The Door of Dread/Chapter 13

by Arthur Stringer

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SADIE WIMPEL knew that the task of trussing her up had not been neglected. She lay like a mummy, flat on what seemed to be a dusty tapestry-covered box-couch, staring up at the ceiling. She could move neither hand nor foot. The pain in her arms, pinioned close behind her back, had already become acute. A numbness about the ankles told her that they were tied quite as tightly. After a series of seismic contortions of the body she succeeded in rolling slightly over on her side.

In this position she was better able to study the room in which she lay a prisoner.

She studied it carefully and methodically, and she did not find it an encouraging harborage. It was small and neglected-looking, with a shuttered window on one side and a fireproofed door on the other. This door, she knew, was locked, for she had heard the sound of the turning key after she had been coolly but unceremoniously dropped on the box-couch along the wall. On one side of the door was a broken rocking-chair and an overturned packing-case still half filled with moldy-looking books. On the other side was a bamboo table, a rolled-up hair mattress and a couple of cardboard hat-boxes. On the table stood a faded and wilted palm in a flat majolica vase. This palm, apparently unwatered for months, had long since died and dried up. Along the outer wall was a bamboo book-shelf filled with dust-covered magazines. The floor was painted and without a carpet. A solitary and unshaded electric bulb had been left burning, presumably for the purpose of some future spying on her.

Sadie, viewing the room with studious eyes, acknowledged to herself that it was anything but inspiriting.

Then she directed her thoughts back to the bonds which held her a prisoner. She saw, by the expedient of suddenly kicking up her heels, that a white cotton rope reinforced by a trunk-strap held her ankles together. It was the same kind of rope, she discovered, that was used for many a housetop clothes-line. And judging from the way it swathed and circled her limbs, there had been an ample supply of it. Yet for several minutes she worked doggedly and valiantly at these bonds, trying first to worry her hands free, and then her feet. It did not take her long to discover that all such efforts were useless. It only tired her body and added to the pain in her shoulders. And after all her struggles there was no appreciable loosening of any of the strands that were so cruelly interfering with her circulation.

She lay back on the box-couch, once more studying the room about her. From time to time her eye returned to the dead palm in its ugly majolica vase. It towered above her in its corner, as melancholy as a hearse-plume. It stood a monument of neglect and abuse. It depressed her with its spiritlessness. Its pallid and withered fronds became something pathetic. It seemed so funereal in its etiolated dejection that she turned wearily away from it.

Then she stared back at the dead palm, for it had suddenly become of interest to her. She looked at it long and pointedly, with her forehead slightly wrinkled. Then she took a deeper breath. It was almost a breath of relief. For on the faded fronds of that dead palm, she saw, hung her one and only hope.

She wormed her way to the edge of the box-couch, letting herself drop limply to the floor. Then by much writhing and working of her torso she placed herself in position for rolling toward the bamboo table. These movements were painful. But she worked both methodically and patiently, for by this time she had arrived at a definite plan of action. And as she rolled toward the fragile-looking bamboo table she did so with all the vigor at her command. She bore down on it, in fact, with ever accelerating speed. Instead of pausing before coming into contact with its spindle legs, her rolling body struck it as a bowling-alley ball strikes a nine-pin.

She struck with sufficient force to send the faded palm and its ugly majolica vase tumbling to the floor. As it tumbled it crashed to pieces.

Instead of exhibiting dismay at this catastrophe, Sadie Wimpel turned over on her side, waited for the cloud of dust from the dried earth to settle, and then viewed the ruins with calmly studious eyes.

The bottom of the vase, she noticed, was the largest remaining piece of majolica. But what was more important for her purposes, along the edge of it ran a shattered edge of the vase-side. This fragment of earthenware she bunted and shouldered patiently away from the others. She did so very much like a sea-lion pushing its trick ball across a stage. But Sadie, for all the ludicrous absurdity of those movements so like an amphibian's, was never more serious in her life.

