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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Abraham Merritt's 'Seven Footprints to Satan' is a thrilling novel that follows the journey of a young man named James Kirkham who becomes entangled in a web of mystery and suspense after accepting a wager to spend the night in a haunted house. The book, written in the early 20th century, showcases Merritt's signature blend of horror, fantasy, and adventure, making it a standout in the pulp fiction genre of the time. The story is filled with eerie encounters, secret passages, and unexpected twists that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Abraham Merritt, a former journalist, was known for his imaginative storytelling and vivid descriptions. His fascination with the supernatural and otherworldly is evident in 'Seven Footprints to Satan', as he expertly weaves together elements of the occult and the unknown to create a gripping narrative. Merritt's background in journalism likely influenced his attention to detail and his ability to craft a compelling storyline that captures the reader's imagination. I highly recommend 'Seven Footprints to Satan' to readers who enjoy classic pulp fiction with a touch of the macabre. Merritt's masterful storytelling and eerie atmosphere make this novel a must-read for fans of vintage horror and suspense literature.
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SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN
Published by
Books
CHAPTER 1
The clock was striking eight as I walked out of the doors of the Discoverers’ Club and stood for a moment looking down lower Fifth Avenue. As I paused, I felt with full force that uncomfortable sensation of being watched that had both puzzled and harassed me for the past two weeks. A curiously prickly, cold feeling somewhere deep under the skin on the side that the watchers are located; an odd sort of tingling pressure. It is a queer sort of a sensitivity that I have in common with most men who spend much of their lives in the jungle or desert. It is a throwback to some primitive sixth sense, since all savages have it until they get introduced to the white man’s liquor.
Trouble was I couldn’t localize the sensation. It seemed to trickle in on me from all sides. I scanned the street. Three taxis were drawn up along the curb in front of the Club. They were empty and their drivers busy talking. There were no loiterers that I could see. The two swift side-rubbing streams of traffic swept up and down the Avenue. I studied the windows of the opposite houses. There was no sign in them of any watchers.
Yet eyes were upon me, intently. I knew it.
The warning had come to me in many places this last fortnight. I had felt the unseen watchers time and again in the Museum where I had gone to look at the Yunnan jades I had made it possible for rich old Rockbilt to put there with distinct increase to his reputation as a philanthropist; it had come to me in the theater and while riding in the Park; in the brokers’ offices where I myself had watched the money the jades had brought me melt swiftly away in a game which I now ruefully admitted I knew less than nothing about. I had felt it in the streets, and that was to be expected. But I had also felt it at the Club, and that was not to be expected and it bothered me more than anyth33ing else.
Yes, I was under strictest surveillance. But why?
That was what this night I had determined to find out.
At a touch upon my shoulder, I jumped, and swept my hand halfway up to the little automatic under my left armpit. By that, suddenly I realized how badly the mystery had gotten on my nerves. I turned, and grinned a bit sheepishly into the face of big Lars Thorwaldsen, back in New York only a few days from his two years in the Antarctic.
“Bit jerky, aren’t you, Jim?” he asked. “What’s the matter? Been on a bender?”
“Nothing like it, Lars,” I answered. “Too much city, I guess. Too much continual noise and motion. And too many people,” I added with a real candor he could not suspect.
“God!” he exclaimed. “It all looks good to me. I’m eating it up— after those two years. But I suppose in a month or two I’ll be feeling the same way about it. I hear you’re going away again soon. Where this time? Back to China?”
I shook my head. I did not feel like telling Lars that my destination was entirely controlled by whatever might turn up before I had spent the sixty-five dollars in my wallet and the seven quarters and two dimes in my pocket.
“Not in trouble, are you, Jim?” he looked at me more keenly. “If you are, I’d be glad to—help you.”
I shook my head. Everybody knew that old Rockbilt had been unusually generous about those infernal jades. I had my pride, and staggered though I was by that amazingly rapid melting-away of a golden deposit I had confidently expected to grow into a barrier against care for the rest of my life, make me, as a matter of fact, independent of all chance, I did not feel like telling even Lars of my folly. Besides, I was not yet that hopeless of all things, a beachcomber in New York. Something would turn up.
“Wait,” he said, as some one called him back into the Club.
But I did not wait. Even less than baring my unfortunate gamble did I feel like telling about my watchers. I stepped down into the street.
