Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 320 - Reign of Terror

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REIGN OF TERROR
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I
? CHAPTER II
? CHAPTER III
? CHAPTER IV
? CHAPTER V
? CHAPTER VI
? CHAPTER VII
? CHAPTER VIII
? CHAPTER IX
? CHAPTER X
? CHAPTER XI
? CHAPTER XII
? CHAPTER XIII
? CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER I
YAWNING, the tired doctor waved a lackadaisical hand good night to his nurse. She said, "Don't forget
you have to be in surgery at nine tomorrow, Dr. Brandon."
"Okay. See you then." The doctor leaned back in his chair. He was bone weary. It was fine to be a
top-notch surgeon, but it was exhausting. The door closed behind his nurse and he was alone. He riffled
through a book which he had received that day. It was about block anesthesia, a subject dear to his
heart. He read on, becoming more and more engrossed. There was a strong possibility that in a period of
a couple of years, localized anesthesia would take the place of gross ether anesthesia.
Time passed over the doctor's unaware head. It was near midnight when the door bell rang. The book
dropped to the doctor's lap as he wondered what this late call presaged. He got to his feet and opened
the door.
He looked at the two men in the doorway with no recognition. Well dressed, too well dressed, they
bulked large in the aperture. One was medium height, medium weight, medium everything until you came
to his eyes. They were slits. The pupils were pin points in the low light. The darting pin points shifted to
the doctor's face. The man spoke.
His voice was shrill, high pitched.
He said, "Back into the office, Dr. Quack."
The other man who was taller, fatter, said slowly, "Yare. Back up."
The doctor retreated, his brain in a whirl. This kind of thing was foreign to him. What could the men
want? Drugs? Some kind of outside-the-law medical assistance?
"Down in the chair," the medium sized man said. He re-inforced his command by showing just the muzzle
of a pistol. It poked out of his overcoat pocket for a second and then dropped back out of sight.
The doctor sat down.
The other man took something out of his pocket. It was not a gun, although the single lamp in the room
cast highlights on the metal that formed the object. It was heavy and made a dull and ominous sound as it
clumped on the surface of the desk.
"Be with you in a second, Dr. Quack." The man whose eyes were slits moved his hand in his pocket.
The other man tightened a screw on the bottom of the object. Only then did the doctor realize what it
was. A vise. The man was fastening the incongruous object to a corner of the desk.
Three men in an office. A machinist's tool fastened to the corner of a doctor's desk. What could it mean,
the doctor wondered? He was not left in doubt for long.
The man with the gun said, "Put his thumb in it, Larry."
"Yare."
Before the doctor quite knew how it had happened, his right hand thumb was being forced in between
the steel jaws of the vise. A turn of the handle and his thumb was pressed with agonizing force.
The man tightened the turning handle of the vise an extra quarter turn. The blood drained out of the
doctor's face. The other man took his gun out of his pocket and, holding it negligently, said, "One sound
and you get one through the head."
The doctor froze. This was fantastic. Incredible as a nightmare. But the pain in his thumb was real. His
precious thumb. With that injured, he could never operate again...
The two men watched as they saw realization dawn in the doctor's eyes. The one with the gun said, "Get
the picture, Doc? One turn of the vise and your thumb is out of commission... forever. No more
operations. No more high fees. Nobody can operate with a flat thumb. Not even you, the wonder
working Dr. Brandon!"
It was true, the doctor thought, looking down at his thumb. Without that sensitive rotating digit he would
be as helpless as if he were handless.
The doctor forced the words out of his dry throat. "What do you want?"
"This will come as a surprise, Dr. Quack. A big surprise."
The doctor looked up. Were these men after revenge? Were they relatives of someone on whom he had
operated and failed? But that would be absurd. Every doctor had failures... even the best...
The man said, "Yep. Some surprise. We want dough. Money. The long green. That filthy stuff that
greases the wheels and makes them go round."
