Byron nodded; then added, “It’s been a nightmare since I sent Daniel out to look for that damned dog of his. The killing of Curtsie seemed just another part of it all. It’s why I left Columbus all those years ago; it’s probably why I went into police work in the first place—penance. Now it’s come full circle somehow and here I am again.”
“What will you do now?” Vanda asked; then, “What will you tell Tom’s wife?”
“What’ll I do?” Byron repeated; then lied, “Go back to my motel room and get drunk. Then sometime after that call Reba and give her the news that Tom’s not coming back—not now; not ever.”
Vanda took his jacket by the lapels and pulled him down to her, planting a moist kiss on his stubbled cheek, while just brushing his lips with hers. For a brief moment he felt her fingers stray across his ribcage then withdraw with a final, urgent tug on his jacket. “Call me if you change your mind,” she said, her eyes never leaving his; “…and don’t go roamin’ around after dark, okay? I’ll be watching you,” she promised.
Byron nodded dumbly back, the note in his pocket as heavy as death.
* * * *
Curtsie’s house appeared just as he had last seen it—bathed in moonlight and sagging beneath the weight of climbing vines and cloaking branches. The plywood door covering still hung tiredly from a single nail as Byron slipped behind it and entered.
A wavering yellow light flickered in the short hallway leading to the kitchen and Byron walked toward its source. He did not try to hide his coming as he knew that he was expected and the creaking floorboards would not allow stealth in any case. Even so, he walked slowly and gently, his hands empty; palms sweating.
The kitchen chair (could it possibly be the same one?) had been placed in the middle of the room once more, it’s spindly metal legs, rusty and loose with age, shifting dangerously with the weight of Thomas Llewellyn. Lit candles gave the long-abandoned kitchen the sepia tone of an old photograph. Tom shifted carefully on his feet to avoid upsetting the precarious balance he was afforded by the rotten plywood seat. His hands had been tied behind his back and Byron could see the crude, dirty bandages they sported; he also had a filthy rag tied round his mouth. Byron also noted the rope that ran from round his neck, through the chandelier hook; terminating in a sturdy knot. The knot lay in the hands of the large, tattooed man who had written Byron’s invitation to the party. Occasionally the man would give a slight tug on his end in order to observe the resultant actions on the other. Tom’s predicament appeared to provide him a quiet amusement.
“Figured it out, yet?” he asked Byron in the sand-papered voice of a heavy smoker.
Byron studied the features camouflaged beneath the swirling blue body art, the faded blue eyes; the stubby nose flattened now by some past violence, the sandy hair going grey with hard years, still shaggy as a rock star’s. “Some, Danny…not all,” he answered. His throat felt swollen and his vision blurred momentarily.
“It’s all about your friend here, brother; your friend…and his friends—men like Mister Curtsie.”
Byron shook his head and took a slight step back, feeling as if he might faint.
“What?” Daniel asked; “You never knew when we were kids that Tom knew Curtsie? I’m shocked, big brother, after all he was your very best friend wasn’t he?”
Byron looked to Tom whose streaming brown eyes were wide with fear and panic. “Tell me,” Byron said, turning away from him to face his brother.
“He was Curtsie’s ‘boy’, Byron; that is, until he reached fourteen. Curtsie liked ’em a little younger. That’s where I came in. I was a little younger.” He gave the rope a slight tug and Tom teetered precariously to one side; then the other, before regaining his balance once more. Byron could hear his mewling through the filthy gag.
Daniel lit a cigarette with his free hand; then continued, “Curtsie threatened to sell him to someone who liked his age group unless he recruited a replacement…that was me. Are you beginning to get the picture there, Chief?”
Byron nodded, saying nothing.
“Ol’ Tom here took advantage of my search for the dog to make sure I stopped in at Virgil Curtsie’s. He told me he was pretty sure that Curtsie had taken our dog in and was keeping him for the owner to claim. I went there, of course. What did I know?—I was only nine years old. He had a cozy room set up for me in his basement, and if the heat hadn’t been brought on him so soon, he might have ‘recruited’ me to take Good Friend Tom’s place and let me go—that’s how it went with you, didn’t it, Good Friend Tom?” He placed a work-booted foot against the chair and slid it carefully for several inches. Tom’s squealing grew more frantic. From somewhere outside Byron heard a car gliding down the deserted street; then another. They stopped several houses away.
