Weird Tales volume 28 number 02

by Wright, Farnsworth, 1888-€“1940

  "But there's no telling how far the block may extend " Sturt cried.

  Then as Campbell and Ennis stripped off their coats and shoes, he followed their example. The rumble of grinding rock around them was now continuous and nerve-shattering.

  Campbell helped Ennis lower Ruth's unconscious form into the water.

  "Keep your hand over her nose and mouth!" cried the inspector. "Come on, now!"

  Sturt went first, his face pale in the searchlight beam as he dived under the rock mass. The tidal current carried him out of sight in a moment.

  Then, holding the girl between them, and with Ennis' hand covering her mouth and nostrils, the other two dived. Down through the cold waters they shot, and then the swift current was carrying them forward like a mill-race, their bodies bumping and scraping against the rock mass overhead.

  Ennis' lungs began to burn, his brain to reel, as they rushed on in the waters, still holding the girl tightly. They struck solid rock, a wall across their way. The current sucked them downward, to a small opening at the bottom. They wedged in it, struggled fiercely, then tore through it. They rose on the other side

  THE DOOR INTO INFINITY

  .

  of it into pure air. They were in the darkness, floating in the tunnel beyond the block, the current carrying them swiftly onward.

  The walls were shaking and roaring frightfully about them as they were borne round the turns of the tunnel. Then they saw ahead of them a circle of dim light, pricked with white stars.

  The current bore them out into that starlight, into the open sea. Before them in the water floated Sturt, and they swam with him out from the shaking, grinding diffs.

  The girl stirred a little in Ennis' grasp, and he saw in the starlight that her face •was no longer dazed.

  "Paul " she muttered, clinging

  close to Ennis in the water.

  "She's coming back to consciousness—

  the water must have revived her from that drug!" he cried.

  But he was cut short by Campbell's cry. "Look! Look!" cried the inspector, pointing back at the black cliffs.

  In the starlight the whole cliff was collapsing, with a prolonged, terrible roar as of grinding planets, its face breaking and buckling. The waters around them boiled furiously, whirling them this way and that.

  Then the waters quieted. They found they had been flung near a sandy spit beyond the shattered cliffs, and they swam toward it.

  "The whole underground honeycomb of caverns and tunnels gave way and the sea poured in!" Campbell cried. "The Door, and the Brotherhood of the Door, are ended for ever!"

  C5 /ycanthropus

  By C. EDGAR BOLEN

  The jellied night has oozed its miry black

  From out the hills to fill the valley floor. Atop the ragged hills the torn cloud-wrack Is lightning-limned into a hellish door. A gust of wind across the sky is hurled—■ The gods of old are loosed upon the world.

  Age-old, the blood-lust wells within my throat;

  Tensely I wait, and feel my body shrink; My hairless hide becomes a furry coat.

  Blood-hungry, through the opened door I slink; I raise my head and howl in horrid glee-— And from the plain a howl comes back to me.

  ask of Death

  By PAUL ERNST

  r A weird and uncanny tale about a strange criminal who called himself

  Doctor Satan, and the terrible doom with which he

  struck down his enemies

  1. The Dread Paralysis

  ON ONE of the most beautiful bays of the Maine coast rested the town that fourteen months before had existed only on an architect's drawing-board.

  Around the almost landlocked harbor were beautiful homes, bathing-beaches, parks. On the single Main Street were model stores. Small hotels and inns were scattered on the outskirts. Streets were laid, radiating from the big hotel in the center of town like spokes from a hub. There was a waterworks and a landing-field; a power house and a library.

  It looked like a year-round town, but it wasn't. Blue Bay, it was called; and it was only a summer resort. . . .

  Only? It was the last word in summer resorts! The millionaires backing it had spent eighteen million dollars on it. They had placed it on a fine road to New York. They ran planes and busses to it. They were going to clean up five hundred per cent on their investment, In real estate deals and rentals.