Who was it that was watching me? And why? Some one from China who had followed after the treasure I had taken from the ancient tomb? I could not believe it. Kin-Wang, bandit though he might be, and accomplished graduate of American poker as well as of Cornell, would have sent no spies after me. Our, well—call it transaction, irregular as it had been, was finished in his mind when he had lost. Crooked as he might be with the cards, he was not the man to go back on his word. Of that I was sure. Besides, there had been no need of letting me get this far before striking. No, they were no emissaries of Kin-Wang.
There had been that mock arrest in Paris, designed to get me quickly out of the way for a few hours, as the ransacked condition of my room and baggage showed when I returned. A return undoubtedly much earlier than the thieves had planned, due to my discovery of the ruse and my surprise sally which left me with an uncomfortable knife slash under an arm but, I afterwards reflected pleasantly, had undoubtedly left one of my guards with a broken neck and another with a head that would not do much thinking for another month or so. Then there had been the second attempt when the auto in which I was rushing to the steamer had been held up between Paris and the Havre. That might have been successful had not the plaques been tucked among the baggage of an acquaintance who was going to the boat by the regular train, thinking, by the way, that he was carrying for me some moderately rare old dishes that I did not want to trust to the possible shocks of fast automobile travel, to which the mythical engagement on the day of sailing had condemned me.
Were the watchers this same gang? They must know that the jades were now out of my hands and safe in the museum. I could be of no further value to these disappointed gentlemen, unless, of course, they were after revenge. Yet that would hardly explain this constant, furtive, patient watching. And why hadn’t they struck long before? Surely there had been plenty of opportunities.
Well, whoever the watchers were, I had determined to give them the most open of chances to get at me. I had paid all my bills. The sixty-six dollars and ninety-five cents in my pocket comprised all my worldly goods, but no one else had any claim on it. Whatever unknown port I was clearing for with severely bare sticks and decks, it was with no debts left behind.
Yes, I had determined to decoy my enemies, if enemies they were, out into the open. I had even made up my mind as to where it should be.
In all New York the loneliest spot at eight o’clock of an October night, or any night for that matter, is the one which by day is the most crowded on all the globe. Lower Broadway, empty then of all its hordes and its canyon-like cleft silent, its intersecting minor canyons emptier and quieter even than their desert kin. It was there that I would go.
As I turned down Fifth Avenue from the Discoverers’ Club a man passed me, a man whose gait and carriage, figure and clothing, were oddly familiar.
I stood stock still, looking after him as he strolled leisurely up the steps and into the Club.
Then, queerly disturbed, I resumed my walk. There had been something peculiarly familiar, indeed disquietingly familiar, about that man. What was it? Making my way over to Broadway, I went down that street, always aware of the watchers.
But it was not until I was opposite City Hall that I realized what that truly weird familiarity had been. The realization came to me with a distinct shock.
In gait and carriage, in figure and clothing, from light brown overcoat, gray soft hat, to strong Malacca cane that man had been— Myself!
CHAPTER 2
I stopped short. The natural assumption was, of course, that the resemblance had been a coincidence, extraordinary enough, but still— coincidence. Without doubt there were at least fifty men in New York who might easily be mistaken for me at casual glance. The chance, however, that one of them would be dressed precisely like me at any precise moment was almost nil. Yet it could be. What else could it be? What reason had any one to impersonate me?
But then, for that matter, what reason had any one to put a watch on me?
I hesitated, of half a mind to call a taxi, and return to the Club. Reason whispered to me that the glimpse I had gotten had been brief, that perhaps I had been deceived by the play of light and shadow, the resemblance been only an illusion. I cursed my jumpy nerves and went on.
Fewer and fewer became the people I passed as I left Cortlandt Street behind me. Trinity was like a country church at midnight. As the cliffs of the silent office buildings hemmed me I felt a smothering oppression, as though they were asleep and swaying in on me; their countless windows were like blind eyes. But if they were blind, those other eyes, that I had never for an instant felt leave me, were not. They seemed to become more intent, more watchful.
And now I met no one. Not a policeman, not even a watchman. The latter were, I knew, inside these huge stone forts of capital. I loitered at corners, giving every opportunity for the lurkers to step out, the invisible to become visible. And still I saw no one. And still the eyes never left me.
