Three sevens A detective story
They talked about that announcement of Leamy’s death in San
Francisco, of his having been drowned then and there. Was it this
that finally brought Leamy to the very fate he had imagined? Or was
it just fright? Anyway, Leamy was a debt which no longer existed on
that red balance sheet Craig had referred to.
But Joan hoped that Craig would come. Her soul was telling her that
he would appear with that last and most dangerous prisoner of all.
She had read that look in Craig’s eyes, and the quality of his voice,
and the way he had carried himself, better than any one else. He was
the Daniel of judgment and prophecy. No defeat, no misfortune, could
befall him.
But as the slow hands on the dial crept around toward midnight, that
whisper would repeat itself:
“Not yet! Not yet!”
There sounded a chime of bells from somewhere. There followed
what seemed to be a long period. Then another bell, very slow and
ponderous, began to strike twelve.
It was then that the thing happened--the thing they had all been
waiting for. Out in the hall there had come the peculiar hum and
click that meant the stopping of an elevator at his floor, a medley
of voices, a tramp of feet.
The door of the office was open. The distance from this door to the
elevators was not great. But the signal of those preliminary sounds
had been sufficient to bring every one up out of the tangle of small
interests into this dominating theme that had been in the minds of
all of them.
“It’s he.”
“It’s Craig!”
Instantly, every one by a sort of telepathy, or a sort of premature
blossoming of hopes and expectations, knew that Craig was bringing a
prisoner with him.
Joan Gracie had been the last to run to the door, although her
interest had been the greatest. As a matter of fact, she was all but
overcome. That period of suspense, following as it did on such other
killing excitement, had been all but too much for her.
Then, there she was at the door, looking out into the hallway, all
eyes, and yet scarcely able to see at all. What she did see was as if
in a series of dark flashes, more like the figments of hallucination
rather than anything real.
There was Craig, sure enough. And with him was Count Wolf. She
remembered Count Wolf from that never-to-be-forgotten look he had
given her back there in the office of San Pedro on the day of the
great delivery.
She saw that the count was handcuffed. Then, confusion.
The count had made a violent movement. He had not only wrenched
himself free. By some amazing trick of suppleness and strength he had
succeeded in getting himself free from those fine, strong shackles
on his wrists.
Joan saw the count strike this way and that. She heard an
imprecation. Then the count was running back toward the elevators.
And Craig was after him.
The elevator was gone. The steel door that guarded the shaft was
just sliding shut. The count thrust this back. He plunged into the
shaft--eighteen stories deep.
Joan’s heart stood still. Craig also had taken that leap.
Both Craig and the count had landed on the top of the elevator car
that had just brought them up. The eighteenth floor was the top floor
of the Courtney Building. Now the car had started down again. Did the
man who ran the car hear that double thud on the top of the cage? It
seemed so. A little further jolt on the lever, and away the car was
dropping down, dizzily swift.
As Craig landed on top of the elevator cage, there was a shout above
him. That was a shout from his friends. The shout was twisted into a
whine, the car was dropping so fast.
There was a great chain attached to the top of the car. It was shiny
in spots, although mostly coated with oil or graphite, possibly both.
“Cling to me,” said the chain.
How far had they fallen? What had happened to the count? But there,
for the first few seconds, the roar from the deeper consciousness
smothered every other voice: “Save yourself!” The floors went past, a
smear of shadows, of flicking lights, swept up by a hot wind stifled
in dust and oil.
There was a soft thud of a sickening suddenness, and the car had
slackened, had stopped.
Then a black shape squirmed up out of the red darkness and there was
Count Wolf again. The count also had escaped serious injury. He must
have. He struck a blow at Craig. Craig had been wavering, dazed. The
blow acted upon him like a deluge of cold water. So the game wasn’t
lost, after all?
He clutched the Wolf, and there for a nameless period of time they
swayed against the chain. Somewhere a bell shrilled. There was a
metallic clang. The platform jerked upward. Both Craig and the Wolf
knew what that meant, although neither of them was capable of speech.
The car was going up again. How far? To the top? There was a huge
wheel up there round which the chain sped as swift and silent as
light. Was it to be the destiny of one or both of them to be crushed
against the wheel?
There was no speech between Craig and the count--no speech requiring
breath--only the silent and far more eloquent speech of their eyes.
Their eyes were close. Their eyes were as dark and deep as this
endless tunnel stood up between heaven and earth.
Craig clung to the Wolf, the Wolf clung to Craig. Both clung to the
chain that had already lacerated them and saved them.
The lights flashed down. In one respect the situation was simplified.
At this hour of the night only this one car was running. And Craig
remembered now. He had noticed when he and the count had come up in
the car but a little while ago that the runner was old and a little
deaf.
Ah, when the car came to the floor where his friends were! It was
they who had signaled for the car to come back. Craig laughed, or
thought he did. His soul laughed as if his soul knew that it was
beyond hurt whatever happened to its enemy, his body. Those friends
would be seeing him now a crushed object--a thing--at the bottom of
the well five hundred feet down.
“Joan! Joan! For your sake!”
