The Black Mask (Vol. 2, No. 2 — November 1920)

I

Chicken-Foot Darragh, with a skinful of cheap Italian red wine, lurched, stiff-armed, against the basement grille. The warped treads of the ancient staircase creaked under the pressure of a careful footfall—then, at what he saw, outlined in the red circle of the single gas-jet, Darragh’s loose lips sagged open—stark, elemental fear strangled the outcry in his throat—his blunt finger-nails met like talons, hooked into the basement gate.

A moment he stood thus, while above him, like a face without a body, there floated against a black pool of darkness, the dreadful head, like, in its semblance, to nothing animal or human save in the broad, porcine snout.

For a moment it held against the red glimmer of the gas which, in a debased aureole, seemed to pale to a flat, toneless shading of unholy fire. Then it passed, like the brief smoke of a windblown torch.

Darragh knew nothing of hippogrifs, of leprechauns; he might have called it a gargoyle, a djinn, had he known them by their names. Nor was he familiar with Anubis, the dog-faced deity of the Egyptians—but the head which he had beheld was kin to none of these...

Now, spread-eagled against the grating, he fell suddenly sick, the fumes of the cheap liquor he had drunk mounting in a swift, dizzying surge against his brain. Stumbling, reeling, clawing desperately outward, behind him the memory of the Thing which he had seen, he gained the street, and, after a headlong flight of several blocks, a park bench.

But his last conscious impression, ere he sank into the stupor which would last until well into the next day’s noon, was of a face which seemed to float, head-high, at the height of a tall man, like a face without a body—a face unspeakable, inhuman, and yet—real—in its terrifying semblance, half-dog, half-pig—whole horror. And with it, too, ere he sank like a stone into the sea-green silence of oblivion, there persisted in his nostrils a savor, a stench, an acrid, faint tang, as though the very air itself had been tainted by the passage of that nameless terror.

II

Detective Sergeant Sinsabaugh, off duty at two A. M., went up the steps of the Varick Street tenement wherein he kept bachelor quarters. No. 32 was a malodorous building in a neighborhood grim and chancy enough of its kind. On one side there loomed the squat bulk of a stable; on the other the towering outline of a chemical plant.

Sinsabaugh, however, was thinking that it was his last night as a bachelor, and, consequently, his last night in No. 32. For tomorrow he would be married... his last night...

But tonight, despite the joyance of his mood, there was something in the air—he felt it as a heaviness, a deadness, a breathless, weighty hush like the tension before storm. But the August evening was close and sultry.

And yet, as he mounted the worn steps, into his mind’s eye, unbidden, there came a face: writhen, snarling, bestial, vengeful—the face of Duster Joe Masterman, gang leader and all-round crook, as he had last seen it on the day that Masterman had gone “up the river” to begin his ten-year term for loft burglary.

It had been Sinsabaugh’s testimony which had convicted the gangster, and Masterman had sworn to “get” him. “You damn double-crossing dick,” Masterman had promised, “I’ll get you—and it’ll take me just ten years and a day — and then—”

But others had threatened Sinsabaugh—there was nothing novel in it — it was just a part of the day’s work — the vicious hatred of an underworld for all that typified the Law—an hereditary and accustomed hatred accepted and understood.

Today, however, Duster Joe was out; no doubt he was even now showing himself in the haunts he had aforetime favored; Gaspipe Looie’s, doubtless, for one. It may have been habit that caused the policeman to feel for his service pistol as he paused in the entrance of the hallway. But as he reached behind him his groping fingers suddenly became rigid—a faint, hissing breath sounded from his lips as he felt his arm caught and held abruptly from behind.

Sinsabaugh pivoted as a boxer ducks under his adversary’s lead, whirling sidewise to face—the empty street. Then he grinned foolishly, clucked with his tongue, and released his coat-sleeve where it had caught in the ornamental ironwork of the banister.

But he hesitated on the threshold, glancing upward where, above the black well of the stairway, there hung a faint pinpoint of gas.

Sinsabaugh was not imaginative, but — it was his last night as a bachelor — almost it seemed as if that touch upon his coat-sleeve had been a warning, a message, a summons laid upon him by the urgence of invisible fingers... nonsense!