It was with a certain sense of disappointment that I reached the end of Broadway and looked out over Battery Park. It was deserted. I walked down to the Harbor wall and sat upon a bench. A ferryboat gliding toward Staten Island was like some great golden water bug. The full moon poured a rivulet of rippling silver fire upon the waves. It was very still—so still that I could faintly hear Trinity’s bells chiming nine o’clock.
I had heard no one approach, but suddenly I was aware of a man sitting beside me and a pleasant voice asking me for a match. As the flame flared up to meet his cigarette, I saw a dark, ascetic face, smooth-shaven, the mouth and eyes kindly and the latter a bit weary, as though from study. The hand that held the match was long and slender and beautifully kept. It gave the impression of unusual strength—a surgeon’s hand or a sculptor’s. A professional man certainly, I conjectured. The thought was strengthened by his Inverness coat and his soft, dark hat. In the broad shoulders under the cloak of the coat was further suggestion of a muscular power much beyond the ordinary.
“A beautiful night, sir,” he tossed the match from him. “A night for adventure. And behind us a city in which any adventure is possible.”
I looked at him more closely. It was an odd remark, considering that I had unquestionably started out that night for adventure. But was it so odd after all? Perhaps it was only my overstimulated suspicion that made it seem so. He could not possibly have known what had drawn me to this silent place. And the kindly eyes and the face made me almost instantly dismiss the thought. Some scholar this, perhaps, grateful for the quietness of the Park.
“That ferryboat yonder,” he pointed, seemingly unaware of my scrutiny. “It is an argosy of potential adventure. Within it are mute Alexanders, inglorious Caesars and Napoleons, incomplete Jasons each almost able to retrieve some Golden Fleece—yes, and incomplete Helens and Cleopatras, all lacking only one thing to round them out and send them forth to conquer.”
“Lucky for the world they’re incomplete, then,” I laughed. “How long would it be before all these Napoleons and Caesars and Cleopatras and all the rest of them were at each other’s throats—and the whole world on fire?”
“Never,” he said, very seriously. “Never, that is, if they were under the control of a will and an intellect greater than the sum total of all their wills and intellects. A mind greater than all of them to plan for all of them, a will more powerful than all their wills to force them to carry out those plans exactly as the greater mind had conceived them.”
“The result, sir,” I objected, “would seem to me to be not the super- pirates, super-thieves and super-courtesans you have cited, but super- slaves.”
“Less slaves than at any time in history,” he replied. “The personages I have suggested as types were always under control of Destiny—or God, if you prefer the term. The will and intellect I have in mind would profit, since its house would be a human brain, by the mistakes of blind, mechanistic Destiny or of a God who surely, if he exists, has too many varying worlds to look after to give minute attention to individuals of the countless species that crawl over them. No, it would use the talents of its servants to the utmost, not waste them. It would suitably and justly reward them, and when it punished—its punishments would be just. It would not scatter a thousand seeds haphazardly on the chance that a few would find fertile ground and grow. It would select the few, and see that they fell on fertile ground and that nothing prevented their growing.”
“Such a mind would have to be greater than Destiny, or, if you prefer the term, God,” I said. “I repeat that it seems to me a super-slavery and that it’s mighty lucky for the world that no such mind exists.”
“Ah!” he drew at his cigarette, thoughtfully, “but, you see—it does.”
“Yes?” I stared at him, wondering if he were joking. “Where?”
“That,” he answered, coolly, “you shall soon know—Mr. Kirkham.”
“You know me!” for one amazed moment I thought that I could not have heard aright.
“Very well,” he said. “And that mind whose existence you doubt knows —all of you there is to know. He summons you! Come, Kirkham, it is time for us to go!”
So! I had met what I had started out to find! They, whoever they were, had come out into the open at last.
“Wait a bit,” I felt my anger stir at the arrogance of the hitherto courteous voice. “Whoever you may be or whoever he may be who sent you, neither of you knows me as well as you seem to think. Let me tell you that I go nowhere unless I know where it is I’m going, and I meet no one unless I choose. Tell me then where you want me to go, who it is I’m to meet and the reason for it. When you do that, I’ll decide whether or not I’ll answer this, what did you call it—summons.”
He had listened to me quietly. Now his hand shot out and caught my wrist. I had run across many strong men, but never one with a grip like that. My cane dropped from my paralyzed grasp.
