The House Of Cain

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Followed then another period of comparative silence. Monty wondered how Mallowing would act if the fat man released him. He wondered again where Cotton was, and if the new guest was the only coward of them all. The fact that homicidal mania is not allied to cowardice occupied his mind for a while, and the act of slipping out the cartridge clip, refilling it with shells from his pocket, and replacing it in the butt of his pistol, was absolutely automatic.

  He thought he heard Madeline Fox’s shrill scream from somewhere outside the house, and remembrance of her brought back the danger from Lane. Exhaustion was creeping on him. His mind now was not so clear. He did not see his shadow cast by the electric light across the threshold of Lane’s door. But he did see a long-barrelled Colt revolver slide round the door-post, followed by a fat, red, hairy hand which held it. With a wry smile he sent a bullet through the wrist.

  A yell of anguish followed. The sudden jerk backward of the smashed hand sent the revolver thudding on the carpet inside the room; which was unfortunate, for had it dropped at the doorway Monty might well have secured it. Lane screamed oaths and threats at him from the dark interior of his room, and, when he paused for breath or fresh inspiration, the big man called to him:

  “Better come out, Lane, and get corpsed. It’s your turn. Come on, now––I’m getting dry. I promise you it won’t hurt, and I pass my word of honour to close your little eyes and cross your lily hands over your gentle breast. Come on, please, Lane. You’ll look a lovely corpse––just lovely!”

  The fat man declined to enter into discussion regarding his probable appearance as a corpse, nor did he jump at the opportunity to become one. Monty heard him bathing his wrist in the water-ewer, and moaning with the pain. Since the man wouldn’t come out, he decided to go into the darkened room after him, trusting to Lane’s inability to shoot straight with his left hand. But first he must go to the hall end of the passage and switch off the light. To attempt to enter a darkened room from an illuminated corridor would be suicidal.

  On moving his left foot the sock felt sticky against the sole, and on looking downward he found himself to be standing in a small pool of blood. Blood oozed through the left trouser leg. He had forgotten the wound caused by Lane’s bullet; and, realizing the significance of his forgetfulness, decided that the matter of first importance was to stanch that wasting stream of blood. Lane must wait.

  Placing the pistol between his teeth, he was in the act of removing his jacket, when suddenly the main glass door of the hall was thrown open, and the corridor resounded with the deep-throated, savage bayings of the monstrous dogs. He heard Madeline Fox’s voice, shrilled to a scream:

  “Sick ’em, Boy! Here, Prince, sick ’em! Fly! Fly! Here, Fly! Sick ’em, old girl! Fool ’em! Sick ’em!”

  Dimly in the hall’s half-light he saw the girl in the centre of a whirl of huge, grey, long-haired beasts, almost as tall as herself. When each of them came directly into the light from the passage he saw, too, the flash of ivories in crimson, slavering jowls.

  Now with his coat off, he stepped rapidly past Lane’s door, so that the fat man could not shoot him from behind whilst he did battle with the brutes urged forward by an insane woman. He saw one dog enter the passage, its half-pricked ears raised high above the great head, its black eyes regarding him balefully. The others came up behind it. Behind them, wildly gesticulating, stood Madeline Fox.

  Lane’s door suddenly crashed shut, a sound eloquent of the fat man’s opinion of the animals. The sound appeared to give them their direction, for with a fresh outburst of baying they flew along the passage towards Monty.

  The fog that dimmed his brain cleared. He thrust aside the temptation to slip into one of the rooms and follow Lane’s example in shutting the door against them. To do this, he realized, would put him in the position of the besieged, giving the enemy time to link forces and recover from their surprise. His decision was based on the principle that his best strategy was to deal with each enemy in the order of appearance.

  His automatic cracked twice so quickly that the reports blended. The leading brute dropped with a guttural howl. Again the pistol spoke, and one of the remaining beasts charging abreast dropped dead across the body of Johnston. But the third, bounding upon him like a huge projectile, hurled the big man back to the floor.

  Gnashing jaws barely missed his throat. He saw the flash of the long white teeth before they sank in his right shoulder. He heard the crunch of bone and wondered curiously if it was his shoulder-bone that made the noise.