"Money? Of course. But... I have no money here. Perhaps fifty dollars in my wallet. Will that be
enough?" The doctor's voice was choked, pinched. His thumb hurt even though the pressure from the
vise was not particularly hard. He could imagine what one more turn would do.
"Fifty clams!" the man said. "The doc's some kidder, ain't he Larry? A comic. You should be on the
radio, doc."
The other man said, "Yare, and less comedy out of you, Barrels. Cut the barbering and get to work."
"Okay. Look, doc, we'll take the fifty for now. But we'll be back tomorrow night. That'll be Wednesday.
We'll come for our weekly two hundred. You can afford that... you could lay down even more, but we're
nice kids and we dowanna put you out of business. As a matter of fact, you could look at it like you just
got some new partners. We want for you to make lots of dough. Cause then we make lots of dough, get
it?"
"You want two hundred dollars a week?" The doctor thought fast. He would promise the money,
promise to pay off weekly and then, tomorrow night, have the police in hiding, and...
The man with the gun grinned. He said, "Look, I'm a mind reader! You know what Dr. Quack is
thinking, don't you? He's thinking of having a reception committee ready for us tomorrow night."
The other said, "Yeah. They all think of that. Show him your clippings."
A hand went into an inner pocket and came out filled with newspaper items clipped from the papers. The
clippings fell with a soft plop on the center of the doctor's desk.
The doctor forced his unwilling eyes downward. He saw, "Acid Ruins Doctor's Hands." That was the
headline on one item. Another was slugged, "Strange Series of Accidents Dogs Doctors." He ran his eyes
down the finer print and read about three doctors who had been singularly luckless. One had been in an
auto accident and had his arm smashed. Another even more unfortunate had caught his hand in a window
and had all his fingers mashed flat. The third had lost a thumb in an odd accident that had been brought
about by his slipping on some icy pavement.
The doctor looked up from the clippings. There were more, many more of the newspaper items but he
had no desire to read them. He said, and his voice was dull, "I see what you mean. If I call the police you
will know about it and will not be here."
"He's a smart kid, this doc." The man grinned. "He catches on fast. Sure, if you call for help we don't
show... not when the cops are here, anyhow. But we come back for a visit. Don't worry about that, we
come back..."
"I'll have the money for you," the doctor said.
The vise flipped open. His thumb was released. The man who'd been operating the device said, "Don't
think that this won't go back on just as easy as it came off!"
They left then. The two men went out through the door and it closed softly behind them. The doctor was
alone. If it hadn't been for the pressure marks on his thumb, tiny dimples left by the inside of the vise, he
might have doubted his sanity. But as it was, he sat that way for a long time looking at his digit.
Sure, he could afford the money. This time. But for how long? Ten thousand dollars a year it worked out
to. Ten thousand four hundred dollars. But it was either that or... he looked at his thumb again.
They were smart, making it in weekly installments. He might have trouble in raising ten thousand in a
lump. He might have had to sell some stocks and that would have left a record. This way... Only then he
remembered that he had to be in the operating room at nine the next morning.
He got to his feet and turned off the light. The office was empty now. He went out the door. It closed
behind him. Darkness filled the room. Black shadows that made weird patterns on the light grey rug.
There was a whisper of sound at the partly open window. So faint as to be but the veriest echo of an
echo, a sinister laugh came into being and then was gone. If there had been ears to hear they would have
wondered where the sound could have come from and what could have made it. But as it was the sound
died away as though unborn.
Now the office was really empty.
CHAPTER II
SHE was unusual in that she was almost as pretty off stage as on. Generally the kind of face that looks
exquisite from the audience is a little coarse at close range. But she was the exception to the rule. She sat
down in front of her make-up mirror and in that crowded little dressing room she was like a lambent
flame.
Outside her door the hubbub of a nightclub went on. The orchestra finished the chord that had brought
her off. She smiled as she heard the last bit of applause die away. The audience had been receptive that
night. They had liked every song she had sung, every special intonation that was her identification mark.
Looking at herself in the mirror she was glad she was alive, glad she was a performer, glad she was
getting the recognition she had always wanted. She took a deep breath. It had been a long, tough climb,
but now, at moments like these, she regretted nothing.
