. It’s yonder.”
The man stared glassily in the direction of the sound. His lips babbled, but his voice could not be forced through them. He saw the gun, grabbed it, perceived that the shells had been removed and threw it on the floor. He snatched the bell cord which had summoned the butler and it dropped into his hand.
“It’s I. William Carpenter,” the voice said and Page felt a heavy slap on the back. He spun around. Nothing. He beat his temples.
“You’re not crazy, Page. Stop that! Don’t yell!” A hand covered his mouth. He groped for the arm. Then the thing loosed him. “I said—don’t yell. I’ll keep my hands off you if you keep quiet.”
“Who—what——”
“William Carpenter, I said. Sit down.”
Page sat back in his chair, his eyes bulging. A recitation came to his ears from the thin air. He heard it, understood parts of it. He could not see the Carpenter who stood before him. The scientist had been sitting in front of Page watching him, hating him, for several minutes. He hated with a long and cumulative rage. In the fury of that emotion he had told the man his name. That was a mistake. Nevertheless his angry subconsciousness had partially prepared him for the steps he afterward took.
He had followed a servant into the back door of Page’s house and followed the butler into the library with a rising excitement at the prospect of this interview. It might have terminated differently if in the ecstasy of telling Page the name of the tormentor Carpenter had not stepped too far. Page was powerful. The oration which followed led to the act.
“I’ve come, Page, to get even with you. Not only for myself. For a score of men you’ve treated the way you did me. You’ve starved thousands with your manipulations. You would starve other thousands. You’ve ruined men. You’re unscrupulous, damnable, unprincipled; arrogant, narrow, and to-night you’re going to die.”
Page was on his knees, white to the lips. “Not that. For God’s sake not that.”
“Do you know any reason you should live?”
The financier shook his head—at first negatively and then positively. Perhaps he thought that this was some terrific nightmare from which he would presently waken. Certainly he made no further protest.
“Above all, you have tried to harm William Carpenter and to go unharmed.”
“Carpenter!”
Then a long paper knife lifted itself from the table. Page shrank from it. Its speed through the air accelerated suddenly. The handle protruded from Page’s chest as he fell back against the seat of his chair.
Carpenter had played God—even to judgment and the death penalty. Page was not a good man. His death might have been well merited. But the harm done was to Carpenter. As he stood over his victim, secure, unrepentant, he was above those emotions which lie along a sadistic plane—but he was not above the emotion of an omnipotence, a megalomania which filled him with an exaltation he whispered into the empty room.
“I have begun.”
At nine o’clock on the next morning Baxter walked into the dining room of the Clariena, chose one of the small tables that are placed in a row along the Fifth Avenue windows and opened the newspaper which was immediately offered to him.
SIMEON PAGE MURDERED
New York, N. Y.—At two o’clock this morning the body of Simeon Page, multi-millionaire wheat operator, was found lying in the library of his Madison Avenue residence by his valet who had descended to see why Mr. Page did not retire. Death had been caused by a single thrust of a long, ornamental paper knife which the assassin had taken from the library table and which remained hilt-deep in the body.
Automatically, Baxter read the part of the account which was on the front page, diverting his attention to other items when he reached the bottom of the column. Inside the newspaper was a biographical sketch of the millionaire. Baxter’s eyes did not reach it until he had finished his grapefruit and sampled his eggs. It mentioned in a single sentence a few of the men who were reputed to have been “unsuccessful competitors” of Page for wheat control. Among those names was that of William Carpenter.
Baxter started violently when he saw that name. His first reaction was to the oddity of reading it; the sensation supplied was that of reading about a dead acquaintance. He realized instantly that the man in connection with whom Carpenter was mentioned had been killed on the previous night; he fitted the time of Carpenter’s melodramatic “Good night” to himself with the conjectural hour of the murder; he rushed back to the reporter’s story and considered the details: “no one was in the house but the servants.… there had been no visitor and no outcry.… butler had left him reading an hour and a half before the valet found the body.… immediate suspicion cast on servants but—the fingerprints on the knife, damningly clear, were those of an extraordinarily large hand and their presence, showing clearly that they had caused the stab, at once exonerated all members of the household and threw the police into a complete quandary.”
Daryl entered the dining room. Her face lit up when she saw Baxter. She went at once to his table.
“Want company? You seem to be terribly interested in your paper. Why—what’s the matter?”
“Sit down, dear. Order your breakfast—and I’ll tell you. Hell is loose.”
M. T. Bradley, head of the brokerage house of Bradley, Pine and Schlessinger, “Mountain” Bradley of Wall Street, discussed William Carpenter that morning with Pine. The conversation took place in Bradley’s private office—a room as large as the nave of a church, lighted with the same sombre radiance, and decorated as if for a Sybarite.
Bradley was huge and genial. His business personality was normally submerged in his love of sports. The rotogravures seldom showed him in any connection with his work; they frequently depicted him on the links at Miami, on his yacht at Providence and sitting in his box at Belmont. When, suddenly and unexpectedly, there emerged from his hulk of flesh the jets of words that dictated his policies, the concentration and subtlety with which his brain operated seemed an impossible anomaly.
Bradley was sitting at his broad and vacant desk while Pine occupied the chair used for interviews. The big man grinned and rumbled.
“See some one got old Page.”
“Yes. Terrible.”
“Terrible, my eye. That snide little grafter deserved worse. I had it in for him myself.”
“He was clever.”
Bradley yawned. “
Yep. Clever. And now there’ll be hell to pay in wheat. Might be a good idea to buy some—cautiously. The price is going to stay up—after to-day’s fluctuations. Page did me one favor, though.”
“Really? I never knew you dealt with him.”
“Never did. Remember Carpenter?”
“Vividly.”
“That’s the word, I guess. Page was another of our little group of Carpenter-smashers. I guess he and I had the biggest hand in putting Carpenter out of business.”
“Why was every one so down on that man?”
“Couldn’t say, Pine. Something about him. Nobody ever said I was psychic——” Pine chuckled—“but I didn’t care for him. And possibly I was alarmed by him. He had the big-scale way of doing things that takes men a long way. I see that he was mentioned in connection with the dead man’s past. Well—God rest them both.”
“I’ll be going.”
“Right. Look into wheat this morning.”
Bradley was alone. A knife that had been hidden under one of the divans moved slowly around the base board of the room and settled on the carpet behind the broker. Bradley opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. In his own hand; he began to write.
“Hello, Bradley!”
The big man looked up. His eyes traversed the room. His face wore a perplexed frown. His hand in a moment touched one of the studs on the side of his desk.
“No use. I cut the wires before you came in.”
“How are you, Carpenter?”
“Bravo!”
“Never forget a voice. Peculiarity of mine.” He scribbled momentarily. “What is this? Some new kind of radio? Television?”
Laughter answered him. “Good man—Bradley. Read about Page this morning?”
“Yes. Did you frighten him much last night?”
“A good deal.”
“I’ll bet. He’s the type. Squeal like a weasel when the time comes. Well—what can’ I do for you or your astral self?”
“Nothing, Bradley. It’s too late.”
The broker nodded. His heavy face was placid, his eyes half-closed.
“I’m booked for a ride, eh?”