Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 2, April, 1923: The unique magazine

“It must have been a bad case—to judge from the size of the scar.”

She did not answer, and he drew the covering a little lower and brought the scar out of the shadow into full view. Then he started, and, involuntarily, a gasp escaped him.

The large surgical scar was in the form of _a perfect reversed letter S_.

_IV_

So much had happened to Carlson that night that his mental receiving instrument was somewhat dulled, and did not immediately register the momentous significance of what his eyes now saw. That curious scar—that reversed S—symbol of the great Senn. Great God! _Now_ he remembered. The only case on record in which that Senn S-incision had been made for appendicitis was the case of Ina Holden.

He heard the masked man muttering in angry impatience, and then his brain began to work again. The Holden _child_. Edwards had spoken of her as “little Ina.”

Though the papers had been full of accounts of the Holden kidnapping case for the last five days, he, Carlson, had read nothing but the headings, and his impression from them and from Edwards’ talk was that Ina was a small girl, quite a child. And yet this was a woman, or a well-grown girl of 16 or 17 at the least. He looked up at her bandaged face.

“How long ago did you have this operation?”

“I—when I was a child.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About eight or nine years ago.”

“Ah——”

“You’re takin’ a hell of a long time, doc. Has she got smallpox?” The man still stood with his back to the foot of the bed, but Carlson realized that he could not temporize much longer.

“Just about a minute more and I can tell you,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could say the words.

How could he get rid of the kidnappers and telephone for the police? Then came an idea—a wild, forlorn hope; but he would try it.

“I will have to examine her throat,” he said, with professional voice.

He walked to the table where his medical bags were and took out a circular mirror with an aperture in the center, a small electric bulb, and a black elastic band with a buckle in it. Next, he detached a connecting-plug from a cell battery in the bottom of the bag, being careful to conceal the battery from the gimletlike eyes of the two men and the woman. With the plug hidden in his hand he crushed the two contactors together.

Then he adjusted the elastic band and mirror to his forehead, connected the two wires with the small bulb on the head mirror and deliberately unscrewed the bulb from the table lamp. He drew a deep breath; then quickly inserted the crushed battery plug into the lamp socket.

_Flash!_ The room was in complete darkness. Carlson had short-circuited the current and fulminated the fuse, probably for the whole house.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, ostentatiously. “What am I going to do now?”

Almost instantly the beam of a pocket flashlight came from the hand of the “boss.”

“Take this, doc,” he said, holding it toward Carlson.

He took it, asked the girl to open her mouth, and looked within.

“No good at all. I _must_ have the electric light. Where is the fuse box?”

The “boss” looked at Teresa.

“It’s in the cellar with the meter,” she said.

“Go down and put in a new fuse.”

“I don’t know how. You’ll have to come with me.”

The man hesitated. He glared at Carlson through his mask, and at the sick girl on the bed, and then at the giant near the door.

“Tony!”

“Huh?”

“Come here!”

The giant slouched nearer.

“Where’s your flash-light?”

He produced it.

“Good! Now stay right here till we come back. If the doctor tries to leave this room, or if he talks to the girl—you know what to do.”

Tony grunted, and showed a magazine pistol in his other hand. The other man and Teresa left the room. The man slammed the door and locked it on the outside.

Carlson felt almost overcome by a feeling of powerlessness and despair. He and the girl were alone with the giant Tony, who sat stolidly by a table in the center of the room, flash-light in one hand, the automatic pistol in the other. His narrow, piglike eyes gleamed through the mask and seemed never to relax their sinister gaze.

Carlson’s plan was completely frustrated by the baleful presence of this Frankenstein Monster.

Suddenly he heard the blindfolded girl give a sob, and he saw her shoulders trembling. At the sound of that despairing sob a new impulse to action surged through him. Her only hope lay in him. He would not fail her. He would save her or die in the trying.

He took her nearest and burning hand in both of his.

“There, there. Everything will be all right.”

As her fingers gripped his convulsively, a horrible snarling sound, as from an angry hippopotamus, came from Tony. Carlson disengaged the girl’s hand and faced the giant.

“Tony!” he said commandingly.

“Huh?”

“Help me to fix up this head light of mine. Bend those points out straight—so!”

Carlson had seen some remarkable demonstrations in hypnotism in Zurich, and he had been told by Professor Jung that he had exceptional personal power in that line, if he chose to develop it. He remembered that advice now, and he was trying it on Tony.

