Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 296 - A Quarter of Eight - Walter Gibson

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A QUARTER OF EIGHT
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," October 1945.
There were four interesting-looking pieces of an old Spanish coin -
representing undreamed-of riches and undreamed-of danger! Only The Shadow
could
cope with the fearful legacy to which a couple of innocent victims fell heir.
CHAPTER I
FOUR men were in Sargon's back room that night.
What their names were didn't matter, because nobody used his right name
in
Martinique - not if he could help it.
These were the times when the island was dominated by the Vichy
government, when a man's life was valued only in terms of his wits. What these
men were was known only to themselves - individually.
In those days, almost everything was illegal in Fort de France, the
capital of Martinique. Tension smoldered like the hidden fires of Mount Pelee,
the towering volcano which twenty years before had all but blasted the island
off the map.
What might blast Martinique next was anybody's guess.
Men who used their boats to carry supplies to waiting Nazi submarines
might, on the return trip, bring in weapons from Free French freighters, for
distribution among the local Underground. Yet no one could question this
inconsistency; it might simply be a cover-up.
The greater a man's value to one side, the greater his value to the
other.
That was the law on Martinique, during this fateful period while the outcome
of
the war seemed hanging in the balance. It was policy for a man to think only
of
himself.
Simon Sargon followed that policy to the letter.
It was against all regulations to allow clandestine meetings on one's
premises, so Sargon didn't allow them. To prove the fact he left his back door
unlocked every night, so that the gendarmerie could look in for themselves and
see that all was empty. Only the gendarmes never looked in, because Sargon had
forgotten to tell them that he alone, of all the distressed merchants in Fort
de France, lacked the sense to lock and barricade his store.
Sargon couldn't help anyone's wandering into the place. That would be his
alibi if he ever needed it. Sargon always turned in early, and it wasn't until
long after his lights were out that these four men stole indoors to discuss
their plans for the morrow.
Sworn comrades, these four, but only until they found out too much about
each other. It was that uncertainty of the future that disturbed them now, for
the business before them was unquestionably a post-war project.
The business concerned a large and curious silver coin which lay on the
wrought-iron table that graced Sargon's back room. It bore the inscription
BOBADILLA - IMPERATOR and it showed the face of a stern Spanish grandee,
topped
by a plumed helmet. On the other side, the coin bore an unidentified
coat-of-arms, and it was scored deeply with two cross-lines which divided the
coin into four sectors. Each of these quadrants in turn had a furrow that ran
horizontally across the coin, making eight divisions in all.
One man put a sudden question:
"You say this was found in the ruins of St. Pierre?"
"In the cellar of an old house," another replied. "A house that belonged
to a family named LeClerq before the great eruption of 1902."
Both men looked toward a third, who was studying the coin with care. When
he spoke, the man's tone carried authority.
"This explains the mystery of Bobadilla," he asserted. "It fits with a
theory that has lingered through four centuries. Shall I expound it?"
There were nods from the other three.
"Bobadilla was the first Spanish governor of Hispaniola," related the
speaker. "His misrule was so notorious that Columbus was sent on one of his
later voyages to order Bobadilla back to Spain. Only Bobadilla didn't wait; he
set out with his entire fleet, carrying all the treasure that he had
accumulated at the expense of the enslaved natives."
A chuckle came from the fourth man, who so far had remained silent. Then:
"I'm glad you're telling us this," the man said. "Go on."
"Bobadilla sailed right into a hurricane which he knew was coming," the
narrator resumed. "His ships were sunk, his treasure lost and with it his
famous golden table, which he was reputedly taking to the King of Spain as a
peace offering. But there is another theory, the one I have mentioned; namely,
that Bobadilla intended to keep his treasure for himself."
Pausing to note that the fourth man was alert, the narrator continued
calmly:
"It was in 1500 that Bobadilla arrived in Hispaniola and his first act
was
to arrest Columbus, who was already there, and send him back to Spain in
chains.
The year 1502 was when Columbus returned with authority to order Bobadilla
home.
Meanwhile, during the year between, another explorer named Americus Vespucius
had discovered new lands to the South, the country now called Brazil.
