Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE PIT OF DESPAIR

  Frances Durkin looked at the jeering man before her, studiously,belligerently.

  "What do you mean by saying he'll punish himself?" she demanded.

  She seemed like a woman who had just awakened. Her earlier comatoseexpression had altogether passed away. There was life, now, in everyline of her body.

  "I mean that Durkin's got his quarter of a million in securities, allright, all right, but, by God, I've got _you_! And I mean that he'sgoin' to, that he's _got_ to, make a choice between them and you. Sowe'll just wait and find out which he loves best, his beau or hisdough!" And he laughed harshly at the feeble witticism, as he added,in his guttural undertone: "And I guess we get the worth of our money,whichever way it goes!"

  Frank's impression was that he was half drunk, that he was mumblingvaguely of revenges which grew up and died in their utterance. Herlook of open scorn stung him into a sudden tremor of anger.

  "Oh, don't think I'm spoutin' wind! If Durkin's the man you think heis, and I hope he is, _he'll be tryin' to nose his way into this placebefore midnight tonight_!"

  "And he will," cried Frank, exultantly, "and with the whole precinctpolice force behind him!"

  "He daren't!" retorted MacNutt. "He daren't get within a hundred yardsof the Central Office, and he daren't show his nose inside a precinctstation-house! And that's not all, either. There's no captain on thisside of New York who's goin' to buck against the whole Tammany machinean' poke into this Penfield business. If that young man with thebutterfly necktie over on Centre street thinks he can keep us movin',he's got to do a heap less talkin' and a heap more convictin' before hecan put _our_ lights out! That air is good enough for politics--butit's never goin' to break this here Penfield combination! Oh, no,Jimmie Durkin knows how the land lays. He's one o' your bold andbrainy kind, who likes to shut himself up in a garret for a week, andmake maps of what he's goin' to do, an' how he's goin' to do it, andthen trip off by his lonely and do his huntin' in the dark! And he'sgoin' to try to get in here, before midnight, tonight, and what's more,_he's goin' to find it uncommonly easy to do_!"

  "You mean you'll entice him and trap him here?"

  "No, I won't lay a finger on him. You'll do the enticin', and he'll dothe trappin'! I won't even be round to see--till afterward!"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean we're holdin' open house tonight," mocked MacNutt, "and thatDurkin will maybe drop in!"

  "And then what will it be?"

  "Come this way, my beauty, and I'll show you. First thing, though,just notice this fact. We're not goin' to make it too hard anddiscouragin' for Durkin. This trap-door will be left unlocked. Also,that front manhole will be left kind of temptingly open, with a fewchunks o' loose coal lyin' round it, so that even a Mercer streetroundsman couldn't help fallin' into it! Oh, yes, he'll find it easyenough!"

  Frank followed him without a word, as he made his way through the lowand narrow steel-lined tunnel leading to the vault-room.

  "Now, my dear, I guess this is the only way he'll be able to get atyou, unless he comes in a flyin' machine, and the first place he'llnose through will be this room. So, bein' old at the business, he'ssure to try a crack at our safe. At least, he'll go gropin' around fora while. Not an invitin'-lookin' piece o' furniture, I grant you, butthat's neither here nor there. It's not the safe that'll be detainin'Durkin, or any other housebreaker who tries to get gay on thesepremises. If you look hard, maybe you'll be able to see what's adamned sight more interestin'!"

  Frank looked, but she saw nothing beyond the great vault and theburnished copper guard-rail that surrounded it, like the fender about amarine engine.

  "You don't notice anything strikin'?" he interrogated wickedly.

  She did not.

  He emitted a guttural little growl of a laugh, and stepped over to ahalf-hidden switchboard, high up on the wall. He threw the lever outand down, and the kiss of the meeting metals sounded in a short andmalevolent spit of greenish light.

  "Are you on?" taunted MacNutt.

  Frank's slowly comprehending eyes were riveted on the burnished copperrailing, on which, only a moment before, her careless fingers hadrested. There was no sign, no alteration in the shining surface ofthat polished metal. But she knew that a change, terrible andmalignant, had taken place. It was no longer a mild and innocentguard-rail. It was now an instrument of destruction, an unbuoyedchannel of death. She stood staring at it, with fixed and horrifiedeyes, until it wavered before her, a glimmering and meandering rivuletof refracted light.

  "Are you on?" reiterated the watching man.

  The wave of pallor that swept over her face seemed to change her eyesfrom violet to black, although, for a moment, their gaze remained asveiled and abstracted as a sleep-walker's. Then a movement from hercompanion lashed and restored her to lucidity of thought. For, fromwhere it leaned against the wall, MacNutt had caught up a heavydoor-sheathing of pressed steel. It was painted a Burgundy red, tomatch the upholstery of the upper room where it had once done service,and on the higher of the two panels was embossed the Penfield triplecrescent.

  This great sheet of painted steel MacNutt held above his head, as ahesitating waiter might hold a gigantic tray. Then he stepped towardthe shimmering guard-rail, and stood in front of it.