Savoring the moment to the utmost, she was deaf to the little sound of her door opening. She didn't even
realize that there were two men in her room till she saw their reflection in the mirror.
Pulling a wrapper up about her, she said angrily, "You might have knocked!"
One of the men said, "Why?" in a flat voice that denied the question it asked.
For a long moment there was complete silence in the crowded little room. The outside noises seemed to
die away. Fear came slowly to the girl. She had been around. She knew the score. But this didn't add up.
The men looked at her coldly. They didn't look at her the way she was used to being eyed by men.
One of them who was medium sized opened his clenched hand. After all the melodrama of the silence,
the content of his hand was an anti-climax. In the center of his palm was a little bottle.
She looked at it. Through the glass she could see an oily fluid. It shimmered slowly in the light from the
unshaded bulb over her make-up mirror.
The man held the bottle gingerly at his finger tips. He removed the glass stopper from the top of the
bottle. Then his slits of eyes flicked around the room. He saw, thrown on a settee, a rag doll.
He walked to it and slowly tilted the bottle over the doll's idiotically smiling face. Drops of the liquid
poured down. The girl watched, hypnotized by what was happening.
A tendril of smoke wafted upward from the painted smile on the doll's face. And then, suddenly, there
was no face! The doll's head was a smoking, roiling mass. The cotton batting of which the head was
made was puffing up into view as the plaster of the doll's face was eaten away.
The girl looked from the destroyed doll's head to the bottle. From the bottle her eyes went up to the face
of the man who had poured the liquid on her doll.
He said, "Get it, dearie?"
She shuddered.
The other man said. "Don't get in a hassle, darling. We won't do that to your face... not unless you force
us to."
"What do you want?" she whispered.
"Money."
"How much?"
"You make five bills a week. We want two."
"Sure." She smiled hysterically. "Sure, I get five hundred a week. But how much do you think is left after
I pay my agent ten per cent, my personal manager ten, Uncle Sam his tax cut, and the hundred I pay my
press agent a week?"
"Enough so you can give us two... or..." The man's slitted eyes went to the doll's head. He lingered over
the cotton batting which was smoking now.
"You're crazy. I don't see that much money free and clear," she said, angry now.
"So you'll have to make a couple of extra bucks a week," the man said. "That's your business, not ours."
His voice was flat. "First payment is due by Friday. And no cops." He grinned and it showed yellow
broken stumps projecting from the gums.
She dropped her head into her hands. She didn't even see them go, but there were eyes that saw them
leave. At the window, the tiny dirty window that never allowed any sun to enter the dressing room, there
was a patch of shadow which seemed just a degree darker than the real shadows.
The darker shadow faded away. The frightened girl was alone with her fears.
The prelims were over. No one had watched the fighters. People milled around, late comers bustled
down the aisles. In the ring the last pair of prelim fighters were finishing their mechanical chores. It was a
six round bout. This was the last round. The fighters were evenly matched. As a matter of fact, they had
put on a fairly good fight. But no one was interested. They were lightweights and the attention of the
evening was focused on the middleweight championship bout.
In the ring, one of the men was on the receiving end of a left jab. He staggered, the right came through
and the bout was over.
The ring was cleared.
The first of the middleweights, the contender, came down the aisle. Now the seats were all filled. The
last, last minute bets had been made. The men in the seats eyed the man in the bathrobe. A lot of money
was riding on him.
He climbed up through the ropes. The white harsh lights bit down into his face making the ring scars on it
stand out like primitive sculpture. He bowed to the audience. There was a cocky little smile twisting the
corners of his mouth. It disappeared as his handler put the rubber mouthpiece in place.
There was a roar welling up in the arena. That meant the champ was coming down. The contender didn't
even look around. He hunched his shoulders.
The champ got into the ring and bowed. If he was frightened he didn't show it. He looked out into the
audience. But there was no help there. There was no help anywhere. Those guys who had come into his
dressing room. He clenched his hands inside the adhesive tape. If he could only get his fists on them...
