THE BLOW OF THE HYPNOTIST.
While the polo-teams were battling at New London, Dion Santenel was not
idle. Charles Conrad Merriwell, sitting up-stairs in his pleasant front
room at the New Haven House, looking over a paper, heard a knock on the
door, and a colored boy came in bearing a card.
“Fisher Stokes, stock-broker and mining-agent, Denver, Colorado,” was
what Mr. Merriwell read on the card.
“Been waiting for you,” said Merriwell, smiling pleasantly, when
“Stokes” was shown into the room.
“Detained by a little business down-town,” the man explained suavely,
giving the apartment a comprehensive, sweeping glance out of the corners
of his dark eyes before sinking into the chair which Merriwell politely
placed for him.
The furnishing was substantial and old-fashioned. In the center of the
room was a round-topped table covered with a heavy slab of marble.
Between the two windows which looked out on Chapel Street and the green
was a long pier-glass. A green velvet carpet covered the floor, and the
room was furnished with an abundance of comfortable chairs and a sofa.
An alcove bedroom opened off from this main room, its doorway
half-concealed by curtains. In addition to this there was a bathroom.
The apartments were the best and most expensive in the house, and the
house the best that New Haven afforded.
As Fisher Stokes took all this in, he came to the quick conclusion that
the white-haired man who had been waiting for him, seated at the round
marble-topped center-table, was comfortably situated, to say the least.
“As I had to come on to New York, I wired you that I would call here
this afternoon to see you about the shares in the Anaconda group in the
Cripple Creek district,” he continued, beginning to open a case which
the colored boy had brought into the room. He looked now with his keen,
dark eyes at Merriwell pretty much as he had looked at the room and its
furnishings.
“I knew you were Merriwell as soon as I saw you. I think I should have
known you, even if I had met you by chance in the street, though we have
never met before. You see, I had a man in my office who once worked for
you in Arizona in a minor capacity. When he found out that I was
handling stocks for you, he became so interested that he gave me a
complete description of your personal appearance and told so many things
concerning you that I have felt for months as if we were personally
acquainted. Some of this business might have been conducted by mail and
wire, but I thought, as I was so near in New York, that it was a duty I
owed to myself and you to run up and see you.”
There was nothing in the man’s appearance to indicate to Merriwell that
he was Brandon Drood, alias Dion Santenel, his old and bitter enemy,
from whose power he had escaped so short a time before, through the aid
of Frank. “Fisher Stokes,” who was evidently past middle age, was almost
Frenchy in appearance, with well-waxed mustache and imperial that hid
the lines of his thin lips and cold, cruel mouth. His thin, straight
form was encased in a dark-gray business suit. A diamond blazed on the
middle finger of his left hand and another shone in his scarp-pin. The
fiery gleam of the eyes had been subdued and almost banished; and, as he
talked, Merriwell noticed that his voice was soft and well modulated. It
held nothing of the real accents of Brandon Drood, nor of the droning
tones of the pretended Hindu. In all things “Fisher Stokes” seemed to be
what he professed to be, a prosperous, alert, rather self-important
mining-broker of the West. And, as Mr. Merriwell had never seen the real
Fisher Stokes, who was handling Western mining-shares for him, he was
the more easily deceived.
“What was the name of the man?” Merriwell asked, at once interested in
Drood’s statement; for, like many men who have made themselves immensely
wealthy by a lucky turn of fortune, Merriwell was sometimes garrulously
fond of recalling and dilating on the past and on the days of his
hardships and misfortune.
“Byron Macomber.”
“Ah, yes!”
Mr. Merriwell’s face lighted.
“Macomber was one of my most trusted clerks while I was in Arizona. So
he is with you now? I am afraid that I failed to reward him properly for
his services to me. Tell him so, please, and that at any time if he
needs aid I shall be glad to extend it.”
Santenel had taken the papers from the leathern case and placed them on
the table.
Then the fiery gleam came into Santenel’s eyes—those terrible,
fascinating, serpentlike eyes—and they glowed and burned, contracting
and expanding their pupils, as they eagerly studied the face of Charles
Conrad Merriwell.
“So soon!” Santenel mentally croaked. “So soon I have him in my power!
And I feared it might be the work of hours. Yes, he is already under my
influence and does not know it. I have him again. Ah! Charles Conrad
Merriwell! You, who hounded me over the earth until at length I turned
at bay, determined to crush you instead of permitting you to crush me, I
have you again in my power, and you shall not escape!”
The reflective light began to fade out of the eyes of Mr. Merriwell, to
be replaced by a look of vacancy. Then he made a struggle to arouse
himself, but the struggle was weak and ineffective. Santenel’s
mysterious power was already over him, holding his will in subjection.
And Frank, who had saved him before, was far off in New London, battling
with the New London polo-team!
In a little while Santenel began to talk in a low, soothing monotone,
still stabbing Merriwell’s face and eyes with his terrible eyes.
“In those days I was not known as Dion Santenel,” he droned, as if
seeking to strengthen a memory that he sought to stir in the mind of the
man he was subjugating. “Then I was called Brandon Drood. You struck me,
you know—struck me like a dog, for cheating you at cards, and I planned
a revenge, a sweet revenge. I discovered, as I lay on my bed where your
blow had placed me, that I was able to hypnotize you—made the first
discovery of the fact that I have that mysterious power over other men.