But the murky air continued heavy, lifeless—the unwinking eye of the gaslight somehow sinister, malevolent. As has been said, Sinsabaugh was not imaginative, but now, like a swimmer breasting a tide of impenetrable and soundless flood, he mounted with slow steps the narrow stair. And about him as he went forward the darkness closed in like a wall, sinister, threatening, above and beyond him that pinpoint of gas, like an evil star now curiously bluish, flat, unreal as a flickering, painted flame.

Sinsabaugh loosened his pistol in its arm-holster, searching the thick-piled shadows massed beyond the fell circle of that brooding beacon. He drew his Colt. If Masterman awaited him somewhere upon that stair or upon the landing above, he would be ready for him. Hugging the wall, for the more silent footing there afforded, the policeman, one hand before him, feeling along the plaster, the other holding his gun, went upward steadily in the whispering gloom, eyes strained against the blackness, ears attuned to the throbbing silence, like the beating of a heart.

The gas offered no illumination beyond its flat nimbus of pale flame, but it seemed to Sinsabaugh that if he could see nothing, there yet lingered in that atmosphere an aura, a something felt yet unperceived. Something or someone had been before him on that stairway, if he or It had passed like the passing of a candle’s breath in the malodorous dark.

At the stairhead he crouched, swung up his arm, and the bright lance of his pocket flash clove the darkness in a dazzling arc to right and left. But there was nothing.

He halted at the door of his chambers—shrugged—inserted the key in the lock. The heavy, sound-proof door swung wide—r-then, following his entrance, slammed shut behind him with a muffled clang.

There came a blow at the base of his brain like the impact of a mighty hand — he staggered, stumbled, fell prone into a struggling, choking hell which took him by the throat, a rising tide engulfing him with an acrid and intolerable stench. His gun barked, once, at the convulsive pressure of his finger. But it was a dead man who fired the shot.

III

Officer Williamson, passing on his beat through Varick Street, halted a moment before No. 32, a puzzled look on his broad, good-humored countenance, For a brief instant, head in air, he sniffed upward, like a pointer—then, his face gray, he reeled abruptly against an area gate, his hand at his throat, coughing like a man in a fit.

His side-partner, turning the corner, as it chanced, at the sight of Williamson doubled over the area-gate, came on at a run, unslinging his pistol.

“What’s up, Jack?” he called; then he, too, halted in mid-career, falling to a stiff-legged walk, as an acrid stench smote him in the face in a blinding, overpowering flood. With his last remaining glimmer of sense his fist crashed into the glass of a fire-box — then he slumped into oblivion. After a moment cries echoed down the street, followed by the clang and rattle of the patrol. Men came up at a run, halted, turned back—then, out of the confusion there arose the cry of “Gas!”

But it was not until the arrival of the Rescue Squad that some order was obtained out of the chaos, when, following the arrival of the police and fire companies, the sufferers were treated with a vaporized solution of milk of magnesia,[1] and Williamson and his partner removed to the nearest hospital.

But as for Detective Sergeant Sinsabaugh—he was beyond their ministrations.

Gunson, Sinsabaugh’s partner and friend, was stubborn in his belief that it was not altogether an accident which had been responsible for the death of Sinsabaugh.

“It was an accident, all right—but it was planned, I tell you, Chief,” he was insisting to Inspector Murchison, his immediate superior.

“If you’re thinking of Masterman; Dave, you’re all wrong, boy,” replied Old Dan. “He’s not in on this? — how could he be? Anyway, you know what it was—th’ gas-tank exploded in Thompson’s warehouse next door, and—”

“Well—that’s all right, Chief, but how do you account for the fact—”

“—That it got into Sinsabaugh’s rooms first? Why — that it smashed through the party wall—it is only, a few inches thick there, you know—and Sinsabaugh’s rooms were right up against it.”

“Sure, Inspector—but this is what I believe—” Gunson leaned forward earnestly, tapping his knee with a blunt forefinger. “I believe that someone — Masterman, for a good guess — made that hole in the wall, pushed the tank through, and then smashed it open in Sinsabaugh’s rooms, just a little while before poor Jim came home—to die.” He paused. “Masterman knew all about tanks and gas—he was an expert—before he turned yegg—an oxy-acetylene blowpipe would have done it—easy — for him.”

The inspector grunted.