But if he had clouted them there would have been others. Always others... more and more of them. You
couldn't fight them all.
He sighed. He'd had his orders. He looked over at the contender and wondered if the contender knew
the fight was in the bag. Ah, what difference did it make? The only thing was to make it look good, so the
stink didn't attract too much attention.
The sixth round he'd been told to flop.
From the audience the champ looked as if he was raring to go. He slipped off his bathrobe. His body
was peculiar. Long bodied and short legged he looked like some link with man's past.
He had a primitive sort of energy that had carried him to triumph over the prostrate bodies of men much
his superior in boxing skill. Forty-seven k.o.'s, three decisions, and one draw. That was his record and
up to twenty minutes ago it had been his proudest boast.
The time keeper clanged the bell. The two men came from their corners and the huge arena was quiet.
This was what twenty thousand people had paid a small fortune to see. It has been said that no coward
ever gets in the ring because no coward can force himself into that white square. There is a feeling of
isolation there, of being back in the dark ages when man was pitted against man or beast...
The contender felt his man out. His left tapped out almost delicately. The champ's guard came up
instinctively. There was a flurry of blows.
The third man in the ring, watching closely, couldn't see anything wrong and yet the contender could feel
it. The champ was off. Just a split second off, but he was off. The contender relaxed a bit.
The referee circled around the men. He hoped it would be a clean fight and a quick one. He was tired
and he wanted to go home and go to bed. He thought maybe he had a cold coming on.
The champ hunched his head into his shoulders and held his guard a little higher than usual. Just because
he was going to take a dive there was no sense in taking a real beating.
The contender landed one that jolted the champ. He sucked wind in. That had hurt. He backed away.
The contender came in faster now, surer of himself. The champ smiled to himself. He knew just how the
contender was feeling.
From the ringside the fight looked good. There where plenty of exchanges. The radio announcer was
working himself up into a frenzy adding artificial excitement to his words so that some of the feeling would
come across into the homes of his listening audience.
The television cameras were focused on the center of the ring where the action was at its peak.
On the screen of a television set the fight looked as if it were being fought by marionettes, by stringed
puppets. The little men in the white ring didn't seem real.
The three men who were sitting around the television set leaned forward in the soft chairs as the champ
flicked a long right out. It caught the contender right on the tip of the chin. He staggered and fell back into
the ropes.
One of the three watching men said. "Is that fool selling us out?"
The fat man who had a bowl in his lap in which he was mixing something said. "Don't be an idiot. He
wouldn't dare. Sit back, relax. When I take care of something, it stays taken care of."
The third man whose dull, blank eyes seemed to be barely focused on the scene, said, "Sure, when Ed
Corre puts a fix in, it stays fixed."
The fat man said, "You tell him, Buster."
"All right, all right," the thin man was querulous.
"That's what's the matter with you, Corbaccio," Ed Corre said, "you worry too much."
"There's a lot of my money riding on this," Corbaccio snapped.
"Sure, sure." Corre used the fork in his hand to mix the salad in the bowl more thoroughly. "Sure, a lot of
money." He grinned. It drew his soft bulbous mouth up into a Cupid-like bow.
The television announcer said, "Only thirty seconds left in the sixth round of the championship match,
folks, and... oh... oh! Watch this!"
The three men, Corre, Corbaccio, and the man called Buster leaned forward in their chairs. Corre forgot
to mix the salad in the bowl. The contender was coming in for the kill. The champ was on the ropes. He
was bleeding from the nose, from a cut over his eye. He was gasping around his rubber mouthpiece. His
lungs strained.
One blow... two... One to the head, one to the bread basket. That snapped the champ's head down right
into the path of the right that came up from the ankle. The champ's head snapped back.
His body slumped into the ropes. The elasticity of the ropes threw him forward as though rejecting him.
He fell downward on his face.
Corre reached out and flicked off the switch on the television set.
Corbaccio stammered, "Aren't you going to wait and see what happens?"