Unquestionably Bobadilla had heard of this, so what could have suited him
better than to sail to that vast continent and set up his own empire there!"
Reaching to the table, the speaker fingered the ancient coin and finally
clinked it upon the ironwork.
"This coin proves the theory," he declared. "Having cast his gold into
one
great piece, he must have used his silver to strike off his own currency for
the
empire that was to be, but never was."
A nod of agreement from the fourth man, who suddenly became spokesman for
the first two.
"Then where did this coin come from?"
"From wherever Bobadilla stowed his treasure," was the prompt reply, "in
the hope that he could return for it in whatever ships outrode the hurricane -
which none did."
"But how did the coin arrive here in Martinique?"
"That is the problem which we must solve in order to learn where
Bobadilla
buried his hoard."
There were words of unanimous assent; then the man who had spoken most
picked up the coin and weighed it.
"Whoever keeps this coin," he declared, "will hold our secret. Its value
as a curio is slight in comparison, particularly as there are probably
thousands more like it in Bobadilla's treasure chests. Is it agreed that when
the time is right, we shall start our treasure hunt?"
Nods from the others.
"And that our basis will be share and share alike?"
More nods, then one man put the canny question:
"Suppose one of us should want to sell his share?"
"That would be fair enough," decided the man who held the coin, "and it
solves our own problem. Here."
Without waiting consent from the others, he broke the coin in half along
one central scoring, then snapped the two pieces apart in the crosswise
direction. He gave a quarter of the coin to each of the other men, retaining
the last for himself.
"These represent shares of ownership," he declared, "whenever or however
the treasure is found - or in the hunt for it. What may become of us" - he
shrugged - "we do not know in these times. So we may sell or even give away
our
shares if we wish."
Again, the fourth man, the canny objector, had an amendment.
"Suppose a token should be lost or stolen?"
"We can have a password to go with it. I would suggest the famous motto:
'One for all' -"
Catching the appropriate suggestion, the others chimed the rest:
"- And all for one!"
Faint glimmers of dawn were tracing through a tiny, high-set window. One
of the men noticed it and arose, saying:
"It is almost time for Sargon to come down."
"We must wait for him," declared another. "From the way my mind feels
now,
I intend to leave Martinique. My life means more than the money I can make
here,
with so much more money to think about."
The others agreed, so one went through an inner door and up a short
flight
of stairs. They heard him knock at a door above; then he returned and waited
with the rest. Soon a stocky man in pajamas shuffled downstairs with his
slippered feet and rubbed his sleepy-looking eyes.
"Ah, mes amis," he queried thickly. "Why do you wake me quite so early?
Besides, I like to find my visitors gone."
"We are going away to stay," replied one of the visitors. "Perhaps you
will never see us again, Sargon."
Sargon's broad, thick-featured face showed an expression which left doubt
as to whether he was glad, sorry, or both.
"Ah, mes amis -"
"But we intend to hold a reunion," put in another of the visitors. "It
might be two, three, five years from now - who knows? And besides" - he threw
a
glance at his companions - "it just might be that one or more of us might send
another in his place."
As the rest nodded, Sargon spread his hands, but before he could say
anything, one of the four men announced:
"We have a password, Sargon. If anyone comes here and says 'One for all'
you will say nothing until he adds: 'And all for one.' Then you will know that
he is the same as one of us."
The others were chiming their agreement to this formula when Sargon,
recognizing the motto of the Three Musketeers, began to chuckle.
"Ah, mes mousquetaires," he laughed, "you do well to leave Martinique.
But
do not expect to find me here even two months from now. If I can sell this
business and ship whatever antiques that remain, I shall do so, and go with
them!"
This silenced the four for the moment, since their plan, so simply laid,
could not be discussed in front of Sargon. Then one man had an idea. He asked:
"Go where, Sargon?"
"To Port Au Prince, perhaps," replied Sargon. "Better still, to Havana.
Maybe if business is fine, I shall even get to New York!"
"And still continue your antique business?"
"Of course. It shall be my business until I die" - Sargon was glancing
anxiously toward the window where dawn hovered - "and that may be too soon in
Martinique!"
This struck a complete chord of agreement. One man voiced it promptly for
the rest.
