Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

Was it possible that she was in bed and asleep? My heart beat wildly. I raised up a little to see.

  She was! I was sure of it. I could see where the covers were bunched together.

  That made it perfect. She probably didn’t even have the gun under her pillow. I moved forward to the bed. I looked around the room again, to make certain she wasn’t hiding.

  Then, suddenly, I leaped up. With a low cry, I plunged the knife into that rise in the covers. There was no sound, but again and again I plunged it in, gloatingly.

  I sank back at last on the floor by the bed. I was exhausted, gasping for breath. Then, abruptly, my hair rose on end. I had heard a sound behind me! The door to the hall was opening—almost noiselessly.

  I whirled about, the knife gripped in my hand, ready for the intruder. And then I screamed.

  In the doorway stood the corpse of Graham Waite!

  I say corpse, because even if I had not known Graham Waite was dead, I’d have been certain this was no living man. The face was almost as white as the hair and beard. The mouth was hideously, hatefully twisted.

  I didn’t even dare to look at the eyes.

  When I screamed, he stopped. I thought for a breathless minute that he was going to wheel about and run. Then he smiled horribly and started toward me.

  CHAPTER V

  House of Madness

  A RED rage boiled up in my brain. Ghost or corpse, I didn’t care. I wanted to sink my knife into it. With a bellow, I leaped to my feet, flung myself toward it with my knife thrust forward.

  The knife struck something fleshy, went in. I heard a cry, and came up against a solid body. I drew my knife back again.

  His arm caught my wrist. Then I saw that his other hand held a gun. I caught the gun hand. We held each other for a moment, struggling. All at once his gun hand wrenched loose. I twisted, and at the same time, I heard the click of the trigger. The gun roared.

  I felt a burn along my side. The bullet hadn’t entered me. I reached out with my foot, caught him off balance. He staggered back. I drove the knife in.

  He gasped once—then he fell backward, clutching at empty air. His grip on me was loosened—yet I went over with him. I stumbled forward, on top of him. He didn’t struggle.

  As we hit the floor, I heard the pound of running feet. Lights flashed in my eyes. People were bending over us. It was Marcia, and Jim—but they had masks on—handkerchiefs tied over their faces like white masks. The whole horror of it struck me at once, like a consuming fire.

  “Send them away,” I mumbled. “Take me down to hell, and send them away!”

  I clutched at the man under me—or the corpse. I felt the beard pull loose. Then everything went black.

  I couldn’t have been out for more than a half minute. I shuddered. I looked down and gasped. I had clawed away the face of the corpse. Beneath it were the features of Sidney Horton!

  Marcia and Jim were helping me to my feet.

  Horton, beneath me, was babbling wildly. The others were talking too, and I began to understand.

  I hadn’t killed Marcia. She hadn’t been in her bed when I drove the knife in. She had seen Jim lying out on the lawn, and had crept out there, hoping she could bring him back to sanity. He already was sane when she got there, because the fresh air had cleared the madness from his brain.

  He had begun to guess why it was he had gone mad—and so when they came back, they had worn masks, treated with antiseptic. The same kind of thing that had saved me till just a little while ago.

  Some of the other answers to that night’s horrors I learned from Sidney Horton’s babblings before he died, some not till much later. One thing I hadn’t known was that Sidney wasn’t a Waite, but was a natural son of the elder Horton, by a Polynesian mother. Graham Waite’s sister had raised him as if he were her own son; but at the same time, the Waites knew his true ancestry, and he knew it, and it had rankled in him. He grew to hate them all. He wanted to destroy them.

  On top of that, he needed money. In some way or other he had learned of a diamond mine in South Africa that his father had once owned a half interest in, but had later sold out entire to Graham Waite. At one time it had been valueless; Graham Waite had still thought it was when he died; but Horton had learned that it was going to turn out to be tremendously valuable, and he wanted it. If he could kill off all the Waites, it would come back to him.

  He found a willing ally in Wong. Wong had been, apparently, a faithful servant of the Waites for years; but at some time or other, Graham Waite had unwittingly offended him. In Oriental fashion, Wong was biding his time for revenge.