When she had disposed the fragment of crockery to her liking, she again rolled over and regarded it with critical eyes. Then, carefully measuring her distance, she rolled away from it, this time at a slightly different angle. But on this occasion, disregarding any personal discomfort which it might involve, she rolled completely over on the saw-edge of the broken majolica, so that when she lay face upward her two forearms, tightly tied against her back at the waist-line, rested on the jagged edge of the earthenware. Then, with a series of movements even more undignified than her earlier ones, she began to see-saw her tired body back and forth, making sure to press a strand or two of the cotton rope against the serrated edge of the vase-side as she moved.

It took much patience and even more strength of body. But by this time she was working in that icy calm of determination which is the sublimation of indignant rage. She was no longer thinking of herself. She was thinking only of what stood before her. And she could not afford to fail.

 

"She sat up, warning herself to be cool."

 

Yet she was compelled to stop and rest, from time to time, for her position was a strained one and her body was tired. She continued the abrasion of the cotton fiber pinioning her arms, however, until her neck-cords seemed ready to crack. Then she rolled wearily over, face downward, and rested. Then she began a series of muscular twists and tugs, worrying at the swathings that bound her hands behind her. She noticed, as she tugged and worked, an ever increased sense of relaxed tension. So she continued her labors, more frenziedly than before. And it suddenly came home to her that her campaign of attrition had actually severed the rope that held her deadened forearms in their painfully unnatural position.

She sat up, at this discovery, warning herself to be cool. But her body was stippled with nerve-quivers as she worked at the loosened strands still about her arms. When they were quite free, and the blood was tingling and needling once more through her numbed finger-ends, she sat there for several luxurious moments, reveling in the thought of that release. The one thing to complete her happiness, she felt, was a glass of water. For by this time she was inexpressibly thirsty.

When she had rested sufficiently, it was a matter of much less difficulty to lean forward and conquer first the trunk-strap and then the knots of the rope about her ankles. This too brought its own relief, though it was several moments, she found, before she could regain the use of her limbs. At first she thought they were paralyzed, so unresponding they were to the commands of will. They seemed, indeed, like something not belonging to her own body. And the pain became as sharp as the pain that follows frost-bite, merging from a multitudinous needling of nerve-ends into a dull ache of discomfort. But she persevered in her exercises, determinedly working the fingers of one hand and then the other. She next gave her attention to her feet. When these became normal she crept to the couch and lay on it, full length. She knew that she was once more free to move. And for that primal freedom she was not ungrateful.

But she did not remain idle for long. After a brief breathing-spell she was on her feet again, busily exploring the room. The window, she had imagined, would be the vulnerable point of her prison. But an examination of this window soon showed her to be wrong. It was not only shuttered but it was even securely barred. So she directed her attention to the other side of the room where the door stood.

The door itself was not encouraging. But above it stood a transom, the glass of which had at some time been replaced by a heavy walnut panel. This transom, she felt, was the one assailable point in the enemy's line. So she decided to storm it.

To storm it, however, was not an altogether easy matter. But Sadie's wits had in the past risen to emergencies even greater than this. She stood for a moment deep in thought. Then she quietly dragged the tapestry-covered box-couch toward the door. This couch she turned over and stood up on end, making sure it was firmly fixed against the floor-boards. In this position, she had already decided, the exposed rows of coil-springs would provide her with a sort of scaling-ladder, unstable perhaps, but still possible.

This proved to be the case. She found the transom held shut by three nails driven into the door lintel; and it took but a few minutes' work with a piece of the palm-vase to work these nails free of the wood. The transom, once these were removed, swung back without trouble and showed the outer hall to be in darkness. So she carefully descended her improvised scaling-ladder, looked about the room and proceeded to wrench one of the rocker-rods from the antique chair that stood in the corner. This, she concluded, would serve both as an instrument of defense and a possible weapon of assault, if the need arose. And before she had gone far, she felt, there would be every promise of that need. She also broke away a piece of the dilapidated bamboo table, to serve as a rod to hold open the transom. Then she twisted and knotted her two lengths of cotton rope together, tying one end securely to the door-knob and placing the other, to which she had already tied her wooden rocker-rod, within reach at the couch-top. Then, having slipped off her shoes and tied them about her neck, she switched out the light and groped her way back toward the door.