"Wherever you are, we'll find you there," the man told Sargon. "Good luck
until then, Sargon, and remember the password that others may use if we are
not
so lucky!"
Like men with prices on their heads, which they were, the four holders of
Bobadilla's quartered coin sneaked from Sargon's back door, glancing about as
though they expected to see enemies arise to seize them, which was likely. As
they separated, they moved swiftly, as if intending to leave these parts
immediately, which they did.
Shrugging, Simon Sargon closed his back door and locked it for the
daytime. He went through his antique shop, unlocked the front door, and let
down the big awning. There was no law against opening a shop early in
Martinique; the only regulations were that shops should close early.
Fort de France was stirring for another of its frightful days which would
result in further pruning of its forty-odd thousand inhabitants. Beyond the
harbor the blue Caribbean twinkled with all its tropical beauty, but like an
ugly sentinel, a symbol of war amid peace, Sargon could see the outline of
Diamond Rock which a century ago the British had fortified and held for a
short
while against the French.
The Rock didn't scintillate as a diamond should. Its name simply applied
to its shape. Maybe it was waiting for the British to come back and take it
again, but Sargon wasn't wondering about that as he stared out to sea.
Like many others who lived in Fort de France, Simon Sargon was wondering
how soon he could afford to leave Martinique, meanwhile making the most of
whatever opportunities he could find.
There were four others who thought differently.
They were the four who used other people's names as their own and another
man's premises as their meeting place.
Patriots, renegades, whichever they might be, they had shown a certain
honor among themselves in acting out the prologue to a story which - as they
themselves had specified - would bide a few years or more until its climax!
CHAPTER II
THE man in the cell was shaking the steel bars of the door and howling
that he wanted to get out.
That was logical enough, since most prisoners had the same sentiments,
but
this one was mixing his facts and seemed to have himself confused into the
bargain.
He was shouting about volcanoes, buried cities, earthquakes and
destruction. He localized this finally by shrieking that unless he was let
out,
the whole island of Martinique would explode around him.
Oddly, this was the enactment of a scene that occurred in 1902 when most
of Martinique did explode. There was a prisoner then, in the jail at Saint
Pierre, who had felt that he was surely left to die, only to wind up as one of
the few survivors among the city's population of thirty thousand.
But this wasn't 1902, it wasn't Saint Pierre, it wasn't even Martinique.
If it had been, there wouldn't have been any danger, because the only thing
that had exploded in Martinique within the past few years had been the Vichy
regime. The man in the cell was muttering something about that recent period
of
misrule. Suddenly, his eyes narrowing with the sharpness of a rat's, the
prisoner took in his real surroundings.
Through the bars he was viewing a group that included the warden of a
modern American penitentiary He recognized the warden and snarled. No longer
did his language include the jargon of half a dozen tongues common in the West
Indies.
"You framed me!" the man snarled. "You knew I wouldn't have gone to kill
him if he hadn't wanted to kill me. You're as bad as he was. All of you!" Head
bobbing back and forth so that his eyes could dodge the upright bars and view
faces better, the man gave a fierce, venomous laugh. "You'd like to steal what
you won't ever get because you don't know what it is!"
The stern-faced warden gave a significant look toward a tall man who
stood
beside him. That caused the prisoner to stare the same way too. Sight of a
calm,
impassive face only ruffled him further.
"Who are you?" he snarled. "Another of those lawyers? No, you can't be" -
the prisoner's tone became contemptuous - "because they talk and you don't."
Steady eyes stayed on the prisoner and briefly they had a quieting
effect.
Then:
"Trying to guess what I'm talking about, aren't you?" the prisoner
sneered. "Well, you never will. There's only one man I ever told, because he
was a friend -"
Pausing as sharply as he had begun, the prisoner spat a finish to his
sentence. His face becoming a sullen glower, he viewed the group with the
manner of a monkey watching visitors outside his cage. Evidently knowing that
the prisoner intended to retain his silence, the warden turned to the tall man
and said:
"There's no use staying any longer, Cranston."
They left the old cell block where the prisoner was confined in what
practically amounted to solitary. Outside, the warden spoke apologetically to
Cranston.