  HE knew of a strange poison, a perfume that would drive men mad, drive them into a killing rage. It would act a little differently upon one man than another, but always, if he got enough of it, if the doses were repeated, the victim would go mad and try to kill himself or others.

  Wong had managed to sprinkle it in the flowers—flowers that, for the most part, had been grown in the Waites’ own garden. The odor had driven Graham Waite to an insane suicide; it had put the butler, Franklin, into a mad fury. Then, when the family were all gathered, the two had attempted to drive the rest of them to madness and to death.

  Horton wore respirators in his nose to save himself, and when he realized that the bandages on me served a like purpose, he decided to save me. Alive, I would be his most certain proof of innocence. He had made himself up to look like Graham Waite partly because he thought it would aggravate the madness with some, but more so that he could safely go from room to room, adding more of the oil to the flowers.

  He had come into Marcia’s room, guessing that we had changed rooms, to do that at the time I met him, and he decided then that he had to kill me, too. Of course he never went for the police.

  He said that Wong had gotten his pay and cleared out, and we’d never catch him. He was right about that. But we did learn something more about the poison later, when the police chemist managed to make a crude analysis of what little was left. He was unable to discover its exact constituents; but he later showed me a book by H. Ashton-Wolfe, “Warped in the Making,” I think it was called, in which the author, describing his experiences as assistant to Dr. Bertillon in Paris, cites an instance of the use of a similar drug. The case of Hanoi Shan, in which this poison was used, is to be found in the records of the Paris Surete for 1909. Shan, otherwise known as the Spider, was a madman killer who had terrorized Paris. At the time of his arrest, the Surete analyzed the poison and announced their belief that it was an extract of the venom of a deadly insect, native to Borneo, probably of the spider family. Its effect was upon the brain cells, arousing in the mind exactly the same sort of bloody madness that had overtaken the Waites. I checked on this later myself, and found that, strange and hideous as it was, it was true!

  That, as I say, came out later.

  Now, after Sidney Horton had breathed his last, we went down the hall and lifted Mrs. Waite gently from her bed. We carried her downstairs, and out of that poison-infested house of death.

  Dawn light was just showing in the east. Marcia and I walked down the lawn a little way.

  I put my arms around her. A little of the dawn light caught her hair. As if by silent agreement, for a little time we forgot everything else but just us, there in the morning light. I leaned down and kissed her tenderly, protectingly.

  THE YELLOW CURSE

  Lars Anderson

  A Cry of Anguish in the Fog-Choked Darkness Brings Arn Flannery to a Scene of Ghastly Evil

  The clammy fog swirled and twisted like a monstrous yellow shroud.

  A battered roadster purred along the graveled road from the direction of the city. Arn Flannery sat tensed behind the wheel. He was driving slowly, blue eyes vainly boring into the concealing mist, grunting eloquently as the car bounced over the washboarded apology for a highway.

  “Seventeen million for roads in five years,” he mused, sarcastically. “And look at this!” Thin lips twisted in a sneer about the cold pipe-stem gripped in stron
g, white teeth.

  He shot a glance at the tiny clock on the dash. It was almost ten o’clock in the evening. He should reach his destination soon now. Would he be able to find it in the hellish murk? Had anything gone wrong with Elena’s plans? Why had she written so briefly, asked him to come to her tonight instead of following through with their set date for Saturday?

  Abruptly, a scream, high-pitched, blood-curdling, broke through the saffron curtain of the mist. Flannery tensed, braked the car to an instant standstill as the tortured wail knifed his ears. He leaped from the car, slipped, went to his knees in the gravel. Off to one side he heard a gasping moan. For a moment, he hunched there on all fours, listening.

  The mist grew momentarily in its shrouding, yellow intensity. It mocked him as it rolled about on its clammy belly like some swaying, poisonous monster of the night. It was impossible to see six feet in front. Nature seemed in the mood for aiding and abetting anything that was going on in the fog-choked darkness.