“You have been told all that is necessary,” he said, coldly. “And you are going with me—now!”
He loosed my wrist, and shaking with rage I jumped to my feet.
“Damn you,” I cried. “I go where I please when I please—” I stooped to pick up my cane. Instantly his arms were around me.
“You go,” he whispered, “where he who sent me pleases and when he pleases!”
I felt his hands swiftly touching me here and there. I could no more have broken away from him than if I had been a kitten. He found the small automatic under my left armpit and drew it out of its holster. Quickly as he had seized me, he released me and stepped back. “Come,” he ordered.
I stood, considering him and the situation. No one has ever had occasion to question my courage, but courage, to my way of thinking, has nothing whatever to do with bull-headed rashness. Courage is the cool weighing of the factors of an emergency within whatever time limit your judgment tells you that you have, and then the putting of every last ounce of brain, nerve and muscle into the course chosen. I had not the slightest doubt that this mysterious messenger had men within instant call. If I threw myself on him, what good would it do? I had only my cane. He had my gun and probably weapons of his own. Strong as I am, he had taught me that my strength was nothing to his. It might even be that he was counting upon an attack by me, that it was what he hoped for.
True, I could cry out for help or I could run. Not only did both of these expedients seem to me to be ridiculous, but, in view of the certainty of his hidden aides, useless.
Not far away were the subway stations and the elevated road. In that brilliantly lighted zone I would be comparatively safe from any concerted attack—if I could get there. I began to walk away across the Park toward Whitehall Street.
To my surprise he made neither objection nor comment. He paced quietly beside me. Soon we were out of the Battery and not far ahead were the lights of the Bowling Green Station. My resentment and anger diminished, a certain amusement took their place. Obviously it was absurd to suppose that in New York City anyone could be forced to go anywhere against his will, once he was in the usual close touch with its people and its police. To be snatched away from a subway station was almost unthinkable, to be kidnapped from the subway once we got in it absolutely unthinkable. Why then was my companion so placidly allowing each step to take me closer to this unassailable position?
It would have been so easy to have overpowered me just a few moments before. Or why had I not been approached at the Club? There were a dozen possible ways in which I could have been lured away from there.
There seemed only one answer. There was some paramount need for secrecy. A struggle in the Park might have brought the police. Overtures at the Club might have left evidence behind had I disappeared. How utterly outside the mark all this reasoning was I was soon to learn.
As we drew closer to the Bowling Green entrance of the subway, I saw a policeman standing there. I admit without shame that his scenic effect warmed my heart.
“Listen,” I said to my companion. “There’s a bluecoat. Slip my gun back into my pocket. Leave me here and go your way. If you do that, I say nothing. If you don’t I’m going to order that policeman to lock you up. They’ll have the Sullivan Law on you if nothing else. Go away quietly and, if you want to, get in touch with me at the Discoverers’ Club. I’ll forget all this and talk to you. But don’t try any more of the rough stuff or I’ll be getting good and mad.”
He smiled at me, as at some child, his face and eyes again all kindness. But he did not go. Instead, he linked his arm firmly in mine and led me straight to the officer. And as we came within earshot he said to me, quite loudly:
“Now come, Henry. You’ve had your little run. I’m sure you don’t want to give this busy officer any trouble. Come, Henry! Be good!”
The policeman stepped forward, looking us over. I did not know whether to laugh or grow angry again. Before I could speak, the man in the Inverness had handed the bluecoat a card. He read it, touched his hat respectfully and asked:
“And what’s the trouble, doctor?”
“Sorry to bother you, officer,” my astonishing companion answered. “But I’ll ask you to help me a bit. My young friend here is one of my patients. War case—aviator. He hurt his head in a crash in France and just now he thinks he is James Kirkham, an explorer. Actually, his name is Henry Walton.”
The bluecoat looked at me, doubtfully. I smiled, in my certain security.
“Go on!” I said. “What else do I think?”
“He’s quite harmless,” he gently patted my shoulder, “but now and then he manages to slip away from us. Yes, harmless, but very ingenious. He evaded us this evening. I sent my men out to trace him. I found him myself down there in the Battery. At such times, officer, he believes he is in danger of being kidnapped. That’s what he wants to tell you—that I am kidnapping him. Will you kindly listen to him, officer, and assure him that such a thing is impossible in New York. Or, if possible, that kidnappers do not conduct their captives up to a New York policeman as I have.”