  On this, its formal opening night, the place was wide open. In every beautiful summer home all lights were on, whether the home in question was tenanted or not. The stores were open, whether or not customers were available. The inns >54

  and small hotels were gay with decorations.

  But it was at the big hotel at the hub of the town that the gayeties attendant on such a stupendous opening night were at their most complete.

  Every room and suite was occupied. The lobby was crowded. Formally; dressed guests strolled the promenade, and tried fruitlessly to gain admission to the already overcrowded roof garden.

  Here, with tables crowded to capacity and emergency waiters trying to give aU the de luxe service required, the second act of the famous Blue Bay floor show was going on.

  In the small dance floor at the center of the tables was a dancer. She was doing a slave dance, trying to free herself from chains. The spotlight was on; the full moon, pouring its silver down on the open roof, added its blue beams.

  The dancer was excellent. The spectators were enthralled. One elderly man, partially bald, a little too stout, seemed particularly engrossed. He sat alone at a ringside table, and had been shown marked deference all during the evening. For he was Mathew Weems, owner of a large block of stock in the Blue Bay; summer resort development, and a verg wealthy man. ,

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  The wall behind the spot wbeie he had been disappeared."

  table, staring at the dancer with sensual lips parted. And she, quite aware of his attention and his wealth, was outdoing herself.

  A prosaic scene, one would have said. Opening night of a resort de luxe; wealthy widower concentrating on a dancer's whirling bare body; people applauding carelessly. But the scene was to become far indeed from prosaic—and the cause of its change was to be Weems.

  Among the people standing at the ■£*■ roof-garden entrance and wishing they could crowd in, there was a stir. A woman walked among them.

  She was tall, slender but delicately voluptuous, with a small, shapely head on a slender, exquisite throat The pallor of her clear skin and the largeness of her intensely dark eyes made her face look like a flower on an ivory stalk. She was gowned in cream-yellow, with the curves

  ass

  .WEIRD TALES

  df a perfect body revealed as her graceful walk molded her frock against her.

  Many people looked at her, and then, questioningly, at one another. She had been registered at the hotel only since late afternoon, but already she was an object of speculation. The register gave her name as Madame Sin, and the knowing ones had hazarded the opinion that she, and her name, were publicity features to help along with the resort opening news.

  Madame Sin entered the roof garden, with the assurance of one who has a table waiting, and walked along the edge of the small dance floor. She moved silently, obviously not to distract attention from the slave dance. But as she walked, eyes followed her instead of the dancer's beautiful moves.

  She passed Weems' table. With the eagerness of a man who has formed a slight acquaintance and would like to make it grow, Weems rose from his table and bowed. The woman known as Madame Sin smiled a little. She spoke to him, with her exotic dark eyes seeming to mock. Her slender hands moved restlessly with the gold-link purse she carried. Then she went on, and Weems sat down again at his table, with his eyes resuming their contented scrutiny of the dancer's convolutions.

  The dancer swayed toward him, struggling gracefully with her symbolic chains. Weems started to raise a glass of champagne abstractedly toward his lips. He stopped, with his hand half-way
up, eyes riveted on the dancer. The spotlight caught the fluid in his upraised glass and flicked out little lights in answer.

  The dancer whirled on. And Weems stayed as he was, staring at the spot where she had been, glass poised half-way between the table and his face, like a man suddenly frozen—or gripped by an ab-mpt thought.

  The slave-girl whirled on. But now as

  she turned, she looked more often in Weems' direction, and a small frown of bewilderment began to gather on her forehead. For Weems was not moving; strangely, somehow disquietingly, he was staying just the same.

  Several people caught the frequence of her glance, and turned their eyes in the same direction. There were amused smiles at the sight of the stout, wealthy man seated there with his eyes wide and unblinking, and his hand raised half-way between table and lips. But soon those who had followed the dancer's glances saw, too. Weems was holding that queer attitude too long.

  The dancer finished her almost completed number and whirled to the dressing-room door. The lights went on. And now everyone near Weems was looking at him, while those farther away were standing in order to see the man.

