The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  He jumped to his feet.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “Even so—it means nothing!”

  I was shooting in the dark. No, not quite. I was giving substance to that shadowy thought, that nebulous suspicion, I had feared to bring out before Barker.

  “No?” I said. “Do you believe, then, that Satan, with all his genius for details, his setting up of the cards, his discounting of every chance—do you believe that Satan would leave any door open through which one could come and rule him? Has crown and scepter ever been won?”

  “Yes,” he replied, disconcertingly. “Unfortunately for the doubt with which you nearly netted me, Kirkham, they have. I have been with Satan eight years. Three times I have seen the steps conquered!”

  That was like a slap in the face. For the moment it silenced me. Not so Eve.

  “What became of them?” she asked.

  “Well,” he looked at her, uneasily, “one of them wanted something—something rather peculiar. He died of it in six months.”

  “Yes,” drawled Eve, “so he died of it. What about the others?”

  “One of them died in an aeroplane accident between London and Paris,” he said. “She was on her way to—what she wanted. Not even Satan could have helped that. Everybody was burned.”

  “Rather unlucky, weren’t they?” asked Eve, innocently. “Both of them. But the third?”

  “I don’t know,” said Consardine, half angrily. “I suppose he’s all right. He went to Asia. I’ve never heard of him since then. He wanted a sort of a hidden little pocket kingdom where he could do as he pleased. Satan gave it to him.”

  “Two dead, and one—disappeared,” mused Eve. “But don’t you think that you ought to have heard something about that third one, Dr. Consardine? Couldn’t you find out what became of him? Maybe—maybe, he died, too, like the others.”

  “As Eve says, two of them didn’t last long,” I said. “The third is doubtful. If you were in Satan’s place, Consardine, wouldn’t it occur to you that it was advisable to keep up hope in the aspirants by showing them now and then that it could be done? It would to me. And, still assuming that we thought like Satan, wouldn’t we handpick our successful climbers? I would. But I wouldn’t pick the kind that would be likely to live long, would you? Or if they were well and hearty, a little accident might be arranged. Like that Croydon air bus you’ve mentioned, for instance.”

  “Gorblyme!” gasped Harry. “The swine! That wouldn’t be ’ard to do. An’ I’ll bet ’e done it!”

  “What does Satan do with his hands when he hides them under his robe?” I repeated.

  “And what became of that third winner?” murmured Eve.

  On Consardine’s forehead little beads of sweat stood out. He was trembling.

  “See here, Consardine,” I said, “you told us you didn’t like being a dupe. You didn’t like being fooled. Suppose Satan has been making a colossal mock of you—and the others. What happens?”

  I saw the effort with which he mastered himself. It frightened me a bit. After all, I hadn’t the slightest evidence to back up what I had been hinting. And if Consardine thought that I was deliberately deceiving him—

  But I wasn’t. The doubts I had raised were entirely legitimate. Satan did hide his hands. The bad after-luck of the step conquerors had been something that Consardine had known, not we.

  “Barker,” he turned to Harry, “have you ever looked over the mechanism that Satan tells us controls the choice of the shining footprints? Answer me! Is it what he says it is?”

  Barker wrung his hands, looking first at him and then at Eve and me, piteously. He swallowed once or twice.

  “Answer me,” ordered Consardine.

  “Gord ’elp me, Cap’n,” Harry turned to me desperately, “I never wanted to lie so ’ard in my life. I want to sye I ’aven’t seen it. Or that it don’t work them bloody prints. But Gord ’elp me, Miss Demerest, I ’ave looked it over. An’ it does work ’em, Dr. Consardine. It does, just as ’e syes it does!”

  Well, that was that. It knocked, apparently, my theories clean through the vanishing point. For a moment I had hoped that the little man would be diplomatic. Say, at least, that he didn’t know. But I could not deny him his right to tell the truth—if he felt like it.

  “That’s all right, Harry,” I said cheerfully. “What we’re looking for is the truth. And what you say settles everything, I suppose.”

  “I’d like to ’ave lied, Cap’n,” he half whimpered. “But, ’ell, I couldn’t.”