I could but admire the deftness of the story, the half humorous and yet patient, wholly professional manner in which he told it. Safe now as I thought myself, I could afford to laugh, and I did.
“Quite right, officer,” I said. “Only it happens that my name really is James Kirkham. I never even heard of this Henry Walton. I never saw this man here until tonight. And I have every reason in the world to know that he is trying to force me to go somewhere that I have no intention whatever of going.”
“You see!” My companion nodded meaningly to the policeman, who, far from answering my smiles, looked at me with an irritating sympathy.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he assured me. “As the good doctor says, kidnappers don’t hunt up the police. Ye couldn’t be kidnapped in New York—at least not this way. Now go right along wit’ the doctor, an’ don’t ye worry no more.”
It was time to terminate the absurd matter. I thrust my hand into my pocket, brought out my wallet and dipped into it for my card. I picked out one and with it a letter or two and handed them to the bluecoat.
“Perhaps these identifications will give you another slant,” I said.
He took them, read them carefully, and handed them back to me, pityingly.
“Sure, lad,” his tone was soothing. “Ye’re in no danger. I’m tellin’ ye. Would ye want a taxi, doctor?”
I stared at him in amazement, and then down to the card and envelopes he had returned to me. I read them once and again, unbelievingly.
For the card bore the name of “Henry Walton,” and each of the envelopes was addressed to that same gentleman “in care of Dr. Michael Consardine” at an address that I recognized as a settlement of the highest-priced New York specialists up in the seventies. Nor was the wallet I held in my hand the one with which I had started this eventful stroll a little more than an hour before.
I opened my coat and glanced down into the inner pocket for the tailor’s label that bore my name. There was no label there.
Very abruptly my sense of security fled. I began to realize that it might be possible to force me to go where I did not want to, after all. Even from a New York Subway station.
“Officer,” I said, and there was no laughter now in my voice, “you are making a great mistake. I met this man a few minutes ago in Battery Park. I give you my word he is an utter stranger to me. He insisted that I follow him to some place whose location he refused to tell, to meet some one whose name he would not reveal. When I refused, he struggled with me, ostensibly searching for weapons. During that struggle it is now plain that he substituted this wallet containing the cards and envelopes bearing the name of Henry Walton in the place of my own. I demand that you search him for my wallet, and then whether you find it or not, I demand that you take us both to Headquarters.”
The bluecoat looked at me doubtfully. My earnestness and apparent sanity had shaken him. Neither my appearance nor my manner was that of even a slightly unbalanced person. But on the other hand the benign face, the kindly eyes, the unmistakable refinement and professionalism of the man of the Battery bench were as far apart as the poles from the puzzled officer’s conception of a kidnapper.
“I’m perfectly willing to be examined at Headquarters—and even searched there,” said the man in the Inverness. “Only I must warn you that all the excitement will certainly react very dangerously on my patient. However—call a taxi—”
“No taxi,” I said firmly. “We go in the patrol wagon, with police around us.”
“Wait a minute,” the bluecoat’s face brightened. “Here comes the Sergeant. He’ll decide what to do.” The Sergeant walked up.
“What’s the trouble, Mooney?” he asked, looking us over. Succinctly, Mooney explained the situation. The Sergeant studied us again more closely. I grinned at him cheerfully.
“All I want,” I told him, “is to be taken to Headquarters. In a patrol wagon. No taxi, Dr.—what was it? Oh, yes, Consardine. Patrol wagon with plenty of police, and Dr. Consardine sitting in it with me— that’s all I want.”
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” said Dr. Consardine, patiently. “I’m quite ready to go. But as I warned Officer Mooney, it means delay and excitement and you must accept the responsibility for the effect upon my patient, whose care is, after all, my first concern. I have said he is harmless, but tonight I took from him—this.”
He handed the Sergeant the small automatic.
“Under his left arm you will find its holster,” said Consardine. “Frankly, I think it best to get him back to my sanatorium as quickly as possible.”
The Sergeant stepped close to me and throwing back my coat, felt under my left arm. I knew by his face as he touched the holster that Consardine had scored.
“I have a license to carry a gun,” I said, tartly.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“In the wallet that man took from me when he lifted the gun,” I answered. “If you’ll search him you’ll find it.”
