THE HORROR EXPERT
A New Novel by
Frank Long
BELMONT BOOKS
NEW YORK CITY
THE HORROR EXPERT is an original full-length novel
published by special arrangement with the author.
BELMONT BOOKS
First Printing December 1961
© 1961 Belmont Productions, Inc., all rights reserved
_BELMONT BOOKS
published by
Belmont Productions, Inc.
66 Leonard Street, New York 13, N. Y._
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_TWISTED_
"_She had a secret library of psychological case histories, featuring
pathological and brutal departures from normalcy in the area of
sex. She never missed a weird movie. Terror in any form excited her
physically...._"
_Helen Lathrup had a curious twist in her imagination ... a twist that
needed an outlet in real life. Close friends found themselves drawn
into a nightmare world of terror and guilt. Finally one violent act
triggered an explosion._
* * * * *
"_She's the kind of woman who can make a man hate and despise
himself--and hate her even more for making him feel that way. I'm not
the only one she's put a knife into. Do you hear what I'm saying, do
you understand? I'm not her first victim. There were others before me,
so many she's probably lost count. But she'll do it once too often.
She'll insert the blade so skillfully that at first Number Fifteen or
Number Twenty-two won't feel any pain at all. Just a warm gratefulness,
an intoxicating sort of happiness. Then she'll slowly start twisting
the blade back and forth ... back and forth ... until the poor devil
has been tormented beyond endurance. He'll either wrap a nylon stocking
around her beautiful white throat or something worse, something even
uglier, will happen to her. I know exactly how her mind works, I know
every one of her tricks. I keep seeing her in a strapless evening gown,
with that slow, careful smile on her lips. She's very careful about how
she smiles when she has the knife well-sharpened. It's a wanton smile,
but much too ladylike and refined to give her the look of a bar pickup
or a hip-swinging tramp. Brains and beauty, delicacy of perception,
sophistication, grace. But if she were lying in a coffin just how many
of those qualities do you think she'd still possess? Not many, wouldn't
you say? Not even her beauty ... if someone with a gun took careful aim
and made a target of her face._"
_The voice did not rise above a whisper, but there was cold malice
and bitterness in it, and something even more sinister that seemed
to be clamoring for release. It was just one of many millions of
voices, cordial or angry or completely matter-of-fact that came and
went in the busy conversational life of New York City. It might have
come from almost anywhere--a quickly lifted and re-cradled telephone
receiver perhaps, or from a recording on tape or from the recklessly
confidential lips of a man or woman seated in a crowded bus, or walking
along the street in the company of a close friend._
_It might even have been addressed to no one in particular--an angry
outburst prompted by some mentally unbalanced person's compulsive need
to bare secret, brutally uninhibited thoughts._
_But whatever its precise nature and from whatever source arising, it
was quickly lost and swallowed up in the vast conversational hum of a
city that was no stranger to startling statements and ugly threats._
Chapter I
The heat had been oppressive all night, but now the streets were
glistening, washed clean by rain, and there was a holiday freshness in
the air. The rain had stopped, but the taxi moving slowly down Fifth
Avenue in the wake of the storm was still wet and gleaming and had the
same washed-clean look.
The woman who sat staring out of the cab window at the cluster of
pedestrians waiting to cross 42nd Street had dressed at leisure, eaten
a light breakfast of orange juice, toast and three-minute eggs, glanced
briefly at the morning headlines, and descended in a private elevator
through a tall, gray house in the East Eighties without manifesting the
slightest outward strain.
But once in the taxi a fierce impatience had taken possession of
her--an impatience which far exceeded that of the pedestrians who were
waiting for the _Don't Walk_ light to vanish at New York's most crowded
intersection.
Helen Lathrup had been chain-smoking and was now on her fourth
cigarette. It was burning the tips of her fingers a little but she
seemed not to care about the pain. She inhaled deeply, blew a cloud
of smoke from her nostrils and fanned it away with her hand, her lips
tightly compressed.
The hurry and bustle of shopgirls, clerks and early morning shoppers
annoyed and angered her. She had no sympathy at all with the look of
keen anticipation on many of the faces, for she was not in a holiday
mood.
