“There he is,” the grave-keeper whispered, parting the hedge so the two detectives could peer through. “That’s the third one he’s gone at since I phoned in to you fellows. I was afraid if I tried to jump on him single-handed he’d get away from me before you got out here. He’s got a gun, see it lying there next to the grave?”
His feeling of inadequacy was understandable; he was not only elderly and scrawny, but trembling all over with nervousness. One of the plarnclothesmen beside him unlimbered his gun, thumbed the guard off, held it half-poised for action. The one on the other side of him carefully maneuvered a manacle from his waistband so that it wouldn’t clash.
They exchanged a look across the keeper’s crouched, quaking back, each to see if the other was ready for the spring. Both nodded imperceptibly. They motioned the frightened cemetery-watchman down out of the way. They reared suddenly, dashed through the opening in the hedge simultaneously, with a great crackling and hissing of leaves.
The figure knee-deep in the grave stopped clawing and burrowing, snaked out an arm toward the revolver lying along its lip. One of the detectives’ huge size 12’s came down flat on it, pinning it down. “Hold it,” he said, and his own gun was inches away from the ghoul’s face. A flashlight balanced on a little mound of freshly-excavated soil like a golf-tee threw a thin, ghostly light on the scene. Off to the left one of the other graves was disturbed, wavy with irregular furrows of earth instead of planed flat.
The manacle clashed around the prisoner’s earth-clotted wrist, then the detective’s. They hauled him up out of the shallow trough he had burrowed almost at full arm-length, like a piece of carrion.
“I thought you’d come,” he said. “Where’d you put her? Where is she?”
They didn’t answer, for one thing because they didn’t understand. They weren’t supposed to understand the gibberings of a maniac. They didn’t ask him any questions, either. They seemed to feel that wasn’t part of their job in this case. They’d come out to get him, they’d got him, and they were bringing him in — that was all they’d been sent to do.
One of them stooped for the gun, put it in his pocket; he picked up the torch too, clicked it off. The tableau suddenly went blue-black. They made their way out of the burial-ground with him, the watchman trailing behind them.
Outside the gate a prowl-car was standing waiting; they jammed him into it between them, told the watchman to appear at Headquarters in the morning without fail, shrieked off with him.
He only said one thing more, on the way. “You didn’t have to hijack a patrol-car to impress me, I know better than to take you for detectives.” They careened through the midnight city streets stony-faced, one on each side of him, as though they hadn’t heard him. “Fiends,” he sobbed bitterly. “How can the Lord put things like you into human shape?”
He seemed vastly surprised at sight of the Headquarters building, with its green-globed entrance. When they stood him before a desk, with a uniformed lieutenant at it, his consternation was noticeable. He seemed unable to believe his eyes. Then when they led him into a back room, and a captain of detectives came in to question him, there could be no mistaking the fact that he was stunned. “You — you really are!” he breathed.
“What did you think we were?” one of the detectives wanted to know caustically. “CCC boys?”
He looked about uncomprehendingly. “I thought you were — them.”
The captain got down to business. “What were you after?” he said tersely.
“Her.” He amended it, “My girl, my girl I was going to marry.”
The captain sighed impatiently. “You expected to find her in the cemetery?”
“Oh, I know!” the man before him broke out bitterly. “I know, I’m insane, that’s what you’ll say! I came to you people for help, of my own accord, before it happened — and that’s what you thought then, too. I spoke to Mercer, at the Poplar Street Station, only yesterday morning. He told me to go home and not worry.” His laughter was horrid, harsh, deranged.
“Quit it, shut up!” The captain drew back uncontrollably, even with the width of his desk between them. He took up the thread of his questioning again. “You were arrested just now in the Cedars of Lebanon Cemetery, in the act of disturbing the graves. The watchman at the Sacred Heart Cemetery also phoned us, earlier tonight, that he had found some of the resting-places in there molested, when he made his rounds. Did you do that too?”
The man nodded vigorously, unashamed. “Yes! And I’ve also been in two others, since sundown, Cypress Hills, and a private graveyard out beyond the city limits toward Ellendale.”
The captain shivered involuntarily. The two detectives in the background paled a little, exchanged a look. The captain let out his accumulated breath slowly.
“You need a doctor, young fellow,” he sighed.
“No, I don’t need a doctor!” The prisoner’s voice rose to a scream. “I need help! If you’ll only listen to me, believe me!”
“I’ll listen to you,” the captain said, without committing himself on the other two pleas. “I think I understand how it is. Engaged to her, you say. Very much in love with her, of course. The shock of losing her — too much for you; temporarily unbalanced your mind. Judging by your clothes — what I can see of them under that accumulation of mold and caked earth, and the fact that you left a car parked near the main entrance of Cedars of Lebanon — robbery wasn’t your motive. My men here tell me you were carrying seven-hundred-odd dollars when they caught up with you. Crazed by grief, didn’t know what you were doing, so you set out on your own to try and find her, is that it?”
The man acted tormented, distracted. “Don’t tell me things I know already!” he pleaded hoarsely.
“But how is it,” the captain went on equably, “you didn’t know where she was buried in the first place?”
“Because it was done without a permit — secretly!”
“If you can prove that—!” The captain sat up a little straighter. This was getting back on his own ground again. “When was she buried, any idea?”
“Some time after sundown this evening — that’s over six hours ago now! And all this time we’re standing here—”
“When’d she die?”
The man clenched his two fists, raised them agonizedly above his head. “She — didn’t — die! Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you! She’s lying somewhere, under the ground, in this very city, at this very minute — still breathing!”
There was a choking stillness as though the room had suddenly been crammed full of cotton-batting. It was a little hard to breathe in there; the three police-officials seemed to find it so. You could hear the effort they put into it.
The captain said, brushing his hand slowly across his mouth to clear it of some unseen impediment, “Hold him up.” Then he said to the man they were supporting between them: “I’m listening.”
To understand about me, you must go back fifteen years, to 1922, to when I was ten years old. And even then, perhaps you’ll wonder why a thing like that, horrible as it was, should poison my whole life...
My father was a war veteran. He had been badly shell-shocked in the Argonne, and for a long time in the base hospital behind the lines they thought they weren’t going to be able to pull him through.
But they did, and he was finally sent home to us, my mother and me. I knew he wasn’t well, and that I mustn’t be too noisy around him, that was all. The others, my mother and the doctors, knew that his nerve-centers had been shattered irreparably; but that slow paralysis was creeping on him, they didn’t dream. There were no signs of it, no warning. Then suddenly, in a flash, it struck. The nerve-centers ceased to function all over his body. “Death,” they called it, in ghastly error.
I wasn’t frightened of death — yet. If it had only been that, it would have been all right; a month later I would have been over it. But as it was...
His government pension had been all we’d had to live on since he’d come back. It had been out of the question for him to work, after what that howitzer-shell exploding a few yards away had done to him. Mother hadn’t been able to work either; there wouldn’t have been anyone to look after him all day. So there was no money to speak of.
Mother had to take any undertaker she could get, was glad to get anybody at all for the pittance that was all she could afford. The fly-by-night swindler that she finally secured, turned up his nose at first at the sum offered, she had to plead with him to take charge of the body. Meanwhile the overworked medical examiner had made a hasty, routine examination, given the cause as a blood-clot on the brain due to his injuries, and made out the death-certificate in proper order.
But he was never prepared for burial in the proper way. He couldn’t have been or it wouldn’t have happened. Those ghoulish undertakers must have put him aside while they attended to other, more remunerative cases, until they discovered there was no time left to do what they were supposed to. And, cold-bloodedly figuring no one would ever know the difference anyway, simply contented themselves with hastily composing his posture, putting on his best suit, and perhaps giving his face a hurried, last-minute shave. Then they put him in the coffin, untouched, just as he was.
We would never have known, perhaps, but mother was unable to meet even the first monthly payment on the plot, and the cemetery officials heartlessly gave orders to disinter the coffin and remove it elsewhere. Whether something about it excited their suspicions, or it was of such flimsy construction that it accidentally broke open when they tried to remove it, I don’t know. At any rate, they made a hideous discovery, and my mother was hastily summoned to come out there. Word was also sent to the police.
Thinking it still had to do with the money due them, she frantically borrowed it from a loan-shark, one of the early forerunners of that racket, and in an evil hour allowed me to go with her out there to the cemetery-grounds.
We found the opened coffin above ground, lying in full view, with a number of police-officials grouped around it. They drew her aside and began to question her, out of earshot. But I didn’t need to overhear, I had the evidence of my own eyes there before me.
The eyes were open and staring; not just blankly as they had been the first time, but dilated with horror, stretched to their uttermost width. Eyes that had tried vainly to pierce the stygian darkness that he found about him. His arms, no longer flat at his sides, were curved clawlike up over his head, nails almost torn off with futile tearing and scratching at the wood that hemmed him in. There were dried brown spots all about the white quilting that lined the lower half of the coffin, that had been blood spots flung about from his flailing, gashed fingertips. Splinters of wood from the underside of the lid clung to each of them like porcupine-quills. And on the inside of the lid were even more tell-tale signs. A criss-cross of gashes, some of them almost shallow troughs, against which his bleeding nails had worn themselves off. But it had held fast, had only split now, when it was being taken up, weeks later.
The voice of one of the police-officials penetrated my numbed senses, seeming to come from far away. “This man — your husband—” he was saying to my mother — “was buried alive, and slowly suffocated to death — the way you see him — in his coffin. Will you tell us, if you can—”
But she dropped at their feet in a dead faint without uttering a sound. Her agony was short, merciful. I, who was to be the far greater sufferer of the two, stood there frozen, stunned, without a whimper, without even crying. I must have seemed to them too stupid or too young to fully understand the implications of what we were looking at. If they thought so, it was the greatest mistake of their lives.
