Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  THE HUMAN ELEMENT

  It was slowly, almost reluctantly, that Durkin returned to full andclear-thoughted consciousness. Even before he had opened his eyes herealized that he was in a hurrying carriage, for he could feel everysway and jolt of the thinly cushioned seat. He could also hear thebeat of the falling rain on the hood-leather, and on the glass of thedoor beside him, as he lay back in the damp odors of wet and soddenupholstery.

  Then he half-opened his eyes, slowly, and saw that it was MacNuttbeside him.

  The discovery neither moved nor startled him; he merely let the heavylids fall over his tired eyes once more, and lay there, without amovement or a sign.

  Tatter by tatter he pieced together the history of the past few hours,and as memory came tardily back to him he knew, in a dim and shadowyway, that he would soon need every alertness of mind and body which hecould summon to his help. But still he waited, passive andunbetraying, fighting against a weakness born of great pain and fatigue.

  He was keenly conscious of the cab's abrupt stopping, of the passing ofmoney between MacNutt and the lean and dripping night-hawk holding thereins, of being half-carried and half-dragged, in the great, bear-likegrasp of his captor, across the wet sidewalk, to the foot of a flightof brownstone steps. These steps were wide and ponderous, and led upto an equally wide and ponderous-looking doorway crowned withornamental figures of marble on a sandstone background. These carvenfigures, wet and glistening in the light of the street-lamps, stood outincongruously gloomy and ghostly, like the high relief on a sarcophagus.

  Instead of mounting the steps, however, MacNutt hauled his captivelimply in under their shadow, to the basement door opening off thestone-flagged area. There, after fumbling with his keys for a momentor two, he quietly unlocked the heavy outer grating of twisted ironworkand then the inner door of oak. Durkin made a mental note of the factthat both of these doors were in turn locked after them.

  The two then made their way through the darkness down what must havebeen a long passage. Its floor was padded with carpet, and somefugitive and indefinable odor seemed to suggest to the prisoner anatmosphere of well-being, of a house both carefully furnished andscrupulously managed.

  MacNutt softly opened a door on the right, and, after listening for acautious moment or two, as softly entered the room into which this doorled. And still again a key was turned and withdrawn from the lock.

  Even with his eyes closed Durkin, as he lay there husbanding hisstrength, was conscious of the sudden light that flooded the room.Covertly opening that eye which remained in the heavy shadow,separating the lashes by little more than the width of a hair, he couldmake out a large room, upholstered and carpeted in green, withgreen-shaded electroliers above two billiard tables that stood ghastlyand bier-like beneath their blanketing covers of white cotton. Againstthe walls stood massive, elephantine club chairs of green fumed oak,and it was into one of these that MacNutt had dropped the inert andunresponding Durkin. At the far end of the room the stealthy observercould make out what was assuredly the entrance to an electric elevator.In fact, as he looked closer he could see the two mother-of-pearlbuttons which controlled the apparatus; for it was plain that thiselevator was one of those automatic lifts not uncommon in cityresidences of the more palatial order.

  Then, as he quietly but busily speculated on the significance of thisdiscovery, Durkin suddenly caught sight of a triple crescent carved onthe arm of the chair against which he leaned. And as he made out thatfamiliar device he knew that he was in Penfield's uptown house onceused as his residence and later as his private clubrooms.

  At this discovery his alert but well-veiled glance went back toMacNutt. He saw his captor fling off his wet and draggled raincoat andthen shake the water from a dripping hat-brim. This he seemed to dowithout haste and without emotion.

  Durkin next saw his enemy gaze about the entire circle of the roomscrutinizingly, the subdolous green eyes coming to a rest only whenthey fell on his own relaxed figure.

  "And this is where the music starts!" muttered MacNutt aloud, as hestrode toward Durkin.

  Even before he had uttered that half-articulate little sentence hiscaptive was possessed by a sudden conviction of approaching climax. Heknew, somewhere deep in the tangled roots of consciousness, that eitherhe or the other must go down that night, that one was destined to winand that the other was destined to lose, that the ancient fight wasabout to be settled, and settled for all time.

  In that agonized and hurried and yet lucid-thoughted summing up ofultimate values Durkin realized that it would be useless to resist whatwas immediately before him. He was too shaken and weak for any crudebattle of brute strength against brute strength. With his woundedhand, which even then sent throbbing spears of pain from finger-tip toshoulder, and with his bruised and weary and stiffened body, he knewthat any test of strength in the muscular and ape-like arms of MacNuttwas out of the question. So he lay back, weak and unresisting, everynow and then emitting from his half-opened lips a little moan of pain.