  Man and beast rolled over and over along the passage. Yelping, worrying snarls came from the dog: grim silence from the man, fighting for his life with but a quarter of his strength remaining to him.

  With his right arm thrust up round his neck Monty protected his throat; but the beast, having obtained a hold, tenaciously clung to it. So rapid was it in its body movements, and so close to him, that Monty found it extraordinarily difficult to use his weapon without endangering himself. He fired once, but the bullet merely cut off a strip of flesh and hair from the animal’s back, which it did not seem to notice.

  The hound’s forepaws tore Monty’s shirt to ribbons with their needle-sharp claws. Again the automatic cracked, and the bullet, striking the ceiling, brought down on them chunks of plaster and filled the air with white, choking dust. Above the horrible snarling he heard the girl’s shrill scream, urging on the dog. Then he heard a man’s voice, steely and dispassionate, commanding her to back along the passage.

  But Monty saw neither woman nor man. His chance, his prayed-for chance, had come. With canine sagacity, the brute began to mill with his hind legs whilst still retaining the grip with his jaws. It was the action of an experienced fighting dog, an action which eventually would have enabled it to wrench out flesh and bone in a corkscrew pull. But the milling brought the brute’s body round and free from Monty’s right arm, and when the automatic once more exploded the hound suddenly let go its rat-trap grip to snap at its side. Again the big man fired. There came a plaintive yelp which was the end.

  A tattered, half-naked man scrambled to his knees, and lurched forward on his blood-smeared face. At a second attempt, he clung to a near door-handle and by it clawed his way to his feet, whereon he swayed to and fro drunkenly.

  His shirt and trousers hung from him in strips, his bare right shoulder was a mass of bleeding flesh. Blood-matted hair fell wildly over his broad forehead to meet grey-blue eyes still emitting a steady light. His Gorgon face was the more terrible by reason of the broad grin of genuine happiness baring his white teeth. Human he was, made of flesh to be torn and bone to be broken; but unconquerable, even as Austiline had deemed him, in courage, in purpose, in determination.

  He was above that state where the brain registers pain of the body. The only thing he realized, realized with boundless joy, was that he was still alive, still able to carry on the battle, his own “private battle,” to use his own words.

  Beyond the three dead beasts and the bodies of Johnston and “The Cat” he saw Madeline Fox standing with her back to the wall, her eyes regarding a pair of shining handcuffs encircling her wrists. On her face was a look of incredulous wonder. He saw, too, the new guest, Cotton, surveying her grimly––Cotton, with water streaming from his white duck suit, and from his neat brown beard and his hair.

  From Monty came a roar of laughter. It was all so funny, so stupid. It was purest farce––one murderer baling up a murderess with handcuffs. In a cracked voice he said:

  “Thanks, Cotton, old boy! But you just drop your little pop-gun toot sweet, or I’ll drop you.”

  “Steady, Monty, I’m an ally,” replied Cotton, his voice soft in drawling intonations––intonations which Monty had heard in the voice of one man only. The giant’s underjaw sagged for a moment beneath the tremendous surprise. The automatic fell to his side. Very slowly his feet slid across the passage, and his back slid down the wall, till finally he reached a sitting posture on the floor.

  “Jumping na
nnygoats!” he exclaimed.

  Cotton opened the door of Madeline’s room, and turned on the light within. With his hand on her arm he led her to her bed, where, releasing one cuff, he snapped it on the bed rail, making her an absolute prisoner. In the passage once more he paused in amazed admiration. He saw Monty calmly reloading his automatic pistol with shells taken from his jacket. He saw, too, the big man sitting in a pool of blood.

  “How is it now, Monty?” he asked gently.

  “Goodo!” replied Monty, looking up with twinkling eyes. Holding out his free hand he added: “Put it there, my dear old Sexton Blake. Somehow, Oakes, you have the bad habit of popping up like a jack-in-the-box. But I’m pleased to see you, nevertheless. What do you think of my private battle?”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  THE LIGHT

  WILLIAM J. ANCHOR lay on his magnificent Queen Anne bedstead. He had awakened suddenly, but was unaware of any disturbing cause.