I used it. I made you imprison yourself in that tunnel in the Ragged
Queen Mine, where I supposed you would die. But you found a way out. You
regained possession of what I thought a used-out mine, which you named
the Lost Man, and from which you dug a fortune. Then, with that wealth
at your back, you began to hound me, pursuing me everywhere, dragging me
down when I climbed to affluence and striking at me without mercy. But
now my time has come! The worm has turned. I have studied and plotted
and planned for this hour. For this hour I have made myself all
men—coming and going with the silence of night and like the changing
characters on the theater boards. All for this hour! What have I not
suffered, endured? For this hour! For this hour!”
The dilating and contracting pupils seemed miniature furnaces with their
shooting flames, and the words lulled Merriwell as the crooning lullaby
of a mother lulls to sleep the babe.
“You are in my power, and you will do as I wish!” Santenel said at
length, ceasing that low droning.
He arose and locked the door, turning the key in the lock and hanging a
cloth over it to keep out any penetrating gaze, though the position of
the door made it most unlikely that any one could see where Merriwell
sat, bolt upright now in the chair.
Coming back, Santenel made a pass with his hands over Merriwell’s face,
commanded him to rouse up, and Merriwell sat up yawning as if he had
been aroused from a nap. He looked at Santenel with vacant curiosity.
“Now as to that business,” said Santenel, spreading out some blank paper
on the marble-topped table and producing pen and ink.
“Oh, yes,” said Merriwell. “Let me see, I forgot what it was?”
“This is the last day of your life, you know! When the sun rises
to-morrow, Charles Conrad Merriwell will have ceased to exist. Aye!
before the sun goes down in the west to-night—goes down where the Ragged
Queen was and the Lost Man Mine now is—you will be gone from this
world!”
“Yes, yes!” Merriwell assented, without a note of fear or regret in his
voice. “That was what brought you here? I had forgotten, but that was
it.”
“But before you go I want you to write a statement, which will show the
world why you go and what is to become of some of your property—a great
deal of your property.”
“Yes, yes!” Merriwell again assented.
Santenel produced a book of bank-checks which he had previously filled
in. There were many of them, all for large amounts, and bearing various
dates, some as much as six months before.
“You are not so wealthy as the world thinks you, when your debts are
paid! My commissions for kiting the Blue Bird mining-stock for you were
one hundred thousand dollars. It was no fault of mine that the Blue Bird
was a worthless hole in the ground. You knew that, and I was only
pushing your ventures. You lost, but you gave me two notes of fifty
thousand each for my commission.”
He pushed out two notes, which Merriwell merely stared at.
“Then I took up and developed the Golden Nugget, at a cost to you of one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, every cent of which I paid out of my
own pocket, though for business reasons we permitted the world to think
you advanced the money yourself. The Golden Nugget had no golden nuggets
in it, and you lost; but, of course, I must have my money, and you gave
me two more notes for that, each of seventy-five thousand dollars.”
He pushed them over, properly filled out, bearing interest, and a date
of five months previous.
“Then there was that big deal in Rocky Mountain coal land, and all those
other deals which you so readily remember. The whole of it amounts to
eight hundred thousand dollars, and I should make it two millions if I
wasn’t afraid of the courts. Sometimes a man’s desire to suddenly enrich
himself bumps him up against the courts, and he loses all that he hoped
to gain and more, too. Your son Frank is a fighter!”
These last remarks seemed to be directed to himself and not to
Merriwell, and Merriwell appeared not to hear them.
Santenel slowly pushed the prepared notes across the table and reached
out the pen to Merriwell, the latter taking it without hesitation.
“You will sign these notes; after which you will prepare a written
statement of the reasons which led you to take a sudden departure from
this earthly sphere!”
Merriwell drew the notes to him, not noticing that they were drawn
payable to another name than that of “Fisher Stokes,” and, dipping the
pen in the ink-well, he proceeded to append his name.
Santenel dried the ink of the signatures with a blotter and placed the
notes in a little heap on the marble table. Then he shoved a sheet of
paper to Merriwell and commanded him to write.
“This is what you are to say,” commanded Santenel, and Charles Conrad
Merriwell set his pen to the paper:
“TO MY SON FRANK.
“DEAR FRANK: The only regret I have is in leaving you, for I
know that you love me and that you will be shocked and grieved
at my death, the death of a suicide. But life has become
unbearable to me. I can stand it no longer. I have studiously
concealed this from you, though I fear sometimes that you have
read it in my face. I am in good mental health; but I have
ceased to have any desire to live. You have sometimes noticed
idiosyncrasies in me. The attempt to hide from you my real
feelings and my heart-sickness of the world will go far toward
explaining them. I hope that my body will not be cast up by the
waves, and that if it should be, it may lie unburied, though
this last I know you will not permit. Pay all my debts. I have
some notes outstanding, among others some heavy ones occasioned
by wildcat mining speculation. These I must ask you to meet. The
rest of my fortune is yours. So good-by; don’t think too hard of
me, and do not grieve, for I am not worthy of it.
“Your unfortunate father,
“CHARLES CONRAD MERRIWELL.”
This was properly dated.
“We will leave that here on the table—or, rather, you will; and then you
will do what I tell you. Just a plunge, and it will all be over. Any man
might crave so easy an exit from the world!”
He was again fixing his terrible eyes on the now almost vacant face of
Frank’s father, thinking at the same time of the steps he must now take
to carry out his plan to its conclusion and secure his own safety.
“You will do all that I tell you?”
“Yes,” Merriwell answered. “Everything!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------