The Empty Coffins

by John Russell Fearn

  Which raised another problem. How had she had the strength to heave the ladder into position? He knew from his own experiences with it that it was anything but a featherweight. Baffling points, certainly, yet in some odd way they cleared his brain. It made him happier to think that there could be perfectly normal happenings in the midst of the other-world atmosphere in which he seemed to have existed for so long.

  He turned back to the girl at last and made her more comfortable on the bed; then he hurried to the bathroom and returned with a basin of warm water and a sponge. He sat bathing her face gently and watching redness float from the sponge into the water from where he had wiped her lips. Care­fully he studied the colour and then realized what it was...cochineal dye. A lot of the pallor in her complexion seemed to disappear too under the action of the wet sponge.

  He had come to the end of his task and was dry­ing her face with the towel when she suddenly stirred, evidently revived by the action of the water.

  “Peter...,” she whispered, looking at him fixed­ly; and he felt his heart race with joy as he not­iced that the blank stare had gone. Instead she was wondering, looking inexpressibly tired, but at least human.

  “Elsie! You recognize me!” Peter put aside the bowl, towel and sponge and gripped her shoulders gently.

  “Why—shouldn’t I?” she asked in a low voice, then her eyelids drooped sleepily. “I’m so…un­utterably weary,” she muttered. “Never been so…weary before.”

  “Listen, darling, you must answer some quest­ions,” Peter insisted, forcing her back to semi-wakefulness. “So much has been happening—so much that has been terrible, and only you can explain it. Everybody has believed you dead, and returned as a vampire. Twice you have tried to attack me—and failed. Now I know, from your very manner, that you certainly never really died— But the vampire business: what is the explanation?”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side on the pillow as she lay gazing at him.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Peter,” she said at last. “I can only remember—strange dreams. Strange voices. I seem—” she stopped and frowned. “I seem to remember being given orders, but I do not remember where—or when.”

  “What is the last clear impression you have?” Peter asked deliberately. “I must know, Elsie! You—and other people—have been the victims of a criminal attack. In the morning Scotland Yard will want the facts…. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember clearly?”

  “You were telling me about—Rawnee Singh. Saying something about the dark arts.”

  “But that was long ago!” Peter cried. “Before you seemed to die! All the horrible things that have happened have been since then! Surely you can remember?”

  She shook her head again and closed her eyes. Peter compressed his lips. Then drawing back the bedclothes he settled her as comfortably as poss­ible and drew the sheets over her. He had hardly finished doing so before a hammering on the front door below made him turn. Immediately he hurried from the room and down the staircase.

  Dr. Meadows was standing outside in the moon­light, two men behind him, his car waiting in the driveway.

  “How is she?” Meadows asked briskly, coming into the hall.

  “No longer a vampire. I’m pretty certain now that it was only hypnotic power holding her, Doc. She’s normal enough, but very exhausted—and she also seems to have amnesia, She doesn’t know a thing of what’s been going on.”

  “If hypnosis is the basis of everything, she’s not likely to.” Meadows answered. “The hypnotic subject has no idea of what occurs whilst under the influence— Oh, I managed to get these two men to give us a hand. They’ll keep guard whilst you and I take a look at the chapel ruins.”

  Peter glanced at the two men and nodded a greeting. They were brawny individuals, obviously connected with the land, and though unfamiliar to Peter he assumed they belonged to the little community that existed in the village.

  “Is everything all right down there, Mr. Malden?” asked the anxious voice of the housekeeper from the head of the stairs.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dawlish—we’re coming up this mom­ent.” Peter turned to the staircase. “Don’t go back to your room: I want a word with you.” Peter led the way up the stairs, Meadows and the two men following behind him. Mrs. Dawlish, in her dressing gown and boudoir cap looked at the quartet in amazement as they gained the landing.

  “Mr. Malden, what is happening?” she demanded. “And at this hour of the night too!”

