The unknown seven A detective story
in a powerful grip that pinned his arms to his side and rendered him
helpless.
His mind worked quickly, while the enormous weight of his adversary
bore him down. Evidently he was a huge man, and his arms were hard
as flails. Even if Cole’s hands had been free, his fists would have
made no stronger impression on the man’s body than on a wall of brick.
Though nimbler and more wiry than his opponent, Cole knew he could not
match him in brute strength and physical endurance. His only hope lay
in releasing his arms and, striking at the fellow’s face, batter him
into insensibility.
He writhed and wriggled in the powerful embrace of the gigantic arms,
resisting the downward pressure till he felt as if his spine must snap.
Inch by inch his opponent was bending him to his knees, and all the
while his arms felt as if they were caught between metal springs. In
vain he put every ounce of strength into the struggle; the mountainous
body of his adversary was constantly forcing him downward. Already his
knees were touching the floor, and his neck felt as if it were being
gradually wrenched out of shape.
His breath grew weak and fluttering. His heart pounded against his ribs
like a trip hammer. In the blackness tiny specks whirled before his
eyes. He knew the struggle must end soon, and the realization seemed
to kindle a flame within him. An idea shot like a flash through his
reeling mind.
Suddenly he grew limp in the sturdy arms of his opponent. With a
grunt of satisfaction the latter let go his hold, and Cole lay flat
and inert on his back. For a few moments he drank huge gulps of air
into his straining lungs. Then, with the elastic swiftness of a spring
suddenly released, he leaped to his feet. With one hand he located his
adversary, with the other he drove a savage blow straight into the
man’s face.
A short cry of pain and rage broke from the other’s lips. His hands
fumbled at Cole’s throat for a strangle hold, but the merciless
hammering of the latter’s fists drove him steadily backward. Whenever
his fingers tightened around Cole’s windpipe a rain of smashing blows
to nose and mouth forced him to relax his hold and retreat a little
farther toward the wall. Cole, his strength electrified by the joy of
battle, did not notice that his knuckles were bruised. Time and again,
with a sureness of aim that surprised himself, he drove them into the
other’s torn and mangled face. Already a stertorous breathing told that
his adversary was becoming groggy. Cole summoned all his strength for a
final knock-out blow.
He flung his arm backward, and in the same instant the other uttered a
loud yell. Cole cut it short with a crashing thrust of his fist. With a
gasp his opponent went to the floor. For a moment he gave himself over
to the thrill of victory, but in the next instant he was all alertness.
A faint click signified that the door had opened, and now several pairs
of feet were stealing swiftly across the floor.
Cole whirled around on his heels, but a stalwart form collided with
him, nearly sweeping him off his feet. Another hurled himself upon him
from behind, and a third jerked his legs from under him. With a sharp
sense of bafflement, Cole fell headlong to the floor. He struck out
with hands and feet, fighting with desperate vehemence, determined to
inflict all the injury he could on his opponents.
But he was outnumbered three to one, and something of his strength had
been spent in the earlier encounter. Defiantly he met the onslaught,
but he was overpowered by numbers. Eventually they laid him on his
back, and then his adversaries shackled his hands and feet with stout
cord. He thought they were handling him with strange gentleness, and he
wondered if they were saving him for another ordeal. He remembered, as
he was picked up and carried, that Miss Brown had said something about
a fate worse than a hundred deaths.
In silence the little procession passed through a door, and presently
Cole was placed on a cot. In a few moments the men walked out, and once
more he was left alone in impenetrable darkness. Not a word had been
spoken by his captors, and he had not obtained a single glimpse of
their faces. The whole episode had been enacted in silence and under
cover of darkness.
The door opened just as his mind was shaking off the numbness that had
seized it when he fell. Some one walked up to the cot where he lay. For
a few moments no sound was heard save the slow breathing of the two
men. Finally the other spoke, and Cole recognized the voice of the one
who had acted as spokesman for the group around the circular table.
“You’re an obstinate man, Mr. Cole. We have made you a very flattering
proposition, and you have seen fit to reject it. I have come to offer
you one more chance to comply with our wishes.”
“And if I refuse,” said Cole evenly, “you will kill me, I suppose. I am
beginning to think you are quite capable of it.”
“Oh, no!” The other man laughed softly. “We know you are not the kind
of man that’s afraid of death. Something stronger than fear for your
life is needed to bend you to our will. But we will bend you sooner or
later. Make no mistake about that.”
The words were spoken in a tone of calm assurance that impressed Cole
against his will.
“How, if I may ask?”
“By a form of persuasion that is far more powerful than the fear of
death. After all, death is nothing. Only a dip into a void. A little
suffering, perhaps, and then nothingness. There are things that are far
worse. Mr. Cole, did you ever stop to consider what your life would
amount to if you should suddenly lose your mind?”
“What?” Cole gave an involuntary shudder.
“Suppose that keen mind of yours should become a blank. Suppose that
your wonderful mental faculties were to desert you, that you were to
become a leering, tottering wretch, inspiring loathing and horror in
your fellow men. Can you picture such a fate, Mr. Cole? Death would be
a thousand times more merciful, yet you would lack the incentive to
kill yourself. What could be worse?”