  Consardine, I suddenly noticed, was behaving rather oddly. He did not seem at all like one whose faith in Satan had been impregnably re-enforced. He seemed, indeed, more disturbed than ever.

  “Barker,” he said, “you’d better go now. I will see Captain Kirkham back to his room.”

  Harry slid over to one of the walls. He bowed to us, miserably. A panel opened, and he was gone. Consardine turned to us.

  “Now, Eve,” he said, “I’ll tell you what brought me here tonight. I told you that you’d been on my mind. So you have. Damnably. I wanted to save you from Satan. I had a way to suggest. I stole the idea from Shakespeare. You remember the stratagem by which the honest friar schemed to get Juliet to her Romeo? And cheat their respective warring families? Their Satan, in a sense.”

  “The draught that would make her appear to be dead,” whispered Eve.

  “Exactly,” nodded Consardine. “It was something like that which I was about to propose to you. To treat you, from my medical knowledge, in such a way that the health and beauty and spirit which makes you so desirable to Satan would fade—temporarily. To put you in such condition as obviously to make impossible, at least in the near future, his personal plans for you. And to keep you in that condition until he had found a substitute for his paternal impulses—or something else happened.

  “There was risk to it, certainly. Great risk to you, Eve. The waiting might be too long—I might not be able to restore to you what I had taken from you. Yet you might have preferred that risk to the certainty of—Satan’s arms. I was going to let you decide.”

  “Was going to?” repeated Eve breathlessly. “Of course I’ll take the risk. Oh, Dr. Consardine—it seems like the way out!”

  “Does it?” asked he grimly. “I think not—now. The original scheme from which I stole my idea came to grief, you remember, because of Romeo. Well, I was reckoning without Romeo. I didn’t know there was one.”

  “I—I don’t quite—get that,” said Eve.

  “Child,” he took her hands, “are you willing to give up your lover? Never see him, never meet him, never communicate with him? Not for weeks or months, but for years? Kill your love for him, or live on, starving upon memories?”

  “No,” answered Eve directly, and shook her curly head.

  “And even if you persuaded her to, Consardine, what do you think I would be doing?” The bare suggestion stirred in me resentment and stubborn anger. “Fold my hands and turn my eyes Heavenward and meekly murmur, ‘Thy will be done!’ Not me!”

  “I’m persuading no one, Kirkham,” he replied quietly. “I’m only pointing out that it’s the only way the thing could be done. If I did to Eve what I have described, what would happen? Treatment here for a time, of course, so Satan could see her failing. Then her removal somewhere, for other doctors to look after her. Her symptoms could not be feigned. They would have to be real. The medical fraternity is not wholly represented by me in Satan’s entourage. He has some highly placed specialists among his dependents. And if he had not, he could call them in. And would, unless at the very outset he was persuaded that her condition would inevitably mean a faulty maternity weakness in offspring. Forgive me, child, for talking so plainly, but it’s no time to be beating around the bush.

  “The specialists I could take care of. Hoodwink. I could have been a very great”—he hesitated, and sighed—“well, no matter. But Satan has set his will on you, Eve. He will not lightly give up his purpose. If it were only as a woman that
he desired you, it would not be so difficult. But you are more than that to him, far more. You are to be the bearer of his child. Not upon my word alone, much as he trusts my judgment, would he relinquish you as unfit. He would have to be convinced beyond all doubt—and therein lies the danger to you and possibly—death.”

  He paused, looked pityingly into her troubled eyes.

  “Too great a risk,” I said. “I’ll try my way first, Consardine.”

  “Enter Romeo,” he smiled faintly. “You’ll have to, Kirkham. You’ve made the other impossible. You think that life would be worthless without Eve, I take it?”

  “I don’t think it, I know it,” I answered.