  “If you’ll come along to my—I mean my wife’s room and mine, I’ll explain. And don’t get a shock when you see her lying there in bed.”

  “But—” Mrs. Dawlish’s eyes were round with wonder and alarm. “But, Mr. Malden, your wife is—dead! Everybody knows that—”

  “It was a mistake,” Peter said. I’ll explain if you’ll only come along.”

  The housekeeper had little choice, so she went ahead of the four men down the corridor and, as Peter motioned, entered the bedroom. Then she stood staring fixedly at Elsie as she lay fast asleep.

  “It’s impossible!” Mrs. Dawlish declared.

  “You can’t deny the evidence of your own eyes,” Peter replied; “though I can well imagine how you feel— Let me explain....”

  And he did so, in detail, whilst Dr. Meadows made a cursory examination of the girl and the two men from the village stood guard at either side of the doorway…

  “Then—then what happens now?” the housekeeper asked finally, startled.

  “Dr. Meadows and I are going to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. I think you had better stay in here and keep guard over my wife whilst we’re gone. These two men here will be outside the door in the passage. They’ll give immediate help if there’s any alarm… How does that plan strike you, Doc?”

  “Quite satisfactory,” he agreed, at the close of giving the sleeping Elsie an injection. “And the sooner we get off to the cemetery, the better. It can’t be so far from dawn, and once the daylight comes our task will be hard with only the two of us.”

  He packed up his bag and added. “Your wife will be all right until we return, granting nothing un­usual happens. She’s sleeping normally enough.”

  He came over to the door, gave Mrs. Dawlish a nod and an encouraging smile, then motioned his two men out into the passage.

  “One of you keep touring the house,” he in­structed. “I don’t see how any attack can be made with Singh lying dead in my surgery, but we can’t take chances. Whichever of you stays here must answer any call for help Mrs. Dawlish may give. It’s up to you: we’ll be out of touch until we’ve got to the bottom of this business.... Now come on, Peter: the time’s getting short.”

  He hurried to the staircase, Peter keeping up with him. When they had reached the hall and Peter grabbed his mackintosh and hat Meadows asked a question.

  “Sure you feel fit enough for whatever may be ahead of us?”

  “Even if I didn’t nothing would turn me back now. Let’s get going.”

  Meadows led the way outside to his car and Peter closed the front door behind him. In another moment or two Meadows was driving through the big gateway into the lane. His manner was taut, nervy, which, considering the strain under which he was working, with hardly any sleep, was not surprising.

  “Now we can talk freely,” Peter said, his eyes on the moonlit lane ahead, “what do you think about Elsie?”

  “She’s alive—and with care can be completely restored,” Meadows answered. “Her present low condition is only the outcome of the ordeal through which she has passed. Once she begins to recover strength she’ll probably be able to explain a good deal of what’s happened to her. She won’t remember it now, her mind stilt being hazy, but given time her memory will fill in the gaps.”

  “I’ve been trying to imagine,” Peter said, “how hypnosis could work on her with Singh lying dead. Suppose we were mistaken in him and that the culprit is somebody we’ve never even glimpsed so far?”

  “As to t
hat,” Meadows said, thinking. “Singh might have given her post-hypnotic orders before he died—and at the appointed time Elsie obeyed.”

  “To the extent of putting a heavy ladder against the house side,” Peter said grimly. “I’m convinced she was brought to the house, Doc, by somebody—perhaps in a car. Her shroud and feet were not indicative of a woman who had struggled through fields and along a lane full of sharp stones, like this one.”

  “The whole damned business still founders in mystery,” Meadows said, sighing. “Let’s hope we can find something in the chapel ruins, even if we are risking our lives by exploring....”

  With that he became silent. The gap in the cemetery railings was only a few yards ahead. In another moment he pulled up the car and climbed out into the lane....

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WITHIN THE CATACOMBS

  “Ready?” Meadows asked, as Peter got out of the car on his own side and came round the bonnet.

  “And waiting. I only wish I had a gun.”

