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

The barricade crumbled still more, and another shot was aimed at Carlson, but did not hit him. Ina deliberately crossed the little room to the telephone and turned off the light.

“They won’t shoot _me_—not yet, anyway,” she said.

The barricade fell to pieces. There was not a moment to lose. Carlson and Ina rushed into the bathroom and locked and bolted the door and began stacking the chairs and tables and one small chiffonier against the door.

Carlson felt blood soaking his clothing. He and Ina crouched together in one corner. He held Tony’s pistol in his right hand, and both of Ina’s hands in his left.

“Listen, Ina! When they force this door, I will try to pick them off one by one. If I fall, be ready to snatch the pistol and shoot carefully. Don’t waste a shot! The police should be here any moment.”

_CRASH!_ The lock and bolt snapped, and the door itself was pressed inward several inches, but rebounded by the pressure of the barricade.

_CRASH!_ This time the door yielded more than a foot, and in the opening Carlson could see a man’s form. He fired, and a shriek followed. Four or five shots were aimed at Carlson, but did not reach him in his protected corner angle. Suddenly a voice yelled from the outer room:

“The Cops! They’re around the house!”

“Damnation! Get the Girl, at all costs!”

When the next rush brought a man into view Carlson fired, and he knew by the scream that he had hit once more. The pistol dropped from his hand, and his body swayed. But the girl realized everything in an instant. Quick as thought she snatched up the pistol with her right hand as she knelt beside him, and her other arm went around him.

At that instant a perfect fusillade of shooting sounded from the outer room, followed by screams, yelling and groaning. Then a masked man with a pistol in his hand bounded wildly into the half-opened door of the bathroom. But Ina fired from their darkened corner before he saw them, and he fell backward among the debris.

Carlson felt everything growing dark.

“Ina?”

“Yes, dear; we’ve won the fight!”

His head sank against her breast, just as two policemen appeared in the doorway.

She dropped the pistol and put both arms about him.

_VI_

“Miss Holden?” asked one of the officers, turning his bull’s-eye lantern on them.

She did not answer, but looked long and tensely at Carlson’s white unconscious face. Then she pressed a kiss on his forehead.

“He saved me!” she said, looking up at the officers. “I owe everything to him. Please send for a surgeon and have him taken to my home immediately.”

“The police surgeon will be here in a moment, Miss Holden. Let us take him into another room.”

As they took him from her arms they saw that her garment was soaked with his blood.

“Who is he?” asked the lieutenant.

“I don’t know. He was brought here by the kidnappers when I seemed to be very sick. We had no time for anything but defense.”

The lieutenant took off his overcoat and placed it over Ina’s shoulders, and then they both followed the two officers who carried the unconscious Carlson out through the wreck of the dressing-room and larger bedroom.

And what a scene of ruin and blood! They had to pick their way through masses of broken furniture. One masked dead man lay just outside the bathroom—the man Ina had shot. Another man, his mask torn off, sat propped up against an overturned chiffonier on the floor of the large bedroom. He was groaning and trying to wring his manacled hands, as two officers knelt beside him and searched his pockets.

The mammoth carcass of Tony lay where Carlson and Ina had first dragged it, but it was now half covered by the mattress and debris of the bed. At least a dozen policemen in the rooms. The woman Teresa stood sniveling in a corner, unmasked and handcuffed.

But there was a sudden silence as Ina Holden appeared, her face bloody, her feet bare, and her form covered by the officer’s overcoat. All eyes were fixed on the girl, whose name and picture had been in every newspaper from Maine to California for the last five days.

They carried Carlson through the devastated rooms, into another room and laid him on a bed. The police surgeon arrived at almost the same moment. After a glance at the unconscious man on the bed, the surgeon said:

“But where is the _girl_?”

“I am Ina Holden,” she said quickly, “but never mind _me_. Look at _him_!”

“Who is he?”

“The man who saved me. They shot him just before the police came.”

The surgeon quickly tore open the blood-soaked shirt and found the bullet wound in the right side. He listened a moment to his heart; then looked up gravely.

“Very serious! There seems to be severe hemorrhage into the pleura. He must be rushed to the nearest hospital for immediate operation.”

“Doctor,” asked Ina, with shaking voice. “Is he—will he recover?”