I accompanied them, and my mother, back to the house without a word. They looked at me curiously once or twice, and I overheard one of them say in a low voice: “He didn’t get it. Good thing, too. Enough to frighten the growth out of a kid that age.”
I didn’t get it! I was frozen all over, they didn’t understand that; in a straight-jacket of icy horror that was crushing the shape out of me.
Mother recovered consciousness presently and — for just a little while, before the long twilight closed in on her — her reason, sanity. They checked with the coroner, the death-certificate was sent for and examined, they decided that neither she nor he was to blame in any way. She gave them the name of the undertaker who had been in charge of the burial preparations, and word was sent out to arrest him and his assistants.
Fate was kind to her, her ordeal was made short. That same night she went hopelessly, incurably out of her mind, and within the week had been committed to an institution. Nature had found the simplest way out for her.
I didn’t get off so easily. There was a brief preliminary stage, more or less to be expected, of childish terror, nightmares, fear of the dark, but that soon wore itself out. Then for a year or two I seemed actually to have gotten over the awful thing; at least, it faded a little, I didn’t think of it incessantly night and day. But the subconscious doesn’t, couldn’t, forget a thing like that. Only another, second shock of equal severity and having to do with the same thing, would heal it. Fighting fire with fire, so to speak.
It came back in my middle teens, and from then on never again left me, grew steadily worse if anything as time went on. It was not a fear of death, you must understand; it was a fear of not dying and of being buried for dead. In other words, of the same thing happening to me some day that happened to him. It was stronger than just a fear, it grew to be an obsession, a phobia. It happened to me over and over again in my dreams, and I woke up shivering, sweating at the thought. Burial alive! The most horrible death imaginable became easy, preferable, compared to that.
Attracted by the very thing I dreaded, I frequently visited cemeteries, wandered among the headstones, reading the inscriptions, shuddering to myself each time: “But was he — or she — really dead? How often has this thing happened before?”
Sometimes I would unexpectedly come upon burial services being conducted in this or that corner of the grounds. Cringing, yet drawing involuntarily nearer to watch and listen, that unforgotten scene at my father’s grave would flash before my mind in all its pristine vividness and horror, and I would turn and run as though I felt myself in danger then and there of being drawn alive into that waiting grave I had just seen.
But one day, instead of running away, it had an opposite effect on me. I was irresistibly drawn forward to create a scene, a scandal, in their solemn midst. Or at least an unwelcome interruption.
The coffin, covered with flowers, was just about to be lowered; the mourners were standing reverently about. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I jostled my way through them until I stood on the very lip of the trench, cried out warningly: “Wait! Make sure, for God’s sake, make sure he’s dead!”
There was a stunned silence, they all drew back in fright, stared at me incredulously. The reading of the service stopped short, the officiating clergyman stood there book in hand blinking at me through his spectacles. Even the lowering of the coffin had been arrested, it swayed there on an uneven keel, partly in and partly out. Some of the flowers slipped off the top of it and fell in.
Realizing belatedly what a holy show I had made of myself, I turned and stumbled away as abruptly as I had come. No one made a move to detain me. Out of sight of them, I sat down on a stone bench behind a laurel hedge, and tormentedly held my head in my hands. Was I going crazy or what, to do such a thing?
About half an hour went by. I heard the sound of motors starting up one after the other on the driveway outside the grounds, and. thought they had all gone away. A minute later there was a light step on the gravel path before me, and I looked up to meet the curious gaze of a young girl. She wore black, but there was something radiantly alive about her that looked strangely out of place in those surroundings. She was beautiful; I could read compassion in her forthright blue eyes. She had evidently been present at the services I had so outrageously interrupted, and had purposely stayed behind to talk to me.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” she murmured. I suddenly found myself wanting to talk to her. I felt strangely drawn to her. Youth is youth, even if its first meeting-place is a cemetery, and outside of this one phobia of mine, I was no different from any young fellow my age.
“Who was that?” I asked abruptly.
“A distant relative of mine,” she said. “Why did you do it?” she added. “I could tell you weren’t drunk or anything. I felt you must have a reason, so I asked them not to complain to the guards.”
“It happened once to my father,” I told her. “I’ve never quite gotten over it.”
“I can see that,” she said with quiet understanding. “But you shouldn’t dwell on it. It’s not natural at our age. Take me for instance. I had every respect for this relative we lost. I’m anything but a hard-hearted person. But it was all they could do to get me to come here today. They had to bribe me by telling me how well I looked in black.” She smiled shyly, “I’m glad I did come, though.”
“I am too,” I said, and I meant it.
“My name is Joan Blaine,” she told me as we walked toward the entrance. The sunlight fell across her face and seemed to light it, as we left the city of the dead and came out into the city of the living.
“I’m Bud Ingram,” I told her.
“You’re too nice a guy to be hanging around graveyards, Bud,” she told me. “I’ll have to take you in hand, try to get rid of this morbid streak in you.”
She was as good as her word in the months that followed. Not that she was a bossy, dictatorial sort of girl, but — well, she liked me, just as I liked her, and she wanted to help me. We went to shows and dances together, took long drives in my car with the wind humming in our ears, lolled on the starlit beach while she strummed a guitar and the surf came whispering in — did all the things that make life so worth living, so hard to give up. Death and its long grasping shadows seemed very far away when I was with her; her golden laughter kept them at a distance. But when I was alone, slowly they came creeping back.
I didn’t let her know about that. I loved her now, and like a fool I was afraid if I told her it was still with me, she’d give me up as hopeless. I should have known her better. I never again mentioned the subject of my father, or my fears; I let her think she had conquered them. It was my own undoing.
I was driving along a seldom-used road out in the open country late one Sunday afternoon. She hadn’t been able to come with me that afternoon, but I was due back at her house for supper, and we were going to the movies afterward. I had taken a detour off the main highway that I thought might be a shortcut, get me there quicker. Then I saw this small, well-cared-for burial-ground to my left as I skimmed along. I braked and sat looking at it, what I could see of it. It was obviously private. A twelve-foot fence of iron palings, gilt-tipped, bordered it. Inside there were clumps of graceful poplars rustling in the breeze, ornamental stone urns, trim white-pebbled paths twisting in and out. Only an occasional, inconspicuous slab showed what it really was.
I drove on again, past the main entrance. It was chained and locked, and there was no sign of either a gatekeeper or a lodge to accommodate one. It evidently was the property of some one family or group of people, I told myself. I put my foot back on the accelerator and went on my way. Joan wouldn’t have approved my even slowing down to look at the place, I knew; but I hadn’t been able to help myself.
Then sharp eyes betrayed me. Even traveling at the rate I was, I caught sight of a place in the paling where one of the uprights had fallen out of its socket in the lower transverse that held them all; it was leaning over at an angle from the rest, causing a little tent-shaped gap. My good resolutions were all shattered at the sight. I threw in the clutch, got out to look, and before I knew it, had wriggled through and was standing on the inside — where I had no right to be.
“I’ll just look around a minute,” I said to myself, “then get out again before I get in trouble.”
I followed one of the winding paths, and all the old familiar fears came back again as I did so. The sun was rapidly going down and the poplars threw long blue shadows across the ground. I turned aside to look at one of the freshly-erected headstones. There was an utter absence of floral wreaths or offerings, such as are to be found even in the poorest cemeteries, although nearly all the slabs looked fairly recent.
I was about to move on, when something caught my eye close up against the base of the slab. A small curved projection, like a tiny gutter to carry off rainwater. Then just under that, protected by it, so to speak, and almost indiscernible, a round opening, a hole, peering through the carefully-trimmed grass. It was too well-rounded to be an accidental gap or pit in the turf. And it was right where the raised grave met the tombstone. But that curling lip over it! Who had ever heard of a headstone provided with a gutter?
I glanced around to make sure I was unobserved, then squatted down over it, all but treading on the grave itself. I hooked one finger into the orifice and explored it carefully. Something smooth, hard, lined it, like a metal inner-tube. It was not a hole in the ground. It was a pipe leading up through the ground.
I had a penknife with me, and I got it out and scraped away the turf around the opening. A half-inch of gleaming, untarnished pipe, either chromium or brass, protruded when I got through. Stranger still, it had a tiny sieve or filter fitted into it, of fine wire-mesh, like a strainer to keep out the dust.
I was growing strangely excited, more excited every minute. This seemed to be a partial solution to what had haunted me for so long. If it was what I thought it was, it could take a little of the edge off the terror of burial — even for me, who dreaded it so.
I snapped my penknife shut, straightened up, moved on to the next marker. It wasn’t close by, I had to look a little to find it, in the deepening violet of the twilight. But when I had, there was the same concealed orifice at its base, diminutive rain-shed, strainer, and all.
As I roamed about there in the dusk, I counted ten of them. Some bizarre cult or secret society, I wondered uneasily? For the first time I began to regret butting into the place; formless fears, vague premonitions of peril, that had nothing to do with that other inner fear of mine began to creep over me.
The sun had gone down long ago, and macabre mists were beginning to blur the outlines of the trees and foliage around me. I turned and started to beat my way back toward that place in the fence by which I had gained admittance, and which I had left a considerable distance behind me by now.
As I came abreast of the entrance gates — the real ones and not the gap through which I had come in — I saw the orange flash of a lantern on the outside of them, through the twilight murk. Chains clanged loosely, and the double gates ground inward, with a horrid groaning sound. Instinctively I jumped back behind a massive stone urn on a pedestal, with creepers spilling out of the top of it.
The gates clanged shut again, lessening my chances of getting out that way, which was the nearer of the two. I peered cautiously out around the narrowed stem of the urn, to see who it was.