  He was still sitting as he had been, as if frozen or paralyzed, with staring eyes glued to the spot where the dancer had been, and with hand half raised holding the glass.

  A friend got up quickly and hastened to the man's table.

  "Weems," he said sharply, resting his hand on the man's shoulder.

  Weems made no sign that he had heard, or had felt the touch. On and on he sat there, staring at nothing, hand half raised to drink.

  "Weems!" Sharp and frightened the friend's voice sounded. And all on the roof garden heard it. For all were now silent, staring with gradually more terrified eyes at Weems.

  The friend passed his hand slowly, haltingly before Weems' staring efes. And those eyes did not blink.

  "Weems—for God's sake—what's the matter with you?"

  The friend was trembling now, with

  MASK OF DEATH

  157,

  growing horror on his face as he sensed something here beyond his power to comprehend. Hardly knowing what he was doing, following only an instinct of fear at the unnatural attitude, he put his hand on Weems' half-raised arm and lowered it to the table. The arm went down like a mechanical thing. The champagne glass touched the table.

  A woman at the next table screamed and got to her feet with a rasp of her chair that sounded like a thin shriek of fear. For Weems' arm, when it was released, went slowly up again to the same position it had assumed when the man suddenly ceased becoming an animate being, and became a thing like a statue clad in dinner clothes with a glass in its hand.

  "Weems!" yelled the friend.

  And then the orchestra began to play, loudly, with metallic cheerfulness, as the head waiter sensed bizarre tragedy and moved to conceal it as such matters are always concealed at such occasions.

  Weems sat on, eyes wide, hand half raised to lips. He continued to hold that posture when four men carried him to the elevators and down to the hotel doctor's suite. He was still holding it when they sat him down in an easy chair, bent forward a bit as though a table were still before him, eyes staring, hand half raised to drink. The champagne glass was empty now, with its contents spotting his clothes and the roof garden carpets, spilled when the four had borne him from the table. But it was still clenched in his rigid hand, and no effort to get it from his oddly set fingers was successful

  The festivities of the much-heralded opening night went on all over the new-born town of Blue Bay. On the roof garden were several hundred people who were still neglecting talk, drinking and .dancing while their startled minds re-

  viewed the strange thing they had seen; but aside from their number, the celebrants were having a careless good time, with no thought of danger in their minds.

  However, there was no sign of gayety in the tower office suite atop the mammoth Blue Bay Hotel and just two floors beneath the garden. The three officers of the Blue Bay Company sat in here, and in their faces was frenzy.

  "What in the world are we going to do?" bleated Chichester, thin, nervous, dry-skinned, secretary and treasurer of the company. "Weems is the biggest stockholder. He is nationally famous. His attack of illness here on the very night of opening will give us publicity so unfavorable that it might put Blue Bay in the red for months. You know how a disaster can sometimes kill a place,"

  "Most unfortunate," sighed heavy-set, paunchy Martin Gest, gnawing his lip. Gest was president of the company.

  "Unfortunate, hell!" snapped Kroner, vice president. Kroner was a self-made man, slightly overcolored, rather loud, with dinner clothes cut a little too mod-ishly. "It's curtains if anything more should happen."

  "Hasn't the doctor found out yet what's the matter with Weems?" quavered Chichester.

  Kroner swore. "You heard the last re-' port, same as the rest of us. Doctor Grays has never seen anything like it. Weems seems to be paralyzed; yet there are none of the symptoms of paralysis save lack of movement. There is no perceptible heartbeat—yet he certainly isn't dead; the complete absence of rigor mortis and the fact that there is a trace of blood circulation prove that. He simply stays in that same position. When you move arm or hand, it moves slowly back to the same position again on being released. He has no reflex response, doesn't apparently hear or , feel or see."

  WEIRD TAtES

  "Like catalepsy," sighed Gest.

  Kroner nodded and moistened his feverish lips.

  "Just like catalepsy. Only it isn't. Grays swears to that. But what it is, he can't say."