She clambered up the treacherous spring-tiers as best she could, cautiously feeling for the transom. Having swung it open, she placed her bamboo support beneath it. She next reached for the rocker-rod tied to the rope-end, carefully lowering it through the opened transom. Then she took a deep breath, for she knew the hardest part of her task was still ahead of her. To emerge head down from a transom seven feet high is no easy matter. But to do this encumbered with skirts, half choked with dust and in utter darkness, takes unto itself the nature of both an exercise in audacity and an adventure in acrobatics.

But Sadie knew her possibilities. As she slowly and silently vermiculated over the dust-covered door-lintel she retained her hold on the cotton rope. She emerged, head down, until her knees were free of the cross-bar. Then, pivoting on the taut rope, she swung about with a cat-like twist of the body, describing an aerial cart-wheel and dropping quietly if a little dazed on the carpeted floor of the hall. She was on her feet in a moment, untying her rocker-rod from the rope-end. The latter she tossed lightly back through the open transom. Then with her rod she pushed away the piece of bamboo holding up the hinged panel, the latter swinging back into place as the bamboo stick dropped back into the room from which she had escaped.

Then the girl turned and stood with her back to the door, straining her eyes through the darkness, with her aural nerves acutely alert, with even her moist skin-surfaces sensitized to atmospheric impressions, and with nostrils distended, like a winded moose sniffing for some hint of its pursuers.

She could hear and see nothing. But her over-delicate olfactory nerves warned her of the imminence of others. The signs of this were devious and diffused. And faint but unmistakable on the musty air floated the smell of tobacco-smoke. For once in her life she found that aroma anything but tranquilizing. Her mouth was dry, and more than ever the thought of long and cooling draughts appealed to her. When she got to a water-tap, she told herself, she would drink like a camel.

She was not content, however, to remain long inactive. So with one hand extended she advanced slowly and noiselessly through the darkness, stopping at every step or two to listen and then going on again. The absence of both sound and light tended to disturb her. It left every doorway an imminent menace and every corner a possible ambush. Her groping fingers came in contact with a door-frame, yet she was afraid to turn the knob. Darkness had imposed on her its accumulation of uncertainties. She even began to entertain exaggerated ideas of distances, imagining that she had traversed scores of feet where she had covered only as many inches.

Still again, as she advanced on her shoeless feet, she encountered the square of a door-frame between which she could feel the panels of the closed door itself. She explored it with fastidious finger-tips, wondering what could lay behind it.

She was standing close in beside it, with one ear pressed intently against its panel, when a sudden sound startled her. She could hear the rattle and clink of portière-rings and the sound of a key being quickly turned in a lock. The next moment a door opened and a fulcrum of light cascaded out across the darkness of the hallway.

It was the door, she saw, past which she had so recently and so innocently worked her way. It was wide open by this time, and two figures had stepped out into the hall. One was Keudell and the other was Andelman. She had a clear vision of them in silhouette, and at the same time her quick eye caught sight of the banister and the stair-head for which she had been searching, not five paces away from her.

Instinctively she flattened her body against the paneled door, pressing as deep into the shadow of its frame as she could. She saw Keudell, with his hat already on his head, step toward the stairs. She saw Andelman reach out a hand to grasp the banister before the closing door behind him again left the hallway in darkness. She heard the sound of the lock and the second clink and tinkle of the portière-rings. And she knew that this door on her right had been locked by some one still within the room. She could at the same time hear the steps of the two men descending the stairs.