There was no reason why she should be, she told herself with
considerable bitterness. The long Fourth of July week-end had not yet
begun--was, in fact, a full day away. An interminable Friday stretched
out before her, with important work piling up, work neglected or
improperly handled, and there was no one except herself she could
depend on to see that no mistakes were made.
It wasn't just the avoidance of costly stupidities she had to concern
herself with. There were a hundred minor annoyances awaiting her. A
grinning fool like Macklin, with his head in the clouds, could joke
about them and call them "office headaches." But she knew that they
could be serious, like grains of sand clogging the moving parts of a
complex and very expensive machine.
She leaned forward and spoke sharply to the driver, gripping one
nylon-sheathed knee so tightly that her knuckles showed white.
"What's holding you up? You waited too long at the last light, and now
we're being stopped again."
"Sorry, lady," the driver said, without turning his head. "That's the
way it is sometimes."
She leaned back, whispering under her breath: "Stupid man!"
"What did you say, lady?"
"Not a goddam thing."
Her mood did not improve as the taxi neared its destination, turning
east a few blocks north of Washington Square and then west again,
slowing down amidst a crosstown traffic snarl that seemed outrageous to
her and entirely the fault of the police. She was lighting her sixth
cigarette when the cab drew to the curb before a twenty-story office
building with an impressive façade of gleaming white stone.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later Helen Lathrup sat alone in the most private of
private offices, a sanctuary where interruptions were infrequent even
when permitted, and intrusion under other circumstances absolutely
forbidden.
The office was in all respects in harmony with the prestige and dignity
of an editorial director of a nationally famous group of magazines.
Large and paneled in oak, its main furnishings consisted of a massive
oak desk, three chairs, one facing the desk, and a circular table with
a glass top and nothing on it at all.
If the décor was a little on the severe side and there was something
distinctly unbending about the woman who now sat facing the door upon
which, in gilt lettering, her name was inscribed, a visitor entering
the office for the first time would not have felt ill at ease.
Not, at any rate, if that visitor happened to be a man. Great feminine
beauty, however much it may be combined with qualities intimidating to
the male, is seldom intimidating at first glance. The glow, the warmth,
the splendor of it is too instant and overwhelming. Even when it is
allied with a harsh coldness which is quick to manifest itself, it is
so very easy to believe that a miracle will occur, that secret delights
are in store for any man bold enough to make light of obstacles which
are certain to prove transitory ... if just the right technique is
applied.
Though it is impossible to judge beauty by any rigid set of rules,
though tastes may differ and the experts disagree, it is doubtful if
one man in a hundred would have failed to be dazzled by the absolute
perfection of Helen Lathrup's face and figure. She had only to cross a
room, walking slowly and with no accentuation of movements which were
as natural to her as breathing, to transport men into another world,
where the sun was brighter, the peaks higher, and unimaginable delights
awaited them.
Even in moments when she herself felt empty and drained, completely
unstirred by the close presence of a man, there were few of her suitors
who would not have stopped before a door marked "Danger--Enter at
Your Peril," pressed a button, and walked into a room as chill and
depressing as the gas chamber at San Quentin, solely for the pleasure
of keeping a dinner date with her.
By whatever yardstick her friends or enemies might choose to judge her
by, Helen Lathrup remained what she was--an extraordinary woman. And by
the same token, extraordinary in her profession, with accomplishments
which inspired admiration and respect, however grudgingly accorded.
There was another aspect of Helen Lathrup's personality which she
seldom talked about and which made her unusual in a quite different way.
At times, her thoughts would take a very morbid turn; she would fall
into restless brooding and seek out a kind of diversion which most
people looked upon as pleasurable only when it remained completely in
the realm of entertainment. To her, it was something more.
The darkly sinister and terrifying in literature and art disturbed
and fascinated her. She had long been a reader of supernatural horror
stories and there were a dozen writers in that chilling branch of
literature to whose work she returned again and again. Edgar Allan Poe,
Ambrose Bierce, M. R. James and H. P. Lovecraft--all supreme masters
in the art of evoking terror--occupied an entire shelf in her library,
along with scholarly studies of witchcraft, medieval demonology and
Satanism.