A typical cemetery-watchman, no different from any of the rest of his kind, was crunching slowly along the nearest path, lantern in hand. Its rays splashed upward, tinged his face, and downward around the ground at his feet, but left the middle of his body in darkness. It created a ghastly effect, that of a lurid head without any body floating along above the ground. I quailed a little.
He passed by close enough for me to touch him, and I shifted tremblingly around to the other side of the urn, keeping it between us. He stopped at the nearest grave, only a short distance away, set his lantern close up against the headstone, and turned up the oil-wick a bit higher. I could see everything he was doing clearly in the increased radiance now. Could see, but couldn’t understand at first.
He squatted down on his haunches just as I had — this, fortunately, wasn’t the one I had disturbed with my penknife — and I saw him holding something in his hand that at first sight I mistook for a flower, a single flower or bloom, that he was about to plant. It had a long almost invisible stalk and ended in a little puff or cluster of fuzz, like a pussywillow. But then when I saw him insert it into the little orifice at the base of the slab, move it busily around, that gave me the clue to what it really was. It was simply a wire-handled brush, such as housewives use for cleaning the spouts of kettles. He was removing the day’s accumulated dust and grit from the little mesh-strainer in the pipe, to keep it from clogging. I saw him take the brush out again, put his face down nearly to the ground, and blow his breath into it to help the process along. I heard the sound that made distinctly — “Phoo!” Even as I watched, he got up again, picked up his lantern, and trudged on to the next grave, and repeated the chore.
A chill slowly went down my spine. Why must those orifices be kept unclogged, free of choking dust, like that? Was there something living, breathing, that needed air, buried below each of those headstones?
I had to grip the pedestal before me with both hands, to hold myself up, to keep from turning and scampering blindly away then and there — and betraying my presence there in the process.
I waited until he had moved on out of sight, and some shrubbery blotted out the core of his lantern, if not its outermost rays; then I turned and darted away, frightened sick.
I beat my way along the inside of the fence, trying to find that unrepaired gap; and maddeningly it seemed to elude me. Then just when I was about ready to lose my head and yell out in panic, I glimpsed my car standing there in the darkness on the other side, and a few steps further on brought me to the place. Arms shaking palsiedly, I held up the loosened paling and slipped through. I stopped a minute there beside the car, wiping off my damp forehead on the back of my sleeve. Then with a deep breath of relief, I reached out, opened the car-door. I slipped in, turned the key... Nothing happened. The ignition wire had been cut in my absence.
Before the full implication of the discovery had time to register on my mind, a man’s head and shoulders rose silently, as out of the ground, just beyond the opposite door, on the outside of the road. He must have been crouched down out of sight, watching me the whole time.
He was well-dressed, no highwayman or robber. His face, or what I could see of it in the dark, had a solemn ascetic cast to it. There was a slight smile to his mouth, but not of friendliness.
His voice, when he spoke, was utterly toneless. It held neither reproach, nor threat, nor anger. “Did you—” His stony eyes flickered just once past the cemetery-barrier — “have business in there?”
What was there I could say? “No. I simply went in, to — to rest awhile, and think.”
“There was rather a severe wind — and rainstorm up here a week ago,” he let me know. “It may have uprooted the sign we had standing at the entrance to this roadway. Thoroughfare is prohibited, it runs through private grounds.”
“I saw no sign,” I told him truthfully.
“But if you went in just to rest and think, how is it you were so agitated when you left just now? I saw you when you came out. What had you done in there to frighten you so?” And then, very slowly, spacing each word, “What — had — you — seen?”
But I’d had about enough. “Are you in charge of these grounds? Well, whether you are or not, I resent being questioned like this! You’ve damaged my car, with deliberation. I’ve a good mind to—”
“Step out and come with me,” he said, and here was suddenly the thin, ugly muzzle of a Luger resting across the doorstep, trained at me. His face remained cold, expressionless.
I pulled the catch out, stepped down beside him. “This is kidnaping,” I said grimly.
“No,” he said, “you’d have a hard time proving that. You’re guilty of trespassing. We have a perfect right to detain you — until you’ve explained clearly, to our satisfaction, what you saw in there to frighten you so.”
Or in other words, I said to myself, just how much I’ve found out — about something I’m not supposed to know. Something kept warning me: No matter what turns up, don’t admit you noticed those vents above the graves in there. Don’t let on you saw them! I didn’t know why I shouldn’t, but it kept pounding at me relentlessly.
“Walk up the road ahead of me,” he directed. “If you try to bolt off into the darkness, I’ll shoot you without compunction.”
I turned and walked slowly back along the middle of the road, hands helplessly at my sides. The scrape and grate of his footsteps followed behind me. He knew enough not to close in and give me a chance to wrest the gun from him. I may have been afraid of burial alive, but I wasn’t particularly afraid of bullets.
We came abreast of the cemetery-gate just as the watchman was letting himself out.
He threw up his head in surprise, picked up his lantern and came over.
“This man was in there just now. Walk along parallel to him, but not too close, and keep your lantern on him.”
“Yes, Brother.” At the time I thought it was just slangy informality on the caretaker’s part; the respectful way he said it should have told me different. As he took up his position off to one side of me I heard him hiss vengefully, “Dirty snooper!”
We were now following a narrow brick footpath, which I had missed seeing altogether from the car that afternoon, indian file, myself in the middle. It brought us, in about five minutes, to a substantial-looking country house, entirely surrounded by such a thick growth of trees that it must have been completely invisible from both roads even in the broad daylight. The lower story was of stone, the upper of stucco. It was obviously not abandoned or in disrepair, but gave no sign of life. All the windows, upper as well as lower, had been boarded up.
The three of us stepped up on the empty porch, whose floorboards glistened with new varnish. The man with the lantern thrust a key into the seemingly boarded-up door, turned it, and swung the entire dummy-facing back intact. Behind it stood the real door, thick oak with an insert of bevelled glass, veiled on the inside by a curtain through which an electric light glimmered dully.
He unlocked that, too, and we were in a warm, well-furnished hall. The watchman took up his lantern and went toward the back of this, with a murmured “I’ll be right in.” My original captor turned me aside into a room furnished like a study, came in after me, at last pocketed the Luger that had persuaded me so well.
A man was sitting behind a large desk, with a reading lamp trained on it, going over some papers. He looked up, paled momentarily, then recovered himself. I’d seen that however; it showed that all the fear was not on my side of the fence. The same silent, warning voice kept pegging away at me: Don’t admit you saw those vents, watch your step!
The man who had brought me in said, “I found his car parked beside the cemetery-rail — where lightning struck and loosened that upright the other night. I waited, until he came out. I thought you’d like to talk to him, Brother.” Again that “Brother.”
“You were right, Brother,” the man behind the desk nodded. He said to me, “What were you doing in there?”
The door behind me opened and the man who had played the part of caretaker came in. He had on a business-suit now just like the other two, in place of the dungarees and greasy sweater. I took a good look at his hands; they were not calloused, but had been recently blistered. I could see the circular threads of skin remaining where the blisters had opened. He was an amateur — and not a professional — gravedigger.
“Did he tamper with anything?” the man behind the desk asked him in that cool, detached voice.
“He certainly did. Jerome’s was disturbed. The sod — around it — had been scraped away, just enough to lay it bare.” He accented that pronoun, to give it special meaning.
My original captor went through my pockets deftly and swiftly, brought to light the penknife, snapped it open, showed them the grass-stains on the steel blade.
The beat of Death’s dark wings was close in the air above my head.
“I’m sorry. Take him out in back of the house with you,” the one behind the desk said flatly. As though those words were my death-warrant.
The whole thing was too incredible, too fantastic, I couldn’t quite force myself to believe I was in danger of being put to death then and there like a mad dog. But I saw the one next to me slowly reach toward the pocket where the Luger bulged.
“I’ll have to go out there and dig again, after I got all cleaned up,” the one who had played the part of watchman sighed regretfully, and glanced ruefully at his blistered hands.
I looked from one to the other, still not fully aware of what it all portended. Then on an impulse — an impulse that saved my life — I blurted out: “You see, it wasn’t just idle curiosity on my part. All my life, since I was ten, I’ve dreaded the thought of burial alive—”
Before I knew it I had told them the whole story, about my father and the lasting impression it had made.
After I had finished, the man at the desk said, slowly, “What year was this — and where?”
“In New Orleans,” I said, “in 1922.”
His eyes flicked to the man on my left. “Get New Orleans on long distance,” he said quietly. “Find out if an undertaker was brought to trial for burying a paralyzed war-veteran named Donald Ingram alive in All-Saints Cemetery in September 1922.”
“The 14th,” I said, shutting my eyes briefly.
“You are a lawyer,” he instructed, “doing it at the behest of the man’s son, because of some litigation that is pending, if they ask you.” The door closed after him; I stayed there with the other two.
The envoy came back, silently handed a written sheet of paper to the one at the desk. He read it through. “Your mother?” he said.
“She died insane in 1929. I had her cremated, to avoid—”
He crumpled the sheet of paper, threw it from him. “Would you care to join us?” he said, his eyes sparkling shrewdly.
“Who — are you?” I hedged.
He didn’t answer that. “We can cure you, heal you. We can do more for you than any doctor, any mental specialist in the world. Would you not like to have this dread, this curse, lifted from you, never to return?”
I would, I said; which was true any way you looked at it.
“You have been particularly afflicted, because of the circumstances of your father’s death,” he went on. “However, don’t think you’re alone in your fear of death. There are scores, hundreds of others, who feel as you do, even if not quite so strongly. From them we draw our membership; we give them new hope and new life, rob death of all its terrors for them. The sense of mortality that has been crippling them ends, the world is theirs to conquer, nothing can stop them. They become like the immortal gods. Wealth, fame, all the world’s goods, are theirs for the taking, for their frightened fellow-men, fearful of dying, defeated before they have even begun to live, cannot compete with them. Is not this a priceless gift? And we are offering it to you because you need it so badly, so very much more badly than anyone who has ever come to us before.” He was anything but cold and icy now. He was glowing, fervent, fanatic, the typical proselyte seeking a new convert.