“Oh, poor lad! Poor lad!” murmured Consardine. And so sincere seemed his distress that I was half inclined to feel sorry for myself. He spoke again to the Sergeant.
“I think perhaps the matter can be settled without running the risk of the journey to Headquarters. As Officer Mooney has told you, my patient’s present delusion is that he is a certain James Kirkham and living at the Discoverers’ Club. It may be that the real Mr. Kirkham is there at this moment. I therefore suggest that you call up the Discoverers’ Club and ask for him. If Mr. Kirkham is there, I take it that will end the matter. If not, we will go to Headquarters.”
The Sergeant looked at me, and I looked at Consardine, amazed.
“If you can talk to James Kirkham at the Discoverers’ Club,” I said at last, “then I’m Henry Walton!”
We walked over to a telephone booth. I gave the Sergeant the number of the Club.
“Ask for Robert,” I interposed. “He’s the desk man.”
I had talked to Robert a few minutes before I had gone out. He would still be on duty.
“Is that Robert? At the desk?” the Sergeant asked as the call came through. “Is Mr. James Kirkham there? This is Police Sergeant Downey.”
There was a pause. He glanced at me.
“They’re paging Kirkham,” he muttered—then to the phone— “What’s that? You are James Kirkham! A moment, please—put that clerk back. Hello—you Robert? That party I’m talking to Kirkham? Kirkham the explorer? You’re certain? All right—all right! Don’t get excited about it. I’ll admit you know him. Put him back—Hello, Mr. Kirkham? No, it’s all right. Just a case of—er—bugs! Man thinks he’s you—”
I snatched the receiver from his hand, lifted it to my ear and heard a voice saying:
“—Not the first time, poor devil—”
The voice was my very own!
CHAPTER 3
The receiver was taken from me, gently enough. Now the Sergeant was listening again. Mooney had me by one arm, the man in the Inverness by the other. I heard the Sergeant say:
“Yes—Walton, Henry Walton, yes, that’s the name. Sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Kirkham. Goo’-by.”
He snapped up the ‘phone and regarded me, compassionately.
“Too bad!” he said. “It’s a damned shame. Do you want an ambulance, doctor?”
“No, thanks,” answered Consardine. “It’s a peculiar case. The kidnapping delusion is a strong one. He’ll be quieter with people around him. We’ll go up on the subway. Even though his normal self is not in control, his subconscious will surely tell him that kidnapping is impossible in the midst of a subway crowd. Now, Henry,” he patted my hand, “admit that it is. You are beginning to realize it already, aren’t you—”
I broke out of my daze. The man who had passed me on Fifth Avenue! The man who had so strangely resembled me! Fool that I was not to have thought of that before! “Wait, officer,” I cried desperately. “That was an impostor at the Club—some one made up to look like me. I saw him—”
“There, there, lad,” he put a hand on my shoulder reassuringly. “You gave your word. You’re not going to welch on it, I’m sure. You’re all right. I’m telling you. Go with the doctor, now.”
For the first time I had the sense of futility. This net spreading around me had been woven with infernal ingenuity. Apparently no contingency had been overlooked. I felt the shadow of a grim oppression. If those so interested in me, or in my—withdrawal, wished it, how easy would it be to obliterate me. If this double of mine could dupe the clerk who had known me for years and mix in with my friends at the Club without detection—if he could do this, what could he not do in my name and in my guise? A touch of ice went through my blood. Was that the plot? Was I to be removed so this double could take my place in my world for a time to perpetrate some villainy that would blacken forever my memory? The situation was no longer humorous. It was heavy with evil possibilities.
But the next step in my involuntary journey was to be the subway. As Consardine had said, no sane person would believe a man could be kidnapped there. Surely there, if anywhere, I could escape, find some one in the crowds who would listen to me, create if necessary such a scene that it’ would be impossible for my captor to hold me, outwit him somehow.
At any rate there was nothing to do but go with him. Further appeal to these two policemen was useless.
“Let’s go—doctor,” I said, quietly. We started down the subway steps, his arm in mine.
We passed through the gates. A train was waiting. I went into the last car, Consardine at my heels. It was empty. I marched on. In the second car was only a nondescript passenger or two. But as I neared the third car I saw at the far end half a dozen marines with a second lieutenant. My pulse quickened. Here was the very opportunity I had been seeking. I made straight for them.