  "Now, this luxurious-lookin' rear-admiral's rail-fence is at presentconnected with a tapped power circuit, or a light circuit, I don't knowwhich. All I know is that it's carryin' about a twenty-eight-hundredalternatin' current. And just to show that it's good and ready to eatup anything that tries monkeyin' round it, watch this!"

  He raised the Burgundy-red door-sheathing vertically above his head,and stepping quickly back, let it descend, so that as it fell it wouldstrike the metal of the sunken vault-top and the copper guardrail aswell.

  The very sound of that blow, as it descended, was swallowed up in thesudden, blinding, lightning-like flash, in the hiss and roar of thepale-green flame, as the sheet of steel, tortured into suddenincandescence, bridged and writhed and twisted, warping and collapsinglike a leaf of writing-paper on the coals of an open fire. A sickeningsmell of burning paint, mingling with the subtler gaseous odors of thecorroding metal, filled the little dungeon.

  "Don't! That's enough!" gasped the woman, groping back toward thesupport of the wall.

  MacNutt shut off the current, and kicked the charred door-sheathing,already fading from incandescence into ashen ruin, with his foot. Thesmell of burning leather filled the room, and he laughed a little,turning on the woman a face crowned with a look of Belial-like triumph,with dark and sunken circles about the vindictive, deep-set eyes.

  Once, in an evening paper, she had pored over the picture of anelectrocution at Sing Sing, a haunting and horrible scene, with thedangling wires reaching down to the prisoner, strapped and bound in hischair, the applied sponges at the base of the spine, the buckled thongsabout the helpless ankles, the grim and waiting gaol officials, theboyish-looking reporters, with watches in their hands, the bald andugly chamber, and in the background the dim figure of RetributiveJustice, with uplifted arm, where an implacable finger was about totouch the fatal button. Time and time again that vision had broughtterror to her midnight dreams, and had left her weak and panting,catching at her startled husband with feverish and passionate hands andholding him and drawing him close to her, as though that momentaryguardianship could protect him from some far and undefined danger.

  "Oh, Mack," she burst out hysterically, over-wrought by the scenebefore her, "for the love of God, don't make him die this way! Givehim a fighting chance! Give him a show! Do what you like with _me_,but don't blot him out, like a dog, without a word of warning!"

  "It's not my doin'!" broke in her tormentor.

  "It's inhuman--it's fiendish!" she went on. "I can't stand the thoughtof it!"

  MacNutt laughed his mirthless laugh once more.

  "Oh, I guess you'll stand it!"
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br />   "But I can't!" she moaned.

  "Oh, yes; you'll stand it, and you'll see it, too! You'll be righthere, where you can take the whole show in, this time! It won't be acase o' foolin' the old man, like it was last time!"

  "I will be here?" she gasped.

  "You'll be right on the spot--and you'll see the whole performance!"

  She drew her hands down, shudderingly, over her averted face, as thoughto shut something even from her imagination.

  "And do you know what'll be the end of it all?" MacNutt went on, in hisfrenzied mockery. "It'll all end in a little paragraph or two in the_Morning Journal_, to the effect that some unknown safecracksman orother accidentally came in contact with a live wire, and was shocked todeath in the very act of breaking into a pious and unoffendin'cigar-store vault! And you'll be the only one who'll know anythingdifferent, and I guess you won't do much squealin' about it!"

  She wheeled, as though about to spring on him.

  "I will! I will, although I wither between gaol walls for it--althoughI die for it! I'm no weak and foolish woman! I've known life bald tothe bone; I've fought and schemed and plotted and twisted all my daysalmost, and I can die doing it! And if you kill this man, if youmurder him--for it is murder!--if you bring this dog's death on him, Iwill make you pay for it, in one way or another--I'll make you mournit, David MacNutt, as you've made me mourn the first day I ever sawyour face!"

  She was in a blind and unreasoning passion of vituperative malevolenceby this time, her face drawn and withered with fear, her eyes luminous,in the dungeon-like half-lights, with the inner fire of her hate.

  "Keep cool, my dear, keep cool!" mocked MacNutt, without a trace oftrepidation at all her vague threats. "Durkin's not dead yet!"

  She caught madly at the slender thread of hope which swung from hismockery.

  "No! No, he's _not_ dead yet, and he'll die hard! He's nofool--you've found that out in the past! He will give you a fightbefore he goes, in some way, for he's fought you and beaten you fromthe first--and he'll beat you again--I know he'll beat you again!"

  Her voice broke and merged into a paroxysm of sobbing, and MacNuttlooked at her bent and shaken figure with meditative coldness.

  "He may have beaten me, once, long ago--but he'll never do it again.He won't even go out fightin'! He'll go with his head hangin' and hisnose down, like a sneak! And you'll see him go, for you'll be tiedthere, with a gag in your pretty red mouth, and you'll neither move norspeak. And there'll be no light, unless he gets so reckless as tostrike a match. But when the light does come, my dear, it'll be aflash o' blue flame, with a smell o' something burnin'!"

  The woman covered her face with her hands, and swayed back and forthwhere she stood.

  Then MacNutt held back his guttural laugh, suddenly, for she had fallenforward on her face, in a dead faint.