“I’m not rich,” I said cagily, to find out where the catch was. And that’s where it was — right there.
“Not now,” he said, “because this blight has hampered your efforts, clipped your wings, so to speak. Few are who come to us. We ask nothing material from you now. Later, when we have helped you, and you are one of the world’s fortunate ones, you may repay us, to assist us to carry on our good work.”
Which might be just a very fancy way of saying future blackmail.
“And now — your decision?”
“I accept — your kind offer,” I said thoughtfully, and immediately amended it mentally: “At least until I can get out of here and back to town.”
But he immediately scotched that, as though he’d read my mind. “There is no revoking your decision once you’ve made it. That brings instant death. Slow suffocation is the manner of their going, those who break faith with us. Burial while still in full possession of their faculties, is the penalty.”
The one doom that was a shade more awful than what had happened to my father; the only one. He at least had not come to until after it had been done. And it had not lasted long with him, it couldn’t have.
“Those vents you saw can prolong it, for whole days,” he went on. “They can be turned on or off at will.”
“I said I’d join you,” I shuddered, resisting an impulse to clap both hands to my ears.
“Good.” He stretched forth his right hand to me and much against my inclination I took it. Then he clasped my wrist with his left, and had me do likewise with mine. I had to repeat this double grip with each of the others in turn. “You are now one of us.”
The cemetery watchman left the room and returned with a tray holding three small skulls and a large one. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck standing up of their own accord. None of them were real though; they were wood or celluloid imitations. They all had flaps that opened at the top; one was a jug and the other three stems.
The man behind the desk named the toast. “To our Friend!” I thought he meant myself at first; he meant that shadowy enemy of all mankind, the Grim Reaper.
“We are called The Friends of Death,” he explained to me when the grisly containers had been emptied. “To outline our creed and purpose briefly, it is this: That death is life, and life is death. We have mastered death, and no member of the Friends of Death need ever fear it. They ‘die,’ it is true, but after death they are buried in special graves in our private cemetery — graves having air vents, such as you discovered. Also, our graves are equipped with electric signals, so that after the bodies of our buried members begin to respond to the secret treatment our scientists have given them before internment, we are warned. Then we come and release them — and they live again. Moreover, they are released, freed of their thralldom; from then on death is an old familiar friend instead of an enemy. They no longer fear it. Do you not see what a wonderful boon this would be in your case, Brother Bud; you who have suffered so from that fear?”
I thought to myself, “They’re insane! They must be!” I forced myself to speak calmly. “And the penalty you spoke of — that you inflict on those who betray or disobey you?”
“Ah!” he inhaled zestfully, “You are buried before death — without benefit of the attention of our experts. The breathing tube is slowly, infinitesimally, shut off from above a notch at a time, by means of a valve — until it is completely sealed. It is,” he concluded, “highly unpleasant while it lasts.” Which was the most glaring case of understatement I had ever yet encountered.
There wasn’t much more to this stage of my preliminary initiation. A ponderous ebony-bound ledger was brought out, with the inevitable skull on its cover in ivory. I was made to draw blood from my wrist and sign my name, with that, in it. The taking of the oath of secrecy followed.
“You will receive word of when your formal initiation is to be,” I was told. “Return to your home and hold yourself ready until you hear from us. Members are not supposed to be known to one another, with the exception of us three, so you are required to attend the rites in a specially-constructed skull-mask which will be given to you. We are the Book-keeper (man behind the desk), the Messenger (man with the Luger), and the Grave-digger. We have chapters in most of the large cities. If business or anything should require you to move your residence elsewhere, don’t fail to notify us and we will transfer you to our branch in the city to which you are going.”
“Like hell I will!” I thought.
“All members in good faith are required to be present at each of the meetings; failure to do so invokes the Penalty.”
The grinning ghoul had the nerve to sling his arm around my shoulder in a friendly way as he led me toward the door, like a hospitable host speeding a parting guest. It was all I could do to keep from squirming at the feel of it. I wanted to part his teeth with my right fist then and there, but the Messenger, with the Luger on him, was a few steps behind me. I was getting out, and that was all that seemed to matter at the time. That was all I wanted — out, and a lungful of fresh air, and a good stiff jolt of whiskey to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
They unlocked the two doors for me, and even flashed on the porch-light so I could see my way down the steps. “You can get a city bus over on the State Highway. We’ll have your car fixed for you and standing in front of your door first thing in the morning.”
But at the very end a hint of warning again showed itself through all their friendliness. “Be sure to come when you’re sent for. We have eyes and ears everywhere, where you’d least expect it. No warning is given, no second chances are ever allowed!”
Again that double grip, three times repeated, and it was over. The two doors were closed and locked, the porch-light snuffed out, and I was groping my way down the brick footpath — alone. Behind me not a chink of light showed from the boarded-up house. It had all been as fleeting, as unreal, as unbelievable, as a bad dream.
I shivered all the way back to the city in the heated bus; the other passengers must have thought I had the grippe. Joan Blame found me at midnight in a bar around the corner from where I lived, stewed to the gills, so drunk I could hardly stand up straight — but still shivering. “Take him home, miss,” she told me afterwards the bartender whispered to her. “He’s been standing there like that three solid hours, staring like he sees ghosts, frightening my other customers off into corners!”
I woke up fully dressed on top of my bed next morning, with just a blanket over me. “That was just a dream, the whole thing!” I kept snarling to myself defensively.
I heard Joan’s knock at the door, and the first thing she said when I let her in was: “Something happen to your car last night? I saw a mechanic drive up to the door with it just now, as I was coming in. He got out, walked off, and left it standing there!”
There went my just-a-dream defense. She saw me rear back a little, but didn’t ask why. I went over to the window and looked down at it. It was waiting there without anyone in or near it.
“Were you in a smash-up?” she demanded. “Is that why you stood me up? Is that why you were shaking so when I found you?”
I grabbed at the out eagerly. “Yeah, that’s it! Bad one, too; came within an inch of winding up behind the eight-ball. Gave me the jitters for hours afterwards.”
She looked at me, said quietly: “Funny kind of a smash-up, to make you say ‘Little pipes coming up through the ground.’ That’s all you said over and over. Not a scratch on you, either. No report of any smack-up involving a car with your license number, when I checked with the police after you’d been three hours overdue at my house.” She gave me an angry look, at least it tried to be. “All right, I’m a woman and therefore a fibber. But I sewed you up pretty this time. I asked that grease-monkey what it was just now, and he said only a cut ignition-wire!”
Her face softened and she came over to me. “What’re you keeping from me, honey? Tell Joan. She’s for you, don’t you know that by now?”
No, it was just a dream, I wasn’t going to tell her. And even if it wasn’t a dream, I’d be damned if I’d tell her! Worry her? I should say not! “All right, there wasn’t any smash-up and there wasn’t anything else either. I’m just a heel, I got stiff and stood you up, that’s all.”
I could tell she didn’t believe me; she left looking unconvinced. I’d just about closed the door after her when my phone rang.
“You’re to be complimented, Brother,” an anonymous voice said. “We’re glad to see that you’re to be relied on,” and then the connection broke.
Eyes everywhere, ears everywhere. I stood there white in the face, and calling it a dream wouldn’t work any more.
The summons to attend came three weeks later to the day. A large white card such as formal invitations are printed on, inside an envelope with my name on it. Only the card itself was blank. I couldn’t make head or tail of it at first, didn’t even connect it with them. Then down in the lower corner I made out the faintly-pencilled word “Heat.”
I went and held it over the steam radiator. A death’s head slowly started to come through, first faint yellow, then brown, then black. And under it a few lines of writing, in hideous travesty of a normal social invitation.
“Call away, but I won’t be here!” was my first explosive reaction. “This goblin stuff has gone far enough. The keepers ought to be out after that whole outfit with butterfly-nets!”
Then presently, faint stirrings of curiosity began to prompt me: “What have you got to lose? Why not see what it’s like, anyway? What can they do to you after all? Pack a gun with you, that’s all.”
When I left the office late that afternoon I made straight for a pawnshop over on the seamy side of town, barged in through the saloon-like half-doors. I already had had a license for some time back, so there was not likely to be any difficulty about getting what I wanted.
While the owner was in the back getting some out to show me, a down-and-outer came in with a mangy overcoat he wanted to peddle. The clerk took it up front to examine it more closely, and for a moment the two of us were left standing alone on the customer’s side of the counter. I swear there was not a gun in sight on the case in front of me. Nothing to indicate what I had come in for.
An almost inaudible murmur sounded from somewhere beside me: “I wouldn’t, Brother, if I were you. You’ll get in trouble if you do.”
I looked around sharply. The seedy derelict seemed unaware of my existence, was staring dejectedly down at the glass case under him. Yet if he hadn’t spoken who had?
He was turned down, took back the coat, and shuffled disheartedly out into the street again, without a glance at me as he went by. The doors flapped loosely behind him. A prickling sensation ran up my spine. That had been a warning from them.
“Sorry,” I said abruptly, when the owner came back with some revolvers to show me, “I’ve changed my mind!” I went out hurriedly, looked up and down the street. The derelict had vanished. Yet the pawnshop was in the middle of the block, about equally distant from each corner. He couldn’t have possibly—! I even asked a janitor, setting out ashcans a few steps away. “Did you see an old guy carrying a coat come out of here just now?”
“Mister,” he said to me, “nobody’s come out of there since you went in yourself two minutes ago.”
“I suppose he was an optical illusion,” I said to myself. “Like hell he was!”