  But behind the torn and battered ramparts of the seemingly comatosebody his vigilant mind paced and watched and kept keenly awake. As hefelt the great hands pad and feel about his body, and the searchingfingers go through his clothes, pocket after pocket, some sentinelintelligence seemed to watch and burn and glow like a coal deep withinthe ashes of all his outer fatigue. He waited quiescent, as he feltthe heated, animal-like breath on his face, as the ruthlessly exploringhands tore open his vest, as they ripped away the inner pocket whichhad been so carefully sewn together at the top, as they drew out thetied and carefully sealed packet of papers for which he had beensearching.

  More than once Durkin thought that if ever those documents, for whichhe had endured and suffered and lost so much, were again wrested fromhim, it would be only after some moment of transcendent conflict, aftersome momentous battle of life's forlornest last reserves. Yet now,impassively and ignominiously, he was surrendering them to theconqueror, supinely, meanly, without even the solace of some supreme ifvain resistance! He listened to MacNutt's gloating little "Ah!" oftriumph without a sign or movement. But, even then, in that moment ofseeming frustration, Durkin's subterranean yet terriblepertinaciousness, his unparaded bull-dog indefatigability, glowed andburned at its brightest. They were not yet in their last ditch.

  "That's _one_ part of it!" muttered MacNutt, as he stowed away thepacket and rebuttoned his coat.

  It was a shadowed and lupine eye which Durkin cautiously opened as hefelt more than heard MacNutt's quick footsteps on the carpeted floor.Covertly, and without moving, he saw the other man walk to theelevator, saw the play of his finger on the mother-of-pearl button, sawthe automatic door noiseless slide away, and the descended and waitingcage locked on a level with the floor. He saw MacNutt step inside, andthe finger again play on one of a row of five pearl buttons set in thepolished wood of the cage-wall, and the elevator noiselessly ascend.

  The moment it went up Durkin was on his feet.

  He first ran to the two doors at the opposite end of the billiard-room.They were both securely locked; and they were his only means of escape.Then he hurriedly circled the two huge tables, in search of someimplement of defense. But the denuded room offered nothing.

  Then he dashed to the elevator shaft. As he had surmised, it was anautomatic electric lift, operating from the cellar below to the top ofthe house. The cage, so far as he could make out, now stood oppositethe third floor. The controlling apparatus, the motor into which thepower wires led, was, of course, in the cellar beneath him. It wouldbe easy enough to twist one of the billiard-table covers into a rope,and drop down to the shaft-bottom, twelve feet below. There he couldtie a bit of string to the emergency switch, watch the first movementof the descending cage, and shut off the current at the right moment.That would mean that the descending cage, robbed of its power, wouldhang a dead weight in its steel channel, the safety brake wouldautomatically apply itself, and anybody within the
cage would remainlocked and imprisoned there, halfway between floors, helpless todescend or ascend, hemmed in by the four blank walls of the shift.

  He decided not even to waste time on twisting up a table-cover. Hewould hang by his right hand, and drop to the bottom. But a suddenglint and flutter of light reminded him of his danger. The cage wasdescending.

  It was only a matter of seconds before MacNutt stepped once more fromthe cage into the billiard-room, yet as he did so he saw nothing butthe still limp and relaxed form of Durkin, huddled back in his hugechair, emitting from between his half-parted lips an occasional weakgroan of pain.

  A gloating and half-demoniacal chuckle broke from the newcomer's lips.In one hand he carried a decanter of brandy, in the other a seltzersiphon. Durkin could hear the gurgle and ripple of the liquid into theglass; a moment later he knew that MacNutt was bending over him.

  "Here, you, wake up out o' that!" he said, with still another chuckleof ominous glee.

  He shook the relaxed figure roughly.

  "Get awake, there! This is _too_ good--this is something you can'tafford to miss, you damned welcher!"

  He poured the scalding liquor down the other's throat. Some of itspilled and ran into the hollow of his neck; some of it dribbled on hislimp collar and his coat lapels. But Durkin took what he could, andwas glad of it. The pain of his wounded arm was very acute.

  "Kind o' recalls our first meetin', eh?" demanded MacNutt, as hewatched the other slowly open his wondering eyes. "Kind o' remind youof the day I loosened you up with brandy and seltzer, that first time Ihad to drag and coax you into this dirty business?"

