Chapter XXVIII: Twelve

But all Craig wanted to do was to get a hold on the count that the count couldn’t break. Then he was running his prisoner off through the dark garden in the direction of the alley where the taxi was waiting. There Craig and the chauffeur searched the count, not as thoroughly as they should have done, and handcuffed him, not as carefully as they should have done.

There was a dial on the front of the cab--eleven thirty. The chauffeur was speeding. Craig, with the black mass of the count at his side, watched the dial, watched the count, watched the flickering lights and shadows. He was like a man who had been under water, was under water still, but who feels himself rushing up to air and safety.

He sought to disregard that recurrent whisper:

“Not yet! Not yet!”

It was a whisper that must have been making itself heard back there in the offices of the Courtney Building whither Craig had already sped with two other prisoners, Trick O’Ray and Ben Jarvis. They were still there, guarded by half a dozen detectives from Colonel Bird’s office.

It was in the front office where the whisper must have been heard. There Colonel Bird himself sat in apparently complacent converse with his friend, Major Gracie, the volunteer warden of San Pedro. Richard Courtney was with them. At Courtney’s orders, the first edition of a great newspaper had gone to press with no hint of the big story that would yet startle the world on the following morning.

“The story’s big enough to make a sensation now,” said Courtney, satisfied.

And he used his unusual powers to make himself agreeable to Major Gracie’s daughter, chiefly on Craig’s account. For Courtney felt grateful to Craig, as a man feels grateful to any one who has come up to personal expectations after years of disillusionment.

“He’s a great man,” said Courtney softly. “He’ll make his mark in the world.”

Joan smiled.

From the window where she stood she also watched a dial--a lighted dial that rode like a yellow moon over the roofs of some adjacent buildings. The dial read eleven thirty. From the street--far, far down--there came the tinkle and roar of traffic. Somewhere in this human tide there was a swimmer battling for his life. His life was her own. So Joan Gracie felt.

She could smile. She could talk a little. She could act as if nothing mattered very much, as if she were possessed of a pleasant assurance.

Then, through her reverie, she heard an announcement:

“He’s drowned!”

There filmed a blackness across her eyes. It seemed an age before she got the rest of the message. No, it wasn’t her own swimmer who was drowned. Far over in another part of the city a night watchman had seen a man throw himself from a bridge. This was the man who was drowned. The news had been telephoned in to Courtney from a precinct station by one of his own reporters.

The drowned man was Taylor Leamy. There followed an odd detail about certain cards that had been found in Leamy’s possession:

Y 630
Report before midnight
3777

Major Gracie could interpret that. He knew what those numbers signified. Then they all knew the purport of the message contained in the rest of the writing. It was Craig who had ordered Leamy to report. Leamy had preferred to report to his Maker instead.

They talked about that announcement of Leamy’s death in San Francisco, of his having been drowned then and there. Was it this that finally brought Leamy to the very fate he had imagined? Or was it just fright? Anyway, Leamy was a debt which no longer existed on that red balance sheet Craig had referred to.

But Joan hoped that Craig would come. Her soul was telling her that he would appear with that last and most dangerous prisoner of all. She had read that look in Craig’s eyes, and the quality of his voice, and the way he had carried himself, better than any one else. He was the Daniel of judgment and prophecy. No defeat, no misfortune, could befall him.

But as the slow hands on the dial crept around toward midnight, that whisper would repeat itself:

“Not yet! Not yet!”

There sounded a chime of bells from somewhere. There followed what seemed to be a long period. Then another bell, very slow and ponderous, began to strike twelve.

It was then that the thing happened--the thing they had all been waiting for. Out in the hall there had come the peculiar hum and click that meant the stopping of an elevator at his floor, a medley of voices, a tramp of feet.

The door of the office was open. The distance from this door to the elevators was not great. But the signal of those preliminary sounds had been sufficient to bring every one up out of the tangle of small interests into this dominating theme that had been in the minds of all of them.

“It’s he.”

“It’s Craig!”

Instantly, every one by a sort of telepathy, or a sort of premature blossoming of hopes and expectations, knew that Craig was bringing a prisoner with him.

Joan Gracie had been the last to run to the door, although her interest had been the greatest. As a matter of fact, she was all but overcome. That period of suspense, following as it did on such other killing excitement, had been all but too much for her.

Then, there she was at the door, looking out into the hallway, all eyes, and yet scarcely able to see at all. What she did see was as if in a series of dark flashes, more like the figments of hallucination rather than anything real.