  Chichester fumbled in his pocket.

  "You two laughed at me this evening when I got worried about getting that note. You talked me down again a few minutes ago. But I'm telling you once more, I believe there's a connection. I believe whoever wrote the note really has made Weems like he is—not that the note'was penned by a crank and that Weems' illness is coincidence."

  "Nonsense!" said Gest. "The note was either written by a madman, or by some crook who adopted a crazy, melodramatic name."

  "But he predicted what happened to Weems," faltered Chichester. "And he says there will be more—much more— enough to ruin Blue Bay for ever if we don't meet his demands "

  "Nuts!" said Kroner bluntly. "Weems just got sick, that's all. Something so rare that most doctors can't spot it, but normal just the same. We can keep it quiet, and have him treated secretly by Grays. That'll stop publicity."

  He rapped with heavy, red knuckles on the note which Chichester had laid on the conference table. "This is a fraud, a thin-air idea of some small shot to get money out of us."

  He turned to the telephone to call Doctor Grays' suite again for a later report en Weems' condition. The other two bent near to listen.

  A breath of air came in the open window. It stirred the note on the table, partially unfolded it.

  ". . . disaster and horror shall be the chief, though uninvited, guests at your opening unless you comply with my request. Mathew Weems shall be only the

  first if you do not signify by one a, m. whether or not you will meet my demand. . . ."

  The note closed as the breeze died, flipped open again so that the signature showed, flipped shut once more.

  The signature was: Doctor Satan!

  2. The Living Dead

  At two in the morning, two hours and -£»■ a half after the odd seizure of Mathew Weems, and while Gest and Kroner and Chichester were in Doctor Grays' suite anxiously looking at the stricken man, eight people were in the sleek, small roulette room of the Blue Bay Hotel on the fourteenth floor.

  The eight, four men and four women, were absorbed by the wheel. Their bets were scattered over the numbered board, and some of the bets were high.

  The croupier, with all bets placed, spun the little ivory ball into the already spinning wheel, and all watched. At the door, a woman stood. She was tall, slender but voluptuously proportioned, with a face like a pale flower on her long, graceful throat. Madame
Sin.

  She came into the room with a little smile on her red, red lips. In her tapering fingers was held a gold-link purse. She did not open this to buy chips, simply walked to the table. There, with a smile, two men moved over » little to make a place for her.

  "Thank you so much," she acknowledged the move. Her voice was as exotically attractive as the rest of her; low, dear, a little throaty. "I am merely going to watch a little while, however. I do not intend to play."

  The wheel stopped. The ball came to rest in the slot marked nineteen. But the attention of those at the table was divided between it and the woman who was outrageous enough, or had sense of humor

  MASK OF DEATH

  tsa

  enough, to call herself Madame Sin. In the men's eyes was admiration. In the women's eyes was the wariness that always appears when another woman comes along whose attractions are genuinely dangerous to male peace of mind.

  "Make your plays," warned the croupier dispassionately, holding the ball between pallid thumb and forefinger while he prepared to spin the wheel again.

  The four couples placed bets. Madame Sin watched out of dark, exotic eyes. She turned slowly, with her gold-link purse casually held in her left hand; turned so that she made a complete, leisurely circle, as though searching for someone. Then, with her red lips still shaped in a smile, she faced the table again.

  The croupier spun the wheel, snapped the ball into it. The eight players leaned to watch it. . . .

  And in that position they remained. There was no movement of any sort from any one of them. It was as though they had been frozen to blocks of ice by a sudden blast of the cold of outer space; or as though a motion picture had been stopped on its reel so that abruptly it became a still-life, with all the actors in mid-move and with half-formed expressions on their faces.

  A tall blond girl was bent far over the table, with her left hand hovering over her bet, on number twenty-nine. Beside her a man had a cigarette in his lips and a lighter in his left hand which he had been about to flick. Two other men were half facing each other with the lips of one parted for a remark he had begun to make. The rest of the eight were gazing at the wheel with arms hanging beside them.