“As it turned out,” Daniel continued; crushing out his smoke with his heel, “Curtsie had ‘friends’ and he was able to hand me off before the police came in to search. I think you know the kind of friends I’m talking about, Big Brother; you’ve got a list of them from our friend Tom, I think. He got that list from our Mister Curtsie and has been making money from it ever since…can’t say I blame him too much on that account. He deserved something, too, I reckon, for all his sufferings.” He turned to regard Tom once more. “Even so…I did a little suffering myself.” He shoved the chair a few more inches and drew up on the slack in the rope. The toes of Tom’s shoes danced on the edge as his eyes began to bulge and grow dark with blood.
Daniel turned back to Byron. “For the next seven years I got traded. I didn’t even know who I was anymore…who I belonged to—I was newly adopted, a visiting nephew or grandchild, a runaway daughter’s illegitimate son…. I had so many different names, that if it weren’t for Tom’s list there, I might not remember them all.
“In the end, I was dumped out of the other end of the pipeline—too old…at sixteen. Can you beat that? I never went home; the thought never even crossed my mind; I wasn’t ‘that’ little boy anymore. I went to all the places people like me go and made my way in fits and spurts to prison—it wasn’t hard…in fact, it seemed kind of like a natural progression. It was a good environment for me…I kinda of liked prison, really.”
He studied Byron in silence for a moment; then continued, “I met a fella inside that had done time in New Jersey; courtesy of you, he said. ’Course he didn’t know we were brothers. Boy was I surprised…my big brother, a cop…and in New Jersey for God’s sake! That guy hoped to kill you next time he got up north…but he fell to death in the showers before his time was up.”
Daniel sighed and coughed as the room began to fill with a silence that swirled and curdled in the dark corners of the dead house. From down the street, Byron heard the distinct snick of car doors being carefully shut.
“Friends of yours?” Daniel inquired casually, and when Byron didn’t answer continued his narrative as if nothing were happening. “If you and Tom hadn’t killed Curtsie they might have found me, brother. That was Tom’s plan all along, you know—he never intended for the old man to be able to talk to anyone…about anything, if you know what I mean. He brought you along for extra muscle and, if it all went wrong, fall guy.”
Byron looked up at his little brother and asked, “Why now, Daniel—what’s happened?”
“I was released, Byron…sent back out into the good old world to finish dying. I’ve got the ‘Big A’ as it turns out…clock ticking, that sort of thing. It just occurred to me tie up some loose strings. I did that and just have this one left. I knew you’d come when I took Tom…I hoped you would. You’re a loose end, too; and I wanted you to know.” He grinned up at Tom and poked him hard in the ribs with a stiff finger. His victim supplied a corresponding muffled squeal. “You want to help?” Tom’s pleading eyes met Byron’s but he turned away.
“Who was that I killed,” he asked.
“A good friend of mine from prison…somebody like me really; there’s a lot of us out there. I don’t think he cared too much that you killed him
, big brother, if that’s worrying you.”
Byron shook his head once more and said softly, “I have a lot to answer for, Danny. I didn’t look after my little brother and look what it’s come to—mom and dad killed by the strain of it all, you…ruined, and me—my whole life an attempt to escape the past; each day, each tomorrow dead, stillborn. Just look at us.” The brothers’ eyes met in the flickering, haunted room.
“But we were kids, little brother, victims; even Tom—not that that lets him off the hook. But I can’t just stand here and let this happen, because if I do, I will never, ever, be able to recover from it, and everything will just continue instead of really ending. I’m gonna take him out of here, Daniel, and I’m gonna see to it that everyone knows what he did; and more importantly, why you’ve done the things you’ve done. I owe you that much, Danny; people should know, and you should be there to tell them while you can.