"I wouldn't have put him in there," the warden explained, "except that he
insisted on it. He's the first prisoner who ever complained that our regular
accommodations were too good for him."
The warden thought he saw a faint smile trace itself on Cranston's lips.
Maybe it was just the light, for Lamont Cranston seemed to be taking this
business very seriously.
"It wasn't a case for a psychiatrist," expressed the warden. "The man's
request was reasonable in its way. We don't object to prisoners denying
themselves certain privileges and occupancy of a modern cell could be classed
in that category. Our own objection to this obsolete cell block is that it
drives prisoners into the very mood this man is showing now. So we can't blame
him for his behavior and if we do the usual thing of putting him in a better
cell we'll be right back where we started."
"An interesting dilemma," concurred Cranston. "You would be punishing the
man for denying himself a privilege."
"Exactly," the warden agreed. "Of course, if other prisoners objected to
the fuss that he is making -" Here the warden paused and shook his head: "But
there are no other prisoners in the cell block," he added "and our own
regulations prevent us from putting them here without their consent. Still, we
have accomplished one thing. We have made the man talk."
"He hasn't before?"
"Not a word of importance and not a word at all, when psychiatrists have
questioned him. That is why I prefer not to class him as a mental case."
"You will soon."
As if to corroborate Cranston's prediction there came a wild, insane
laugh, filtering through the thick door of the old cell block. Even the
veteran
warden showed alarm.
"You are right, Cranston! The man will soon crack. I never expected it,
not from him. Read this."
What the warden handed Cranston was a report on the prisoner. The man's
name was Hugh Stolt, but he had a half a dozen aliases. He had been sentenced
to life imprisonment for the murder of Artie Duvan, an unsavory character,
whose death wouldn't have warranted such penalty for the dealer, except that
Stolt had rather embellished it.
According to the report, as Cranston already knew from newspaper
accounts,
Stolt had literally carved Artie to ribbons with a quaint weapon known as a
machete, a knife the size of a broadsword that West Indian sugar workers used
for cutting cane.
A jury had logically decided that parties addicted to such heinous
practices did not belong at large. Otherwise Stolt might have been given a
manslaughter conviction, instead of first degree, since witnesses agreed that
Artie had participated in an altercation with Stolt prior to the machete
carving.
"There's something behind all this," mused the warden. "Stolt keeps
referring to himself as Jacques, which isn't one of his aliases. You heard him
mention some other person and hint at something that Stolt himself fears may
be
stolen."
Still studying the report sheet, Cranston nodded, apparently oblivious to
a new wave of mad mirth that grew in its crescendo from beyond the door. The
warden's face tightened; he seemed to be counting time on Stolt.
"I can keep this report?"
The warden nodded in reply to Cranston's request. The tall man stooped to
put the sheet in a briefcase that was leaning beside the door. Meanwhile, the
wild laughter continued, passing its proper limit. The warden's face was
really
grim.
"Wait here, Cranston," said the warden. "Unless this has stopped when I
return, you will see some firm and rapid action. At least we'll make your trip
here worth while."
Hardly had the warden left before Cranston showed some rapid action of
his
own. Inverting the briefcase, he whipped open a hidden zipper in the bottom
and
from a V-shaped compartment removed a black cloak and a slouch hat. With one
sweep, Cranston was caparisoned in both garments and his figure seemed
actually
to vanish as he opened the door and stepped into the gloom of the cell block
beyond.
So silent was the stride of the cloaked intruder that Stolt was not aware
of his approach until blackness clouded the space outside the cell. In the
midst of a madman's howl, that he accompanied with a clanging of the bars,
Stolt froze and let his eyes grow so large that they became glittering white
surrounding blackened pin-points.
Then came the prisoner's frenzied snarl through tight-clenched teeth:
"Who are you!"
"You heard of me in Martinique." The whisper came from lips that Stolt
could not see, for they were hidden by the upturned collar of the cloak. "They
called me L'Ombre."
There was no need to specify that L'Ombre meant The Shadow.
"And they called you Jacques," The Shadow continued, "or rather you chose
that name for yourself."