“I am sorry to say, Miss Holden, the chances are against him. Quick, boys! The stretcher. One of you telephone Mercy Hospital to have the operating-room ready.”

And then another man burst like a whirlwind into the room—a large, bearded man of about fifty—a man of commanding presence, before whom everyone made way.

“Ina!—my Girl!—”

Slowly Ina turned her eyes from Carlson and looked at her father. Then she stood up and held out her arms, and was gathered into his embrace.

“Father, dear!” she panted, as soon as his joyful greetings would allow; “Listen! I am all right. But that man lying there saved my life. If he had not come—”

“Yes, my girl! Go on!”

“He was shot defending me before the police could get here. And now—he may be—_dying_!—” Her voice broke.

Two men entered with a stretcher, just as the surgeon gave Carlson a hypodermic of some powerful heart stimulant. Deftly they moved him from bed to stretcher. Mr. Holden drew the surgeon aside and they exchanged a few earnest words.

“We’ll do our best, sir, that’s all I can say. Good night, sir! Good night, Miss Holden!” He hurried down stairs after the stretcher.

“Where’s the telephone?” said Holden.

Ina took him to it, and then he called the hospital and several famous surgeons, telling them that the man who had saved his daughter must be saved! _Must be saved!_

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“I have found his name, sir. It’s on his surgical bag. He is Dr. Herbert Carlson of New York.”

“Thank you very much! Please find his ’phone number and I will call his wife and tell her what we are doing for him.”

As her father was calling Carlson’s telephone number, Ina listened with strained attention. His _wife_! Somehow, it had never occurred to her that he might be married!

“Hello! Is this Dr. Carlson’s residence?... Yes, yes, I know he’s not there now. May I speak with his wife?... What’s that?... _Not_ married?... O, I beg your pardon! His sister?—yourself? Thank you! Now listen to me, please!...”

Ina did not try to analyze her feelings when her father’s words at the telephone seemed to prove that Carlson was unmarried. But then she suddenly remembered, as with a stab at her heart, what the police surgeon had said! Yes: As her father had ordered, He _must_ be saved! Nothing else mattered!

At 2:53 A. M. the telephone at the Holden residence rang for at least the hundredth time that fateful night. The butler had instructions not to call Mr. Holden except for communications from the police or the hospital. Ina and her mother, in Ina’s bedroom, heard the muffled buzzer in the study below, and looked at each other anxiously. Ina snatched up the extension receiver at her bedside and listened.

“Hospital speaking. I have a message for Mr. Holden.”

It was the second message from the hospital. The first had told the hopeful news that Dr. Carlson had been successfully operated on, that hemorrhage had been checked, and that his heart had responded to stimulants. Mr. Holden, at his desk, lifted the receiver.

“Mr. Holden speaking. Quick! What’s your message?”

“Dr. Carlson slept until five minutes ago. Then he woke up suddenly and asked: ‘Is Ina all right?’ We told him that Miss Holden was safe at home, and he said: ‘Thank God!’ and went to sleep again.”

[Illustration]

Thrillers Make Audiences Warm

It has been discovered that thrilling mystery or “spook” plays, of which there have been an unusual number lately, have a tendency to increase the temperature of those who witness them. Prof. Edward F. Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a number of tests among various audiences and found this to be true. His assertions were substantiated by Chicago theatre managers, one of whom said:

“The excitement created by mystery plays starts the blood to circulating so quickly that heightened temperature is the result. I notice that the theatre warms up at the end of the first act, when the play is an exciting one. We have to watch the temperature of our theatres more closely when a play, that is exciting or has a great emotional appeal is being given.”

The owner of a motion picture theatre disagreed with this, but said that a comedy film always means a rising temperature.

“Five minutes of laughing,” he said, “will send the thermometer up, unless provision is made to keep the temperature the same. The reactions of each audience are identical, and we know when an audience is going to laugh more than usual, and so I push the button on the thermostat that throws in more cool, washed air, and the audience does not feel the effect of the heat-producing laughter. Normally, there is a complete change of air every three minutes, but when the piece is particularly funny it is changed oftener. There is real activity when the theatre patron laughs, but when other emotions are aroused he sits quietly, and no excess energy is created.”

_Creeping Horror Lurked_

Beyond the Door

An Unusual Story

By PAUL SUTER

“You haven’t told me yet how it happened,” I said to Mrs. Malkin.