As I entered the car I was vaguely aware of a couple sitting in the corner close to the door. Intent upon reaching the leathernecks, I paid no attention to them.
Before I had gone five steps I heard a faint scream, then a cry of—
“Harry! Oh, Dr. Consardine! You’ve found him!”
Involuntarily, I halted and turned. A girl was running toward me. She threw her arms around my neck and cried again:
“Harry! Harry! dear! Oh, thank God he found you!”
Two of the loveliest brown eyes I had ever beheld looked up at me. They were deep and tender and pitying, and tears trembled on the long black lashes. Even in my consternation I took note of the delicate skin untouched by rouge, the curly, silken fine bobbed hair under the smart little hat —hair touched with warm bronze glints, the nose a bit uplifted and the exquisite mouth and elfinly pointed chin. Under other circumstances, exactly the girl I would have given much to meet; under the present circumstances, well—disconcerting.
“There! There, Miss Walton!” Dr. Consardine’s voice was benignly soothing. “Your brother is all right now!”
“Now, Eve, don’t fuss any more. The doctor found him just as I told you he would.”
It was a third voice, that of the other occupant of the corner seat. He was a man of about my own age, exceedingly well dressed, the face rather thin and tanned, a touch of dissipation about his eyes and mouth.
“How are you feeling, Harry?” he asked me, and added, somewhat gruffly, “Devil of a chase you’ve given us this time, I must say.”
“Now, Walter,” the girl rebuked him, “what matter, so he is safe?”
I disengaged the girl’s arms and looked at the three of them. Outwardly they were exactly what they purported to be—an earnest, experienced, expensive specialist anxious about a recalcitrant patient with a defective mentality, a sweet, worried sister almost overcome with glad relief that her mind-sick runaway brother had been found, a trusty friend, perhaps a fiancé, a bit put out, but still eighteen-carat faithful and devoted and so glad that his sweetheart’s worry was over that he was ready to hand me a wallop if I began again to misbehave. So convincing were they that for one insane moment I doubted my own identity. Was I, after all, Jim Kirkham? Maybe I’d only read about him! My mind rocked with the possibility that I might be this Henry Walton whose wits had been scrambled by some accident in France.
It was with distinct effort that I banished the idea. This couple had, of course, been planted in the station and waiting for me to appear. But in the name of all far-seeing devils how could it have been foretold that I would appear at that very station at that very time?
And suddenly one of Consardine’s curious phrases returned to me:
“A mind greater than all to plan for all of them; a will greater than all their wills—”
Cobwebs seemed to be dropping around me, cobwebs whose multitudinous strands were held by one master hand, and pulling me, pulling me— irresistibly… where… and to what?
I turned and faced the marines. They were staring at us with absorbed interest. The lieutenant was on his feet, and now he came toward us.
“Anything I can do for you, sir?” he asked Consardine, but his eyes were on the girl and filled with admiration. And at that moment I knew that I could expect no help from him or his men. Nevertheless, it was I who answered.
“You can,” I said. “My name is James Kirkham. I live at the Discoverers’ Club. I don’t expect you to believe me, but these people are kidnapping me—”
“Oh, Harry, Harry!” murmured the girl and touched her eyes with a foolish little square of lace.
“All that I ask you to do,” I went on, “is to call up the Discoverers’ Club when you leave this car. Ask for Lars Thorwaldsen, tell him what you have seen, and say I told you that the man at the Club who calls himself James Kirkham is an impostor. Will you do that?”
“Oh, Dr. Consardine,” sobbed the girl. “Oh, poor, poor brother!”
“Will you come with me a moment, lieutenant?” asked Consardine. He spoke to the man who had called the girl Eve—“Watch; Walter—look after Harry—”
He touched the lieutenant’s arm and they walked to the front of the car.
“Sit down, Harry, old man,” urged Walter.
“Please, dear,” said the girl. A hand of each of them on my arms, they pressed me into a seat.
I made no resistance. A certain grim wonder had come to me. I watched Consardine and the lieutenant carry on a whispered conversation to which the latter’s leathernecks aimed eager ears. I knew the story Consardine was telling, for I saw the officer’s face soften, and he and his men glanced at me pityingly; at the girl, compassionately. The lieutenant asked some question, Consardine nodded acquiescence and the pair walked back.