So I went without a gun.
A not only embarrassing but highly dangerous contretemps was waiting for me when I got back to my place a few minutes later. Joan was in the apartment waiting for me, had had the landlady, who knew her quite well, let her in. Tonight of all nights, when they were calling for me! I not only had to stay here, but I had to get her out of the way before they showed up.
The first thing my eye fell on as I came in was that damned invitation, too. It was lying about where I’d left it, but I could have sworn I’d put it back in its envelope, and now it was on the outside, skull staring up from it as big as life. Had she seen it? If so, she gave no sign. I sidled around in front of it and pushed it out of sight in a drawer with my hands behind my back.
“Take a lady to supper,” she said.
But I couldn’t, there wouldn’t be time enough to get back there again if! did; they were due in about a quarter of an hour, I figured. It was an hour’s ride out there.
“Damn! I just ate,” I lied. “Why didn’t you let me know—”
“How’s for the movies then?” She was unusually persistent tonight, almost as though she’d found out something and wanted to force me to break down and admit it.
I mumbled something about a headache, going to bed early, my eyes fixed frantically on the clock. Ten minutes now.
“I seem popular tonight,” she shrugged. But she made no move to go, sat there watching me curiously, intently.
Sweat was beading my forehead. Seven minutes to go. If I let her stay any longer, I was endangering her. But how could I get rid of her without hurting her, making her suspicious — if she wasn’t already?
“You seem very tense tonight,” she murmured. “I never saw you watch a clock so closely.” Five minutes were left.
They helped me out. Eyes everywhere, ears everywhere. The phone rang. Again that anonymous voice, as three weeks before.
“Better get that young woman out of the way, Brother. The car’s at the corner, waiting to come up to your door. You’ll be late.”
“Yes,” I said, and hung up.
“Competition?” she asked playfully when I went back.
“Joan,” I said hoarsely, “you run along. I’ve got to go out. There’s something I can’t tell you about. You’ve got to trust me. You do, don’t you?” I pleaded.
She only said one thing, sadly, apprehensively, as she got up and walked toward the door. “I do. But you don’t seem to trust — me.” She turned impulsively, her hands crept pleadingly up my lapels. “Oh, why can’t you tell me!”
“You don’t know what you’re asking!” I groaned.
She turned and ran swiftly down the stairs, I could hear her sobbing gently as she went. I never heard the street-door close after her, though.
Moments later my call-bell rang, I grabbed my hat and ran down. A touring-car was standing in front of the house, rear door invitingly open. I got in and found myself seated next to the Messenger. “All right, Brother,” he said to the driver. All I could see of the latter was the back of his head; the mirror had been removed from the front of the car.
“Let me caution you,” the Messenger said, as we started off. “You went into a pawnshop this afternoon to buy a gun. Don’t try that, if you know what’s good for you. And after this, see to it that the young lady isn’t admitted to your room in your absence. She might have read the summons we sent.”
“I destroyed it,” I lied.
He handed me something done up in paper. “Your mask,” he said. “Don’t put it on until we get past the city-limits.”
It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a mask but a hood for the entire head, canvas and cardboard, chalk-white to simulate a skull, with deep black hollows for the eyes and grinning teeth for the mouth.
The private highway, as we neared the house, was lined on both sides with parked cars. I counted fifteen of them as we flashed by; and there must have been as many more ahead, in the other direction.
We drew up and he and I got out. I glanced in cautiously over my shoulder at the driver as we went by, to see if I could see his face, but he too had donned one of the death-masks.
“Never do that,” the Messenger warned me in a low voice. “Never try to penetrate any other member’s disguise.”
The house was as silent and lifeless as the last time — on the outside. Within it was a horrid, crawling charnel-house alive with skull-headed figures, their bodies encased in business-suits, tuxedos, and evening dresses. The lights were all dyed a ghastly green or ghostly blue, by means of colored tissue-paper sheathed around them. A group of masked musicians kept playing the Funeral March over and over, with brief pauses in between. A coffin stood in the center of the main living-room.
I was drenched with sweat under my own mask and sick almost to death, even this early in the game.
At last the Book-keeper, unmasked, appeared in their midst. Behind him came the Messenger. The dead-head guests all applauded enthusiastically, gathered around them in a ring. Those in other rooms came in. The musicians stopped the Death March.
The Book-keeper bowed, smiled graciously. “Good evening, fellow corpses,” was his chill greeting. “We are gathered together to witness the induction of our newest member.” There was an electric tension. “Brother Bud!” His voice rang out like a clarion in the silence. “Step forward.”
My heart burst into little pieces in my chest. I could feel my legs getting ready to go down under me. That roaring in my ears was my own crazed thoughts. And I knew with a terrible certainty that this was no initiation — this was to be “the punishment.” For I was of no value to them — having no money.
Before I had time to tear off my mask, fight and claw my way out, I was seized by half-a-dozen of them, thrust forward into the center of the circle. I was forced to my knees and held in that position, writhing and twisting. My coat, vest and shirt were stripped off and my mask was removed. A linen shroud, with neck-and-arm holes, was pulled over my head. My hands were caught, pulled behind my back, and lashed tight with leather straps. I kicked out at them with my legs and squirmed about on the floor like a maniac — I, who was the only sane one of all of them! I rasped strangled imprecations at them. The corpse was unwilling.
They caught my threshing legs finally, strapped those together at the ankles and the knees, then carefully drew the shroud the rest of the way down. I was lifted bodily like a log, a long twisting white thing in its shroud, and fitted neatly into the quilted coffin. Agonizedly I tried to rear. I was forced down fiat and strapped in place across the waist and across the chest. All I could make now were inchoate animal-noises, gurglings and keenings. My face was a steaming cauldron of sweat.
I could still see the tops of their masked heads from where I was, bending down around me in a circle. Gloating, grinning, merciless death’s heads. One seemed to be staring at me in fixed intensity; they were all staring, of course, but I saw him briefly hold a pair of glasses to the eyeholes of his mask, as though — almost as though I was known to him, from that other world outside. A moment later he beckoned the Book-keeper to him and they withdrew together out of my line of vision, as though conferring about something.
The face of the Grave-digger had appeared above the rim of my coffin meanwhile, as though he had just come in from outside.
“Is it ready?” the Messenger asked him.
“Ready — and six feet deep,” was the blood-curdling answer.
I saw them up-end the lid of the coffin, to close it over me. One was holding a hammer and a number of long nails in his hand, in readiness. Down came the lid, flat, smothering my squall of unutterable woe, and the blue-green light that had been bearing down on me until now went velvety black.
Then, immediately afterwards, it was partially displaced again and the head of the Book-keeper was bending down close to mine. I could feel his warm breath on my forehead. His whisper was meant for me alone. “Is it true you are betrothed to a young lady of considerable means, a Miss Joan Blaine?”
I nodded, so far gone with terror I was only half-aware what I was doing.
“Is it her uncle, Rufus Blaine, who is the well-known manufacturer?”
I nodded again, groaned weakly. His face suddenly whisked away, but instead of the lid being fitted back into place as I momentarily expected, it was taken away altogether.
Arms reached in, undid the body-straps that held me, and I was helped to a sitting-position. A moment later the shroud had been drawn off me like a long white stocking, and my hands and legs were freed. I was lifted out.
I was too spent to do anything but tumble to the floor and lie there inert at the feet of all of them, conscious but unable to move. I heard and saw the rest of what went on from that position.
The Book-keeper held up his hand. “Fellow corpses!” he proclaimed, “Brother Bud’s punishment is indefinitely postponed, for reasons best known to myself and the other heads of the chapter—”
But the vile assemblage of masked fiends didn’t like that at all; they were being cheated of their prey. “No! No!” they gibbered, and raised their arms threateningly toward him. “The coffin cries for an occupant! The grave yearns for an inmate!”
“It shall have one!” he promised. “You shall witness your internment. You shall not be deprived of your funeral joys, of the wake you are entitled to!” He made a surreptitious sign to the Messenger, and the skull-crested ledger was handed to him. He opened it, hastily turned its pages, consulted the entries, while an ominous, expectant silence reigned. He pointed to something in the book, his eyes beaded maliciously. Then once more he held up his hand. “You shall witness a penalty, an irrevocable burial with the vents closed!”
Crooning cries of delight sounded on all sides.
“I find here,” he went on, “the name of a member who has accepted all our benefits, yet steadily defaulted on the contributions due us. Who has means, yet who had tried to cheat us by signing over his wealth to others, hiding it in safe-deposit boxes under false names, and so on. I hereby condemn Brother Anselm to be penalized!”
A mad scream sounded from their midst, and one of the masked figures tried to dash frightenedly toward the door. He was seized, dragged back, and the ordeal I had just been through was repeated. I couldn’t help noticing, with chill forebodings, that the Book-keeper made a point of having me stood up on my feet and held erect to watch the whole damnable thing. In other words, by being a witness and a participant, I was now as guilty as any of them. A fact which they were not likely to let me forget if I balked later on at meeting their blackmail-demands. Demands which they expected me to fulfill with the help of Joan’s money — her uncle’s, rather-once I was married to her. It was the mention of her name, I realized, that had saved me. I was more use to them alive than dead, for the present, that was all.
Meanwhile, to the accompaniment of one last wail of despair that rang in my ears for days afterward, the coffin lid had been nailed down fast on top of the pulsing, throbbing contents the box held. It was lifted by four designated pall-bearers, carried outside to a waiting hearse lurking amidst the trees, while the musicians struck up the Death March. The rest of the murderous crew followed, myself included, held fast by the Messenger on one side, the Book-keeper on the other. They forced me into a limousine between them, and off we glided after the hearse, the other cars following us.