"You kidding? I ordered him to flop in the sixth. This is the sixth."
Buster said, "Don't you believe the boss when he says somethin'?"
"Sure, but..." Corbaccio looked undecided.
"But what?" Corre asked, his cupid's bow mouth curved in a sweet smile.
Corbaccio stammered into silence.
"That's better," Corre said. "Now I want your honest opinion about this new salad dressing. Your honest
opinion, mind you. Don't say you like it if you don't."
Buster left the room to get plates. Corbaccio sat back in his chair and looked at Corre. How much of this
food business was an act and how much real? He could never make up his mind. The phone rang and he
watched Corre waddle over and answer it. The man was so fat. He almost abused the privilege. Three
hundreds pounds of soft blubber... and inside it that hard brain. It didn't seem possible.
Corre said, "You got the money? Okay, put it in the safe and then you can beat it." He hung up the
phone.
"We get paid off," he said to Corbaccio. "You can really relax now. I like that. You should never eat
when you are the slightest bit upset. It's not fair to the food." He turned as Buster came in with plates and
silverware. "Ah, thank you, my genial fool."
He separated the salad into three portions. Two normal size and the third gigantic. He would allow no
talking when he ate. The two men observed the silence rule. They ate. When the plates were clear Corre
asked, "Now, how do you like it?"
"Good. Very good. One of the best salads I ever ate!" Corbaccio said truthfully.
"One of the best?" Corre looked thoughtful. He lifted his head, tightening his neck line so that only three
of his double chins showed. "Where have you ever had any like it?" He was really curious.
"Why... I don't know. I don't remember. But really, this is great."
"Pity you don't remember." Corre looked sorrowful. "However, to work. Have you taken care of the
booking angle?"
"Uh huh," Corbaccio looked wary. "Corre, are you sure this is going to work? It's a peculiar angle, it's
never been done before."
"It'll work," Corre said.
"Sure." Buster shook his head anxiously. "It's the boss' idea and they always work. Wait and see!"
CHAPTER III
THE comedian bowed to his applause and walked off the floor. When he got to the side of the club the
maitre d'hotel was waiting for him. The maitre d'hotel said, "Over there. Table number six."
"What's up?"
"Some guy says he can do you some good." The maitre d'hotel was not interested.
The comic walked to the table. He sized up the two men sitting there. If they were booking agents he'd
never seen them before, but that wasn't surprising. There were almost as many bookers as acts.
One of the men whose slitted eyes seemed to hurt even in the dull blue lights of the nightclub said, "Sit
down."
Seating himself the comedian waited.
"You finish here tonight." It was not a question but a statement of fact.
"Yes, why?"
"How'd you like forty weeks booking at five bills a week?"
Since the comedian was only making three hundred a week he was very interested. He said, "Tell me
more."
"That's all, you want the booking or not?" the man with the tiny pupils in his slits of eyes said. "Speak up.
There's plenty of crumby m.c. comics who are starving. You want the booking or don't you?"
It was true about the comics starving. The entertainment business was way off from the war time boom.
The comedian said, "Sure, I want the booking."
"It'll cost you five grand. You drop the dough and you sign the contract." This was from the other man
who up to this point had not spoken.
"Five thous... Ya kiddin'?"
Slit eyes said, "In or out? You want in say so. If not we go next door. There's a comic there too."
"But where would I get that kind of dough?"
"Questions he asks," Slit eyes said.
The other man said, "Don't you know any shylocks?"
"Yeah, but..."
The two men stood up. Slit eyes said, "Ya can't do business with some of these creeps, that's all there is
to it."
The comedian gulped, then said, "Gimme twenty-four hours to try and raise the dough, will you?"
"We'll be back tomorrow night this time. Don't louse around, if you don't think you can raise it, tell us
now. We're busy."
Forty weeks... even in his best year the comic hadn't worked more than thirty. He said, "I'll have the
dough somehow." He paused, lowered his voice and said, "When'd you guys move in on this business?"
