Murgunstrumm and Others Read online

  "You!" Kermeff rasped violently. "Where is Doctor Von Heller?"

  "Sit down, gentlemen," Paul said evenly.

  "Where is Von Heller?"

  "Von Heller is not here."

  "What? What are you saying? Are you ..

  "I wrote the letters myself, gentlemen," Paul shrugged, "to bring you here."

  Kermeff realized the truth. He had been trapped. He had gulped the bait completely. His one desire now was to spit it out again, to leave before the madman before him became violent. Kermeff swung about with a lurid growl.

  But the exit was barred, and the physician stiffened again. The door was closed; Jeremy leaned against it. Kermeff stood on braced legs, swaying. He gathered himself. With a great oath he flung himself forward.

  He stopped almost in the same movement. Jeremy's hand, sliding out of a bulging pocket, gripped a leveled revolver. Kermeff glared at it with animal hate. Turning again, very slowly and deliberately, he faced Paul.

  "Sit down," Paul ordered.

  "You are mad!"

  "Sit down, I said."

  Kermeff sank into a chair. He was trembling not with fear, but with rage. He sat like a coiled spring, ready to leap erect. He glared sullenly at his colleague, as if expecting Allenby to work the impossible.

  Instead, Allenby glanced furtively from the rigid revolver to Paul's set face, and sat down also. Not until then did Paul move away from the wall. He, too, drew a revolver from his pocket.

  "It is your car outside, I suppose?" he said quietly, addressing Kermeff. "Yes?"

  "Yes."

  "Come with me, then. At once, please."

  Kermeff stood up, watching every move with smoldering eyes that threatened to blaze any moment into flame. He said harshly, gutturally:

  "Why did you summon us here?"

  "You will see, in time."

  "It is an outrage! I demand—"

  "Demanding will do you no good," Paul said crisply. "You are here and you will stay here. There will be no argument."

  "I will have you arrested for forgery!"

  "You are going downstairs with me and instruct your driver to return to town. You will tell him, very simply, that you have no further need for him. And you will make no false move, Kermeff. I didn't bring you here for pleasure or for any petty hate. If you attempt in any way to trick me, I will kill you."

  Kermeff faltered. For an instant it seemed that he would give way to his violent anger and rush forward blindly, despite the twin revolvers that covered him. Then, trembling from head to foot, he turned to the door.

  Jeremy held the door open as the physician strode into the hail. Paul followed silently, close enough behind to keep his protruding coat pocket, with his revolver buried in it, on a direct unwavering line with the man's back.

  And Kermeff tried no tricks. Obviously he realized the grim severity of his position. He walked deliberately down the corridor, descended the stairs, and strode across the lobby. Gates, glancing at him from behind the desk, mumbled an inaudible greeting. Kermeff, without replying, went directly to the door and stepped out on the veranda, with Paul only inches behind him.

  The chauffeur stood there, leaning indifferently against the rail. Kermeff looked squarely at him and said distinctly:

  "We are staying here, Peter. You may go back to the city. We shall not need you."

  "You won't want me, sir?"

  "When we do, I will send for you."

  The chauffeur touched his hand to his cap and turned to the steps. Kermeff, swinging on his heel, re-entered the hotel. He climbed the stairs with methodical precision. He said nothing. With Paul still behind him, very close and silent, he returned to the room he had just left.

  And there, with the door closed again, Paul said evenly:

  "That is all, gentlemen. I must ask you to remain here quietly until it is dark. Then. .. ." He shrugged his shoulders.

  Allenby, peering at him sharply, said in a thick voice:

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps we shall go mad."

  Paul sat down, toying with the revolver. Kermeff and Allenby glared at him, then glanced significantly at each other. Jeremy, stolid and silent, remained standing at the door.

  That occurred at seven-thirty o'clock. At nine, Paul glanced at his watch, stirred impatiently in his chair, and stood up. Crossing quickly to the window, he drew the shade and peered out. It was very dark outside. The village was a thing of brooding silence and blackness. The sky held no twinkling points of light, no visible moon. There was no need to wait longer.