The giant hesitated, but at last obeyed the imperative and hypnotic voice of the young doctor. He laid the pistol and flash-light on the table, but just within reach of his hand, and then held out one hand for the electric plug.

“There—twist them out again, right there,” said Carlson in a slow, monotonous voice. As he spoke, his other hand closed over a heavy glass paper weight that lay at the farther end of the table. Tony put the plug on the table and bent his face over it.

Carlson felt that he could soon have Tony completely under his own hypnotic power. But time was too precious to wait for that. The “boss” might return any minute. There was only one thing to do, and Carlson did it.

He raised the paper weight slowly, and just beyond Tony’s field of vision and then—he brought it down on the giant’s head with all the force he could put into the blow.

Tony dropped the electric plug and swayed to one side, only slightly stunned by a blow that would have fractured the skull of another man. But before he could recover, Carlson dealt him a second, and then a third blow, the last on the angle of the jaw.

Tony crumpled up and fell face downward across the table. But Carlson, to make sure, gave him a final and terrible blow, which seemed to give back a crushing sound.

_V_

He rushed to the door and bolted it; then back to the bedside.

“Are you Ina Holden?”

“Yes!”

“Then get out of bed instantly. I’m going to save you.”

As she started up, he seized her in his arms, lifted her out bodily, and plumped her into the nearest upholstered chair.

“Take off that bandage as quickly as you can!”

He flew back to the huge bed and began dragging it toward the door. It was heavy as a safe, and incredibly hard to move. Suddenly it became easier, and to his amazement he saw that the girl was helping him. When they had placed it so that the head completely blocked the door, Carlson ran to Tony.

“Help me drag this carcass against the foot of the bed. Take the feet—so! That will brace the bed better. Now take this pistol. You know how to use it?”

“O, yes!”

“Fine! Watch that beast while I telephone the police. If he moves, shoot him.”

Carlson rushed into the smaller room, kicking two small chairs out of his way and looked behind the screen. Praise be to God! It _was_ a telephone. He jerked the receiver to his ear and began jiggling the instrument frantically. After a few interminable seconds came the blessed words:

“Number, please?”

“Listen, operator—this is a case of life and death. First take down this number—Cartwright 872.... Yes.... No! No!!—for God’s sake don’t _call_ it. _This_ is it. Now listen. Have you got this number written down?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Listen, I tell you!”

“I am listening!”

“Ina Holden is a prisoner in this house, with telephone Cartwright 872. Do you know who Ina Holden is?”

“You mean the kidnapped girl?”

“Yes. Now get me police headquarters at once. Then, while I am talking with them, you look up Cartwright 872 and phone the police station nearest this place. _Quick_, for God’s sake!”

Another agonizing wait; then—

“Police headquarters speaking.”

“Ina Holden is in a house with phone number Cartwright 872. Mark it down.”

He heard the voice of the officer dictating “Cartwright 872. Ina Holden.” Then, “What else, sir?”

“There are at least four armed men in the house, and one woman.”

“Where is the house?”

“I don’t know. I’m a prisoner with her myself. Send enough men at once to surround the house. Look it up in the numerical index.”

Carlson could hear the officer giving rapid orders, and, more faintly, their repetition being shouted out through the station.

“All right, sir. We’ve located the house, and it will take us about twenty minutes to get to you. I’m sending out a general alarm, and maybe some of our men out there can arrive sooner. How are you fixed?”

“I knocked out one of the men. I and the girl are barricaded in a third floor back room, and we’ll try to hold out until your men come.”

“Good! Stay at the ’phone as long as you can and keep me informed to the last possible moment. Good luck to you!”

“I’ll put the girl at the ’phone, and stand guard myself. Ina!”

“Yes, doctor.” She came in quickly, the pistol in her hand.

“Please sit down here and hold the ’phone. The police are on the wire. I’ll call out to you how things go, and you report to them. Has Tony moved?”

“No. He doesn’t seem to breathe.”

Carlson left Ina at the ’phone and went to Tony. He lay absolutely still, just as they had placed him at the foot of the bed. Carlson tore off the mask and turned the face around and listened with his ear to the month. Not a sound! Then he used his stethoscope over the heart. Silence! Tony was dead!