There was Craig, sure enough. And with him was Count Wolf. She remembered Count Wolf from that never-to-be-forgotten look he had given her back there in the office of San Pedro on the day of the great delivery.

She saw that the count was handcuffed. Then, confusion.

The count had made a violent movement. He had not only wrenched himself free. By some amazing trick of suppleness and strength he had succeeded in getting himself free from those fine, strong shackles on his wrists.

Joan saw the count strike this way and that. She heard an imprecation. Then the count was running back toward the elevators. And Craig was after him.

The elevator was gone. The steel door that guarded the shaft was just sliding shut. The count thrust this back. He plunged into the shaft--eighteen stories deep.

Joan’s heart stood still. Craig also had taken that leap.

Both Craig and the count had landed on the top of the elevator car that had just brought them up. The eighteenth floor was the top floor of the Courtney Building. Now the car had started down again. Did the man who ran the car hear that double thud on the top of the cage? It seemed so. A little further jolt on the lever, and away the car was dropping down, dizzily swift.

As Craig landed on top of the elevator cage, there was a shout above him. That was a shout from his friends. The shout was twisted into a whine, the car was dropping so fast.

There was a great chain attached to the top of the car. It was shiny in spots, although mostly coated with oil or graphite, possibly both.

“Cling to me,” said the chain.

How far had they fallen? What had happened to the count? But there, for the first few seconds, the roar from the deeper consciousness smothered every other voice: “Save yourself!” The floors went past, a smear of shadows, of flicking lights, swept up by a hot wind stifled in dust and oil.

There was a soft thud of a sickening suddenness, and the car had slackened, had stopped.

Then a black shape squirmed up out of the red darkness and there was Count Wolf again. The count also had escaped serious injury. He must have. He struck a blow at Craig. Craig had been wavering, dazed. The blow acted upon him like a deluge of cold water. So the game wasn’t lost, after all?

He clutched the Wolf, and there for a nameless period of time they swayed against the chain. Somewhere a bell shrilled. There was a metallic clang. The platform jerked upward. Both Craig and the Wolf knew what that meant, although neither of them was capable of speech. The car was going up again. How far? To the top? There was a huge wheel up there round which the chain sped as swift and silent as light. Was it to be the destiny of one or both of them to be crushed against the wheel?

There was no speech between Craig and the count--no speech requiring breath--only the silent and far more eloquent speech of their eyes. Their eyes were close. Their eyes were as dark and deep as this endless tunnel stood up between heaven and earth.

Craig clung to the Wolf, the Wolf clung to Craig. Both clung to the chain that had already lacerated them and saved them.

The lights flashed down. In one respect the situation was simplified. At this hour of the night only this one car was running. And Craig remembered now. He had noticed when he and the count had come up in the car but a little while ago that the runner was old and a little deaf.

Ah, when the car came to the floor where his friends were! It was they who had signaled for the car to come back. Craig laughed, or thought he did. His soul laughed as if his soul knew that it was beyond hurt whatever happened to its enemy, his body. Those friends would be seeing him now a crushed object--a thing--at the bottom of the well five hundred feet down.

“Joan! Joan! For your sake!”

A cry from his heart, that. He gripped the count tighter, brought the smudge of the count’s face against the steel chain, for the count kept prodding him with something sharp--up against his ribs--was trying to cut him.

They went to their knees in a heap.

The car had stopped. And, there for a moment, Craig clung to the top of the car with iron hooks that had been his fingers. For the count was trying to thrust him over and down, and Craig didn’t want to go. He didn’t want the fight to end.

He caught a flashing view of the depth, as down an endless, vanishing tunnel, ribbed with light.

To fall through that, drop through it, spinning, clutching at the fleeting light, grasping at shadows that sped! Ah, no! Ah, no! Better to end it here!

In the midst of cries that he did not understand, he had twisted himself up, caught the count about the waist, jerked, tugged, told him--or thought to tell him: “You go first!”

But the Wolf kicked as with a hoof of flint, then leaped.

He had sprung to the grating at the side of the car. This was like a fence of steel pickets running from ceiling to floor, ornamental and close set, shutting off the elevator well from the hallway landing. In this fence, or grille, there were perhaps a dozen doors or gates, one for each elevator.

Craig also leaped, although he was troubled by the knowledge of a certain weakness. This was no time to show weakness, though. Let nerve supply any strength that was lacking. Who was this Count Wolf? A blackleg! A man whose face he had slapped. Craig caught the bars and clung.