  He stepped to the bed and drew back the covers, exposing the white sheets beneath. Methodically he pulled the top sheet free and tore it into inch-wide strips and ripped the strips into sections. Jeremy was watching queerly. Kermeff and Allenby stared and said nothing. Perhaps they thought he was mad.

  And perhaps he was! Certainly it was a mad thing he was doing—a crazy, fantastic idea which had crept into his mind while he sat there in the chair, thinking of what the night might hold. And now, as he pulled his suit-case from the corner and rummaged through it in search of the needle and thread which Armand LeGeum had stowed there, a thin smile played on his lips. Without a doubt they would think him mad in another moment.

  He found what he sought. Crossing quietly to the door, he put his revolver into Jeremy's hand and said simply: "Be careful." To do what he intended, he would have to bend over within reach of Kermeff's thick arms and then within reach of Allenby's. It would not do to leave the gun unguarded in his pocket, for a groping hand to seize.

  He turned and gathered up the strips of white cloth. To Kermeff he said evenly:

  "Put your hands behind you."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Nothing to hurt you. Perhaps something that may save you from harm later. Put them behind you."

  With a shrug, as if to imply that insane men must be humored, the big man complied.

  Paul bent over him. Across the front of the man's vest he stretched a twelve-inch strip of cloth and sewed it quickly into place. A second strip, somewhat shorter, he sewed across the first, forming a gleaming cross. The stitching was crude and clumsy, but it would hold. Unless clutching fingers or teeth tore the sheeting loose, the thing would remain in place.

  Kermeff, meanwhile, was watching with hostile eyes. When the operation was finished he relaxed and held his coat open, studying the cross as if he could not quite believe. Then he scowled unpleasantly and peered again into Paul's face.

  "In God's name, what is this for?"

  "For your protection," Paul said grimly. "And you are right. Protection in God's name."

  Kermeff laughed—a strained unnatural laugh that was more animal than human. But Paul was already at work upon Allenby, and presently he was attaching a third cross to his own body, in such a position that a single outward fling of his coat would reveal it to anyone who stood before him. Finally, pacing to the door, he took the two revolvers from Jeremy's hand and said quietly:

  "Do the same to yourself, Jeremy. I'll stand guard. As soon as you've finished, we'll be leaving."

  7. The Innkeeper

  The Gray Toad Inn was half a mile ahead. Paul, huddled over the wheel of the roadster, glanced quickly into the face of the man beside him and wondered if Anton Kermeff were afraid. But there was no trace of fear in the big man's features. They were fixed and tense; the thick brows were knitted together in a set frown, the eyes focused straight ahead, unblinking. If anything, Kermeff was violently angry.

  But he was also helpless. He was unarmed, and the door-pocket under his right hand contained nothing which might serve as a weapon. Paul had seen to that before leaving the hotel. And Paul's own hand, resting carelessly on the rim of the wheel, hovered only a few inches above the revolver in his coat pocket. If Kermeff made a single treacherous move, that hand could sweep down in a scant second and lash up again.

  Moreover, the roadster's convertible top was down; and Matt Jeremy, in the spacious rumble-seat besi
de the huddled form of Franklin Allenby, commanded a view of the front. If Kermeff moved, Jeremy had orders to strike first. As for Allenby, the very presence of the powerful Jeremy beside him seemed to have driven all thought of resistance from his mind.

  The car purred on, eating its way with twin shafts of light drilling the uncanny darkness. The Gray Toad Inn was just ahead.

  This time Paul did not stop the car. Approaching on foot, under cover, would avail nothing tonight. The car was part of the plan. Paul clung to the wheel and drove steadily along the unused road, until at last the massive grotesquery of the inn materialized in the gloom on the right.

  As before, a light glowed on the lower floor, struggling feebly to grope through the atmosphere of abomination that hung over the entire building. The car slowed to a groping pace, approaching almost noiselessly. Kermeff was staring. Paul looked at him, smiled thinly, and said in a low voice:

  "The Gray Toad, Kermeff. You've heard of it before?"

  The physician said nothing. He sat very stiff, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously. Obviously he was beginning to realize the peril of his position, the danger of being hauled blindly through the night, on a strange mission, by a madman who presumably sought revenge.