Looking down at the comedian, slit eyes said, "We've always been in it. We just decided to make it pay
off faster. Tomorrow night." It was an order.
They left.
Slit eyes was in a phone booth. He spoke with his lips barely moving. "A pushover. Yeah."
A voice on the phone said, "Good. Look, I'm sorry, but something has come up. All the other boys are
busy. Do you mind doing one more thing tonight?"
"What's on your mind?"
The phone said, "Look up James Ravvel."
"And?" The question hung in the air.
"He decided not to pay off tonight."
"Okay. His address is 342 Larren St., isn't it?"
"Sixteenth floor," the phone said. "He's there now."
"When we finish this shall I check with you?"
"No... don't bother. I'm going to bed now."
The phone clicked as the receiver slid into place.
The elevator door opened at the nineteenth floor. Two men stepped out. The door closed behind them.
They walked down the hall. At the end of it there was a fire door. They looked around them. No one in
sight. The door slid open and closed behind them. They walked down three flights of stairs. They walked
easily, unhurriedly. They might have been two men coming home from the office after working late. Or,
they might have been inspectors examining the walls. That is if it hadn't been three o'clock in the morning.
Unhurriedly they walked out the fire door on the sixteenth floor. No one in sight here either. They walked
perhaps twenty paces and paused in front of a door. A neat little tab on the door read James Ravvel.
One man stepped further toward the door. In his hand was a slim piece of blue steel. He inserted it in the
keyway of the lock. He pressed on the steel. Then he took another curiously shaped piece of steel from
his pocket. One end of it curved down. He inserted this on top of the slimmer object. He jiggled it
patiently. There was a series of clicks.
The other man reached his hand down and twisted the knob. The door clicked open. They stepped in as
though they were coming home.
The apartment was in darkness. They walked surefootedly through the foyer that led into the living room.
The fatter of the two men reached out and turned on a bridge lamp. The light was warm, comforting.
There was a door leading off the living room.
One of the men, the fatter one, reached in his pocket and took out a roll of nickels that was wrapped in
paper the way a bank packs theirs. He placed the package in the center of his palm. One end of the roll
of coins butted against a big heavy ring that the man wore on his smallest finger. He tightened his hand
around the roll.
The other man slammed the bedroom door open. He walked into the darkness to the side of the bed. A
man sat up in bed. Light spilling in from the other room illumined his regular features. Throat dry, he
croaked, "Wh... who is it?"
The man said, "Visitors. Get up."
Eyes wide with fear, the man staggered out of his bed. His foot caught in the bedclothes. He pitched
forward. As he fell the man who had awakened him lashed out and his hand smashed down on the nape
of the other man's neck.
Ravvel grunted with pain. He was not out, but he was groggy. A foot in his chest brought him forward
onto his knees. He got to his feet and holding onto the wall for support he made his way into the living
room.
Pin point pupils dancing in the light, the slimmer of the two men said, "C'mon, get this over. I'm tired. I
want to go to bed."
The other grabbed a handful of Ravvel's pajamas coat into a bunch and shook him. His right hand was
heavy with the roll of nickels. He said, "No matter how I muss pretty boy's face up, it ain't gonna show
when he lands on his puss. Sixteen floors, is a long drop."
"Go ahead, but hurry it up. I'm tired."
"You're not tired, you need a shot. G'wan in the bathroom and get it over. I can handle pretty boy."
Making a period to the sentence the man's heavy fist cut across Ravvel's face. His heavy ring ripped a
segment of skin off the face. Blood spurted.
The thinner man left the room. As soon as he was gone there was a susurration in the bed room. Not
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REIGNOFTERRORMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI?CHAPTERII?CHAPTERIII?CHAPTERIV?CHAPTERV?CHAPTERVI?CHAPTERVII?CHAPTERVIII?CHAPTERIX?CHAPTERX?CHAPTERXI?CHAPTERXII?CHAPTERXIII?CHAPTERXIVCHAPTERIYAWNING,thetireddoctorwavedalackadaisicalhandgoodnighttohisn...

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