Evidently Stolt had forgotten his own mutterings for it astounded him to
hear this alias mentioned.
"I choose names too," observed The Shadow. "In one place where you nearly
met me, I was known as La Sombra."
This was a double stroke. Quite sure that Stolt must have traveled widely
in the West Indies, The Shadow was equally convinced that crime had always
attracted the man. Stolt would have met up with company in certain Spanish
speaking countries where men of evil feared The Shadow as La Sombra.
Stolt's breath came with a sharp, deep-drawn hiss. Then, defiantly, the
prisoner retorted:
"If I killed Artie, who are you to care? He'd have killed a friend of
mine
if he'd known where to find him. You ought to know that friends are few."
"Friends are few," repeated The Shadow, "but enemies like Artie may be
many."
Alarm registered itself in Stolt's bulging eyes. Those shreds of loyalty
that were in his spotty make-up were being tested to their limit. Gripping the
bars, the prisoner gasped:
"You won't let them, Shadow! You won't let them get Cap Winslow! They'd
do
it, fellows like Artie would, if they knew he had what I gave him -"
Standing like a weird inquisitor, The Shadow did nothing to break the
spell that had grown upon the man who once called himself Jacques. What broke
it was the sound of the opening door, accompanied by heavy footsteps on stone.
Instantly, Stolt's manner changed.
"Get away!" he shrieked. "You've framed me, too, like the rest of them!
You and that -"
The rest of the prisoner's outburst was drowned by the clatter of the
bars
as he rattled them, but some of his profanity was coherent, punctuated
frequently by the word "warden." Then Stolt found himself railing at the
Warden
in person, instead of The Shadow, who had somehow vanished during all this
ranting. A guard was unlocking the cell door; then two others, huskies both,
were planting Stolt in a strait-jacket in the fast firm style that the warden
had promised.
From the gloom of the wall opposite the cell, blackness skirted the group
and reached the door. When the guards brought Stolt past, Lamont Cranston was
standing there, briefcase in hand, calmly viewing the removal of the howling
prisoner. Compared to his former outburst, Stolt's present exhibition was fury
incarnate.
It seemed a long time before those maddened shrieks faded from the
departing truck in which the guards were taking the prisoner to the hospital's
psychopathic ward. The warden shook his head, with a trace of sympathy. He had
seen convicts crack before.
"Crazy as a loon," defined the warden. "Howling at somebody he thought he
could see, but who wasn't there. That finishes him, Cranston. When I left I
was
sure that nobody could get anything out of him."
The clang of the cell block door, given as the warden closed it,
suppressed the whispered laugh that issued from Cranston's lips, a sound that
was strangely reminiscent of The Shadow's tone when he had talked to the man
who once was Jacques.
Lamont Cranston, otherwise The Shadow, could not agree that nothing could
have been gotten out of that prisoner who was in the last stages of his
crack-up.
The Shadow had gotten it.
CHAPTER III
THE name beside the apartment number 3-D was brief and to the point. In
irregular capital letters it simply said:
CAPTAIN WINSLOW
In a way, the name wasn't necessary. Anyone who had seen that style of
hand-print would have recognized it. Certainly Claire Winslow did when she saw
it. Claire smiled, particularly because she knew the name that was missing
between tile Captain and the Winslow.
That name was Belshazzar.
Pressing a gloved finger against the call button, Claire waited for an
answering buzz from the door knob, the way it always responded in the one
apartment house in the town of Lakewood.
Only there wasn't any answer, so Claire tried the door and found it open.
By her calculation, 3-D would represent the back apartment in this old
house that had been converted into an apartment building. It proved to be just
that. Only nobody answered when Claire knocked at the door, so she tried it,
found it open, and walked right in on her Uncle Belshazzar.
The old captain was sitting up in bed and he looked a lot better than
Claire had expected from his last letter. Maybe his smile was withered, but it
was genuine enough to make Claire think he wasn't dying, as he had assured her
that he was when he wrote her. About all that seemed wrong with Uncle
Belshazzar was his wheeze.
"Sorry, Claire." The tone came like the low whirr of old clockwork. "I
knew it was you when you knocked, but I couldn't answer loud enough."