Where were those who shouted so? What were they saying? There was no occasion for excitement.

He saw the count lift the lever of a gate, slip through.

As the count turned to thrust the gate shut, Craig had an arm through. He followed his arm, while the count struck and struck again. But Craig refused to go back. Ah, no! He wouldn’t go down that elevator shaft alone. Too far! Too lonely! No one to meet him at the journey’s end.

Ah, there were those who had shouted. A rush of figures. But now the count was fleeing toward the stairway, the narrow, crooked stairway of stone and steel, never used except by postmen and scrubwomen, that squared down at one end of the hall beyond the battery of elevators.

Craig caught the count at the head of this.

“You got away once--twice--thrice! Now, never again!”

The thought was Craig’s. For a moment they were like dancers in the circus--high up on a rope--balancing--death pulling one way, life the other.

They went down with a rush.

When his friends found Craig, he was three flights down, and apparently unhurt. They thought he was unhurt. They thought that Count Wolf was dead. For Craig was standing up, with the count in his arms, and had started back with him for the office on the upper floor. And Craig smiled.

His clothes were in disarray. His face was white--all the whiter from the contrast of his skin with a smear of oil and blood from temple to chin.

“I’ll carry him,” said Craig. “He’s my prisoner. The red ledger is--the red ledger--is----”

Courtney and Major Gracie started to take the prisoner from the captor’s arms. But they dropped the prisoner as Craig reeled around against the railing of the stairway, stood there panting, smiling still. Joan Gracie, appearing like a white shadow to Craig, spoke with a voice that sounded to him like a brook running over pebbles in a woody solitude:

“Quick! He’s hurt!”

Well, that was good enough for Craig. Some final thread of resolution snapped. He went to sleep.

* * * * *

There were other white shadows for Craig. He had come into a world that was mostly of white shadows. It appeared that, apart from other hurts, Count Wolf had managed to cut him rather severely with a knife--a small knife, fortunately; although very sharp. One of Craig’s sides, as a matter of fact, was pretty well ribboned to the bone. But nothing too serious, for a constitution like his--clean blood, a good family history, no doubt.

Only, there was one night when Craig himself believed that he had opened his eyes on the white dawn of the Big Sleep. Everything white. He was in the hospital then, and didn’t know it. No shape, no shadow except the one big white shadow which enveloped him physically and mentally--and spiritually, too, for he felt immeasurably clean.

With perfect peace he thought of all that he had been through. His conscience was clear. That dark and scarlet world through which he had passed had been a hard master to him, but he had worked out his bond, was a freeman. There had been a red ledger. The red ledger was no more.

But, with thought of the red ledger, there crept into this white heaven in which Craig found himself a glint of poignant yearning, a sense of loss, a loneliness and a nostalgia that was beyond endurance.

He knew that he was weak. He knew that it was wrong. But he just couldn’t help it. That was all.

“Let me go back--go back!”

As if in response to his cry, a cool softness descended on his forehead. The white shadow took on color and became infused with lines and substance, evidently in response to the simple magic of turning on the light, and he found himself looking up into the face of Joan Gracie.

“Joan,” he whispered.

“Yes, Daniel.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital--a private hospital--one of the best.”

“And you are really here?”

“I came to see how you were getting on. The nurse stepped out for a moment, left me in charge.”

Craig’s breast rose and fell.

“You may talk a very little,” said Joan. “Tell me what was bothering you just now. Maybe you’ll be relieved.”

Craig told her.

“I thought,” he said, “that I had died and gone to heaven, but when I looked for you and found that you weren’t there----”

He was still under the effects of his recent fright. He reached up and got Joan’s hand. He brought it to his lips and held it there.

THE END

TO THE READER

If you have enjoyed this book, you will be glad to know that there are many others just as well written, just as interesting, to be had in the Chelsea House Popular Copyright Novels.

The stories which we will publish in this line have never appeared in book form before, and they are without question the best value in the way of clothbound books that has been offered to the reading public in many years.

CHELSEA HOUSE

79 SEVENTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY

Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. Four misspelled words were corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. Extraneous quote marks were deleted.

The following items were changed:

Deleted ‘been’ ... ‘His interest in humanity had [been] survived a
half dozen years of exceedingly active politics.’
Changed ‘lay’ to ‘way’ ... ‘His way was to was to bask, take things
easy, ...’
Changed ‘friends’ to ‘friend’ ... ‘they had caught that friend ...’