  Meadows took his automatic from his pocket and held it in readiness.

  “So long as I have,” he said. “Come along....”

  They squeezed through the gap in the railings and, after stumbling over several graves, reached the more or less open space that led to the ruin of the old chapel. Without a word they progressed, mud oozing over their shoes, the light of the moon reflecting from a myriad small puddles where the rain of the night had not yet been absorbed.

  “There’s the wall.” Peter said at last, point­ing. “When I saw Elsie the first time she appeared round the far end of the old cloisters, so some­where around there seems to be the place we want.”

  “Good enough,” Meadows murmured, tugging a torch from his pocket. “We’ll see what we can find.”

  Once they had got beyond the wall they moved more cautiously, picking their way amidst the loose stones on the quadrangle floor. All the time they glanced about them expectantly, wary of any sudden attack—and the moonlight was a considerable advantage to help them see the surr­oundings. But nothing happened, so finally Meadows risked switching on his torch and casting the beam on the ground when the end of the old cloist­ers had been reached.

  “Look!” Peter said abruptly. “In this wet mud here.”

  Meadows studied the spot and nodded. “Defin­itely Elsie’s footprints,” he agreed. “Now let’s see if we can discover where they go.”

  Since they had come to the end of the old cloisters there was nothing ahead of them but the burial grounds studded with the white teeth of the tombstones, and here and there a massive colonnade to denote the mausoleum of some indi­vidual more important than the rest.

  “Only thing we can do is see if these prints go anywhere,” Meadows said finally, and he started off again with his torch beam inspecting the wet ground before him. Peter followed behind him, double-checking on the prints. Then presently he stopped.

  “More prints than Elsie’s here,” he said quickly. “There are boot marks, similar to those Singh and I discovered. No doubt belong to the same men.”

  “Not a very remarkable discovery on Singh’s part,” Meadows said dryly; “since he knew exactly what was happening. Better see where they go.”

  They were not hard to follow. Elsie’s prints were mixed up with them, which seemed to suggest she had been compelled to move with the men. They stopped finally at the base of a huge tombstone.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Peter said, puzzled. “How could they come to a blind end right here?”

  He peered at the inscription on the stone, nearly eroded with rain and wind. It referred to a name that meant nothing. He began to examine the stone intently. It fronted to a small, long neglected grave. The prints themselves finished at the back of it and all endeavours to pick them up again seemed to be useless.

  Finally Peter pushed the stone, without any hope of anything happening. To his surprise, how­ever, he felt it move very slightly.

  “Something queer!” he exclaimed excitedly, as Meadows watched him. “Give me a hand....”

  The doctor nodded, pocketed his torch and auto­matic, and came forward. With his own weight and Peter’s pushing on the stone it began to tilt, and as it did so the grave in front of it sank downwards, but none of the soil in it moved.

  “It’s a trick grave, or something,” Peter said, pausing for a moment in amazement. “That soil must be treated so as to cake it together solidly and the whole thing is on a fulcrum, shaped like a letter ‘L’.”

  “And that isn’t all,” Meadows said, pulling out his torch and flashing the beam. “Take a look there….”

  Peter fixed his gaze on the space that the sunken—or rather tilted—grave had left. There were worn steps leading downwards into darkness.

  “We’ve found it,” he exclaimed in sudden excite­ment. “It must be a stairway leading to the old catacombs under this burial ground. The footprints vanish on the other side of the stone to make it look more puzzling in case they were found. All the owners of the feet had to do was step up onto this prepared soil, which leaves no prints anyway, and then go down the steps. I suppose the grave can be shut from below.”

  “You mean going down?” Meadows asked, taking out his automatic.

  “Having got this far do you think anything would stop me? Let’s go!”

  “I’ll go first,” Meadows said. “I’ve got the gun.”

