Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

“There’s no corner of the world with which he isn’t familiar.”

  “How’d he make his money?” Buckley asked, abruptly.

  “I’ve never asked him. But he has plenty of it.”

  The clumps on each side of the road grew denser, and scattered pinpoints of light that marked isolated farm houses faded out behind them. The road tilted gradually as they climbed higher and higher into the wild hill region which, an hour’s drive from the city, locked the broad crystalline sheet of silver that men called White Lake. Now ahead of them a glint shivered among the trees, and topping a wooded crest, they saw the lake spread out below them, reflecting the stars in myriad flecks of silver. The road meandered along the curving shore.

  “Where’s Reynolds’ lodge?” inquired Buckley.

  Brill pointed. “See that thick clump of shadows, within a few yards of the water’s edge? It’s the only cottage on this side of the lake. The others are three or four miles away. None of them occupied, this time of the year. There’s a car drawn up in front of the cottage.”

  “No light in the shack,” grunted Buckley, pulling up beside the long low roadster that stood before the narrow stoop. The building reared dark and silent before them, blocked against the rippling silver sheen behind it.

  “Hey, Jim!” called Brill. “Jim Reynolds!”

  No answer. Only a vague echo shuddering down from the blackly wooded hills.

  “Devil of a place at night,” muttered Buckley, peering at the dense shadows that bordered the lake. “We might be a thousand miles from civilization.”

  Brill slid out of the car. “Reynolds must be here — unless he’s gone for a midnight boat ride.”

  Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Brill banged the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer.

  Buckley shook the door. It was locked from the inside.

  “I don’t like this,” he growled. “Car in front of the cottage — door locked on the inside — nobody answering it. I believe I’ll break the door in—”

  “No need.” Brill fumbled in his pocket. “I’ll use my key.”

  “How comes it you have a key to Reynolds’ shack?” demanded Buckley.

  “It was his own idea. I spent some time with him up here last summer, and he insisted on giving me a key, so I could use the cottage any time I wanted to. Turn on your flash, will you? I can’t find the lock. All right, I’ve got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?”

  Buckley’s flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Buckley heard Brill fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and Brill swore.

  “The juice is off. There’s a line running out from town to supply the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as we’re in here, let’s go through the house. Reynolds may be sleeping somewhere—”

  He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Buckley had opened the door that led to the bedroom. His flash played on the interior — on a broken chair, a smashed table — a crumpled shape that lay in the midst of a dark widening pool.

  “Good God, it’s Reynolds!”

  Buckley’s gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around the room, sifting the shadows for lurking shapes of menace; it rested on a bolted rear door; rested longer on an open window, the screen of which hung in tatters.

  “We’ve got to have more light,” he grunted. “Where’s the switch? Maybe a fuse has blown.”

  “Outside, near that window.” Stumblingly Brill led the way out of the house and around to the window. Buckley flashed his light, grunted.

  “The switch has been pulled!” He pushed it back in place, and light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them. Buckley glared into the shadows, seemed to shiver. Brill had not spoken; he shook as with ague.

  Back in the house they bent over the man who lay in the middle of the red- splashed floor.

  Jim Reynolds had been a stocky, strongly built man of middle age. His skin was brown and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His features were masked with blood; his head lolled back, disclosing an awful wound beneath his chin.

  “His throat’s been cut!” stammered Brill. Buckley shook his head.

  “Not cut — torn. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him.”

  The whole throat had literally been torn out; muscles, arteries, windpipe and the great jugular vein had been severed; the bones of the vertebrae showed beneath.

  “He’s so bloody I wouldn’t have recognized him,” muttered the detective. “How did you know him so quickly? The instant we saw him, you cried out that it was Reynolds.”

  “I recognized his garments and his build,” answered the other. “But what in God’s name killed him?”

  Buckley straightened and looked about. “Where does that door lead to?”

  “To the kitchen; but it’s locked on this side.”