“That’s all very well, Dave,” he made answer, “but there’s one little thing you’ve overlooked—there’s one flaw in your argument: we’ll suppose Masterman, or whoever it was got into the warehouse—breached the wall—rolled in the tank—and let out the gas with a blowpipe. Well and good. Then, how do you account for the fact that the murderer—if there was a murderer — was not himself gassed? You know what chlorine is, Dave — no—it was just an accident—that’s all there is to it.” Gunson’s jaw set stubbornly. “I can’t answer that, Inspector,” he said — “I’m not going to try—just now—but as sure as—as Duster Joe Masterman came out of stir when his time was up — Jim Sinsabaugh was murdered—and you can’t make me believe anything else.”

He rose, his face grim with purpose. “You’ll give me a week—working alone?” he questioned. “That’s all I’ll ask—a week—no more.”

By way of answer the grizzled inspector bowed his head. Sinsabaugh had been one of his best men. He liked Gunson.

“Go to it, my boy,” he said heavily, “and—good luck.”

Gunson took his leave. But there was one thing he had neglected to mention to Inspector Murchison; a small thing, if you will—but a clue which had furnished him with an idea—a something he had observed at the house on Varick Street on the day of the explosion as the firemen had issued from that house of death. This he had kept to himself, but time was precious. A day might be too little—or too much.

IV

Chicken-Foot Darragh reclined against the bar at Gaspipe Looie’s. At Looie’s you can still purchase a pretty fair quality of hooch for four bits even now, and the snowbird brigade makes it a headquarters, too.

Darragh, his head wagging foolishly, his loose lips mouthing his words, retailed a story for the twentieth time, half to himself, half to a saturnine individual with a predatory nose and a straight gash for a mouth who had for some reason, bought Darragh a drink.

“Here’s luck,” said Darragh. “Well — as I was sayin’... I seen this ghost, or whatever it was, as I was goin’ in th’ basement door. It looked like—it looked like—”

He paused—shivered—drained his glass.

“Yes?” prompted his new friend. “Like what, bo?”

He spoke in a friendly tone, yet like velvet over steel, but if Darragh could have seen his face—the look in the deep-set, implacable eyes—his whistling breath might have ended in a sudden gasp.

But he did not.

“Why—why—like a dog—a pig, Mister,” he replied. “I seen it—sure—but—I dunno.”

His head wagged, his eyes glassy with his potations. He fumbled again with his loose lips, muttering inarticulately. The stranger cleared his throat — then he spoke in a carrying voice!

“You had ’em sure, bo,” he asserted. “Th’ jimmies — you’ll be seeing pink monkeys and green elephants next if you don’t keep your feet down—I’ll say so.”

He glanced about the room. “Guess you’re right, mister,” mumbled the derelict, without offence. “I had ’em bad, sure enough.” And then, with an abrupt, drunken stubbornness: “ ’Twuz Dago red wine—I ain’t never seen things with Dago red wine, Mister—it was there... I seen’ it—it moved—right under th’ gas—it moved... sure... well—g’night—g’night.”

He turned, swayed, lurched out into the night, a grotesque, shambling figure, misshapen, formless as the long, wavering shadow which fled ahead, cast by the sputtering arc at the corner. And behind him, behind, he did not see that other Shadow, quick, stealthy, furtive, for all of its bulk—a shadow with predatory eyes and a traplike mouth, moving like a great, grim cat in the darkness...

The shadow was nearer now, and a little wind, pattering in the dust like the feet of an invisible army of the dead, stole forward on the wings of the night, whispering, ending with a quick shriek and a sudden hush. A storm was brewing in the west...

Like figures in a dream, pursuer and pursued entered a broad belt of darkness like a deep well of night. The clump-clump of the derelict’s heavy brogans echoed for a moment across the cobbles at the intersection of an alley, beyond it the revealing radiance of a street lamp.

He saw it—and that was all. For, while the brooding blackness held there came the snick of steel—a choked gurgle—a muffled cry, like the quick squeak of a mouse in the wainscot—a thud... silence.

Chicken-Foot Darragh had passed on — into the dark.

V

Gunson, earlier in the evening, had paused a moment in his search for Masterman before the window of a store which had caused him to suck in his breath in the sheer surprise of a discovery which he was certain dovetailed with the other clue which he had turned up at No. 32. He had heard the story of Darragh at second-hand, and now, as he stared through the dingy pane of the old curiosity shop a sudden inspiration took him by the throat.