She stood listening intently, for the direction of their advance was a matter of vast moment to her. Before those steps reached the bottom of the stairs, however, she heard them come to a stop. She caught a whispered word or two and then the sound of the men as they hurriedly reascended the treads, stopped again and listened. At the same time, from somewhere below-stairs, she heard the dull thud of a door being quickly closed.

While she stood speculating as to whether or not this could be the street-door which had suddenly opened and shut, a vague flare of light showed somewhere deep in the well of the stairway. This brought her creeping forward to the banister. Then she knew her surmise had been right; some one had entered from the street and was now striking a match, either to make sure of his whereabouts or to guide the manner of his advance. The uncertain light of that burning match showed her one other tableau. This was Keudell, half-way up the stairs, with a revolver in his hand and Andelman crouching close behind him. He stood poised and menacing, as though prepared for any emergency. But a gasp that was half anger and half relief burst from him as the match burned up.

"Easy there!" suddenly called out the man with the match-end. And as he spoke Sadie Wimpel knew it was the big man who had held her down in the taxicab. He had obviously just caught sight of his colleague with the leveled firearm.

"What the devil do you mean by coming in that way?" demanded Andelman. "Without a word of warning?"

"It's the only way I had time for!"

"What's wrong?"

"Listen: he's got Spike's driver. In ten minutes they'll be hot on this trail!"

"Who has?"

"Wilsnach has!"

"Hell!" said Keudell, out of the silence.

But Sadie, at the sound of that name, knew a sudden sense of released tension. She breathed deep. Wilsnach had captured their taxi-driver. Then Wilsnach was free! A soft and warming glow crept through her body and left her indeterminately dizzy with hope. They had lied to her, from the first. Wilsnach was not a prisoner with her in that house. He had been too clever for them. He had trumped their ace and captured their own driver. And he would be after them, any time now, hot-foot Ike. For that was Wilsnach's way.

She could hear the sound of steps again.

"What are we going to do?" asked Andelman out of the darkness.

It was the big man who spoke next.

"You've got to beat it out of here, and beat it quick!"

"But why?"

"I tell you this house ain't safe! They'll third-degree that driver until he can't keep his trap shut!"

"Supposing he doesn't!"

"It means you've got to scatter!"

"And it means," complained Andelman, "a fine messing up of this thing!"

Again there was a brief interlude of silence. Sadie, listening above, strained for every word. "And it will be a worse mess, unless we get away from here!"

It was Keudell speaking at last. He did so without apparent alarm, almost meditatively. He struck a match and looked at his watch. Then he spoke again. "Give the word to Breitman and Heinold. And make it where I said!"

"London?"

"Yes!"

"London in six days. Am I right?"

"That is right. But remember that we are watched. Go by way of St. Louis and take the Wabash back. Drop off at Detroit and hang over in Bartholomew's rooming-house in East Ferry Street until you get word from me."

"And you?" asked Andelman.

"I will go by the river, with McKensic. That is the only way left for me—with McKensic as far as Kingston, in the launch, and then the Lackawanna!"

"But where in London?"

That question remained for the moment unanswered for the door at the stair-head above them suddenly opened and the cautious but inquisitive head of Wallaby Sam appeared in the vague shaft of light.

"We're in for a rumble!" Andelman called warningly up to him.

Wallaby Sam shuffled out on the landing. His was the only figure plainly visible to the watching girl. More than ever, with his rounded paunch and his rumpled-up hair-fringe and rubicund face, he looked like a blithe-spirited old robin finally driven into a dejection for which he had not been fashioned.

He pursed his heavy lips up in a dolorous whistle, blinking meditatively down into the darkness where the other three men were grouped.

"You'll have to hurry!" once more warned the big man.

"But where in London?" repeated Andelman, almost fretfully.

"The Tecumseh House. And have Heinold—"

He did not finish, for Wallaby Sam was calling down to him. "How about that girl?"

It was Andelman who answered. "For God's sake don't holler so loud! And why can't we have some light here?"