“Tom sent you into this house a long time ago and I wasn’t there for you—please, Danny, now that I’ve found you all these years later, let me take you out of here…if not for your sake, then for my own—I need you, little brother, and there’s not a lot of time left to us. Isn’t that why I’m really here?”
Byron reached across the short distance between them and took hold of Daniels’s end of the rope. Daniel stared back hard at him; his grip firm.
“Please,” Byron pleaded.
“You should have gone with me, By,” Daniel answered, tears leaking from his fierce, bloodshot eyes. “I needed you.” His grip loosened and Byron untied the knot; then gently threaded the rope back through the ceiling hook. Still holding one end, he guided Tom down from the rickety chair and led him toward the door like a dog on a leash. He didn’t bother removing his gag or ligatures. He felt Daniel looming close behind.
As he neared the doorway, Byron called out to the officers he knew would have surrounded the house, “Vanda…Chief, we’re coming out! Hold your fire! I’ve got the one responsible for all this and I’m sending him out first!” With that, he kicked his old friend hard enough in the backside to propel him through the doorway. Thomas took out the plywood sheet as he tumbled helplessly down the steps into the tall, rank grasses of the front yard. A murmur arose at the trussed suspect’s violent expulsion.
“Vanda, I’m coming next, but I’ve got company so don’t anybody get antsy, you hear? You’ll recognize him, but take it easy! He’s ugly enough to scare anybody and that’s for certain, but he’s with me…its Daniel, my brother!” And with that Byron turned and took his brother’s arm, and together they walked out of that house and into the warm and living night.
THE FLAMING PHANTOM, by Jacques Futrelle
CHAPTER I
Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, stood beside the City Editor’s desk, smoking and waiting patiently for that energetic gentleman to dispose of several matters in hand. City Editors always have several matters in hand, for the profession of keeping count of the pulse-beat of the world is a busy one. Finally this City Editor emerged from a mass of other things and picked up a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled some strange hieroglyphics, these representing his interpretation of the art of writing.
“Afraid of ghosts?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Hatch replied, smiling a little. “I never happened to meet one.”
“Well, this looks like a good story,” the City Editor explained. “It’s a haunted house. Nobody can live in it; all sorts of strange happenings, demoniacal laughter, groans and things. House is owned by Ernest Weston, a broker. Better jump down and take a look at it. If it is promising, you might spend a night in it for a Sunday story. Not afraid, are you?”
“I never heard of a ghost hurting anyone,” Hatch replied, still smiling a little. “If this one hurts me it will make the story better.”
Thus attention was attracted to the latest creepy mystery of a small town by the sea which in the past had not been wholly lacking in creepy mysteries.
Within two hours Hatch was there. He readily found the old Weston house, as it was known, a two-story, solidly built frame structure, which had stood for sixty or seventy years high upon a cliff overlooking the sea, in the center of a land plot of ten or twelve acres. From a distance it was imposing, but close inspection showed that, outwardly, at least, it was a ramshackle affair.
Without having questioned anyone in the village, Hatch climbed the steep cliff road to the old house, expecting to find some one who might grant him permission to inspect it. But no one appeared; a settled melancholy and gloom seemed to overspread it; all the shutters were closed forbiddingly.
There was no answer to his vigorous knock on the front door, and he shook the shutters on a window without result. Then he passed around the house to the back. Here he found a door and dutifully hammered on it. Still no answer. He tried it, and passed in. He stood in the kitchen, damp, chilly and darkened by the closed shutters.
One glance about this room and he went on through a back hall to the dining-room, now deserted, but at one time a comfortable and handsomely furnished place. Its hardwood floor was covered with dust; the chill of disuse was all-pervading. There was no furniture, only the litter which accumulates of its own accord.
From this point, just inside the dining-room door, Hatch began a sort of study of the inside architecture of the place. To his left was a door, the butler’s pantry. There was a passage through, down three steps into the kitchen he had just left.