  Ahead, the light winked suddenly as if an obstruction inside the grim walls had stepped momentarily in front of it. Then it glowed again. The door of the inn swung back.

  Instinctively Paul's foot touched the brake. The car stopped with a tremor. With sudden dread Paul waited for whatever would emerge.

  At first he saw nothing. He was looking for the wrong thing. He expected a human shape—the hunched body of Murgunstrumm or perhaps one of the immaculate evening-attired inhabitants. But it was no human form that slunk over the threshold into the night. It was an indistinct creature of low-slung belly and short legs. It crept forth, hugging the ground, and broke into a loping run straight for the road. A long thin howl rose on the still air. The howl of a wolf.

  Paul shuddered, still staring. Wolves, here in Murgunstrumm's house, meant only one thing! They were not flesh and blood, but

  Kermeff cried aloud. The loping thing ahead had reached the road and stopped quite still. Crouching, it swung about to face the car, as if seeing the machine for the first time. The twin lights fell full upon it as it bellied forward, revealing a sleek black body and glittering eyes of fire.

  There was an instant of emptiness, of stiffening inaction, while the thing's eyes glared balefully. Then, all at once, it rushed forward with amazing speed, hurtling through the intervening space so quickly that it seemed to lose form as it came.

  And it had no form! Even as it swept the last few yards it became a shapeless blur and vanished utterly; and in its place, swooping up before the headlight, came a flapping winged thing which drove straight at Paul's face.

  Just once it struck. An unearthly stench invaded Paul's nostrils. The smell of the grave enveloped him, choking him. Then the creature was high above, hanging like a painted shape against the sky, with wings swaying slowly. And Kermeff was laughing in a peculiarly cracked shrill voice:

  "It's a bat! It's only a bat!"

  Paul's foot hit the accelerator sharply. The car jerked forward, careening down the road. But even as it groaned to a stop again before the driveway of the inn, Paul looked up again apprehensively, muttering to himself. And the bat still hovered near, seeming to eye the occupants of the room with a malicious hungry ware of hate.

  "Come," Paul said sharply, climbing out. "Hurry!"

  He strode toward the door. Somehow the thought that Kermeff and Allenby might choose this moment to chance an attack, or to attempt escape, seemed insignificant. The other peril was so much greater and closer that he could consider nothing else.

  He was a fool—that was it! No sane man would be deliberately walking into the horrors of this diabolical place after once having had the luck to escape. Yet he was doing precisely that. He was risking something more than life, more than the lives of his three companions—for Ruth.

  Still he advanced, not daring to hesitate or look above him. He knew, without looking, that the same significant shape hovered there—the thing which had once been a wolf and now was a bat, and in reality was neither. And it was there for a reason. Pangs of hunger had driven it out into the night, to prowl the countryside or perhaps to pay a visit to one of the nearby villages. And here—here at hand was a means of satiating that hunger, in the shape of four unwary visitors to the abode of evil. Four humans of flesh and blood. Flesh which meant nothing; blood which meant everything!

  But it was too late to turn back. The door creaked open in Paul's face. A glare of light blinded him. A lantern swung before him, and behind it gleamed a pair of penetrating, searching eyes. Paul gazed fearfully into the eyes, into the contorted frowning mask of features in which they were set at incredible depth. With an effort he smothered his increasing fear and said in an uneven voice:

  "You—you're still open, my good man?"

  The repulsive face shook sideways. The thick lips parted soundlessly, mouthing an unspoken negative.

  "Oh, come," Paul insisted, forcing something like a careless laugh. "We're hungry. We've come a long way and have even farther to go. Can't you stretch it a bit and scrape up something for us to eat and drink?"

  Again Murgunstrumm shook his head without answering. The lantern swayed directly in front of Paul's face, vivid and repelling.

  "We'll make it worth your while," Paul argued desperately. "We'll pay you—"

  He did not finish. That same nauseating stench assailed him abruptly and a distorted black thing flopped past his head to careen against the lantern and lurch sideways into Murgunstrumm's face. Paul recoiled with an involuntary cry. But the thing had no evil intentions; it merely circled Murgunstrumm's shoulders erratically, uttering queer whispering sounds. And then all at once it darted away.