She set her lips and eyed me, sharply.

“Didn’t you talk with the coroner, sir?”

“Yes, of course,” I admitted; “but as I understand you found my uncle, I thought——”

“Well, I wouldn’t care to say anything about it,” she interrupted, with decision.

This housekeeper of my uncle’s was somewhat taller than I, and much heavier—two physical preponderances which afford any woman possessing them an advantage over the inferior male. She appeared a subject for diplomacy rather than argument.

Noting her ample jaw, her breadth of cheek, the unsentimental glint of her eye, I decided on conciliation. I placed a chair for her, there in my Uncle Godfrey’s study, and dropped into another, myself.

“At least, before we go over the other parts of the house, suppose we rest a little,” I suggested, in my most unctuous manner. “The place rather gets on one’s nerves—don’t you think so?”

It was sheer luck—I claim no credit for it. My chance reflection found the weak spot in her fortifications. She replied to it with an undoubted smack of satisfaction:

“It’s more than seven years that I’ve been doing for Mr. Sarston, sir: Bringing him his meals regular as clockwork, keeping the house clean—as clean as he’d let me—and sleeping at my own home, o’ nights; and in all that time I’ve said, over and over, there ain’t a house in New York the equal of this for queerness.”

“Nor anywhere else,” I encouraged her, with a laugh; and her confidences opened another notch:

“You’re likely right in that, too, sir. As I’ve said to poor Mr. Sarston, many a time, ‘It’s all well enough,’ says I, ‘to have bugs for a hobby. You can afford it; and being a bachelor and by yourself, you don’t have to consider other people’s likes and dislikes. And it’s all well enough if you want to,’ says I, ‘to keep thousands and thousands o’ them in cabinets, all over the place, the way you do. But when it comes to pinnin’ them on the walls in regular armies,’ I says, ‘and on the ceiling of your own study; and even on different parts of the furniture, so that a body don’t know what awful thing she’s agoin’ to find under her hand of a sudden when she does the dusting; why, then,’ I says to him, ‘it’s drivin’ a decent woman too far.’”

“And did he never try to reform his ways when you told him that?” I asked, smiling.

“To be frank with you, Mr. Robinson, when I talked like that to him, he generally raised my pay. And what was a body to do then?”

“I can’t see how Lucy Lawton stood the place as long as she did,” I observed, watching Mrs. Malkin’s red face very closely.

She swallowed the bait, and leaned forward, hands on knees.

“Poor girl, it got on her nerves. But she was the quiet kind. You never saw her, sir?”

I shook my head.

“One of them slim, faded girls, with light hair, and hardly a word to say for herself. I don’t believe she got to know the next-door neighbor in the whole year she lived with your uncle. She was an orphan, wasn’t she, sir?”

“Yes,” I said. “Godfrey Sarston and I were her only living relatives. That was why she came from Australia to stay with him, after her father’s death.”

Mrs. Malkin nodded. I was hoping that, by putting a check on my eagerness, I could lead her on to a number of things I greatly desired to know. Up to the time I had induced the housekeeper to show me through this strange house of my Uncle Godfrey’s, the whole affair had been a mystery of lips which closed and faces which were averted at my approach. Even the coroner seemed unwilling to tell me just how my uncle had died.

* * * * *

“Did you understand she was going to live with him, sir?” asked Mrs. Malkin, looking hard at me.

I confined myself to a nod.

“Well, so did I. Yet, after a year, back she went.”

“She went suddenly?” I suggested.

“So suddenly that I never knew a thing about it till after she was gone. I came to do my chores one day, and she was here. I came the next, and she had started back to Australia. That’s how sudden she went.”

“They must have had a falling-out,” I conjectured. “I suppose it was because of the house.”

“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.”

“You know of other reasons?”

“I have eyes in my head,” she said. “But I’m not going to talk about it. Shall we be getting on now, sir?”

I tried another lead:

“I hadn’t seen my uncle in five years, you know. He seemed terribly changed. He was not an old man, by any means, yet when I saw him at the funeral—” I paused, expectantly.

To my relief, she responded readily:

“He looked that way for the last few months, especially the last week. I spoke to him about it, two days before—before it happened, sir—and told him he’d do well to see the doctor again. But he cut me off short. My sister took sick the same day, and I was called out of town. The next time I saw him, he was—”

She paused, and then went on, sobbing:

“To think of him lyin’ there in that awful place, and callin’ and callin’ for me, as I know he must, and me not around to hear him!”