A cry from his heart, that. He gripped the count tighter, brought the
smudge of the count’s face against the steel chain, for the count
kept prodding him with something sharp--up against his ribs--was
trying to cut him.
They went to their knees in a heap.
The car had stopped. And, there for a moment, Craig clung to the top
of the car with iron hooks that had been his fingers. For the count
was trying to thrust him over and down, and Craig didn’t want to go.
He didn’t want the fight to end.
He caught a flashing view of the depth, as down an endless, vanishing
tunnel, ribbed with light.
To fall through that, drop through it, spinning, clutching at the
fleeting light, grasping at shadows that sped! Ah, no! Ah, no! Better
to end it here!
In the midst of cries that he did not understand, he had twisted
himself up, caught the count about the waist, jerked, tugged, told
him--or thought to tell him: “You go first!”
But the Wolf kicked as with a hoof of flint, then leaped.
He had sprung to the grating at the side of the car. This was like a
fence of steel pickets running from ceiling to floor, ornamental and
close set, shutting off the elevator well from the hallway landing.
In this fence, or grille, there were perhaps a dozen doors or gates,
one for each elevator.
Craig also leaped, although he was troubled by the knowledge of a
certain weakness. This was no time to show weakness, though. Let
nerve supply any strength that was lacking. Who was this Count Wolf?
A blackleg! A man whose face he had slapped. Craig caught the bars
and clung.
Where were those who shouted so? What were they saying? There was no
occasion for excitement.
He saw the count lift the lever of a gate, slip through.
As the count turned to thrust the gate shut, Craig had an arm
through. He followed his arm, while the count struck and struck
again. But Craig refused to go back. Ah, no! He wouldn’t go down that
elevator shaft alone. Too far! Too lonely! No one to meet him at the
journey’s end.
Ah, there were those who had shouted. A rush of figures. But now the
count was fleeing toward the stairway, the narrow, crooked stairway
of stone and steel, never used except by postmen and scrubwomen, that
squared down at one end of the hall beyond the battery of elevators.
Craig caught the count at the head of this.
“You got away once--twice--thrice! Now, never again!”
The thought was Craig’s. For a moment they were like dancers in the
circus--high up on a rope--balancing--death pulling one way, life the
other.
They went down with a rush.
When his friends found Craig, he was three flights down, and
apparently unhurt. They thought he was unhurt. They thought that
Count Wolf was dead. For Craig was standing up, with the count in
his arms, and had started back with him for the office on the upper
floor. And Craig smiled.
His clothes were in disarray. His face was white--all the whiter from
the contrast of his skin with a smear of oil and blood from temple to
chin.
“I’ll carry him,” said Craig. “He’s my prisoner. The red ledger
is--the red ledger--is----”
Courtney and Major Gracie started to take the prisoner from the
captor’s arms. But they dropped the prisoner as Craig reeled around
against the railing of the stairway, stood there panting, smiling
still. Joan Gracie, appearing like a white shadow to Craig, spoke
with a voice that sounded to him like a brook running over pebbles in
a woody solitude:
“Quick! He’s hurt!”
Well, that was good enough for Craig. Some final thread of resolution
snapped. He went to sleep.
* * * * *
There were other white shadows for Craig. He had come into a world
that was mostly of white shadows. It appeared that, apart from
other hurts, Count Wolf had managed to cut him rather severely with
a knife--a small knife, fortunately; although very sharp. One of
Craig’s sides, as a matter of fact, was pretty well ribboned to the
bone. But nothing too serious, for a constitution like his--clean
blood, a good family history, no doubt.
Only, there was one night when Craig himself believed that he had
opened his eyes on the white dawn of the Big Sleep. Everything white.
He was in the hospital then, and didn’t know it. No shape, no shadow
except the one big white shadow which enveloped him physically and
mentally--and spiritually, too, for he felt immeasurably clean.
With perfect peace he thought of all that he had been through. His
conscience was clear. That dark and scarlet world through which he
had passed had been a hard master to him, but he had worked out his
bond, was a freeman. There had been a red ledger. The red ledger was
no more.
But, with thought of the red ledger, there crept into this white
heaven in which Craig found himself a glint of poignant yearning, a
sense of loss, a loneliness and a nostalgia that was beyond endurance.
He knew that he was weak. He knew that it was wrong. But he just
couldn’t help it. That was all.
“Let me go back--go back!”
As if in response to his cry, a cool softness descended on his
forehead. The white shadow took on color and became infused with
lines and substance, evidently in response to the simple magic of
turning on the light, and he found himself looking up into the face
of Joan Gracie.
“Joan,” he whispered.
“Yes, Daniel.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re in a hospital--a private hospital--one of the best.”
“And you are really here?”
“I came to see how you were getting on. The nurse stepped out for a
moment, left me in charge.”
Craig’s breast rose and fell.
“You may talk a very little,” said Joan. “Tell me what was bothering
you just now. Maybe you’ll be relieved.”
Craig told her.
“I thought,” he said, “that I had died and gone to heaven, but when I
looked for you and found that you weren’t there----”