"Don't try to talk," Claire told him. Sitting down in the only chair that
looked tenable, Claire laid her bag and gloves on a four-legged table that had
three legs. "I'll ask questions and you can just answer with nods. First, do
you mind if I call you Uncle Belshazzar?"
The captain didn't answer. He just shook his head.
"I'm glad you don't mind," assured Claire. "It's kind of nice to belong
to
a family that picked off-trail names. It was intended as a sort of object
lesson, wasn't it?"
Old Belshazzar nodded.
"I catch," Claire continued. "Belshazzar was a king who lost his temper
and threw a goblet at the wall. Only it didn't stop the hand from writing
there
and marking up his doom. So anybody with a name like Belshazzar wouldn't lose
his temper easily, would he?"
The captain's face had tightened. His stare worried Claire.
"I'm sorry!" the girl exclaimed. "I shouldn't have mentioned -"
She paused, hesitating at the word "doom" which she knew her uncle
feared,
otherwise he wouldn't have insisted that she come here.
"My temper," wheezed her uncle. "I've never lost it. I mean, I've never
lost having it to lose."
Claire smiled and the old man's eyes lighted, with good reason. He was
appraising this niece of his, with a gaze that had covered about every form of
maiden in every clime, and somehow Claire brought back the spice of the Indies
to the captain's memories. When he thought of Indies, Belshazzar didn't
differentiate between East and West. He'd been to both so often that he had
them mixed.
Of course the Indies weren't stocked with blondes, or hadn't been when
Captain Belshazzar was last there, but that didn't injure Claire's case. Her
svelte figure accounted for itself, even though encased in civilized attire;
her smile had the naive welcome that Belshazzar remembered as worn by the
Polynesian ladies who had swum a few miles to sea and climbed on ship board;
while her eyes had the illuminating blue that the Winslow family must somehow
have borrowed from the tropical seas in which the Captain had sailed and sunk
more vessels than he cared to count.
Claire could read all that in Belshazzar's own blue-eyed gaze and she
tried to hold back the dew that was creeping into her own. She knew how hollow
her uncle's title of captain was. About the only ship he'd commanded that had
carried anything more than sail was a Gulf of Mexico rum runner that had gone
out with Prohibition. But Claire wasn't a stickler regarding the checkered and
unsuccessful career of the last living relative for whom she really cared.
"Well, uncle," asserted Claire, "I'm here, and I'm going to look out for
you, a long, long while to come."
Belshazzar answered with a headshake.
"Now don't argue with me," began Claire. "It won't be any trouble -"
There was an interruption. Belshazzar supplied it by picking up a
newspaper from the table beside his head and thrusting it into Claire's hand.
With a shaky finger, the old man pointed to an item which Claire read.
It stated that a convict named Hugh Stolt had suddenly gone crazy at Sing
Sing, but that the prison doctors declared that it could have no bearing on
his
case, since he was entirely sane when he had been incarcerated there,
following
his sentence for murder.
"And I thought," wheezed Belshazzar, "that Jacques was crazy all along!"
Claire's frown would have been prettier if a strew of blond hair hadn't
hidden so much of her forehead. Still, those blonde locks were not bad in
themselves, for old Belshazzar was speculating on their potentialities in a
spanking Caribbean breeze. Then came Claire's question:
"Who is Jacques?"
Belshazzar's finger indicated the name Stolt. Then, not from just beneath
his pillow, but from somewhere deep inside it, the old captain drew out an
object which he dropped in Claire's hand.
More puzzled than ever, the girl stared at the piece of silver. It was a
quarter of a coin and about the only thing decipherable was the word ILLA that
ran around its margin.
"Take it to Sargon," wheezed Belshazzar. "An antique dealer - used to be
in Martinique -"
The story broke off with the old man's cough. He gestured to a bottle of
medicine and a glass that was on the table beside the bed.
"Tell Sargon: 'One for all.'" Belshazzar's voice was back. "He won't
understand. So then you say 'All for one.' You understand?"