“Old man,” the lieutenant spoke to me soothingly, “of course I’ll do what you ask. We get off at the Bridge and I’ll go to the first telephone. Discoverers’ Club, you said?”
It would have been wonderful if I had not known that he thought he was humoring a lunatic.
I nodded, wearily.
“‘Tell it to the marines,’” I quoted. “The man who said that knew what he was talking about. Invincible but dumb. Of course, you’ll not do it. But if a spark of intelligence should miraculously light up your mind tonight or even tomorrow, please phone as I asked.”
“Oh, Harry! Please be quiet!” implored the girl. She turned her eyes, eloquent with gratitude, to the lieutenant. “I’m sure the lieutenant will do exactly as he has promised.”
“Indeed I will,” he assured me—and half winked at her.
I laughed outright, I couldn’t help it. No heart of any marine I had ever met, officer or otherwise, could have withstood that look of Eve’s—so appealing, so grateful, so wistfully appreciative.
“All right, lieutenant,” I said. “I don’t blame you a bit. I bet myself I couldn’t be kidnapped under a New York cop’s eye at a subway entrance. But I lost. Then I bet myself I couldn’t be kidnapped in a subway train. And again I’ve lost. Nevertheless, if you should get wondering whether I’m crazy or not, take a chance, lieutenant, and call up the Club.”
“Oh, brother,” breathed Eve, and wept once more.
I sank back into my seat, waiting another opportunity. The girl kept her hand on mine, her eyes, intermittently, on the leatherneck lieutenant. Consardine had seated himself at my right. Walter sat at Eve’s side.
At Brooklyn Bridge the marines got out, with many backward looks at us. I saluted the lieutenant sardonically; the girl sent him a beautifully grateful smile. If anything else had been needed to make him forget my appeal it was that.
Quite a crowd piled on the car at the Bridge. I watched them hopefully, as they stampeded into the seats. The hopefulness faded steadily as I studied their faces. Sadly I realized that old Vanderbilt had been all wrong when he had said, “The public be damned.” What he ought to have said was “The public be dumb.”
There was a Hebraic delegation of a half dozen on their way home to the Bronx, a belated stenographer who at once began operations with a lipstick, three rabbit-faced young hoods, an Italian woman with four restless children, a dignified old gentleman who viewed their movements with suspicion, a plain- looking Negro, a rather pleasant-appearing man of early middle age with a woman who might have been a school teacher, two giggling girls who at once began flirting with the hoods, a laborer, three possible clerks and a scattering dozen of assorted morons. The typical New York subway train congregation. A glance at right and left of me assayed no richer residue of human intelligence.
There was no use in making an appeal to these people. My three guardians were too far ahead of them in gray matter and resourcefulness. They could make it abortive before I was half finished. But I might drop that suggestion of calling up the Club. Someone, I argued, might have their curiosity sufficiently developed to risk a phone call. I fixed my gaze on the dignified old gentleman—be seemed the type who possibly would not be able to rest until he had found out what it was all about.
And just as I was opening my mouth to speak to him, the girl patted my hand and leaned across me to the man in the Inverness.
“Doctor,” her voice was very clear and of a carrying quality that made it audible throughout the car. “Doctor, Harry seems so much better. Shall I give him—you know what?”
“An excellent idea, Miss Walton,” he answered. “Give it to him.”
The girl reached under her long sport coat and brought out a small bundle.
“Here, Harry,” she handed it to me. “Here’s your little playmate— who’s been so lonely without you.”
Automatically I took the bundle and tore it open.
Into my hands dropped out a dirty, hideous old rag-doll!
As I looked at it, stupefied, there came to me complete perception of the truly devilish cunning of those who had me in their trap. The very farcicality of that doll had a touch of terror in it. At the girl’s clear voice, all the car had centered their attention upon us. I saw the dignified old gentleman staring at me unbelievingly over his spectacles, saw Consardine catch his eye and tap his forehead significantly—and so did every one else see him. The Negro’s guffaw suddenly stopped. The Hebraic group stiffened up and gaped at me; the stenographer dropped her vanity case; the Italian children goggled at the doll, fascinated. The middle-aged couple looked away, embarrassed.
I realized that I was on my feet, clutching the doll as though I feared it was to be taken from me.
“Hell!” I swore, and lifted it to dash it to the floor.
And suddenly I knew that any further resistance, and further struggle, was useless.