Cole was silent. The darkness gave free rein to his imagination, and
the picture he saw sent a cold shiver down his spine.
“All that life means to you would be blotted out,” the other went on
with remorseless eloquence. “Instead of matching your wits against a
man’s problems, as at present, you would probably be devoting your
time to childish amusements. Imagine yourself placing buttons in a row
and building houses out of blocks. You would be dragging a useless and
broken body through life until——”
“Stop it!” said Cole. “You’re in more danger of losing your mind than I
am. Yours is already a bit twisted, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Unless you give us a reasonable guarantee that
you will comply with our wishes, you will be a grimacing lunatic by
morning. A very simple operation on the brain will do it. Among those
seven men whom you saw around the circular table is a noted surgeon.
Everything, including the ether and the instruments, will be ready in a
few minutes. There is still time for you to come to your senses.”
In the back of Cole’s mind was a hazy suspicion that he was dreaming,
but the other’s calm and softly penetrating tones gave him a feeling of
reality.
“You wouldn’t——” he began.
“Ah, wouldn’t we? Just wait and see. Perhaps I can convince you.”
Cole heard his footfalls cross the floor, and then a door opened and
closed. For a few minutes he was alone, trying to arrange in an orderly
process the odds and ends of the night’s amazing happenings. His
mind staggered before the task, and suddenly the door opened again.
He had a vague impression that two men were entering, and that they
were carrying a burden between them. They moved about quickly in the
darkness, and now and then they whispered in tones so low that Cole
could not hear them.
A light flashed on, and in the same instant the door closed. After the
long period of utter darkness, the sudden glare had a blinding effect.
Cole blinked his eyes, but after a little he opened them wide in
astonishment, and the sight that met them drew a long, trembling gasp
from his lips.
There was only one other man in the room, a shivering, gibbering wreck
of a man whose grimacing features and hollow cackle sent a series of
chill shivers through Cole’s body. For a long time he stared into the
leering, slowly twitching face before he was able to realize that the
wretch, seated a few feet from his cot, was Malcolm Reeves.
CHAPTER IV
“YELLOW”
When he first went to work on the case of Reeves’ mysterious
disappearance, Cole had been shown several photographs of the missing
man. Along the numerous twistings of the trail, he had carried with him
a mental picture of a fine intellectual face, deep and rather somber
eyes, a long nose, whose slenderness hinted at aristocratic breeding,
a clean-cut jaw that denoted a great deal of aggressiveness, and lips
that were a trifle too full and might have suggested sensuality, if the
broad slope of the forehead had not conveyed a dominant impression of
the student and the thinker. The picture in Cole’s mind had represented
a man about fifty years old, with a virile personality and quiet tastes.
The contrast between his mental image of Malcolm Reeves and the
miserable creature, now sitting a few feet away, was so sharp that the
comparison gave Cole a profound shock. His clothing hung loosely over
his bony frame, and he seemed to have aged decades in the three weeks
that had elapsed since his disappearance. His shoulders were hunched
down a little, his head was bent forward, and the eyes stared rigidly
into space, as if he were seeing something in the distance. His lips
were twisted into a fixed, vacant smile that impressed Cole as the most
hideous thing he had ever seen.
He tried to spring from the cot, momentarily forgetting that his arms
and legs were bound. He sank back with a mutter of exasperation. Not
much imagination was required to guess that the men who had brought
about his own plight were also responsible for the condition of Malcolm
Reeves.
Again something drew his glance to the insane man. The revolting
picture seemed to hold Cole with an uncanny fascination. “What’s
happened?” he inquired, realizing a moment later that he might as well
have addressed a wooden image.
Reeves was still gazing fixedly at the opposite wall. There was a look
of insane glee in his shrunken eyes. He bent forward a little more, and
then his lips began to move. “Yellow,” he said. “Pretty yellow!”
The soft-spoken words and the giggle that followed caused Cole to
shudder. He could see that Reeves’ mind, or the pitiful remnant of it,
was reveling in some childish fancy. The wreckage of a once splendid
intellect was horrible to behold.
“What do you see?” he asked, wondering whether the man was capable of
any form of response.
The other’s face brightened, but Cole thought it was only an external
glow, a reflected light rather than one kindled from within. He
recoiled inwardly as another stream of giggling mirth flowed from the
insane man’s lips.
“Yellow,” said Reeves again. “Pretty yellow!”
His expression became more rapt. His smile grew broader and deeper, but
to Cole it seemed nothing more than a contortion of facial muscles.
He wondered whether the two words were all that was left of the man’s
vocabulary. He felt a desire to test him and see if there was not a
remaining scrap of intellect that could be aroused.
“Listen, Mr. Reeves,” he said sharply. “When did you last see Professor
Carmody?”
The giggling ended in a quick intake of breath. Reeves’ smile faded
as abruptly as if an invisible hand had blotted it out. Watching him