Claire understood and nodded. She was mixing the medicine with water from
a pitcher, one spoonful of it. Her uncle shook his head and raised three
fingers. Looking at the bottle, Claire saw that it said 'One spoonful every
hour, or proportionately up to four hours.' Rather a funny thing with
medicine,
still with such things as penicillin and other modern remedies that weren't in
the family doctor book back in Lakewood, Claire was in no position to argue.
So
she mixed two extra spoonfuls to make up for the hours that her uncle had
missed.
"It's worth a quarter -"
Claire couldn't help but smile, even though it was another cough that
interrupted her uncle's wheeze.
"Of course it's worth a quarter," returned Claire, as she dropped the
piece of silver in her bag. "It's a quarter of a coin."
"A quarter of a million dollars," added Belshazzar, reclaiming his funny
throat whirr. "Maybe a quarter of a lot more, whatever it turns out to be."
The girl couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her eyes showed it and
her
uncle returned a smile.
"It's what Jacques told me," assured Belshazzar. "I can believe it, now
that I know he wasn't crazy. I saved his life."
A cough spasm followed, but it didn't detract from the positive effect of
the old captain's tone. In the language of the seas where this unsuccessful
skipper had sailed, the term 'I saved his life' went back to prehistoric law.
Brutally incongruous that Belshazzar had saved Jacques' life that the latter
might spend it in a prison or asylum, but that was the law of the land, not
the
sea. Then, old Belshazzar added in a series of broken wheezes:
"They were after him - he knew it - he didn't care what happened to
himself - he owed me a debt - I didn't ask him to pay - he wanted to pay -
wanted to go his way - wanted to kill - wanted revenge -"
It was hard effort to include all those phrases in one speech. With a
surprisingly firm hand, Belshazzar plucked the glass of watered medicine from
his niece's hand, raised it and paused as if for a toast.
"So Jacques gave it to me," the old man whirred, "because he knew then
they would never find it!"
Triumphantly, the old man drained the glass. Hardly had he finished
before
he threw his free hand to his throat. His gargly gasp seemed to stifle itself.
From the writhe he gave, Claire realized that her uncle was in his death
throes. But he still was able to live up to his name.
As if from the recoil of his own body, Belshazzar flung his arm forward
and hurled the glass toward the wall, beside a blackened window that showed
only the thick darkness of the outside night.
Spontaneously, Claire came to her feet to stop the wild gesture, only to
stand rooted, her eyes following the course of the flying glass. Claire
herself
was not only visible, but conspicuous in relation to the window, but she
didn't
think of that.
Etched on the wall like a thing of fate, was the silhouette of a moving
hand, a replica of the moving fingers at which an ancient Belshazzar had flung
a goblet when he realized that his death was signified!
Before Claire Winslow could even scream, the glass crashed and with it
the
swift - moving silhouette became a real hand, a gloved one, that plucked the
light switch!
CHAPTER IV
A SUDDEN change from full light to pitch-darkness produces a brief but
startling optical illusion, which was precisely what Claire Winslow
experienced
on this occasion.
Such illusions, however, are always stepped up under stress, sometimes
imbuing the mind with a fantastic, imagery. With Claire, that added effect was
double. Her uncle's frantic death throes, the dramatic smashing of the glass
upon a silhouetted hand that never paused its cavort across the wall, were the
sort of events that could snap taut nerves.
Oddly the tonic was the blackness. It obliterated reality, threw
everything into the realm of the incredible. Claire saw purple, green and
pink,
a flood of twisting, kaleidoscopic after-images, saturated with the blackness
that was about to swallow such hallucinations themselves.
Yet most vivid was the etched recollection of the room itself. One crawl
of blackness represented the moving hand that Claire had seen; another, a
block
with criss-crossed lines of color, stood for the back window, though she
didn't
know it. For that back window had been blackness before, and though all that
Claire had seen beyond it was the thick night itself, she had been completely
outlined in that frame, from the viewpoint of anyone who might have been
摘要：

AQUARTEROFEIGHTbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"October1945.Therewerefourinteresting-lookingpiecesofanoldSpanishcoin-representingundreamed-ofrichesandundreamed-ofdanger!OnlyTheShadowcouldcopewiththefearfullegacytowhichacoupleofinnocentvictimsfellheir.CHAPTERIFOURmenwereinSarg...

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