  “And the outer door of the front room was locked on the inside,” muttered Buckley. “Doesn’t take a genius to see how the murderer got in — and he — or it — went out the same way.”

  “What do you mean, it?”

  “Does that look like the work of a human being?” Buckley pointed to the dead man’s mangled throat. Brill winced.

  “I’ve seen black boys mauled by the big cats on the West Coast—”

  “And whatever tore Reynolds’ gullet out, tore that window screen. It wasn’t cut with a knife.”

  “Do you suppose a panther from the hills—” began Brill.

  “A panther smart enough to throw the electric switch before he slid through the window?” scoffed Buckley.

  “We don’t know the killer threw the switch.”

  “Was Reynolds fooling around in the dark, then? No; when I pushed the switch back in place, the light came on in here. That shows it had been on; the button hadn’t been pushed back. Whoever killed Reynolds had a reason for wanting to work in the dark. Maybe this was it!” The detective indicated, with a square-shod toe, a stubby chunk of blue steel that lay not far from the body.

  “From what I hear about Reynolds, he was quick enough on the trigger.” Buckley slipped on a glove, carefully lifted the revolver, and scanned the chamber. His gaze, roving about the room again, halted at the window, and with a single long stride, he reached it and bent over the sill.

  “One shot’s been fired from this gun. The bullet’s in the window sill. At least, one bullet is, and it’s logical to suppose it’s the one from the empty chamber of Reynolds’ gun. Here’s the way I reconstruct the crime: somethingsneaked up to the shack, threw the switch, and came busting through the window. Reynolds shot once in the dark and missed, and then the killer got in his work. I’ll take this gun to headquarters; don’t expect to find any fingerprints except Reynolds’, however. We’ll examine the light switch, too, though maybe my dumb pawing erased any fingerprints that might have been there. Say, it’s a good thing you have an iron-clad alibi.”

  Brill started violently. “What the Hell do you mean?”

  “Why, there’s the Chinaman to swear you called Reynolds to his death.”

  “Why the devil should I do such a thing?” hotly demanded the scientist.

  “Well,” answered Buckley, “I know you were in the library of the club all evening. That’s an unshakable alibi — I suppose.”

  Brill was tired as he locked the door of his garage and turned toward the house which rose dark and silent among the trees. He found himself wishing that his sister, with whom he was staying, had not left town for the weekend with her husband and children. Dark empty houses were vaguely repellent to him after the happenings of the night before.

  He sighed wearily as he trudged toward the house, under the dense shadows of the trees that lined the driveway. It had been a morbid, and harrying day. Tag ends of thoughts and worries flitted through his mind. Uneasi
ly he remembered Buckley’s cryptic remark: “Either Yut Wuen is lying about that telephone call, or—” The detective had left the sentence unfinished, casting a glance at Brill that was as inscrutable as his speech. Nobody believed the Chinaman was deliberately lying. His devotion to his master was well known — a devotion shared by the other servants of the dead man. Police suspicion had failed to connect them in any way with the crime. Apparently none of them had left Reynolds’ town house during the day or the night of the murder. Nor had the murder-cottage given up any clues. No tracks had been found on the hard earth, no fingerprints on the gun other than the dead man’s nor any except Buckley’s on the light switch. If Buckley had had any luck in trying to trace the mysterious phone call, he had not divulged anything.

  Brill remembered, with a twinge of nervousness, the way in which they had looked at him, those inscrutable Orientals. Their features had been immobile, but in their dark eyes had gleamed suspicion and a threat. He had seen it in the eyes of Yut Wuen, the stocky yellow man; of Ali, the Egyptian, a lean, sinewy statue of bronze; of Jugra Singh, the tall, broad shouldered, turbaned Sikh. They had not spoken their thoughts; but their eyes had followed him, hot and burning, like beasts of prey.