  “And you feel the same way about—Jim?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “But—to save his life—”

  “It wouldn’t,” said Consardine. “I know men and women. No matter what you made up your mind to do, Eve, he would be working and planning to get you away. Nor are you exactly the kind to sit down, as he expresses it, with meekly folded hands. He would be trapped, sooner or later. It might very likely follow that the trick would be discovered. Then I would have to give up my foolish prejudice for living. I won’t take the chance of that. But assume that you do escape. Together. You would be two hares running around the world with the hounds constantly at your heels. Satan’s hounds, always on the move. Always with his threat hanging over you. Would such a life be worth living? There might be a child. Be sure that Satan’s vengeance would not spare it. I repeat—would such a life be worth living?”

  “No,” I said, and Eve drew a deep breath and shook her head.

  “What can we do!” she whispered.

  Consardine strode once across the room, and back. He stood before me, and I saw that again the veins in his forehead were standing out like cords, and that his gray eyes were hard and cold as steel. He tapped me thrice on the breast with his clenched fist.

  “Find out what Satan does with his hands when he hides them!” he said.

  He turned from us, plainly not trusting himself to speak further. Eve was staring at him, wondering, even as I, at the intensity of the rage that was shaking him.

  “Come, Kirkham,” he had mastered himself. He ran his fingers through Eve’s bob, ruffling it caressingly.

  “Babes in the Wood,” he repeated.

  He walked to the panel, slowly. Considerately.

  “Tonight,” I whispered to Eve.

  Her arms were around my neck, her lips pressed to mine.

  “Jim—dear!” she whispered, and let me go.

  I looked back as I passed through the opening. She was standing as I had left her, hands stretched out to me, eyes wide and wistful. She was like a lonely little child, afraid to go to bed. I felt a deeper twinge at my heart. A strengthening of resolve. The panel closed.

  In silence I followed Consardine as he led me to my room. He entered with me and stood for a moment staring at me somberly. Quite suddenly I felt dog-tired.

  “I hope you sleep better tonight than I shall,” said Consardine, abruptly.

  He was gone. I was too tired to wonder what he had meant by that. I managed to get out of my clothes, and was asleep before I could draw the bed covers over me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The ringing of the telephone aroused me. I reached out for it, only half awake, not in the least realizing where I was. Consardine’s voice brought me out of my lethargy like a bucket of water.

  “Hello, Kirkham,” he said. “Don’t want to spoil your beauty sleep, but how about having breakfast with me, and then taking a canter? We’ve some excellent horses, and the morning’s too nice to be wasted.”

  “Fine,” I answered. “I’ll be down in ten minutes. How will I find you?”

  “Ring for Thomas. I’ll be waiting.” He hung up.

  The sun was streaming through the windows. I looked at my watch. It was close to eleven. I had slept soundly about seven hours. I rang for Thomas.

  Sleep, a plunge and the brilliant sunshine were charms that sent the shadow of Satan far below the rim of the world. Whistling, I hoped half-guiltily that Eve felt as fit. The valet brought me out what Barker would have called a “real tysty ridin’ rig.” He convoyed me to a sunny, old-world lovely room looking out on a broad, green terrace. There were a dozen or so nice-looking people breakfasting at small tables. Some of them I had met the night before.

  Over in a corner I saw Consardine. I joined him. We had an extremely pleasant meal, at least I did. Consardine did not seem to have a care on earth. His talk had a subtly sardonic flavor that I found most stimulating. So far as the conversation was concerned, our encounter in Eve’s room might never have been. He made no slightest reference to it. Nor, following his lead, did I.

  We went from there to the stables. He took a powerful black gelding that whinnied to him as he entered. I mounted a trim roan. We rode at a brisk canter along bridle paths that wound through thick woods to scrub pine and oak. Now and then we met a guard who stood at attention, and saluted Consardine as we passed by. It was a silent ride.

  We came abruptly out of the woods. Consardine reined in. We were upon the cleared top of a low hillock. Below us and a hundred yards away sparkled the waters of the Sound.

  Perhaps a quarter mile out lay a perfect beauty of a yacht. She was about two hundred feet long and not more than thirty in beam. Seagoing and serviceable, and built for speed as well. Her paint and brass shone, dazzling white and golden.

  “The Cherub,” said Consardine, dryly. “She’s Satan’s. He named her that because she looks so spotless and innocent. There is a more descriptive word for her, however, but not a polite one. She can do her thirty knots, by the way.”