  "We'll pay you double," Paul said again, recovering himself and stepping forward crisply. "We'll—" He stopped. Murgunstrumm was no longer scowling. The twisted face was fixed in a hungry grin. The sunken eyes were riveted, like the eyes of a starved animal, squarely in Paul's face. Murgunstrumm lifted the lantern higher and said thickly:

  "You come in."

  Paul stepped forward, knowing only that he felt suddenly weak and very afraid. Mechanically he crossed the sill. Kermeff followed him, and Allenby, and Jeremy entered last. Then the door swung shut and Murgunstrumm was leaning against it, the lantern dangling in his hand. His lips were spread in a huge idiotic grin. His eyes were twin sloes of fire, fixed and unmoving.

  It was a queer room. The only two sources of light, the lantern and the slender-necked oil lamp on the table, were feeble and flickering, filling the entire chamber with a faltering, dancing yellow glow and uncouth crawling shadows. A bare floor, evidently once a polished dance surface, but now merely a layer of blackened boards, extended away into unlimited gloom. The walls were mere suggestions of shapes in the semi-dark, visible only when the fitful lamps were generous enough to spurt into restive brilliance.

  There were tables—three, four of them. Round squat tables of dark color, holding candle stumps with black dejected wicks set in green glass holders, which threw out tiny jeweled facets of light.

  And it was the light—lamp light and lantern light—which put the room in motion and lent it that restless, quivering sensation of being furtively alive. First the lamp flare, sputtering and winking, fighting against stray drafts which came out of cracked walls and loose windows. And then, more particularly, the glare of the lantern in Murgunstrumm's hanging fist, jerking slowly into the center of the room as the cripple limped forward.

  "Sit down, sirs," Murgunstrumm leered. "We be all alone here tonight."

  He scuffed past, seeming to sink into the floor each time his twisted right foot came in contact. His guests stared at him, fascinated utterly, as he hobbled to the farther wall. There, grinning at them indifferently, he raised the lantern face high and clawed up its globe wi
th crooked fingers, and peered fixedly at the burning wick as if it were a thing of evil significance.

  And his face was full in the realm of it—a gargoyle of malicious expectation. A contorted mass of shapeless features, assembled by some unholy chance or perhaps developed by some unholy habit. And then the lips protruded, the cheeks bloated for an instant. The thick tongue licked out, directing a gust of air into the lantern. The flame expired.

  After that, Paul and his companions retreated to an out-of-the-way table, as near the door as possible, and sat very close together, in silence.

  Murgunstrumm vanished, to reappear a moment later with a cloth, ghastly white in the contrasting gloom, slung over his stiffened arm. Grinning, he bent over the table, lifted the lamp, and spread the cloth in place. Lowering the lamp again, he said gutturally:

  "Ye'll be wantin' food, huh?"

  "Anything," Paul said, cringing from the hovering face. "Anything will do."

  "Uh-uh. I'll find somethin', I will."

  "And—er—"

  "Yus?"

  "Can't we have a bit more light here? It's—it's ghastly."

  The innkeeper hesitated. It seemed to Paul for an instant that the man's lips tightened almost imperceptibly and the dull sheen of his eyes brightened as if some nerve, buried in that venomous head, had been short-circuited. Then with a shrug the fellow nodded and said:

  "Yus, sir. We don't generally have much light here. I'll touch up the candles, I will."

  He groped to the other tables and bent over them, one after another, scratching matches and holding his deformed, cupped hands, over the cold candle wicks.

  And presently four tiny flames burned in the thick gloom, like tiny moving eyes, animal eyes glowing through fog.

  "Who"—it was Anton Kermeff speaking for the first time—"who is that man?"

  "Murgunstrumm," Paul said dully.

  "He is horrible. Horrible!"

  "He is more than that," Paul replied bitterly.

  "I refuse to remain here. I shall go—"

  "No." Paul bent over the table, gazing straight into the physician's face. "You will not leave so easily, Kermeff."