  The lanky reporter scrambled to his feet, swore softly, dug a flash from the door pocket of the roadster. His fingers trembled, fumbled at the switch. It was a poor light, but better than nothing at all. He turned the sickly, orange glow into the teeth of the mist. It was no match for that thick shroud, but it would have to do. Cautiously, he made his way in the direction from whence had sounded the shrill, fearful outcry.

  Flannery could hear nothing now except the click and crunch of his shoes against the roadway. He paused, stood listening, his strong shoulders hunched, hard eyes narrowing. The hellish saffron billows clung to him like a material pall. Then, he heard it again. A gasping, whining moan of ineffable horror and anguish. It crescendoed upward, terminated abruptly. Then, there was no sound to be heard.

  The next moment, Arn Flannery saw her. He lunged forward, leaned over the still, feminine form. The figure, scantily clad in filmy underthings, lay upon its side. The reporter smothered a curse as he turned the girl face upward.

  “Holy Moses!” he gasped.

  The prostrate girl had once been very beautiful. She was small and dainty. But her youthful cheeks were somewhat sunken, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her butter-hued hair was a mass of silken disarray about her rounded shoulders.

  But one thing Flannery noticed with a start. The coloring of her smooth skin. It was of a ghastly hue that matched the golden satin undergarments. In the faint rays of the flash, her exposed loveliness gave off a hideous sheen that seemed to make her a part of the ghostly, macabre mist!

  “It’s as if this damnable fog had smirched her with its evil,” Arn Flannery thought.

  Just then, her long lashes fluttered weakly open; she gazed up at him with glazing, pitiful eyes.

  “What in heaven’s name has happened?” he asked, softly. “Are you hurt? Tell me.”

  Abruptly, a shiver shook her body and somehow, the man realized that it was not caused by the chill atmosphere.

  “The yellow curse!” she moaned, weakly. “Go for—help—before it is too late! Get—get key—key—”

  Another horrible tremor stabbed her body; her piquant face twisted with pain; her soft flesh quivered and crawled as though at the memory of some malignant and evil thing. Then, suddenly, she went limp, her golden head lolling to one side.

  Flannery fell to his knees beside the half-naked body, placed a gentle ear against the girl’s left breast. There was no murmur, no sound of life.

  “Dead!” he gasped.

  Suddenly, as he straightened to his feet, a light loomed off to the left in the encompassing gloom. The fog swirled thickly yellow and ghastly between it and the man. It couldn’t be far away! Striding forward, Flannery found a side road which led in its direction.

  He considered a moment, returned to his roadster, slid beneath the wheel. He stepped on the starter, guided the battered car into a deep ditch beside the road. He tensed hard muscles, braced himself, as the machine went over on its side. Cautiously, he crawled from the wreckage, uninjured, grinning, serene. A moment later, without a backward glance, his tall figure was cutting through the clinging mist in the direction of the light.

  The driveway from the main road ran upgrade along a narrow ridge. He followed its winding course with cautious tread till he faced a huge, ugly edifice, a piled mass of masonry, grim, forbidding. Obviously, it had once been a mansion of some grandeur. Now, however, it had deteriorated; its gables sagged, its general aspect was as evil as Arn Flannery had anticipated. At one end a round tower thrust upward, gaunt in the eerie yellow mist. A single light blinked like an evil eye from a window on the lower floor.

  The reporter shivered as he put foot upon the high porch. It, like the rest of the house, was of a deeper, more sinister yellow than the fog that surrounded it. He approached the front door, banged with an immense brass knocker. It sent echoes whispering through the interior of the place like ghostly mutterings in a tomb.

  Flannery waited. Slow minutes passed. He knocked again, insistently. Once more the whispers ricocheted through the depths within. Suddenly, soundlessly, the door swung open before him.

  A man stared out at him. Arn Flannery felt then a touch of the fear which was to follow. He was not conscious of being afraid, but there was an odd, heavy feeling in his chest, and his hands shook slightly as he looked into a pair of sunken, malignant orbs which might belong to the devil instead of man.