Carlson picked up Tony’s automatic, turned off the light plug in the large bed room, and went back to Ina. She was at her post, her elbows on the little table, the receiver at her ear. She looked up at him with a grave smile.

“The police have been asking me a lot of questions. How about the man in the next room?”

“Dead. I’m sorry I killed him, but there was nothing else to do. Anyway,” said Carlson, “it makes our work easier. We won’t have to watch him, and his body will help hold the door a little longer.”

He looked quickly around the room.

“And now for our plan of defense until the police come. The barricade in the bedroom may hold till then. But, if it doesn’t then we will have to barricade ourselves again in here. We ought to be able to hold out easily.”

And then Carlson began dragging furniture from the bedroom into the dressing room until the latter was nearly full.

“I guess that’ll be enough,” he said. “They’re taking a long time fixing that fuse, but they can’t be too long for us.” He stood beside Ina once more, having done all that could be done for the present.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “and their bungling delay probably means our salvation. Anyhow, there’s nothing for it but to wait—for what is to come.”

Carlson had been looking at Ina Holden while they were talking, and he thought he had never seen a more charming girl. Her thick dark hair was unloosed and uncombed and fell over her shoulders. She was clad only in the coarse, sleeveless, night garment, which showed beautifully rounded arms to the shoulders. Her feet were bare. Her eyes were a pure and brilliant blue, shining under heavy but well arched brows. Her features were almost faultless, but the strong jaw and firm though adorable lips expressed unusual force and will power for a woman. A woman worth going through hell for—Carlson thought grimly.

Her face, neck and arms were deeply suffused as with the flush of high fever. But her manner and movements were not those of a very sick person. Carlson was puzzled.

“I confess I don’t know what to make of your fever,” he said frankly.

She half smiled as she replied:

“Of course. I should have thought of that before. It isn’t a _real_ fever, but what the Italians call an _impressione_.”

“What’s that?”

“An effect of a shock.”

“But no mere shock can cause actual fever!”

“That’s what many doctors have said. But the fact is that it _does_ with me. I was always that way. There’s something abnormal in my constitution. I can even bring on a fever by willing it. I’m ashamed to say that when I was a child I would sometimes play sick in that way in order to get what I wanted. But I hadn’t done it for so long that I’d almost forgotten about it—until this horrible thing happened, and then I remembered and tried it. But they wouldn’t call a doctor for three days, not until they got badly scared and thought I might die on their hands. And that is why they brought _you_ here.”

“I never heard of such a case before,” said Carlson. “Never! To be sure, there are a few cases on record where the heart and pulse rate were under the control of the will to some extent; but certainly _not_ the temperature.”

He then asked: “How does it happen that the kidnappers have a house like this?”

“This house belongs to a wealthy family named Carriello. They are traveling in Europe, and have left the house in charge of an Italian and his wife.”

“The woman Teresa?”

“Yes. The two are black-handers, and their gang figured that the police would never suspect that I might be hidden in such a place.”

Suddenly the lights flashed out. The fuse was repaired at last. The kidnappers would be at the door in a few moments!

Carlson gripped Tony’s automatic a little harder, and his left hand fell almost involuntarily on the girl’s shoulder. They waited thus, tensely, hardly breathing, and with quickened heart-beats, until they heard footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Then Carlson drew a deep breath, and whispered:

“They are coming now—but don’t be afraid.”

She said nothing, but raised both her hands and clasped them over his for a moment.

He stepped softly into the darkened bedroom, just as a key turned in the lock. The knob was turned, the door tried—then shaken. There was a short silence. Then, from the “boss:”

“Open the door, you fool!”

Carlson was silent.

“Tony!”

Silence.

“Tony! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Silence.

A whispered consultation outside the door. Then:

“Tony! Doctor! Open that door or, by God! I’ll——”

More whispering, then a short silence.

“Doctor!”

Silence.

Whispering again; then footsteps running down the stairs; then another and longer silence. Carlson put his ear as near as he could to the door. Soon he heard the footsteps returning, but they stopped at the second floor. A voice called faintly from below:

“I can’t find anything but a hatchet.”

Smothered cursing told that the “boss” was still on the other side of the door. Then he also seemed to run down stairs. Presently Carlson heard hammering or pounding, far below, and at last a crushing and crumbling sound, as if something heavy had given way. _What_ were the scoundrels doing?