It was Keudell's voice, calm and authoritative, which spoke above Andelman's whimper. "Bring Heinold down here so we can talk this thing out."

Wallaby Sam, with a grunt, turned and shuffled back into the lighted room.

"I tell you you haven't time for debating societies around this house! You're steering for a fall!"

It was the big man of the taxi who spoke.

"When those guys hit us, they'll hit heavy. You leave the girl to me. I can have her held for a couple of weeks, and when you send the word I'll—"

Still again he broke off for Wallaby Sam and Heinold were groping and stumbling their way down the stairs. They had switched out the light behind them, Sadie noticed, but they had not stopped to lock the door. Of that she was positive. And on that she built her hopes.

She sidled noiselessly along the wall, working her way step by cautious step toward the stair-head. Her movements were equally deliberate as she groped for the door-knob, caressed it between her strong young fingers and carefully turned it. As she expected, it yielded and swung back to her pressure. She slipped inside and with a silence born of infinite precaution closed and relocked the door, leaving the key in the lock.

It disturbed her, as she did so, to find that the sound of conferring voices was no longer reaching her. But her first aim, once she was locked in that room, was to find the light-switch. So she groped and padded about as a blind woman might, following the line of the walls and exploring every piece of furniture with which she came in contact. It was several minutes before she came to an open roll-top desk on which stood a reading-lamp. In another moment or two she had discovered the switch and turned on the light.

She found herself in a sparsely-furnished room which had apparently been fitted up as an office. A telephone-directory on the desk-top in front of her sent her circling about the chamber for a telephone, but none was to be found in the room. She could not even unearth a trace of wiring. So she returned to the desk. There, beside the telephone-book, stood a box of cigarettes and a match-holder. For one brief moment she looked hesitatingly at the cigarettes, then began a hurried yet methodic search of the desk-drawers.

But these she found practically empty. It was not until she came to the bottom drawer on the right-hand side that her search was in any way rewarded. In this drawer she found an automatic pistol and several clips of cartridges. And a small wave of satisfaction sped through her tired body as she possessed herself of this weapon. For now, she knew, the fight would not be such a one-sided one.

She was standing deep in thought again, balancing the gunmetal weapon in her hand when a sudden sound arrested her. She heard the knob of her door turn and then move more vigorously, as though tugged at by an impatient hand.

"Who locked this door?" demanded a muffled voice from the hall. She knew it was Wallaby Sam speaking. She heard him step to the stair-banister and call down to his companions in the lower regions of the house. Then came the sound of answering voices, hushed and hurried, and the further sound of quick steps on the stairs and past the door behind which she stood.

At any time now, she surmised, they would discover the fact of her escape. And that would promptly solve for them the mystery of the locked door. So she knew that she would have to be ready. Their work, she concluded, would be hurried, and being hurried, would be ruthless.

They could advance, she knew, only by way of the door behind which she stood. So she carefully wheeled about the roll-top desk and in front of it placed the chairs which stood in the room.

From this ambuscade, she felt, she could at least keep things interesting, as long as her cartridge-clips held out, at any rate. For, this time, she knew, she could expect no quarter from them. She was not ignorant of Keudell's record and his character. He would never give her another chance.

She waited with the calmness of the unimaginative young animal that she was, still further narcotized by sheer physical weariness. She waited with her eyes on the locked door and her pistol in her hand. She even forgot her thirst. One determined assault on those panels, she knew, would easily carry them away. So she decided that it would be better, on the whole, to have the light turned off.

She reached out for the switch. As she did so her eyes fell on the box of cigarettes, A wayward temptation to take one of them up and light it possessed her. But the business on hand, she remembered, was too serious for trifling. So she switched out the light and stood in the darkness, waiting. And as she waited she remembered that she was very thirsty.

The tension of her position also began to tell on her tired body. She found standing irksome. So she groped her way about the desk and lifted one of the chairs back next to the wall which enfiladed her. She sat down in this chair, with the automatic still in her hand, still waiting.