  And again his captor laughed, wickedly, mirthlessly.

  "Go on, take some more! I'm goin' to give you enough to light you allto glory!" he gloated. And still he poured the liquor down theunresisting man's throat.

  He dragged the other to his feet.

  "Come on now, quick! There's a little scene waitin' for youupstairs--something that'll kind o' soothe and console you for gettin'so done up!"

  They were in the elevator by this time, mounting noiselessly upward.Durkin could feel the fire of the brandy soar up to his brain and singthrough his veins. MacNutt supported him as they stepped from theelevator cage into a darkened room. On the far side of this room, frombetween two heavy portieres, a gash of light cut into the otherwiseunbroken gloom.

  A sound of voices floated out to them and MacNutt tightened his grip onthe other's arm, as they stood and listened, for it was Frances Durkinand Keenan talking together, hurriedly, impetuously, earnestly.

  "But does it make any difference what I have been, or who I am?" thewoman's voice was asking. "I did my part; I did my work for you. Nowyou ought to give me a chance!"

  Still holding the other back, MacNutt circled sidewise, until they cameinto the line of vision with the unsuspecting pair in the other room.Keenan, they could see, held one heavy hand on the woman's shoulder,intimately; and she, in turn, looked up into his face, in an attitudeas open and intimate.

  "You know, now, what I have known before you!" whispered MacNutt, intothe ear of the tortured Durkin.

  "You lie!" murmured Durkin's lips, but no sound came from them, for hisstaring eyes were still on the scene before him.

  "Listen then, you fool!" was all his tempter whispered back. And theystood together, listening.

  "But I _am_ giving you a chance," Keenan next replied, and his long,melancholy Celtic face was white and colorless with emotion. "I'mgiving you the only chance that life holds for both of us!"

  "I know it!" said the woman.

  Keenan's arms went out to her, and she did not draw back. Instead, shereached up her own seemingly wearied and surrendering arms, without aword, and held him there in her obliterating embrace. He swayed alittle, where he stood, and for a moment neither moved nor spoke.

  MacNutt, narrowly watching the shadowy face of Durkin, saw pictured onthat pallid and changing countenance fear and revolt, one momentarytouch of despairing doubt, and then a mounting and all-consumingpassion of blind rage.

  In that drunken rage seemed to culminate all his misgivings, hissuspicions, his apparent betrayals of the past. He trembled and shooklike a man in a vertigo; the fingers of his upraised right hand openedand closed spasmodically; his flaccid lips fell apart, vacuously,insanely.

  "I'll kill her!" he ejaculated under his breath. MacNutt knew that hismoment had come.

  Without a spoken word he caught his revolver up from his coat pocket.Then he thrust it, craftily, into the other man's hand.

  The insane fingers closed on the handle of it, the glaring andexpressionless eye peered along the steadying barrel. MacNutt held hisbreath, and waited. It must be soon, he knew, before the moment ofmadness had burnt itself out.

  The woman under the white light of the electrolier drew back fromKeenan, with her eyes still on his face, so that her head and shouldersstood out, a target of black against the white fore-ground. Then shedrew one hand quickly across her forehead, and, wheeling slowly, lether puzzled glance sweep the entire circle of the room, until once moreher eyes rested upon the expectant eyes of Keenan.

  Durkin, through all his rage, shut his teeth on a sudden sob. It wasall over. It was the end.

  A change suddenly swept across the woman's face, a light of exaltationleaped into her dilated pupils, and her hand went up to her heart.

  Was it some small sound or movement that she had heard, or was it someminute vibration of floor that she had felt?

  "_Jim, it's you_!" she shrilled out suddenly, into the heavy silence,in a tense and high soprano, with a voice not like her own.

  "_Jim, where are you_?" she called passionately, as she beat Keenanimpotently back with her naked hands. "Help me, quick! Can't you seeI need you? Can't you see this is _killing me_?"

  Keenan fell back before her, aghast.

  "You fool, you weak fool!" she shrieked at him madly. "Do you think Imeant that? Do you dream I could respect or care for an animal likeyou! Do you imagine I would endure the touch of your hands, if itwasn't to save me till this? Do you dream----?"

  She stopped suddenly, for with one sweep of his advancing arm Durkintore the heavy portiere from its curtain-rings, and he stood beforethem, in the flat white light of the electrics.