As she stopped again, suddenly, and threw a suspicious glance at me, I hastened to insert a matter-of-fact question:

“Did he appear ill on that last day?”

“Not so much ill, as——”

“Yes?” I prompted.

She was silent a long time, while I waited, afraid that some word of mine had brought back her former attitude of hostility. Then she seemed to make up her mind.

“I oughtn’t to say another word. I’ve said too much, already. But you’ve been liberal with me, sir, and I know somethin’ you’ve a right to be told, which I’m thinkin’ no one else is agoin’ to tell you. Look at the bottom of his study door a minute, sir.”

I followed her direction. What I saw led me to drop to my hands and knees, the better to examine it.

“Why should he put a rubber strip on the bottom of his door?” I asked, getting up.

She replied with another enigmatical suggestion:

“Look at these, if you will, sir. You’ll remember that he slept in this study. That was his bed, over there in the alcove.”

“Bolts!” I exclaimed. And I reinforced sight with touch by shooting one of them back and forth a few times. “Double bolts on the inside of his bedroom door! An upstairs room, at that. What was the idea?”

Mrs. Malkin portentously shook her head and sighed, as one unburdening her mind.

“Only this can I say, sir: He was afraid of something—_terribly_ afraid, sir. Something that came in the night.”

“What was it?” I demanded.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“It was in the night that—it happened?” I asked.

She nodded; then, as if the prologue were over, as if she had prepared my mind sufficiently, she produced something from under her apron. She must have been holding it there all the time.

“It’s his diary, sir. It was lying here on the floor. I saved it for you, before the police could get their hands on it.”

I opened the little book. One of the sheets near the back was crumpled, and I glanced at it, idly. What I read there impelled me to slap the covers shut again.

“Did you read this?” I demanded.

She met my gaze, frankly.

“I looked into it, sir, just as you did—only just _looked_ into it. Not for worlds would I do even that again!”

“I noticed some reference here to a slab in the cellar. What slab is that?”

“It covers an old, dried-up well, sir.”

“Will you show it to me?”

“You can find it for yourself, sir, if you wish. I’m not goin’ down there,” she said, decidedly.

“Ah, well, I’ve seen enough for today,” I told her. “I’ll take the diary back to my hotel and read it.”

* * * * *

I did not return to my hotel, however. In my one brief glance into the little book, I had seen something which had bitten into my soul; only a few words, but they had brought me very near to that queer, solitary man who had been my uncle.

I dismissed Mrs. Malkin, and remained in the study. There was the fitting place to read the diary he had left behind him.

His personality lingered like a vapor in that study. I settled into his deep morris chair, and turned it to catch the light from the single, narrow window—the light, doubtless, by which he had written much of his work on entomology.

That same struggling illumination played shadowy tricks with hosts of wall-crucified insects, which seemed engaged in a united effort to crawl upward in sinuous lines. Some of their number, impaled to the ceiling itself, peered quiveringly down on the aspiring multitude. The whole house, with its crisp dead, rustling in any vagrant breeze, brought back to my mind the hand that had pinned them, one by one, on wall and ceiling and furniture. A kindly hand, I reflected, though eccentric; one not to be turned aside from its single hobby.

When quiet, peering Uncle Godfrey went, there passed out another of those scientific enthusiasts, whose passion for exact truth in some one direction has extended the bounds of human knowledge. Could not his unquestioned merits have been balanced against his sin? Was it necessary to even-handed justice that he die face-to-face with Horror, struggling with the thing he most feared? I ponder the question still, though his body—strangely bruised—has been long at rest.

The entries in the little book began with the fifteenth of June. Everything before that date had been torn out. There, in the room where it had been written, I read my Uncle Godfrey’s diary.

“It is done. I am trembling so that the words will hardly form under my pen, but my mind is collected. My course was for the best. Suppose I had married her? She would have been unwilling to live in this house. At the outset, her wishes would have come between me and my work, and that would have been only the beginning.

“As a married man, I could not have concentrated properly, I could not have surrounded myself with the atmosphere indispensable to the writing of my book. My scientific message would never have been delivered. As it is, though my heart is sore, I shall stifle these memories in work.