Straight before him, set in the wall, between two windows, was a large mirror, seven, possibly eight, feet tall and proportionately wide. A mirror of the same size was set in the wall at the end of the room to his left. From the dining-room he passed through a wide archway into the next room. This archway made the two rooms almost as one. This second, he presumed, had been a sort of living-room, but here, too, was nothing save accumulated litter, an old-fashioned fireplace and two long mirrors. As he entered, the fireplace was to his immediate left, one of the large mirrors was straight ahead of him and the other was to his right.
Next to the mirror in the end was a passageway of a little more than usual size which had once been closed with a sliding door. Hatch went through this into the reception-hall of the old house. Here, to his right, was the main hall, connected with the reception-hall by an archway, and through this archway he could see a wide, old-fashioned stairway leading up. To his left was a door, of ordinary size, closed. He tried it and it opened. He peered into a big room beyond. This room had been the library. It smelled of books and damp wood. There was nothing here—not even mirrors.
Beyond the main hall lay only two rooms, one a drawing-room of the generous proportions our old folks loved, with its gilt all tarnished and its fancy decorations covered with dust. Behind this, toward the back of the house, was a small parlor. There was nothing here to attract his attention, and he went upstairs. As he went he could see through the archway into the reception-hall as far as the library door, which he had left closed.
Upstairs were four or five roomy suites. Here, too, in small rooms designed for dressing, he saw the owner’s passion for mirrors again. As he passed through room after room he fixed the general arrangement of it all in his mind, and later on paper, to study it, so that, if necessary, he could leave any part of the house in the dark. He didn’t know but what this might be necessary, hence his care—the same care he had evidenced downstairs.
After another casual examination of the lower floor, Hatch went out the back way to the barn. This stood a couple of hundred feet back of the house and was of more recent construction. Above, reached by outside stairs, were apartments intended for the servants. Hatch looked over these rooms, but they, too, had the appearance of not having been occupied for several years. The lower part of the barn, he found, was arranged to house half a dozen horses and three or four traps.
“Nothing here to frighten anybody,” was his mental comment as he left the old place and started back toward the village. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. His purpose was to
learn then all he could of the “ghost,” and return that night for developments.
He sought out the usual village bureau of information, the town constable, a grizzled old chap of sixty years, who realized his importance as the whole police department, and who had the gossip and information, more or less distorted, of several generations at his tongue’s end.
The old man talked for two hours—he was glad to talk—seemed to have been longing for just such a glorious opportunity as the reporter offered. Hatch sifted out what he wanted, those things which might be valuable in his story.
It seemed, according to the constable, that the Weston house had not been occupied for five years, since the death of the father of Ernest Weston, present owner. Two weeks before the reporter’s appearance there Ernest Weston had come down with a contractor and looked over the old place.
“We understand here,” said the constable, judicially, “that Mr. Weston is going to be married soon, and we kind of thought he was having the house made ready for his Summer home again.”
“Whom do you understand he is to marry?” asked Hatch, for this was news.
“Miss Katherine Everard, daughter of Curtis Everard, a banker up in Boston,” was the reply. “I know he used to go around with her before the old man died, and they say since she came out in Newport he has spent a lot of time with her.”
“Oh, I see,” said Hatch. “They were to marry and come here?”
“That’s right,” said the constable. “But I don’t know when, since this ghost story has come up.”
“Oh, yes, the ghost,” remarked Hatch. “Well, hasn’t the work of repairing begun?”
“No, not inside,” was the reply. “There’s been some work done on the grounds—in the daytime—but not much of that, and I kind of think it will be a long time before it’s all done.”
“What is the spook story, anyway?”
“Well,” and the old constable rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It seems sort of funny. A few days after Mr. Weston was down here a gang of laborers, mostly Italians, came down to work and decided to sleep in the house—sort of camp out—until they could repair a leak in the barn and move in there. They got here late in the afternoon and didn’t do much that day but move into the house, all upstairs, and sort of settle down for the night. About one o’clock they heard some sort of noise downstairs, and finally all sorts of a racket and groans and yells, and they just naturally came down to see what it was.
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