Chapter III: The Temptress Speaks

Five minutes passed. Cole could no longer control his restlessness. He got up from the chair and went gropingly across the heavily carpeted floor. His footsteps made scarcely a sound, and he had a queer sensation that the darkness and silence were insinuating themselves into his very pores. It was as if a magic spell had fallen over him. He could no longer trust his reason or his senses.

He stopped short as a faint whisper went through the dead silence. With head thrown back and straining his ears, he listened. Again the whisper came, trailing through the blackness like a disembodied breath. He groped in the direction whence the sound came, and now he could hear it quite distinctly.

“Mr. Cole!”

Tracing the sound vibrations, he crossed the floor and brought up against the wall. Again his name was spoken, and now he had an impression that the speaker was only a few feet away. He thought he recognized the voice.

“Mr. Cole!”

His highly sensitized ears gauged and dissected each small fraction of a syllable. He knew he was not mistaken. The voice belonged to the woman who had introduced herself by the absurdly inappropriate name of Miss Brown.

“Where are you?” he asked. He fumbled with his hands in the dark, but found nothing but emptiness. He turned and ran his fingers up and down the wall until he encountered a metallic object imbedded in the paneling. Again his name was called, and he gave a short laugh as he realized that the sounds were coming to him through the mouthpiece of a speaking tube. The touch of the cold metal against his fingers seemed to shatter an illusion. Simple though the contrivance was, it smacked of up-to-dateness. A sense of reality broke the spell which the weird events of the night had cast over him.

“Hello,” he spoke into the mouthpiece. “You, Miss Brown?”

A brief pause, and then her voice came to him in hurried tones that bespoke intense excitement. “Yes, Mr. Cole. I must warn you. I feel responsible for your predicament. Awful things will happen if you persist in your headstrong course. You must abandon it and accept the proposition that was made to you. Otherwise——”

Her voice quavered and broke. The suspended sentence and the words she had left unspoken impressed Cole grimly. He could almost see her, white and shuddering at the other end of the speaking tube. Though he knew she was a clever actress, there was an earnestness in her tones that gave him pause.

“You mean these men will kill me unless I accept their vile terms?” he asked.

“Oh, they will do worse than that! They are terrible men, Mr. Cole, and they are in a desperate temper. Death, a hundred deaths, would be preferable to the thing they intend doing. Won’t you come to your senses before it’s too late? Oh, please——”

Cole laughed into the mouthpiece. “Compose yourself, Miss Brown. Don’t worry on my account. I’ve been in tight corners before, and I always wriggled out of them somehow. I shall do so this time.”

A sob sounded at the other end, and then all was quiet. Cole drew away from the speaking tube. It might have been only another bit of clever acting, but Miss Brown’s warning had left him in a state of tingling suspense. She had hinted at dire things that were to happen to him, and Cole tried to tell himself that she had only been exercising her imagination. Such things belonged in the realm of romance and melodrama. It was laughable to think that they might happen on the top floor of a skyscraper, located close to the world’s financial nerve center. The incongruity of it struck Cole as quite amusing.

He chuckled, but in the next instant he sharply caught his breath. A sound resembling that of a clicking lock reached his ears. He heard nothing more, but he had a feeling that some one had entered the room, that he was no longer alone. Instinctively he braced himself to resist an attack. His ears were keyed to catch the slightest sound; every muscle in his body had the tension of a cocked trigger.

He stood with his back against the wall, all his senses quiveringly alert. He could neither hear nor see, but he knew some one was steadily approaching from the farther end of the long room. Presently he could hear sounds of breathing, but the prowler’s progress was still muffled by the heavy carpet. Now a little thud signified that the intruder had walked up against the circular table, so he could be no more than a few feet from where Cole stood. The fact that he could not see who it was that was coming toward him made the suspense nerve-racking.