  My gaze dropped from the yacht to a strong landing that thrust out from the shore. A little fleet of launches and speed boats were clustered near it. I caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned rambling house nestled among the trees near the water’s edge.

  My eyes followed the curve of the shore. A few hundred feet from the pier was a pile of great rocks, huge boulders dropped by the glacier that once covered the Island. I started, and looked more closely.

  Upon one of them stood Satan, black-cloaked, arms folded, staring out at the gleaming yacht. I touched Consardine’s arm.

  “Look!” I whispered, “Sat—” I stopped. The rock was bare. I had turned my eyes from it for the barest fraction of a second. Yet in that time Satan had disappeared.

  “What did you see?” asked Consardine.

  “Satan,” I said. “He was standing on that pile of rocks. Where could he have gone!”

  “He has a hole there,” he answered indifferently. “A tunnel that runs from the big house to the shore.”

  He swung around to the woods. I followed. We rode along for a quarter of an hour more. We came out into a small meadow through which ran a brook. He dismounted, and dropped the reins over the black’s neck.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said to me.

  I gave the roan its freedom, and sat down beside Consardine.

  “Kirkham, you’ve set my world rocking under my feet,” he said curtly. “You’ve put the black doubt in me. Of the few things that I would have staked my life on, the first was that Satan’s gamble of the seven footprints was a straight one. And now—I would not.”

  “You don’t accept Barker’s testimony, then?” I asked.

  “Talk straight, Kirkham,” he warned, coldly. “Your implication was that Satan manipulated the telltale from the Black Throne. With his hidden hands. If so, he has the cunning to do it in a way that Barker, going over the other mechanism, would never suspect. You know that. Talk straight, I tell you.”

  “The thought that Barker might be wrong occurred to me, Consardine,” I said. “I preferred to let it occur to you without my suggesting it. I had said enough.”

  “Too much—or not enough,” he said. “You have put the doubt in me. Well, you’ve got to rid me of it.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?” I asked him.
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br />   “I mean,” he said, “that you must find out the truth. Give me back my faith in Satan, or change my doubt into certainty.”

  “And if I do the latter—” I began eagerly.

  “You will have struck a greater blow at him than any with knife or bullet. You will be no longer alone in your fight. That I promise you.”

  His voice was thick, and the handle of his riding crop snapped in the sudden clenching of his strong hand.

  “Consardine,” I said bluntly, “why should the possibility of Satan’s play being crooked move you so? You are closest to him here, I gather. His service, so you say, brings you all that you desire. And you tell me he is the shield between you and the law. What difference, then, does it make to you whether his gamble of the seven footprints is on the level or isn’t?”

  He caught my shoulder, and I winced at the crushing grip.

  “Because,” he answered, “I am under Satan’s sentence of death!”

  “You!” I exclaimed, incredulously.

  “For eight years,” he said, “that threat has been over me. For eight years he has tormented me, as the mood swayed him. Now with hint of the imminent carrying out of that sentence. Now with half-promise of its wiping out, and another trial at the steps. Kirkham, I am no coward—yet death fills me with horror. If I knew it to be inevitable, I would face it calmly. But I believe it to be eternal blackness, oblivion, extinction. There is something in me that recoils from that, something that shrinks from it with a deadly terror, with loathing. Kirkham, I love life.

  “Yet if the gamble was straight, he was within his rights. But if it was not straight—then all those eight years he has played with me, made a mock of me, laughed at me. And still laughing, would have watched me go to whatever death he had decreed, unresisting, since I would have believed that by my oath I was so bound.

  “And that, Kirkham, is not to be endured. Not by me!

  “Nor is that all. I have watched many men and women take the steps, risking all on Satan’s word. And I have seen some of them go to death, as calmly as I would have done, their honor, like mine, rooted in dishonor. And others go broken and wailing. Like Cartright. While Satan laughed. And there are more who live like me on Satan’s sufferance. And all this on a cast of loaded dice? If so, then I tell you, Kirkham, it is not a thing to be borne! Nor shall it be borne!”