Annister’s gun went up and out as the black-bearded man, turning, saw him
where he stood.
Travis Annister, parchment-pale, took two forward, lurching steps, as
the doctor, backing stiffly against the wall, hands upraised, called
something in a high sing-song, savage, inarticulate.
Then—everything seemed to happen at once. A snarling, animal outcry
echoed from the passage just without; it rose, as there came a far,
gobbling mutter of voices, and the _pad-pad_ of running feet.
The hooded Familiars, as one man, turned, and the long knives flashed,
luminous, under the lights, as Kane and Ellison, meeting them half way,
raised their heavy guns.
Annister, covering the Doctor, froze suddenly in motion as that gobbling
horror mounted, and then, filling that narrow way like figures in a
dream, they came: the outcasts, the lost battalion, the Men Who Had no
Right to Live.
In their van, but running rather as if pursued than as if in answer to
that snarling call, there came three men, guards by their dress, their
faces contorted, agonized, upon them the impress of a crawling fear. They
streamed past that door, pursuers and pursued, as Black Steve Annister,
finger upon the trigger of his pistol, saw that lean hand sweep upward;
it flicked the thin lips; the dark face grayed, went blank; the Dark
Doctor, his gaze in a queer, frozen look upon Eternity, pitched forward
upon his face.
In some way, as Annister could understand, the madmen had won free,
but—how?
Turning, he saw a white face at his elbow as there sounded from without
the staccato explosions of a motor, and a swift, hammering thunder upon
the great door.
“I am—Newbold Humiston,” said the face, “and I am not mad, or, rather, I
am but mad north-north-west when the wind is southerly,” he quoted, with
a ghastly smile. “This devil—” he pointed to the body of Elphinstone—“has
gone to his own place, but the evil that he did lives after him—in _us_.”
His voice rose to a shriek as there came a rush of feet along the
corridor: a compact body of men, at their head a tall man at sight of
whom Stephen Annister flung up a hand.
“Well, Childers,” he said. “I’m glad!”
Childers spoke pantingly, in quick gasps:
“We just made it, old man,” he said. “A day ahead at that. The station
agent put us on the track. We got ’em all—Lunn, and the rest; all but
Rook—”
He paused, at Annister’s inquiring look, turning his thumb down with an
expressive gesture.
“We found him—strangled—in his office ... a queer business....”
Annister gave an exclamation.
“The Indian!” he said. “Well, Rook was the ‘Third Light,’ sure enough!”
Again he was seeing the lean, avid face in the vestibule of the smoker,
the lighted match; himself, and the conductor, and Rook, the lawyer’s
pale eyes brooding above the glowing end of his cigarette.... And again,
as the picture passed, he was aware of the white face at his elbow as
Mary Allerton, her hand in his, behind her the golden hair and the wide
eyes of Cleo Ridgley, turned to Childers with a smile that yet had in it
a hint of tears.
He that had been Newbold Humiston continued:
“The others—they’re quiet now. The guards have gone—to follow _him_—the
others saw to that.”
He gestured toward the silent figure on the floor.
“His plan was worthy of his master, the Devil, because it was
diabolically simple: Rook was his procurer and his clearing-house; you
see, Rook found the victims, and cashed the checks that Elphinstone wrung
from them; and then, when they had cleaned up, or when they deemed the
time was ripe, the victims—disappeared. Rook’s secretary they kidnapped
for revenge; Miss Allerton because she knew much; they suspected that she
was in the Secret Service. And so—these others disappeared.”
He laughed; the laugh of a dead man risen from the tomb.
“They disappeared—yes—but—they remained, as you see—myself—a living
ghost!”
“But how?” asked the younger Annister, in the sudden quiet, the
realization of what his father and Mary had escaped burning like a quick
fire in his veins. The toneless voice went on:
“Elphinstone was a surgeon, a master.... You’ve heard of Dermatology?
Well, it’s been done in India, I believe; practiced there to an extent
unknown here, of course. An anesthetic, and then an operation: new faces
for old, forged faces; the thing was diabolically simple. And so when
they, the victims, saw themselves in a mirror, sometimes they went mad,
for who could prove it? Who would be believed?”
His voice rose, died, gathered strength, as a candle flames at the last
with a brief spark of life:
“It’s done,” he muttered. “He’s gone—but his work lives after him, even
as he called himself—the Jailer of Souls!”