We all got out again at a lonely glen in the woods, where a grave had been prepared. No need to dwell on the scene that followed. Only one thing need be told. As the box was being lowered into it, in complete silence, sounds of frenzied motion could distinctly be heard within it, as of something rolling desperately from side to side. I watched as through a film of delirium, restraining hands on my wrists compelling me to look on.
When at last it was over, when at last the hole in the ground was gone, and the earth had been stamped down flat again on top of it, I found myself once more in the car that had originally called for me, alone this time with just the driver, being taken back to the city. I deliberately threw my own mask out of the side of the car, in token of burning my bridges behind me.
When he veered in toward the curb in front of my house, I jumped down and whirled, intending to grab him by the throat and drag him out after me. The damnable machine was already just a tail-light whirring away from me; he hadn’t braked at all.
I chased upstairs, pulled down the shades so no one could see in, hauled out my valise, and began pitching things into it from full-height, my lower jaw trembling. Then I went to the phone, hesitated briefly, called Joan’s number. Eyes everywhere, ears everywhere! But I had to take the chance. Her peril, now, was as great as mine.
Somebody else answered in her place. “Joan can’t talk to anyone right now. The doctor’s ordered her to bed, he had to give her a sedative to quiet her nerves, she came in awhile ago in a hysterical condition. We don’t know what happened to her, we can’t get her to tell us!”
I hung up, mystified. I thought: “I did that to her, by asking her to leave tonight. I hurt her, and she must have brooded about it—” I kicked my valise back under the bed. Friends of Death or no Friends of Death, I couldn’t go until I’d seen her.
I didn’t sleep all that night. By nine the next morning I’d made up my mind. I put the invitation to the meeting in my inside pocket and went around to the nearest precinct-house. I regretted now having thrown my mask away the night before, that would have been more evidence to show them.
I asked, tight-lipped, to see the captain in charge. He listened patiently, scanned the invitation, tapped his lower teeth thoughtfully with his thumbnail. It slowly dawned on me that he considered me slightly cracked, a crank; my story must have sounded too fantastic to be altogether credible. Then when I’d given him the key to my falling in with them in the first place — my graveyard obsession — I saw him narrow his eyes shrewdly at me and nod to himself as though that explained everything.
He summoned one of the detectives, half-heartedly instructed him: “Investigate this man’s story, Crow. See what you can find out about this — ahem — country-house and mysterious graveyard out toward Ellendale. Report back to me.” And then hurriedly went on to me, as though he couldn’t wait to get rid of me, felt I really ought to be under observation at one of the psychopathic wards, “We’ll take care of you, Mr. Ingram. You go on home now and don’t let it worry you.” He flipped the death’s-head invitation carelessly against the edge of his desk once or twice. “You’re sure this isn’t just a high-pressure circular from some life-insurance concern or other?”
I locked my jaw grimly and walked out of there without answering. A lot of good they were going to be to me, I could see that. All but telling me to my face I was screwy.
Crow, the detective, came down the steps behind me leisurely buttoning his topcoat. He said, “An interstate bus’ll leave me off close by there.” It would, but I wondered how he knew that.
He threw up his arm as one approached and signalled it to stop. It swerved in and the door folded back automatically. His eyes bored through mine, through and through like gimlets, for just a second before he swung aboard. “See you later, Brother,” he said. “You’ve earned the Penalty if anyone ever did. You’re going down — without an air-pipe.” Then he and the bus were gone-out toward Ellendale.
The sidewalk sort of swayed all around me, like jelly. It threatened to come up and hit me flat across the face, but I grabbed hold of a bus-stop stanchion and held onto it until the vertigo had passed. One of them right on the plainclothes squad! What was the sense of going back in there again? If I hadn’t been believed the first time, what chance had I of being believed now? And the way he’d gone off and left me just now showed how safe he felt on that score. The fact that he hadn’t tried to hijack me, force me to go out there with him, showed how certain they felt of laying hands on me when they were ready.
Well they hadn’t yet! And they weren’t going to, not if I had anything to say about it. Since I couldn’t get help, flight was all that remained then. Flight it would be. They couldn’t be everywhere, omnipotent; there must be places where I’d be safe from them — if only for a little while.
I drew my money out of the bank, I phoned in to the office that they could find somebody else for my job, I wasn’t coming in any more. I went and got my car out of the garage where I habitually bedded it, and had it serviced, filled and checked for a long trip. I drove around to where I lived, paid up, put my valise in the back. I drove over to Joan’s.
She looked pale, as though she’d been through something the night before, but she was up and around. My arms went around her. I said, “I’ve got to get out of town — now, before the hour’s out — but I love you, and I’ll get word to you where I am the minute I’m able to.”
She answered quietly, looking up into my face: “What need is there of that, when I’ll be right there with you — wherever it is?”
“But you don’t know what I’m up against — and I can’t tell you why, I’ll only involve you!”
“I don’t want to know. I’m coming. We can get married there, wherever it’s to be—” She turned and ran out, was back again in no time, dragging a coat after her with one hand, hugging a jewel-case and an overnight-bag to her with the other, hat perched rakishly on the back of her head. We neither of us laughed, this was no time for laughter.
“I’m ready—” She saw by my face that something had happened, even in the brief time she’d been gone. “What is it?” She dropped the things; a string of pearls rolled out of the case.
I led her to the window and silently pointed down to my car below. I’d had the tires pumped up just now at the garage; all four rims rested flatly on the asphalt now, all the air let out. “Probably emptied the tank, cut the ignition, crippled it irreparably, while they were at it,” I said in a flat voice, “We’re being watched every minute! Damn it, I shouldn’t have come here, I’m dragging you to your grave!”
“Bud,” she said, “if that’s where I’ve got to go to be with you — even that’s all right with me.”
“Well, we’re not there yet!” I muttered doggedly. “Train, then.”
She nodded eagerly. “Where to?”
“New York. And if we’re not safe even there, we can hop a boat to England — that surely ought to be out of their reach.”
“Who are they?” she wanted to know.
“As long as I don’t tell you, you’ve still got a chance. I’m not dooming you if I can help it!”
She didn’t press the point, almost — it occurred to me later — almost as though she already knew all there was to know. “I’ll call the station, find out when the next one leaves—”
I heard her go out in the hall, jiggle the phone-hook for a connection. I squatted down, stuck the pearls back in the case for her. I raised my eyes, and her feet were there on the carpet before me again.
She didn’t whimper and she didn’t break; just looked through me and beyond as I straightened up. “They mean business,” she breathed. “The phone’s gone dead.”
She moved back to the window, stood there looking out. “There’s a man been standing across the way reading a newspaper the whole time we’ve been talking in here. He seems to be waiting for a bus, but three have gone by and he’s still there. We’ll never make it.” Then suddenly her face brightened. “Wait, I have it!” But her enthusiasm seemed spurious, premeditated, to me. “Instead of leaving here together to try to get through to the station, suppose we separate — and meet later on the train. I think that’s safer.”
“What! Leave you behind alone in this place? Nothing doing.
“I’ll go first, without taking anything with me, just as though I were going shopping. I won’t go near the station. I can take an ordinary city-bus to Hamlin, that’s the first train-stop on the way to New York. You give me a head-start, show yourself plentifully at the window in case he’s one of their plants, then slip out the back way, get your ticket and get aboard. I’ll be waiting for you on the station-platform at Hamlin, you can whisk me aboard with you; they only stop there a minute.”
The way she told it, it sounded reasonable, I would be running most of the risk, getting from here to the station. I agreed. “Stay in the thick of the crowd the whole way,” I warned her. “Don’t take any chances. If anyone so much as looks at you cross-eyed, holler blue murder, pull down the whole police force on top of them.”
“I’ll handle it,” she said competently. She came close, our lips met briefly. Her eyes misted over. “Bud darling,” she murmured low, “a long life and happy one to you!” Before it had dawned on me what a strange thing to say that was, she had flitted out and the door had closed after her.
I watched narrowly from the window, ready to dash out if the man with the paper so much as made a move toward her. To get the downtown bus she had to cross to where he was and wait beside him. He took no notice of her, never raised his eyes from his paper — a paper whose pages he hadn’t turned in a full ten minutes. She stood there facing one way, he the other. They could, of course, have exchanged remarks without my being aware of it. The bus flashed by and I tensed. A minute later I relaxed again. She was gone; he was still there reading that never-ending paper.
I decided to give her a half-hour’s start. That way, the train being faster than the bus, we’d both get to Hamlin about simultaneously. I didn’t want her to have to wait there alone on the station-platform too long if it could be avoided. Meanwhile I kept returning to the window, to let the watcher see that I was still about the premises. I — Joan too for that matter — had long ago decided that he was a lookout, a plant, and then about twenty minutes after she’d gone, my whole theory collapsed like a house of cards. A girl, whom he must have been waiting for the whole time, came hurrying up to him and I could see her making excuses. He flung down his paper, looked at his wristwatch, took her roughly by the arm and they stalked off, arguing violently.
My relief was only momentary. The cut phone-wires, my crippled car, were evidence enough that unseen eyes had been, and still were watching me the whole time. Only they did it more skillfully than by means of a blatant look-out on a street corner. At least with him I had thought I knew where I was at; now I was in the dark again.
Thirty-five minutes after Joan had gone I slipped out through the back door, leaving my car still out there in front (as if that would do any good), leaving my hat perched on the top of an easy-chair with its back toward the window (as if that would, either). I followed the service-alley between the houses until I’d come out on the nearest side street, around the corner from Joan’s. It was now one in the afternoon. There wasn’t a soul in sight at the moment, in this quiet residential district, and it seemed humanly impossible that I had been sighted.
I followed a circuitous zig-zag route, down one street, across another, in the general direction of the station, taking time out at frequent intervals to scan my surroundings with the help of some polished show-case that reflected them like a mirror. For all the signs of danger that I could notice, the Friends of Death seemed very far-away, non-existent.