  Brill turned from the meandering driveway to cut across the lawn. As he passed under the black shadow of the trees, something sudden, clinging and smothering, enveloped his head, and steely arms locked fiercely about him. His reaction was as instinctive and violent as that of a trapped leopard. He exploded into a galvanized burst of frantic action, a bucking heave that tore the stifling cloak from his head, and freed his arms from the arms that pinioned him. But another pair of arms hung like grim Fate to his legs, and figures surged in on him from the darkness. He could not tell the nature of his assailants; they were like denser, moving shadows in the blackness.

  Staggering, fighting for balance, he lashed out blindly, felt the jolt of a solid hit shoot up his arm, and saw one of the shadows sway and pitch backward. His other arm was caught in a savage grasp and twisted up behind his back so violently that he felt as if the tendons were being ripped from their roots. Hot breath hissed in his ear, and bending his head forward, he jerked it backward again with all the power of his thick neck muscles. He felt the back of his skull crash into something softer — a man’s face. There was a groan, and the crippling grip on his imprisoned arm relaxed. With a desperate wrench he tore away, but the arms that clung to his legs tripped him. He pitched headlong, spreading his arms to break his fall, and even before his fingers touched the ground, something exploded in his brain, showering a suddenly starless night of blackness with red sparks that were engulfed abruptly in formless oblivion.

  Joel Brill’s first conscious thought was that he was being tossed about in an open boat on a stormy sea. Then as his dazed mind cleared, be realized that he was lying in an automobile which was speeding along an uneven road. His head throbbed; he was bound hand and foot, and blanketed in some kind of a cloak. He could see nothing; could hear nothing but the purr of the racing motor. Bewilderment clouded his mind as be sought for a clue to the identity of the kidnappers. Then a sudden suspicion brought out the cold sweat on his skin.

  The car lurched to a halt. Powerful hands lifted him, cloak and all, and he felt himself being carried over a short stretch of level ground, and apparently up a step or so. A key grated in a lock, a door rasped on its hinges. Those carrying him advanced; there was a click, and light shone through the folds of the cloth over Brill’s head. He felt himself being lowered onto what felt like a bed. Then the cloth was ripped away, and he blinked in the glare of the light. A cold premonitory shudder passed over him.

  He was lying on the bed in the room in which James Reynolds had died. And about him stood, arms folded, three grim and silent shapes: Yut Wuen, Ali the Egyptian, and Jugra Singh. There was dried blood on the Chinaman’s yellow face, and his lip was cut. A dark blue bruise showed on Jugra Singh’s jaw.

  “The sahib awakes,” said the Sikh, in his perfect English.

  “What the devil’s the idea, Jugra?” demanded Brill, trying to struggle to a sitting posture. “What do you mean by this? Take these ropes off me—” His voice trailed away, a shaky resonance of futility as he read the meaning in the hot dark eyes that regarded him.

  “In this room our master met his doom,” said Ali.

  “You called him forth,” said Yut Wuen.

  “But I didn’t!” raged Brill, jerking wildly at the cords which cut into his flesh. “Damn it, I knew nothing about it!”

  “Your voice came over the wire and our master followed it to his death,” said Jugra Singh.

  A panic of helplessness swept over Joel Brill. He felt like a man beating at an insurmountable wall — the wall of inexorable Oriental fatalism, of conviction unchangeable. If even Buckley believed that somehow he, Joel Brill, was connected with Reynolds’ death, how was he to convince these immutable Orientals? He fought down an impulse to hysteria.

  “The detective, Buckley, was with me all evening,” he said, in a voice unnatural from his efforts at control. “He has told you that he did not see me touch a phone; nor did I leave his sight. I could not have killed my friend, your master, because while he was being killed, I was either in the library of the Corinthian Club, or driving from there with Buckley.”

  “How it was done, we do not know,” answered the Sikh, tranquilly. “The ways of the sahibs are beyond us. But we know that somehow, in some manner, you caused our master’s death. And we have brought you here to expiate your crime.”

  “You mean to murder me?” demanded Brill, his flesh crawling.

  “If a sahib judge sentenced you, and a sahib hangman dropped you through a black trap, white men would call it execution. So it is execution we work upon you, not murder.”