She thought she heard a vague sound or two, but of this she could not be sure. The silence tended to unnerve her. She became obsessed with the thought that vast and intricate tissues of intrigue were being woven on the looms of silence about her. Countless ghostly contingencies, as the minutes dragged on, stood serried and sinister in the gloom above her. Inactivity became an ache. The fingers of her restless left hand toyed for a moment with the open cigarette-box on the desk-top. She took up one of the tiny cylinders, tapped its end against the desk-edge and tried to moisten it with her lips. Then her hand went back to the match-holder. She sat motionless for a minute or two, hemmed in by the velvety blackness about her. Then she deliberately took up a match, struck it and lighted the cigarette which still drooped from between her lips. She sighed at the second puff. It almost made her forget her thirst again. She was in the act of exhaling the third luxurious puff when she suddenly leaned forward, rising from her chair as she did so.

It was at the same moment that the sudden crash came that she leveled her pistol and pulled the trigger. For she knew that the door had been suddenly broken in, that her enemies were already through that door and advancing on her. It came home to her consciousness, at the same instant, that there had been no detonations from her fire-arm. There had been the snap of metal against metal, and that was all. She had scarcely time to realize that her automatic was empty, that she had neglected to slip in a clip, before she heard a voice calling out, a little thick with excitement: "I've got 'em! They're here!"

She groped frenziedly about for the clips of cartridges. As she did so the level ray of a flash-light exploded across the darkness of the room, and the voice cried out for the second time.

"Stick up your hands there! Stick 'em up quick!"

It was not the savagery with which these words were uttered that appalled her. It was the fact that they were spoken by Wilsnach hirnself.

For one moment the flash-light wavered about the room and then centered white and clear on her startled face. She sank weakly back in her chair, with the cigarette still drooping from her slightly parted lips.

She heard Wilsnach's exclamation of "Good God!" as she reached forward and switched on the electric-lamp. She could see the light shine on his revolver barrel. He was without a hat or coat, and his eyes, in the sudden light, were ridiculously round and blinking.

"Wh—where are they?" he rather vacuously demanded. In the doorway behind him, Sadie saw, stood Romano of the city force, with a gunmetal automatic in his hand.

"Where are they?" repeated Wilsnach.

Kestner himself swung in past Romano as Wilsnach stood still regarding her.

"Didn't you get 'em?" shrilled Sadie.

"Get who?" demanded Kestner.

"Keudell and the others!"

"No!"

"They're in this house then!"

Kestner suddenly relaxed and sank into a chair. Then he shook his head. "They can't."

"But they were here not ten minutes ago—and I oughtta know!"

Kestner still was dolorously shaking his head from side to side. "They've made their get-away!"

Sadie leaned back in her chair. Wilsnach came forward a step or two and gently took the automatic from her somewhat shaky right hand. He looked at it curiously. Then he looked even more curiously into her white face with the disturbingly febrile glitter about the weary-looking eyes. The cigarette was still in her hand. She stared down at it guiltily.

"Hully gee," she said with listless insolence, "I said I'd cut out the smokin', didn't I?"

No one spoke as she laughed, quite without mirth. "Well, I guess I earned this coffin-nail, all right! For I've had quite a night of it!"

Kestner, with the bitterness of defeat in his blood, swung half angrily about on her.

"You seem to think all this was engineered for your amusement!"

Sadie smiled up at him.

"It looks funny t' me!" she announced.

"What does?"

"The way yuh keep lettin' that bunch get by yuh!"

Kestner was in no mood to encourage such levity.

"Could you handle this case any better?" was his curt demand.

"I guess mebbe I could," was the girl's languid reply.

"Then why don't you try it?"

Sadie blew a ring of smoke ceilingward. She watched it meditatively, for a silent moment or two.

"I guess mebbe that's what I'll have to do!" she finally declared.