I slipped into the station finally through the baggage entrance on the side, and worked my way from there toward the front, keeping my eyes open as I neared the ticket-windows. The place was a beehive of activity as usual, which made it both safer and at the same time more dangerous for me. I was safer from sudden seizure with all these people around me, but it was harder to tell whether I was being watched or not.
“Two to New York,” I said guardedly to the agent. And pocketing the tickets with a wary look around me, “When’s the next one leave?”
“Half-an-hour.”
I spent the time by keeping on the move. I didn’t like the looks of the waiting-room; there were too many in it. I finally decided a telephone-booth would be the likeliest bet. Its gloom would offer me a measure of concealment, and instead of having four directions to watch at once, I’d only have one. Then, too, they were located conveniently near to the gates leading outside to the tracks. Passengers, however, were not being allowed through the latter yet.
I took a last comprehensive look around, then went straight at a booth as though I had a call to make. The two on each side of it were definitely empty; I saw that as I stepped in. I gave the bulb over me a couple of turns so it wouldn’t flash on, left the slide open on a crack so I could catch the starter’s announcement when it came, and leaned back watchfully against the far partition, eyes on the glass in front of me.
Twenty minutes went by and nothing happened. An amplifier suddenly came to life outside, and the starter’s voice thundered through it. “New York Express. Track Four. Leaving in ten minutes. First stop Hamlin—”
And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.
I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It must, it must be a wrong number, somebody wanted the Information Booth or—! It must have been audible outside, with all I had the slide partly closed. One of the redcaps passing by turned, looked over, then started coming across toward where I was. To get rid of him I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear.
“You’d better come out now, time’s up,” a flat, deadly voice said. “They’re calling your train, but you’re not getting on that one-or any other.”
“Wh— where are talking from?”
“The next booth to yours,” the voice jeered. “You forgot the glass inserts only reach halfway down.”
The connection broke and a man’s looming figure was shadowing the glass in front of my eyes, before I could even get the receiver back on the hook. I dropped it full-length, tensed my right arm to pound it through his face as soon as I shoved the glass aside. He had a revolver-bore for a top vest-button, trained on me. Two more had shown up behind him, from which direction I hadn’t noticed. It was very dark in the booth now, their collective silhouettes shut out all the daylight. The station and all its friendly bustle was blotted out, had receded into the far background, a thousand miles away for all the help it could give me. I slapped the glass wearily aside, came slowly out.
One of them flashed a badge — maybe Crow had loaned him his for the occasion. “You’re being arrested for putting slugs in that phone. It won’t do any good to raise your voice and shriek for help, try to tell people different. But suit yourself.”
I knew that as well as he; heads turned to stare after us by the dozens as they started with me in their midst through the station’s main-level. But not one in all that crowd would have dared interfere with what they mistook for a legitimate arrest in the line of duty. The one with the badge kept it conspicuously tilted in his upturned palm, at sight of which the frozen onlookers slowly parted, made way for us through their midst. I was being led to my doom in full view of scores of people.
I tried twice to dig my feet in when we came to ridges in the level of the terraced marble floor, but the point of the gun at the base of my spine removed the impediment each time, I was so used to not wanting to die. Then slowly this determination came to me: “I’m going to force them to shoot me, before they get me into the car or whatever it is they’re taking me to. It’s my only way out, cheat death by death. I’m to be buried agonizingly alive, anyway; I’ll compel them to end it here instead, by that gun. That clean, friendly gun. But not just shoot me, shoot me dead, otherwise—” A violent wrench backwards would do it, compressing the gun into its holder’s body, discharging it automatically into me. “Poor Joan,” I thought, “left waiting on the Hamlin station-platform — for all eternity.” But that didn’t alter my determination any.
The voice of the train-dispatcher, loudspeaker and all, was dwindling behind us. “New York Express, Track Four, leaves in five more min—”
Sunlight suddenly struck down at us from outside the station portico, between the huge two-story high columns, and down below at the distant bottom of the long terraced steps there was one of those black touring-cars standing waiting. “Now!” I thought, and tensed, ready to rear backward into the gun so that it would explode into my vitals.
A Western Union messenger in typical olive-green was running up the sloping steps straight toward my captors, arm extended. Not a boy though, a grown man. One of them disguised, I knew, even as I looked at him. “Urgent!” he panted, and thrust a message into the hand of the one with the badge. I let myself relax again in their hands, postponing for a moment the forcing of death into my own body, while I waited to see what this was.
He read it through once, then quickly whispered it aloud a second time to the other two — or part of it, anyway. “Penalty cancelled, give ex-Brother Bud safe-conduct to New York on promise never to return. Renewed oath of eternal silence on his part accepted. Interment ceremonies will take place as planned—” He pointed with his finger to the rest without repeating it aloud, that’s how I knew there was more.
The messenger had already hurried down again to where the car was, and darted behind it. A motorcycle suddenly shot out from the other side of it and racketed off, trailing little puff-balls of blue gas-smoke. A moment later the three with me, scattered like startled buzzards cheated of their prey, had followed him down, at different angles that converged toward the car. I found myself standing there alone at the top of the station-steps, a lone figure dwarfed by the monolithic columns.
I reeled, turned and started headlong through the long reaches of the station behind me, bent over like a marathon runner reaching for the guerdon. “Board! Board!” was sounding faintly somewhere in the distance. I could see them pulling the adjustable exit-gates closed ahead of me. I held one arm straight up in the air, and they saw me coming and left a little opening for me, enough for one person to dive through.
The train was gathering speed when I lurched down to track level, but I caught the handrail of the last vestibule of the last car just before it cleared the concrete runway beside the tracks. A conductor dragged me in bodily and I fell in a huddle at his feet.
“You last-minute passengers!” I heard him grumbling, “you’d think your life depended on it—”
I lay there heaving, flat on my back like a fish out of water, looking up at him. “It did,” I managed to get out.
I was leaning far out from the bottom vestibule-step at nearly a 45-degree angle, holding on with one hand, when the Hamlin station-platform swept into sight forty minutes later. I could see the whole boat-shaped “pier” from end to end.
There was something wrong; she wasn’t on it. Nobody was on it, only a pair of lounging darkies, backs against the station-wall. The big painted sign floated up, came to a halt almost before my eyes: “HAMLIN.” She’d said Hamlin; what had happened, what had gone wrong? It had to be Hamlin; there wasn’t any other stop until tomorrow morning, states away!
I jumped down, went skidding into the little stuffy two-by-four waiting-room. Nobody in it. I dashed for the ticket-window, grabbed the bars with both hands, all but shook them. “A girl — blue eyes, blonde hair, brown coat — where is she, where’d she go? Haven’t you seen anyone like that around here?”
“Nope, nobody been around here all afternoon, ain’t sold a ticket nor even had an inquiry—”
“The bus from the city — did it get here yet?”
“Ten full minutes ago. It’s out there in back of the station right now.”
I hurled through the opposite door like something demented. The locomotive-bell was tolling dismally, almost like a funeral knell. I collared the bus-driver despairingly.
“Nope, didn’t bring any young women out at all on my last run. I’d know; I like young women.”
“And no one like that got on, at the downtown city-terminal?”
“Nope, no blondes. I’d know, I like blondes.”
The wheels were already starting to click warningly over the rail-intersections as the train glided into motion; I could hear them around on the other side of the station from where I was. Half-crazed, I ducked inside again. The agent belatedly remembered something, called me over as I stood there dazedly looking all around me. “Say, by the way, your name Ingram? Forgot to tell you, special messenger brought this out awhile back, asked me to deliver it to the New York train.”
I snatched at it. It was in her handwriting! I tore it open, my head swivelled crazily from left to right as my eyes raced along the writing.
I didn’t take the bus to Hamlin after all, but don’t worry. Go on to New York and wait there for me instead. And think of me often, and pray for me sometimes, and above all keep your pledge of silence.
Joan
She’d found out! was the first thunderbolt that struck me. And the second was a dynamite-blast that split me from head to foot. She was in their hands! That gruesome message that had saved me at the station came back to me word for word, and I knew now what it meant and what the part was that they’d kept from me. “Penalty cancelled. Give Brother Bud safe-conduct. Renewed oath on his part accepted—” But I hadn’t made one. She must have promised them that on my behalf. “Interment will take place as planned—” Substitute accepted!
And that substitute was Joan. She’d taken my place. She’d gone to them and made a bargain with them. Saved me, at the cost of her own life.
I don’t remember how I got back to the city. Maybe I thrust all the money I had on me at someone and borrowed their car. Maybe I just stole one left unguarded on the street with the key in it. I don’t remember where I got the gun either. I must have gone back to that same pawnshop I’d already been to once, as soon as I got in.
When things came back into focus, I was already on the porch of that boarded-up house at Ellendale, battering my body apart against the doorcasing. I broke in finally by jumping from a tree to the porch-shed and kicking in one of the upper-story windows, less stoutly boarded.
I was too late. The silence told me that as soon as I stood within the room, and the last tinklings of shattered glass had died down around me. They weren’t here. They’d gone. There wasn’t a soul in the place! But there were signs, when I crept down the stairs gun in hand, that they’d been there. The downstairs rooms were heavy with the thickly cloying scent of fresh flowers, ferns and bits of leaf were scattered about the floor. Folding camp chairs were still arranged in orderly rows, as though a funeral service had been conducted. Facing them stood tapers thick as a man’s wrist, barely cool at the top, the charred odor of their gutted wicks still clinging to them. And in a closet when I looked I found her coat — Joan’s — her hat, her dress, her little pitiful strapped sandals standing empty side by side! I crushed them to me, dropped them, ran out of there crazed, and broke into the adjacent graveyard, but there were no signs that she’d been taken there. No freshly-filled in grave, no mound without its sprouting grass. I’d heard them say they had others. It had grown dark long ago, and it must be over by now. But how could I stop trying, even though it were too late?