  Lying in the darkness of his sumptuously furnished underground bedroom, sleep banished for the time, his thoughts turned idly to the Sherwoods, whom circumstances had made necessary to remove from active life. For them he had no dislike. In fact he admitted often that he admired Monty; and, although regarding Martin with jealousy as the accepted lover of Austiline Thorpe, the blind man on some few occasions aroused in the millionaire a sense of pity. Anchor possessed imagination; also he had a horror of blindness.

  A revolver shot, muffled by several walls, made him start and listen. Half inclined to doubt his hearing, he raised himself on the bed, his eyes staring into the utter blackness, his brows knit into a straight line, his breathing suspended. Then, with a quick gesture, he caught at the dangling cord operating the switch and turned on the light. The tiny clock on the bed-table told him it was twenty minutes past three.

  He recognized the sound of the shot for what it was. He had heard revolver firing too often to mistake the sound for a clap of thunder, the explosion of gelignite, or even the report of a shotgun.

  Quite calmly he donned a dressing-gown and slipped into one of the pockets an automatic pistol of smaller calibre than that possessed by Monty. His bedroom opened into a larger room wherein was installed his wireless and his experimental paraphernalia, including a large, strange-looking model, the purpose and nature of which was a secret that died with him.

  He crossed this larger room to the passage door, where from a hook he took down an electric torch similar to that which the big man had taken from Moore’s door. He paused, listening, with the passage door open.

  His torch showed him the cork-paved corridor. He walked to the steps, climbed them to the panel-door, stooped to the catch.

  It was immovable.

  That fixed panel, making him a prisoner unless he chose to batter the wood to pieces, caused him his first qualm. He heard the chef’s bedroom door flung open, and recognized Johnston’s heavy, lumbering footsteps entering the hall. Then he heard more distinctly a pistol crack, followed by a slight pause, when it cracked again twice in rapid succession.

  Anchor was completely mystified by the shooting and by the fastened panel-door. He was inclined to credit the police with a much earlier visit than he had believed possible, especially in view of the rain. Was it they who were in conflict with “The Cat” and the others on the ground floor?

  Deciding to seek the help and advice of his doctor friend, the millionaire retraced his steps to Moore’s room. Entering the bedroom, he switched on the light and saw at once that the doctor was not on his bed. Hastening to the laboratory door, he flung it open, to be faced by the blinding glare of the arc-lamp over the operating-tables.

  First he noticed the central table, with its unusual disorder of papers and upturned microscope. His gaze passed thence around the long room, resting finally on the figure of a woman lying on one of the operating-tables.

  He almost ran across the room. Snatching the handkerchief off Mabel Hogan’s face, he stepped back with an expression of mingled surprise and fear. His features went suddenly ghastly white. The handkerchief dropped from his nerveless fingers. He recognized that she was dead.

  Feverishly he sprang to the second operating-table; and, on seeing his friend bound and gagged, realization came to him, together with the stunning shock that Dr. Moore also was dead.

  The mask of benevolent cynicism had fallen momentarily from his face. His slaty agate eyes were wide and his lips parted, frozen by fear. He was a devil horribly afraid of being cast into his own furnace. But the cultivated self-control of many years came to his aid, and this astonishing man pulled himself together and smiled with his usual blandness, although his eyes shone with unveiled ferocity.

  Now he knew who was firing, or causing to be fired, the revolver shots on the floor above. He was less in fear of Monty than of the police. When he had dealt with Monty Sherwood and his brother, he would be finished with them; but, as for policemen, no matter how many he “put away” there were innumerable others to follow.

  Having decided to reinforce his friends above, Anchor, his face fixed in a slight grin, left Moore’s suite and re-entered his room, where from among his tools he selected a heavy hammer. Again in the corridor, he heard another revolver shot, and at that precise moment Mrs. Jonas opened the door and came out, dressed in a black silk wrapper.