Another shelf was entirely taken up with modern psychological studies
of crime in its more pathological and gruesome aspects, including those
often brutal departures from normalcy in the sphere of sex that appall
even the most sophisticated minds.
She never missed an outstanding screen production of a terrifying
nature. Mystery films which dealt with criminal violence in a somber
setting never failed to excite her. The psychopathic young killer,
haunted, desperate, self-tormented and guilt-ridden, had a strange
fascination for her, whether in books or on the screen, and she
experienced a pleasure she would not have cared to discuss as she
watched the net closing in, the noose swinging nearer ... and then
darkness and despair and the terrible finality of death itself.
But always there was a price which had to be paid. With the ending of
the picture or the closing of the book a reaction would set in, and she
would sit shivering, fearful, visualizing herself, not in the role of
the furtive, tormented slayer--even when that slayer was a woman--but
_as the victim_.
The victim of the very violence she had welcomed and embraced, with
wildly beating heart, when she had thought of it as happening to
someone else.
She could not have explained this aberration even to herself, and the
impulse to succumb to it, to make herself agonizingly vulnerable by
seeking out a certain movie or a certain book, would come upon her only
at times.
This Friday morning, however, Helen Lathrup was in an entirely
different mood.
She was almost trembling now in her impatience to get on with the day's
work, to make every minute count, precisely as she had determined to do
on the long, frustrating ride from her home to the office.
She picked up the mail which lay before her, looked through it, and
leaned toward the intercom to summon her secretary. The door of the
office opened then, and someone she was not expecting to see until
later in the morning, someone whose presence at that exact moment was
distasteful to her, stared at her unsmilingly and closed the door again
very firmly by backing up against it.
The intruder made no attempt to apologize for the outrageousness of
such behavior--made no effort, in fact, to speak at all.
The gun in the intruder's hand was long-barreled, black and
ugly-looking and capped by a silencer. It was pointed directly at
her. The intruder's eyes were half-lidded, but when the light in the
room shifted a little the lids went up, disclosing a cold rage and a
firmness of purpose that told Helen Lathrup at once that she was in the
deadliest kind of danger.
It was not in her nature to remain immobile when a threat confronted
her. Neither was it in her nature to remain silent.
She rose slowly, keeping her eyes trained on the intruder's face,
displaying no visible trace of fear. Her voice, when she spoke, was
coldly contemptuous and tinged with anger.
"Why are you pointing that gun at me?" she demanded. "What do you want?
I'm not afraid of you."
Still without uttering a word the intruder grimaced vindictively, took
a slow step forwards, raised the gun a little and shot Helen Lathrup
through the head.
The gun's recoil was violent, the report quite loud. A silenced gun
is not silent. It can be heard from a considerable distance. But the
intruder appeared either willing to accept that risk, or had discounted
it in advance as of no great importance.
Helen Lathrup did not cry out, and the impact of the bullet did not
hurl her backwards, for the bullet passed completely through her head
and the weapon had been fired at no more than medium-close range.
For an instant the tip of her tongue darted along the quivering,
scarlet gash of her mouth, but the rest of her face remained
expressionless. Her eyes had gone completely blank. It was as if
tiny, weighted curtains, iris-colored, had dropped across her pupils,
obliterating their gleam, making both eyes look opaque.
For five full seconds she remained in an upright position behind the
desk, her back held rigid. A barely perceptible quivering of her
shoulders and a spasmodic twitching of her right hand gave her the
look, if only for an instant, of a strong-willed woman shaken by a fit
of ungovernable rage and still capable of commanding the intruder to
depart.
Then her shoulders sagged and she shuddered convulsively and fell
forward across the desk, her head striking the desktop with such force
that it sent an ashtray crashing to the floor. An explosive sound came
out of her mouth, and her body jerked and quivered again, but less
violently, and after that she did not move.
The door opened and closed, with a barely audible click.