Afterwards, along the state highway, I found a couple sleeping overnight in a trailer by the roadside who told me a hearse had passed them on its way to the city, followed by a number of limousines, a full two hours earlier. They’d thought it was a strange hour for a funeral. They’d also thought the procession was going faster than seemed decent. And after an empty gin bottle had been tossed out of one of the cars, they were not likely to forget the incident.
I lost the trail at the city-limits, no one had seen them beyond there, the night and the darkness had swallowed them up. I’ve been looking ever since. I’ve already broken into two, and I was in the third one when you stopped me — but no sign of her. She’s in some city graveyard at this very minute, still breathing, threshing her life away in smothering darkness, while you’re holding me here, wasting precious time. Kill me, then, kill me and have it over with-or else help me find her, but don’t let me suffer like this!
The captain took his hand away from before his eyes, stopped pinching the bridge of his nose with it. A white mark was left there between his eyes. “This is awful,” he breathed. “I almost wish I hadn’t heard that story. How could it be anything else but true? It’s too farfetched, too unbelievable.”
Suddenly, like a wireless-set that comes to life, crackling, emitting blue sparks, he was sending out staccato orders. “For corroborating evidence we have her note to you sent to Hamlin station; we have her clothing at the Ellendale house, and undoubtedly that ledger of membership you first signed, along with God-knows what else! You two men get out there quick with a battery of police-photographers and take pictures of those camp chairs, tapers, everything just as you find it. And don’t forget the graveyard. I want every one of those graves broken open as fast as you can swing picks. I’ll send the necessary exhumation-permits after you, but don’t wait for them! Those grounds are full of living beings!”
“Joan— Joan—” Bud Ingram whimpered as the door crashed after them.
The captain nodded tersely, without even having time enough to be sympathetic. “Now we stop thinking like policemen and think like human beings for this once, departmental regulations to the contrary,” he promised. He spoke quietly into his desk-phone. “Give me Mercer at Poplar Street And then, “This man Crow of yours... He’s off-duty right now, you say?”
“He’s at the wake, he’s beyond your reach,” Ingram moaned. “He won’t report back until—”
“Sh!” the captain silenced him. “He may be one of them, but he’s a policeman along with it.” He said to Mercer, “I want you to send out a short-wave, asking him to call in to you at his precinct-house at once. And when he does, I want you to keep him on the wire, I want that line kept open until his call has been traced! That man must not get off until I’ve found out where he’s talking from and had a chance to get there, and I’ll hold you responsible, Mercer. Is that clear? It’s a matter of life and death. You can make whatever case he’s on at present the excuse. I’ll be waiting to start out from here the minute I hear from you.” And then, into the desk-transmitter: “I want an emergency raiding-party made up at once, two cars, everyone you can spare. I want shovels, spades and picks, plenty of them. I want a third car, with an inhalator-squad, oxygen-tent and the whole works. Yeah, motorcycle escort — and give orders ahead: No sirens, no lights.”
Ingram said, “The short-wave mayn’t reach him — Crow. And if it does, he may not answer it, pretend he didn’t get it.”
“He’s got his car,” the captain said, “and he’s still a policeman, no matter what else he is.” He held the door open. “There it goes out.” A set outside in one of the other rooms throbbed: “Lawrence Crow, detective first grade. Lawrence Crow, detective first grade. Ring up Mercer at your precinct-house immediately. Ring up Mercer—”
Ingram leaned against the door in silent prayer. “May his sense of duty be stronger than his caution!”
The captain was buttoning on a coat, feeling for the revolver at his hip.
“It’s no use, she’s dead already,” Ingram said. “It’s one in the morning, seven hours have gone by—”
The desk-phone buzzed ominously, just once. “Hold him!” was all the captain rasped into it, and thrust Ingram out ahead of him. “He’s calling in — get out there to the car!”
And as the car-door cracked shut after them outside the building, he gave a terse: “All-night drugstore, Main on the 700-block!” They started off like a procession of swift silent black shadows, the only sound of their going the muffled pounding of motorcycles around and ahead of them.
Crow’s car was standing there outside the lighted place as they swept up, and he was still inside. Two of them jumped in, hurried him out between them. The captain stood facing him.
“Your badge,” he said. “You’re under arrest. Where was she taken, this girl, Joan Blame? Where is she now?”
“I don’t know who she is,” he said.
The captain drew his gun. “Answer me or I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
Ingram said hopelessly, “He’s not afraid of death.”
“No, I’m not,” Crow answered quietly.
“He’ll be afraid of pain, then!” the captain said. “Take him back inside. You two come with me. The rest of you keep out, understand?”
The glass door flashed open again after they’d gone in and the drugstore night clerk was thrust out on the sidewalk, looking frightened. A full-length shade was suddenly drawn down behind him.
Ingram stayed in the car, head clasped in his arms, bowed over his lap. A muffled scream sounded somewhere near at hand in the utter stillness. The door suddenly flew open and the captain came running out alone. He was stripping off a rubber glove; the reek of some strong acid reached those in the car. Through the open door behind him came the sound of a man sobbing brokenly like a little child, a man in pain.
“Inhalator-squad follow my car,” the captain snapped. “Greenwood Park, main driveway. The rest of you go to a large house standing in the middle of its own grounds over on the South Side near Valley Road. Surround it and arrest every man and woman you find in it.”
They separated; the captain’s and Ingram’s car fled silently westward along the night bound boulevard toward the immense public park on that side of the city.
Trees, lawns, meadows, black under the starlight, suddenly swept around them, and to the left there was the faint coruscation of a body of water. A bagpipe of brakes and a puff of burnt-rubber stench and they had skidded to a halt.
“Lights!” ordered the captain, stumbling out. “Train the heads after us — and bring those tools and the oxygen-tanks!” The sward bleached vividly green as the two cars backed sideways into position. It was suddenly full of scattered, moiling men, trampling about, heads down like bloodhounds.
The one farthest afield shouted: “Here’s a patch without grass!”
They came running from all directions, contracted into a knot around him.
“That’s it — see the oblong, see the darker color from the freshly-upturned—!” Coats flew up into the air like waving banners, a shovel bit in, another, another. But Ingram was at it with his raw, bared hands again, like a mole, pleading, “Be careful! Oh be careful, men! This is my girl!”
“Now keep your heads,” the captain warned. “Just a minute more. Keep him back, he’s getting in their way.”
A hollow sound, a Phuff! echoed from the inch of protruding pipe, and the man testing it, flat on his stomach, lifted his face, said, “It’s partly open all the way down.”
The earth parted like a wave across the top of it, and they were lifting it, and they were prying at the lid, gently, carefully, no blows. “Now, bring up the tanks — quick!” the captain said, and to no one in particular, “What a night!” They were still holding Ingram back by main force, and then suddenly as the lid came off, they didn’t have to hold him any more.
She was in a bridal gown, and she was beautiful, even as still and as marble-white as she was, when they lifted the disarranged veil — when they gently drew aside the protecting arm she’d thrown before her eyes. Then she was hidden from Ingram by their backs.
Suddenly the police-doctor straightened up. “Take that tube away. This girl doesn’t need oxygen — there’s nothing the matter with her breathing, or her heart-action. She needs restoratives, she’s in a dead faint from fright, that’s all!”
Instantly they were all busy at once, chafing her hands and arms, clumsily yet gently slapping her face, holding ammonia to her nose. With the fluttering of her eyelids came a shriek of unutterable terror, as though it had been waiting in her throat all this time to be released.
“Lift her out of that thing, quick, before she sees it,” the captain whispered.
Back raced the cars, with the girl that had come up out of her grave — and beside her, holding her close, a man who had been healed of all his fears, cured-even as the Friends of Death had promised.
“And each time I’d come to, I’d go right off again,” she whispered huskily.
“That probably saved you,” the doctor on the other side of her said, “lying still. You’ll be all right, you’ve had a bad fright, that’s all.”
Bud Ingram held her close, her head upon his shoulder, eyes unafraid staring straight ahead now.
“I never knew there could be such a love in all this world,” he murmured.
She smiled a feeble little smile. “Look in my heart sometime — and see,” she said.
There were sensational disclosures the next day, when the Friends of Death appeared in court. A number of leading citizens were among them — men and women whom the weird society was draining of their wealth. Others, there were, who claimed they had been brought back from the grave — and, indeed, there were doctor’s certificates and burial permits to testify to the truth of this. Only later, at the trial of the leaders of the cult, did the whole story come to light. The people who had “died” and been buried were those chosen by the leaders for their reputations for honesty and reliability. They were then slowly poisoned by a member planted in their household by the society for this purpose — sometimes it was a servant, sometimes a member of the person’s own family. But the poison was not fatal. It induced a state of partially suspended organic functions which a cursory medical examination might diagnose as death, the rest was handled by doctors and undertakers — even civil employees — who were members of the “Friends.” Then the victim was resuscitated, persuaded he had been restored to life by the secret processes of the society, and initiated as a member. His testimony, after that, was responsible for gaining many new members, without the dangerous necessity of “killing” and reviving more than the first few. And the “penalties” inflicted upon recalcitrant members made those remaining, participants in capital crime — and made the society’s hold on them absolute.
But the greatest hold of all — the one which made the vast majority of the members rejoice in their bondage, and turn into rabid fiends at the least suspicion of disloyalty in the organization — was the infinitely comforting knowledge that no longer need they fear death.
And, in the words of the state prosecutor, most of them had been punished sufficiently for their sins in the terrible awakening to the realization that they were not immortals — and that somewhere, sometime, their graves awaited them...