Why—why—of course—that was it — it had to be—for Gunson was confident that he had seen Darragh’s “ghost,” or, at any rate, his counterfeit presentment, leering at him through the dirt-encrusted pane. But a hurried questioning of the proprietor, a Spanish Jew with a fondness for gesticulation in inverse ratio to his almost unintelligible speech, gave him pause—but only for a moment. Gunson, however, made a rather peculiar purchase, which he bestowed carefully in an inner pocket.

Masterman, after all, need not have entered that shop; in the second place he was far too shrewd a malefactor for that. But the suggestion remained, fantastic, incredible as he owned it to himself to be, and Gunson, at the corner of the street had had it corroborated, so to speak, when a wizened nondescript rose up almost at his elbow.

“Darragh — Chicken-Foot — he’s at Gaspipe’s—he said t’ tell youse he’d wait.”

And Gunson, without more ado had sought the derelict and the saloon of Gaspipe Looie, perhaps five minutes after the departure of the vagrant, and B-his shadow.

Looie knew nothing—of course. That was to be expected. Gunson could spare no time to tighten the thumbscrews of his inquisition. It was going on for eleven. He hurried.

“That — rumhound — Darragh been here lately, Looie?” he had asked.

For a moment as he faced the swart Syracusan behind his stained and battered bar Gunson was conscious of a movement at his back: a ripple, an eddy, a swift, sudden current of electric tension. In the stained and spotted mirror he could see but little, but at Looie’s reply of “Naw—theesa bum — he go—eight-nine o’clock,” and a look which he fancied that he saw in the sullen, furtive eyes of the saloonkeeper, Gunson whirled on his heel in a lightning pivot.

They came at him in a headlong rush, silent, no guns—knives out, life-preservers—an evil ring of dark faces and clutching hands... Something hissed in a thin-drawn whine at the level of his cheek—the knife clanged, quivering, in the mahogany. Voices rose, bestial, snarling: “Croak him... croak th’ bull!” A slungshot at the end of a swart, hairy arm, drove over his shoulder.

Gunson had been trained up from the streets, the alleys. To a habit of lightning decision was added the perfect coordination of muscles steel-hard and willow-withed. Now he multiplied himself—the fighting flame of his Norse forebears rising to a Baresark fury at the thought that these were the paid hirelings, doubtless, of the man who, he was now convinced, had murdered Sinsabaugh. His fist, behind it the weight of two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, crashed into a grinning face. The face was blotted out.

Hemmed in as he was, there was no time for gunplay—it was fist and elbow against knife and club in a ferocious free-for-all of which the issue could not be long in doubt.

He went to one knee under the glancing impact of a sandbag, heaved upward, shook his head as a pugilist rallies his whirling wits—and then, muscle and mind and body, hurled himself in one furious, headlong dive into and through that vicious ring of steel. The spank of a clean-cut blow was followed by a groaning curse, and for the first time the crash of an automatic, and the dull tsung of splintered glass.

A red-hot needle seared through his cheek as, ducking under the outstretched arm of the last of his attackers, his swinging uppercut was followed by a grunt and a slumping fall. Then he was through the swinging doors — and away.

They would not follow him—of that he was reasonably certain—but nevertheless he went forward at a lunging run, jerking his service pistol from its holster as he approached the black maw of the alley.

Then—he stumbled—went to his hands and knees—fumbled a moment in the darkness, produced his pocket flash. And in the radius of that clear beam he saw, staring up at him from the cobbles, the dead face, with its staring eyes and brief, twisted grin, of Chicken-Foot Darragh.

Masterman, secure in the knowledge that his decoy had by this time accomplished his purpose (he had had Gunson trailed for the best part of the evening) went swiftly to a room which he kept in a slightly more respectable neighborhood.

This he had used often enough in the past—Gunson was aware of it, of course. Now, with that healthy fatigue which is the prerogative of thieves and murderers as well as of honest men, Masterman flung himself on the bed. He was dog-tired, so much so that he had removed his coat and hat, merely, before he was breathing easily, like a man whose conscience had never been burdened with anything heavier than a hearty dinner.

As a matter of fact, he had bent over to unlace his shoes, but in the very act sleep had overtaken him. If he had done so, this story might never have been written—but he did not. And he had had them on since the night of Sinsabaugh’s death, just twenty-four hours previous.