Then footsteps again, coming up the stairs, but more slowly this time. And as they came, there was an occasional bumping sound, as if they were carrying some bulky object which now and then struck the walls or stairs.

When they were opposite the door, something heavy hit the floor. Then, once more, the sullen voice of the “boss.”

“Listen, Doc! I don’t know what you’ve done to Tony, and what’s more I don’t give a damn, if you open the door now.”

Silence. Carlson thought he could hear their heavy breathing. As a psychologist he knew that his own silence, and that of Tony, had a horror about it that was telling severely, even on their hardened nerves.

“This is your last chance, Doc! If you open the door now, you can go, and take your fee, and be damned. But if you won’t open, I’m going to break down the door, and then—you’ll leave here in a coupla suit cases. Do you get me?”

Silence! After about a quarter of a minute, the “boss” said:

“Now then! All together!”

Carlson braced himself. But suddenly the woman screamed, “Stop!”

“Shut up! You—”

“I won’t. Listen!” And though she spoke lower, Carlson could hear her say something about the doctor and Tony’s pistol!

“I know that,” muttered the man, “but we’ve got to risk it!”

Another voice, Carlson thought that of the man who sat beside him in the auto, half whispered:

“Wait, Boss! I don’t like this! What did the doc do to big Tony? I wouldn’t go into that room again if you killed me! I’ve lost my nerve, let’s chuck this job and make a getaway!”

“No, I won’t! and none of you won’t by God! We’ve gone too far to go back. We’ll win together, or go to the Chair together! I’ll shoot the first—”

“But—”

“Take that, will you, and shut up!” a blow, a fall, and a groan, as if from the level of the floor.

A few seconds of dead silence, then the voice of the “boss”:

“Now, get together and smash that door!”

More shuffling of feet and the dragging of something heavy, then the muffled voice of the woman:

“Maybe he found the phone—”

“Quick! Bust in that door!”

Carlson held his breath.

_CRASH!_

A terrific blow, as of from a battering ram, shook and shivered the strong oak door. But door and bolt still held. Carlson knew from the impact of the blow that some ponderous solid object had been driven against the door. And he know also that a few more such blows would shatter it, leaving only the bed and an overturned chiffonier and Tony’s body as a barricade.

So he quickly began dragging more chairs, tables and what not into the small dressing-room.

_CRASH!_ The door fell inward against the head of the massive bed.

Carlson dragged a davenport into the little room, and then closed its door, locking and bolting it.

_CRASH!_

The devastating sound that followed told that the heavy overhanging canopy of the bed had fallen inward. Carlson kept steadily working away barricading the second door.

“Thank God _this_ door opens outward!” he said to Ina. She was still at her post at the telephone.

“Hello!” she said calmly. “They have just smashed in the outer door and are climbing in over the ruins of the bed and furniture. We have retreated into a smaller room, and the doctor is piling furniture against it—” She looked at Carlson.

“The police want to know how long we can hold out!”

“Perhaps another five minutes.”

“Five minutes more—what?... O, I hope so!”

_CRASH!_ This time on the inner door. It held perfectly!

“They are attacking our inner door, Inspector—you heard it?”

_CRASH!_ A panel cracked, all the way down.

_CRASH!_ The panel flew in splinters. One splinter struck the girl in the face, making a small wound on the forehead, and blood trickled down into her eyes, but she did nothing more than to wipe it off with the back of her right hand.

Carlson readjusted the shifting barricade, and glanced at Ina.

“You are hurt!”

“It’s nothing.”

“Into the bathroom, quickly!”

_CRASH!_ Another panel cracked!

She got up calmly, and wiped the blood out of her eyes again with the handkerchief Carlson pressed against her face; then, his arm around her, she walked into the bathroom.

Carlson forced Ina into a chair and knelt beside her, indifferent to everything now but the bleeding cut on her face.

“Let me look at it!”

“It’s nothing at all, I tell you! Go back and attend to the door. We must barricade ourselves in here in another minute.”

_CRASH!_ The center of the door fell inward against the barricade. As Carlson ran to pick up a heavy chair for the bathroom defense, a hand and pistol came through the breach in the door and a shot rang out. He felt a stinging pain in his side, but kept on with his work. Before he realized it, Ina was in the room again, dragging another chair into the bathroom.