Suddenly he thought of matches. He searched his pockets, but the little case in which he usually carried them was empty. Somewhere in the room there must be an electric-light switch, but it was not likely he could find it in the dark.

He peered sharply into the blackness. Now his ears caught a pawing sound, like that of some one crawling on hands and knees. He bent forward a little, shoulders squared, for he knew the prowler was only a foot or two away. Evidently he hoped Cole was unaware of his entrance and expected to take his victim by surprise.

A fumbling hand swept Cole’s knees, and he kicked out his foot with great force, foiling the attempt to trip him. A startled yell testified to the effectiveness of the kick, but in the next instant Cole knew that his adversary had risen to his feet and was changing his tactics. His fist struck out, but it landed on a body hard and firm as rock, and the only apparent result of the blow was a stinging sensation in his knuckles. He tried to strike again, but now his shoulders were seized in a powerful grip that pinned his arms to his side and rendered him helpless.

His mind worked quickly, while the enormous weight of his adversary bore him down. Evidently he was a huge man, and his arms were hard as flails. Even if Cole’s hands had been free, his fists would have made no stronger impression on the man’s body than on a wall of brick. Though nimbler and more wiry than his opponent, Cole knew he could not match him in brute strength and physical endurance. His only hope lay in releasing his arms and, striking at the fellow’s face, batter him into insensibility.

He writhed and wriggled in the powerful embrace of the gigantic arms, resisting the downward pressure till he felt as if his spine must snap. Inch by inch his opponent was bending him to his knees, and all the while his arms felt as if they were caught between metal springs. In vain he put every ounce of strength into the struggle; the mountainous body of his adversary was constantly forcing him downward. Already his knees were touching the floor, and his neck felt as if it were being gradually wrenched out of shape.

His breath grew weak and fluttering. His heart pounded against his ribs like a trip hammer. In the blackness tiny specks whirled before his eyes. He knew the struggle must end soon, and the realization seemed to kindle a flame within him. An idea shot like a flash through his reeling mind.

Suddenly he grew limp in the sturdy arms of his opponent. With a grunt of satisfaction the latter let go his hold, and Cole lay flat and inert on his back. For a few moments he drank huge gulps of air into his straining lungs. Then, with the elastic swiftness of a spring suddenly released, he leaped to his feet. With one hand he located his adversary, with the other he drove a savage blow straight into the man’s face.

A short cry of pain and rage broke from the other’s lips. His hands fumbled at Cole’s throat for a strangle hold, but the merciless hammering of the latter’s fists drove him steadily backward. Whenever his fingers tightened around Cole’s windpipe a rain of smashing blows to nose and mouth forced him to relax his hold and retreat a little farther toward the wall. Cole, his strength electrified by the joy of battle, did not notice that his knuckles were bruised. Time and again, with a sureness of aim that surprised himself, he drove them into the other’s torn and mangled face. Already a stertorous breathing told that his adversary was becoming groggy. Cole summoned all his strength for a final knock-out blow.

He flung his arm backward, and in the same instant the other uttered a loud yell. Cole cut it short with a crashing thrust of his fist. With a gasp his opponent went to the floor. For a moment he gave himself over to the thrill of victory, but in the next instant he was all alertness. A faint click signified that the door had opened, and now several pairs of feet were stealing swiftly across the floor.

Cole whirled around on his heels, but a stalwart form collided with him, nearly sweeping him off his feet. Another hurled himself upon him from behind, and a third jerked his legs from under him. With a sharp sense of bafflement, Cole fell headlong to the floor. He struck out with hands and feet, fighting with desperate vehemence, determined to inflict all the injury he could on his opponents.

But he was outnumbered three to one, and something of his strength had been spent in the earlier encounter. Defiantly he met the onslaught, but he was overpowered by numbers. Eventually they laid him on his back, and then his adversaries shackled his hands and feet with stout cord. He thought they were handling him with strange gentleness, and he wondered if they were saving him for another ordeal. He remembered, as he was picked up and carried, that Miss Brown had said something about a fate worse than a hundred deaths.