It had required no very special keenness on the part of Gunson to deduce that Masterman would do the very thing that he had done—seek his room. The detective knew the address, and, anyway, the obvious had its importance — he would try here first, at any rate.

Slipping in quietly by the side door (the room was over a saloon on a quiet street) Gunson, unseen, mounted the narrow stair—listened a moment at a door on the second landing—turned the knob noiselessly—unlocked the door by turning the key from the outside with a long, thin wire made for this purpose — and entered.

And so—Masterman awoke at a dazzle of light which struck him full in the eyes. He blinked owlishly—then sat upright with a jerk, his hand reaching for his gun and then falling at his side at the crisp voice of the detective:

“I’ve got you covered, Masterman.”

The yegg cursed, stared a moment wildly; then his pig eyes snapped evilly as Gunson’s other hand, reaching upward behind him, turned up the light. Gunson, putting away his flashlight, bent a hard eye on his prisoner.

“I want you, Masterman,” he said evenly, “you rotten killer—step lively, now—you hear?”

But Masterman, his composure returning after that first, amazed glance which had assured him that Gunson was unarmed, spoke, sneeringly confident:

“You’ve got nothing on me, Gunson,” he said, his heavy face, with its blue-shaven jowls, assuming a satiric mask. “You can’t prove nothing.”

“I have—or rather you have,” replied Gunson cryptically, “and I can prove everything,” he was beginning. “Shake a leg now—” when abruptly there came a startling reversal.

Not for nothing had Masterman abode aforetime in that haven of the dwellers by night—Paris, of the thousand eyes. And among other accomplishments of that grim underworld of the Apache, most ruthless of his kind, had he acquired a more than average efficiency in the art of La Savate. Now, at Gunson’s crisp command, he came suddenly into action.

His right foot, shod with its pointed boot, swung upward in a bone-smashing kick, almost too deadly swift for the eye to follow, aimed at the detective’s face. The impact of that bruising kick would mean unconsciousness, a broken jaw—or worse.

But if Masterman was consummate in the attack, in the lightning upthrust of that deadly lunge, like the swift swing of a javelin, Gunson was not unprepared. There is but one parry for that abrupt passade: a single, deft movement, an estoppel as swift and certain as the delivery of the kick itself.

Gunson moved his head a scant half inch to the right, as a boxer evades the whiplash of a straight left, his hand at the same instant curving in a short arc. His fingers closed like iron about the yegg’s ankle—there came a quick heave, an abrupt explosion of movement, and Masterman crashed downward to the floor.

He glared defiance and implacable hate, merged, however, with a certain respect. But still he rasped out, between panting breaths:

“You’ve got nothing—on me—Gunson—you think—you’re wise, don’t you?”

“You’ve—got it—on yourself,” repeated Gunson. Then he leaned over the fallen man, his words, slow, bitter, dripping with the still acid of a corrosive vengeance:

“You’re slick, Masterman—but—you overlooked one thing... one little thing... you’re in, bo—up to your neck — heels over head, I’ll say.” He barked a short, grim laugh. “I had the motive — all I needed was a clue—and I got it — at No. 32, while I was watching the firemen coming out. You croaked Darragh because he’d seen—this—”

With his free hand he jerked from his pocket the purchase he had made at Spanish Joe’s, thrusting it before Masterman—a sinister exhibit indeed—the “ghost” of Darragh’s perfervid dreams — a gas mask of the French type, long-snouted like a boar, terrifying, indeed, as an accessory to silent halls, dim night, and alcoholic imaginations.

“But that isn’t all, Masterman,” continued the detective. “It’s not a circumstance to this—thing you’ve fastened on — yourself.”

He stooped, his voice rising to a note of triumph:

“You’re in, Masterman — ankle-deep!” he cried, bending swiftly, and jerking the half-laced shoe from the foot of the murderer.

“Yellow!” he exulted, “and that’s your brand, you shillaber.”

For, as acid acts on litmus, so chlorine impregnates with its revealing color change the substances which it touches.

Across and across, where the blue sock of the murderer came above the protection of the shoe, there shone the stigma of an ineffaceable guilt: the ineradicable, inescapable, indelible proof, even as Gunson had seen it on the stockings of the firemen—the revealed and all-revealing stain: a broad band of staring yellow!