  The man was tall, thin, almost gaunt. His angular face was sallow, saturnine, strangely Satanic. His narrow, slanted eyes were like those of a coiled cobra. Corn-tasseled hair was trained to a peak on his low forehead. His thin lips were twisted into a snarl. His ears were pointed at the top.

  Everything Arn contacted in this eerie night was of the same ghastly, malignant yellow hue! The damnable fog, the corpse by the roadside, this gaunt skeleton of a house. And now, strangest of all, the sallow-faced devil who was peering at him with such ill-disguised malevolence in his eyes.

  What had the dying girl gasped? The yellow curse! What was the meaning behind her words? “Go for help before it is too late!”

  Too late for what? “Get key!” What key could she have meant? All these questions harassed the reporter as he faced the apparition in the doorway. He shook off an overpowering sense of dread, grinned affably. But the yellow creature before him did not return the grin.

  “What do you want here?” he asked in a voice that dripped venom.

  “Had a bit of a smash-up in the beastly fog,” replied Flannery, smoothly. “The steering-gear went bad on me. I hate to bother you, but there’s no other house near. Perhaps you would—”

  “I have no servants who might help you,” gritted the man evilly. “And no telephone. You came to a poor place for help!” He half closed the door.

  “In that case,” Flannery said quickly. “I’d be glad to pay you if you could accommodate me until morning. It’s all of fifteen miles to Thibadeau, you know.”

  The yellow-visaged man glared intently at Flannery for a moment. The reporter quaked inwardly at an odd, peculiar light which flared in the evil orbs for an instant, then died away. Then, the fellow stepped aside, waved him into a dim reception hall.

  A single lamp burned in the long corridor. Its fearsome glow bathed the drab velvet curtains that hung over doorways on either side. A heavy Turkish rug deadened the sound of footsteps, and led to stairs slanting upward in the semi-gloom. Although scantily furnished, the general impression was of wealth. But Flannery sensed an unholy tension in the still, musky atmosphere as he turned to his host.

  “I have no accommodations for guests,” piped the thin man, sourly. “But come upstairs and I’ll show you a place where you may sleep.”

  He leered at the reporter, tilting his Satanic eyes so that they caught the green light, gleamed balefully at his unwanted caller. Bloodless, green-yellow lips tightened back from white, wolfish teeth in an ugly snarl. His voice was cathedral-toned.

  Flannery shrugged, followed obediently after him up the broad staircase at the far en
d of the gloomy hall. They reached the second floor of the house. The host stopped before a bedroom door, flung it open.

  “I hope you sleep well,” he muttered in an unholy tone which sounded like a knell of death in the tautened ears of the reporter. “You asked for a place to sleep. You will not leave this room until morning!”

  What did the leering devil mean?

  Before Flannery could answer him, he turned and glided swiftly down the black corridor, odd laughter coming back to the puzzled guest over his gaunt shoulder. The laugh was a mad, rippling sound like that of a stream flowing beneath Winter’s ice. It made Flannery shiver as if a cold blast had fanned his spine.

  Arn Flannery stood in the center of the room, lit a cigarette, listened intently. It was near midnight, he knew. The great house was perfectly still. Ominously so. Something was wrong with the place. No question as to that. Something terrible was going on here. Something horrible. Try as he would, he could not shake off the feeling that this was true.

  Flannery had been detailed by the city desk to work on a couple of mysterious disappearances that had plagued the civic authorities for several months. Elena Vaughn had been selected to work with him on the case. However, the girl reporter had ferreted out her own leads, and had not confided all of them to him. Three days before, she had vanished, leaving him a note. In it, she had merely stated that she was taking a secretarial position in the country. She hinted that it was all in line with her duty.

  Since that time, she had not contacted him, and Flannery, who loved her ardently, had become worried. Today, she had ended that worry by sending him a brief note asking him to come to her tonight. Her instructions had been vague, the fog had made them almost useless. Was he in the right house? Or was his entrance into this place a wasted, futile effort?

  Arn Flannery believed in hunches. He had had a strong one out there in the fog while crouched beside the dying girl. The dull gleam of the light through the mist had convinced him of its authenticity; he had determined to see what he could do about her gasping plea!