The Black Hush

CHAPTER XXI. THE MAN WHO FEARED

HARRY VINCENT was standing beside the living room window of a comfortable apartment. Before him, stretched awkwardly in an easy chair, was the man whom he had come to see — Don Chalvers.

It was nearing midnight. Harry Vincent, deciding that it would be unwise to sound out Chalvers on his first visit, resolved to forgo a discussion that might lead to some word regarding Roland Furness.

Chalvers seemed too restless; perhaps it was because of his carousing on the preceding night. Harry noted that the man was weary.

“Think I’ll be leaving you,” remarked Harry, as he stepped away from the window. “When can we get together again? Tomorrow night?”

“Busy tomorrow night,” responded Chalvers. “But don’t go yet, Vincent. Don’t go!”

There was a pleading note in the final tone. Harry could not withhold a sharp look toward his companion.

He noticed that Chalvers was pale.

“What’s the matter? ” questioned Harry. “You don’t look well, Chalvers.”

“I don’t feel well,” the man complained. “I haven’t been feeling well. Wait. If you’re leaving, I’ll go downstairs with you, and do a turn around the block.”

Harry agreed.

THE pair left the apartment and descended by the automatic elevator, six stories to the street. As they strolled along together, Chalvers gripped Harry’s arm in the darkness.

“Vincent,” he said suddenly. “Come back up to my apartment, will you? I want to talk to you. I have to talk to you. I’m worried — terribly worried — and I must talk to someone.”

Harry glanced at his watch. They were standing by the light of a drugstore. After the short consideration, Harry expressed willingness to return to the apartment.

“I’ll have to make a telephone call,” he remarked. “There may be a message for me at the hotel. I’ll go right here in the drugstore.”

“Call from the apartment—”

Chalvers made the statement too late. Harry had already reached the door. Chalvers followed him and watched him enter a booth. While the engineer was buying some cigarettes, Harry made a quick call to Burbank.

“Vincent reporting,” he announced. “Chalvers may be going to talk. I’m going back to his apartment. We’re in the drugstore now.”

“All well?” queried Burbank.

“Absolutely,” returned Harry. “No possible chance of danger. I’ll report through Mann tomorrow morning unless I learn something of great consequence.”

With this statement, Harry concluded his call and joined Chalvers by the door of the drugstore. Together, they strolled back and ascended in the elevator.

Chalvers was taciturn now; Harry, however, knew that the man was holding his conversation until they reached the living room.

Back in the apartment, Chalvers flung his hat upon a table. Restlessly, he drew Harry to a chair and began to express his troubles in a breathless voice. All the pent-up worry of the man seemed to break loose at once in a flood of emotion.

“Vincent,” confided Chalvers, “I’m terribly afraid. Don’t ask me whom I fear. It’s what I fear that counts. I’m afraid for my life. Maybe you can help me.”

“Tell me the trouble.”

“It all goes back to when I was in college” — Chalvers was speaking less hastily, while Harry listened without betraying undue interest — “and it involves a friend of mine. My best friend, he was, but he’s dead now. Poor Roland!”

“Roland?”

“Yes. Roland Furness. Do you remember, Vincent, that two men were murdered not long ago at the Olympia Hotel? Two electrical engineers — the newspapers were filled with accounts of the crime.”

“I think I did read something of the sort.”

Don Chalvers rubbed his hands in worried fashion. He stared toward Harry, and his face displayed an expression that betokened a nervous, hunted man. Harry Vincent remained serene. He was sure that he was about to gain clues that would be of value to The Shadow.

“When I was in college,” confided Chalvers, “Roland Furness was my roommate. He and I used to indulge in unusual experiments. We made a discovery, Vincent — a wonderful discovery. I… I don’t need to go into the details now. But it was more than a discovery; it was an invention. It was a ray—”

Chalvers paused and looked about him as though the very mention of the fact might cause him trouble.

He licked his lips nervously, then resumed his discourse.

“A ray,” he explained, “that cast blackness. It played hob with electrical equipment when we tried it out. We kept on, though, and we got the bounce from college. We never gave the details — simply took the expulsion and said nothing.

“Furness didn’t do much experimenting after that. He was too busy getting his degree at the new college, where we graduated. But I kept on fooling with the idea. Had a model at my home up in the Catskills. It’s still there; but—”

Chalvers paused and clawed at the arm of his chair. He looked toward the door, then leaped from his seat and went over to turn the knob and peer out into the hall. Satisfied, he rejoined Harry.

“Somebody has learned the secret,” he whispered. “Someone has perfected an apparatus like ours. Whoever has it is using it for crime. When Furness was killed, the Olympia Hotel was plunged into darkness. Furness was killed because he knew about the ray — because he might have told!

“I am the only other one who knows. They haven’t found me yet, Vincent. I’m practically in hiding here. I’m afraid to tell the police. I don’t want it to be known that I’m in New York.

“Look, Vincent” — Chalvers pointed to the window — “and see those twinkling lights. The ray could put them out! It could enter here and grip you and me. It throws a hush, too, Vincent — a black hush—”

As Chalvers pronounced the words, every light in the room went out. Still staring toward the window, Harry Vincent found his vision completely blotted. The twinkling flashes of the city were gone. A blanketing blindness had arrived; with it, a stifling pall that made The Shadow’s agent utter an inarticulate gasp.

The suddenness of the happening seemed to paralyze Harry Vincent. He was fixed in his chair, unable to understand this terrible stroke of darkness. Weird silence hung like a shroud. The black hush had fallen.

Grimly, Harry regained his nerve. He started to rise from his chair. But before he reached his feet, hands clutched at his arms. The surge of a powerful body hurled him back. The chair overturned, and Harry sprawled upon the floor. Something struck him underneath the chin.

Blackness surged through Harry Vincent’s brain as he succumbed to the attack delivered by men from the dark!