  Brill opened his mouth, then closed it, realizing the utter futility of argument. The whole affair was like a fantastic nightmare from which he would presently awaken.

  Ali came forward with something, the sight of which shook Brill with a nameless foreboding. It was a wire cage, in which a great gaunt rat squealed and bit at the wires. Yut Wuen laid upon a card table a copper bowl, furnished with a slot on each side of the rim, to one of which was made fast a long leather strap. Brill turned suddenly sick.

  “These are the tools of execution, sahib,” said Jugra Singh, somberly. “That bowl shall be laid on your naked belly, the strap drawn about your body and made fast so that the bowl shall not slip. Inside the bowl the rat will be imprisoned. He is ravenous with hunger, wild with fear and rage. For a while he will only run about the bowl, treading on your flesh. But with irons hot from the fire, we shall gradually heat the bowl, until, driven by pain, the rat begins to gnaw his way out. He can not gnaw through copper; he can gnaw through flesh — through flesh and muscles and intestines and bones, sahib.”

  Brill wet his lips three times before he found voice to speak.

  “You’ll hang for this!” he gasped, in a voice he did not himself recognize.

  “If it be the will of Allah,” assented Ali calmly. “This is your fate; what ours is, no man can say. It is the will of Allah that you die with a rat in your bowels. If it is Allah’s will, we shall die on the gallows. Only Allah knows.”

  Brill made no reply. Some vestige of pride still remained to him. He set his jaw hard, feeling that if he opened his mouth to speak, to reason, to argue, he would collapse into shameful shrieks and entreaties. One was useless as the other, against the abysmal fatalism of the Orient.

  Ali set the cage with its grisly Occupant on the table beside the copper bowl — without warning the light went out.

  In the darkness Brill’s heart began to pound suffocatingly. The Orientals stood still, patiently, expecting the light to come on again. But Brill instinctively felt that the stage was set for some drama darker and more hideous than that which menaced him. Silence reigned; somewhere off in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was a faint scratching sound, somewhere —

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nbsp; “The electric torch,” muttered a ghostly voice which Brill recognized as Jugra Singh’s. “I laid it on the card table. Wait!”

  He heard the Sikh fumbling in the dark; but he was watching the window, a square of dim, star-flecked sky blocked out of blackness. And as Brill watched, he saw something dark and bulky rear up in that square. Etched against the stars he saw a misshapen head, vague monstrous shoulders.

  A scream sounded from inside the room, the crash of a wildly thrown missile. On the instant there was a scrambling sound, and the object blotted out the square of starlight, then vanished from it. It was inside the room.

  Brill, lying frozen in his cords, heard all Hell and bedlam break loose in that dark room. Screams, shouts, strident cries of agony mingled with the smashing of furniture, the impact of blows, and a hideous, worrying, tearing sound that made Brill’s flesh crawl. Once the battling pack staggered past the window, but Brill made out only a dim writhing of limbs, the pale glint of steel, and the terrible blaze of a pair of eyes he knew belonged to none of his three captors.

  Somewhere a man was moaning horribly, his gasps growing weaker and weaker. There was a last convulsion of movement, the groaning impact of a heavy body; then the starlight in the window was for an instant blotted out again, and silence reigned once more in the cottage on the lake shore; silence broken only by the death gasps in the dark, and the labored panting of a wounded man.

  Brill heard some one stumbling and floundering in the darkness, and it was from this one that the racking, panting was emanating. A circle of light flashed on, and in it Brill saw the blood-smeared face of Jugra Singh.

  The light wandered erratically away, dancing crazily about the walls. Brill heard the Sikh blundering across the room, moving like a drunken man, or like one wounded unto death. The flash shone full in the scientist’s face, blinding him. Fingers tugged awkwardly at his cords, a knife edge was dragged across them, slicing skin as well as hemp.

  Jugra Singh sank to the floor. The flash thumped beside him and went out. Brill groped for him, found his shoulder. The cloth was soaked with what Brill knew was blood.