  “Whatever is going on?” she demanded, her face ashen grey, her handsome large eyes wide with apprehension. Anchor’s grin became a smile; he set down the hammer at his feet, and produced a cigar-case.

  “A little midnight shooting practice, my dear Mrs. Jonas,” he said softly. The case flashed open and snapped shut. A match was struck, and calmly he lit one of his favourite black cheroots. He proceeded: “Apparently the Sherwoods have escaped and are creating a little diversion for Lane and ‘The Cat.’ I suspect strongly that others also are being amused, and I hope presently to join in the fun myself. Have no fear, dear lady. The Sherwoods soon will be unpleasantly cold.”

  “Is it necessary to bring murder into this house of sanctuary?” she asked wildly. “Cannot we leave killing behind us for ever? I begged you not to harm them––to let them go as well as Miss Thorpe; but no words of mine could recall you to sanity or turn the doctor from his devilish inventions. Where is he?”

  “Dead,” he replied laconically.

  For a moment she stared at him; then said very calmly:

  “I am glad.”

  “I am not, Mrs. Jonas,” he told her; “I am greatly upset,” he added, though no one would have thought so from his tone or look.

  Came to them then, as if a thick curtain had been suddenly withdrawn, the hideous baying of hounds and the mitigated echoes of Madeline Fox’s screams. Anchor regarded Mrs. Jonas with calm significance. A revolver shot followed a few seconds later, then two rapidly together.

  “The dogs are taking a hand, and Madeline with them,” Anchor murmured.

  Bangings on the floor overhead, and the snarling of a dog, told of Monty’s terrific struggle. Then came several more shots, followed by blank silence. At that sudden cessation of all sound uneasiness flashed into Anchor’s eyes. He realized for the first time that the Sherwoods might now become, if they were not so already, masters of that upper floor. Mrs. Jonas saw and understood his expression.

  “You may well be afraid, Mr. Anchor,” she whispered. “It is the end of us and of this house. It is the inevitable triumph of good over evil. Had you and Moore repented of your past misdeeds and tried to live out your redemption in meekness and humility, God, I am sure, would have permitted us to continue in peace and safety. The fire awaits you, Mr. Anchor, as it awaits me.”

  He would have made some sarcastic if politely spoken rejoinder, had not she abruptly withdrawn into her room and locked the door. To him the silence was ominous, especially that of the dogs. A passage floor-board above him creaked, betraying the movement of some one walking quietly.

  The sound of Mrs. Jonas dragging something heavy across the floor of her room reached him, but when it ceas
ed he forgot her; for, darting off at a tangent, his thoughts fastened on Martin Sherwood. He, too, recognized the impossibility of the blind man taking any active part in the struggle. And then, suddenly, his thin lips drew back in a bestial snarl. A jealous suspicion had entered his mind; and, instead of making for the stairs, he picked up his hammer and walked rapidly to Austiline’s door.

  Finding the door locked, he unhesitatingly placed an ear against the keyhole. Distinguishing no sound, and no reply being made to his knocking, he knocked again loudly and repeatedly.

  Half a minute passed. Came to him then the swish of a woman’s clothes, followed by Austiline’s voice asking who was there.

  “Anchor,” was the one word he spoke.

  “But what do you want? Surely you know the time.”

  “It is about a quarter to four or a little later. Let me in, please. I have news for you.”

  With wide eyes and heaving bosom, Austiline clung to the door the fear engendered in her by the dull reports of firearms now trebled by the faint note of menace in the voice beyond the door.

  “If you will kindly open the door, you will save me the trouble of breaking it down with the hammer I have with me,” the millionaire said silkily.

  “Please wait a moment till I throw on a gown,” she gasped; and, without waiting further, flew back to Martin Sherwood, who sat on the sofa with a lighted cigarette between his fingers.

  “It’s Anchor, Martin,” she whispered agitatedly. “He wants to come in to tell me some news. He mustn’t find you here, sweetheart. Come, let me hide you.”

  She took the half-consumed cigarette from him, putting it between her own lips; and, when he rose, almost a madman from his inability to see, she gently but firmly guided him to her bedroom and pushed him behind a curtain concealing a row of clothes pegs.