In silence the little procession passed through a door, and presently Cole was placed on a cot. In a few moments the men walked out, and once more he was left alone in impenetrable darkness. Not a word had been spoken by his captors, and he had not obtained a single glimpse of their faces. The whole episode had been enacted in silence and under cover of darkness.

The door opened just as his mind was shaking off the numbness that had seized it when he fell. Some one walked up to the cot where he lay. For a few moments no sound was heard save the slow breathing of the two men. Finally the other spoke, and Cole recognized the voice of the one who had acted as spokesman for the group around the circular table.

“You’re an obstinate man, Mr. Cole. We have made you a very flattering proposition, and you have seen fit to reject it. I have come to offer you one more chance to comply with our wishes.”

“And if I refuse,” said Cole evenly, “you will kill me, I suppose. I am beginning to think you are quite capable of it.”

“Oh, no!” The other man laughed softly. “We know you are not the kind of man that’s afraid of death. Something stronger than fear for your life is needed to bend you to our will. But we will bend you sooner or later. Make no mistake about that.”

The words were spoken in a tone of calm assurance that impressed Cole against his will.

“How, if I may ask?”

“By a form of persuasion that is far more powerful than the fear of death. After all, death is nothing. Only a dip into a void. A little suffering, perhaps, and then nothingness. There are things that are far worse. Mr. Cole, did you ever stop to consider what your life would amount to if you should suddenly lose your mind?”

“What?” Cole gave an involuntary shudder.

“Suppose that keen mind of yours should become a blank. Suppose that your wonderful mental faculties were to desert you, that you were to become a leering, tottering wretch, inspiring loathing and horror in your fellow men. Can you picture such a fate, Mr. Cole? Death would be a thousand times more merciful, yet you would lack the incentive to kill yourself. What could be worse?”

Cole was silent. The darkness gave free rein to his imagination, and the picture he saw sent a cold shiver down his spine.

“All that life means to you would be blotted out,” the other went on with remorseless eloquence. “Instead of matching your wits against a man’s problems, as at present, you would probably be devoting your time to childish amusements. Imagine yourself placing buttons in a row and building houses out of blocks. You would be dragging a useless and broken body through life until——”

“Stop it!” said Cole. “You’re in more danger of losing your mind than I am. Yours is already a bit twisted, unless I’m mistaken.”

“Don’t fool yourself. Unless you give us a reasonable guarantee that you will comply with our wishes, you will be a grimacing lunatic by morning. A very simple operation on the brain will do it. Among those seven men whom you saw around the circular table is a noted surgeon. Everything, including the ether and the instruments, will be ready in a few minutes. There is still time for you to come to your senses.”

In the back of Cole’s mind was a hazy suspicion that he was dreaming, but the other’s calm and softly penetrating tones gave him a feeling of reality.

“You wouldn’t——” he began.

“Ah, wouldn’t we? Just wait and see. Perhaps I can convince you.”

Cole heard his footfalls cross the floor, and then a door opened and closed. For a few minutes he was alone, trying to arrange in an orderly process the odds and ends of the night’s amazing happenings. His mind staggered before the task, and suddenly the door opened again. He had a vague impression that two men were entering, and that they were carrying a burden between them. They moved about quickly in the darkness, and now and then they whispered in tones so low that Cole could not hear them.

A light flashed on, and in the same instant the door closed. After the long period of utter darkness, the sudden glare had a blinding effect. Cole blinked his eyes, but after a little he opened them wide in astonishment, and the sight that met them drew a long, trembling gasp from his lips.

There was only one other man in the room, a shivering, gibbering wreck of a man whose grimacing features and hollow cackle sent a series of chill shivers through Cole’s body. For a long time he stared into the leering, slowly twitching face before he was able to realize that the wretch, seated a few feet from his cot, was Malcolm Reeves.