  He moved round to the steps and then commenced to descend them cautiously, his beam flashing on ancient, mildewed walls as he went lower. Peter kept close behind him; then when they had reached the tunnel floor they both stood looking at a big iron bar, apparently not of very great age, hanging down before them. It was curved rather like a flattened ‘U’ so that it could be grasped at any point when moved,

  “This must close the grave,” Meadows said. “And I think we’d better—at least until we’ve finished exploring.”

  Peter gave a nod, grasped the bar, and pulled on it. By leverage the bar moved and at length there came a thud from the top of the steps as the specially prepared grave closed back into position.

  “Nicely arranged, whoever’s behind it,” Peter murmured, looking at Meadows in the reflected torch light.

  “Uh-huh….” Meadows flashed the beam overhead so that a monstrous, well-oiled cylindrical bar became visible, deeply sunken into cemented holes in the wall.

  “The further we get,” Peter said, “the more the business smells of organized crime. Singh certainly made a thorough job of things. He must have been around this district a great deal more than anybody imagined.”

  “We’d better see where the tunnel takes us,” Meadows said, and began to move forward, torch in one hand and automatic in the other.

  The tunnel extended a considerable distance before it ended at a massive old door made of teak. The hinges were solid brass.

  “Looks like the entrance to some long forgotten mausoleum,” Peter murmured, studying it. And from the look of things nothing short of dynamite will open it.”

  “Perhaps,” Meadows said, and seized hold of an enormous old ring at the side of the door. He twisted it and from somewhere there was a click. The door began to open slowly inwards, not creakily like a door that has not been budged for ages, but on well-greased hinges.

  When it had swung to its limit a dim yellow glow became obvious. It was like a small oblong and apparently quite a distance away.

  “A door blocking another tunnel,” Meadows said. “And at the far end of it there seems to be life. I’d better go first and keep my gun ready.”

  He went on swiftly up the vista, Peter following behind him. The yellow oblong became discernable finally as an open doorway, the yellow light deep­ening and brightening until it became clear it was actually from electric light globes, probably yellow-shaded.

  Ten yards from the doorway Meadows stopped. Peter stopped too, trying to see what was in the space beyond, but a screen had been contrived to prevent such a possibility. There were sounds, however—m
etallic in the main, and there was also a throbbing of machinery, which, from its rhythm, seemed to suggest electric energy.

  “How the devil could anyone use electricity down here?” Peter muttered at length, turning. “The chapel hasn’t got anything brighter than candles. I know that for a fact.”

  “Only way to find out about that is to go in here and see if we can take them by surprise,” Meadows answered. “You willing to take the risk?”

  Peter nodded, so Meadows crept forward ahead of him. When they came beyond the tall screen that had hidden the view Peter stood looking about him in amazement. Though the huge space was obviously an old-time mausoleum, all such obvious signs of it being so had long since disappeared.

  There were no sarcophagi, no stone tombs, but a wilderness of machinery which, basically, reminded Peter of a distillery. There were big, swollen glass globes, which looked as though they ought to house giant goldfish; there were transparent tubes in which liquid bubbled strangely. Then there were endless numbers of vats, each of them with a tube affixed to the top. Dynamos controlled endless belts, which spun the wheels of puzzling machinery. From somewhere there was the sound of hissing at regular intervals as though a suction pump were at work.

  “It looks to me—” Peter started to say, turn­ing to Meadows; then he paused and looked at the doctor’s automatic. He was pointing it steadily.

  “I congratulate you. Peter, on your nerve,” he said, that strangely hard smile he occasionally revealed now returning. “I wondered how far you would be willing to go, and to my surprise the sky proved to be the limit.”

  “But, Doc, what on earth—?” Peter did not fin­ish the sentence. He watched Meadows close the heavy door and thrust a bolt into place.

  “Keep on walking, Peter,” he instructed. “Into the centre of the room here, if you please.”

  Peter obeyed slowly, looking at the four men who were working amongst the apparatus. They were big, well-muscled, yet to judge from their fore­heads pretty intelligent too. The nearer Peter came to them the more he could detect how cruel were their faces.