Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 290 - Death has Grey Eyes

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DEATH HAS GREY EYES
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," April 1945.
There were strange, sinister plans for Dick Whitlock's post-war future.
Could The Shadow solve the secret of the past and prevent the fulfillment of a
fanatical doctor's crazed ideas?
CHAPTER I
THE eyes were there again, cold grey eyes, as hard and merciless as the
flack that had shredded the wings of the Flying Fortress "Sweetie Pie" before
Dick Whitlock had bailed out over Germany.
And Dick was still in Germany.
The thrumm of planes, the muffled burst of bombs with the odd, crackly
echoes they produced, told Dick he was somewhere in a target area that must be
in Naziland, considering the pounding it was taking.
Being on the receiving end was different from handling the bomb sights,
but Dick didn't mind taking it, considering that it would eliminate a covey of
undesirable companions, including the man with the grey eyes.
Dick was hoping, though, that the girl had left; the girl with the dark
hair and the straight lips that were as sympathetic as her eyes; those eyes
that were a deep brown in contrast to the grey orbs.
The man behind the grey eyes was crisp-faced, colored like long-faded
ashes. His voice, instead of being sharp, was smooth as a cat's contented
purr,
yet commanding in every word. It carried a nefarious encouragement that was
somehow irresistible.
"State your case again," it ordered. "Tell me: who are you?"
"I am Dick Whitlock," was Dick's mechanical reply. "A prisoner of war -
wounded -"
He was pointing across to his right arm when he found that he was raising
it. Some of the numbness was still there, but the sling was absent. Dick
hadn't
been wearing it for days, for weeks, perhaps for months.
How could he tell with those grey eyes keeping their fixed stare?
"Wounded and hospitalized," picked up the purred voice. "Well-treated,
given every consideration."
Dick's response was a mechanical nod. The voice hadn't lied, in fact it
never did. Somehow its words were friendly - always so - but too sure in their
persuasion to be accepted. Behind their smooth suggestion was an ever-present
threat Dick had ever sensed but never tested.
"Turn to the mirror," toned the grey-eyed man. "See for yourself that you
are well."
It was the same mirror, the broad one opposite the fireplace. Dick had
lost count of how many times he had studied his own reflection in that glass.
It was getting to be funny, even with the grey-eyed man around. Dick smiled in
the mirror and heard a dry chuckle from his shoulder.
"That is good." Despite the approval there was no smile on the crisp face
that Dick saw staring with him. "Have a cigarette, my friend."
Taking one from the proffered case, Dick placed it in his mouth and
received a match. He snapped the head with his left thumb-nail, the trick that
he had practiced recently, and watched the result in the mirror. Then Dick was
lighting the cigarette and at the same time peering over the match flame to
watch the reaction of the man with the grey eyes.
Only the man was no longer at Dick's shoulder.
He was talking to one of the men who wore a green cap with a feather, the
chap who looked as though he was always about to yodel.
"We must hurry, Herr Doktor," the arrival was saying. "It will not be
long
before the bombers find the chalet. They have already blocked the road through
the Pass."
The square room quivered from the force of a near-hit and the rustic
furniture joggled. A picture frame crashed from the wall and Hitler's face
looked wrinkled up through the shattered glass. The grey-eyed doctor gave a
depreciating shrug and for the first time Dick rather liked him. Then, on the
chance that his broad grin might produce an argument, Dick turned toward the
mirror, letting the smile lessen gradually. The illusion was odd; his lips
looked straight, almost horrified, while the smile was still upon them. Dick's
expression turned to a puzzled frown which the reflection, returned in that
same delayed fashion.
A hand tapped Dick's shoulder.
"Wait here."
In the mirror, Dick saw the doctor turn and go out through the door by
which the green-garbed yodeler who didn't yodel had evidently preceded him.
The whole place quivered hard from the close bash of another bomb.
Dick's knees gave, and he used his good left hand to brace against the
table. He expected the mirror to crack along with caving walls, but it stood
the gaff. The door flew open, but the bomb wasn't responsible.
It was the girl.
"Hurry!" she exclaimed, and the quick dart of those dark eyes meant it.
"You haven't a moment to lose!"
"But the doctor said -"
"You mean you would trust Doctor Greug?" Tense though it was, the girl's
face showed amazement. "Why, he's already deserted you! Come!"
Dick winced as the girl clutched his sore right wrist. Shifting her grip
to his left arm, she hurried him from the square room and through a corridor
he'd never seen before. Opening a door to the left, she started down a
stairway, beckoning for Dick to follow.
Right then, a bomb really scored. The way the surroundings dissolved was
incredible. The walls should have splintered, but instead they wilted like
damp
cardboard. They were pouring down the stairway, carrying the twisted door with
them and Dick was lying slanted on what had previously been the hallway
ceiling.
The girl had vanished, to safety Dick was sure, since she had gained a
head-start. But how Dick could ever extricate himself from this debris was a
mystery, or would have been, except for Doctor Greug.
Timbers yielded under hacking sounds and Dick went sliding to the right
along with the caving floor, squarely into the arms of the crisp-faced doctor
and a pair of men in green. Greug's guttural exclamation carried a pleased
note
and before Dick realized it, he was being carried along a stone-walled passage
of rock.
Half-dazed by the bomb's concussion, Dick didn't hear the next blast that
must have obliterated the remainder of the building they had left. From then
on, the whole experience was a nightmare that outdid Dick's hazy recollections
of how he'd ever arrived in this vicinity.
Doctor Greug was climbing into a waiting automobile that already
contained
some occupants whose faces Dick couldn't distinguish. The car gave what looked
like a take-off as it bounded down a steep gully. From the window came Greug's
dismissing wave and the men in green started Dick along a mountain ledge that
overhung a vast ravine.
There were trees everywhere in the dusk except for jagged rocks and bare
slashes where the bombs had literally trampled down the forest. Then, reaching
a platform that overhung a precarious crag, Dick found himself being shoved
into a crazy, dangling contrivance that he mistook for one of the Ferris Wheel
cars that he remembered from Coney Island.
The men in green were with him and they were starting the thing across a
cable that faded into the blackness of a lower cliff on the other side of the
huge crevice. High above, the drone of bombing planes was dwindling into the
distance, but now Dick heard the jab of revolvers in his half-deafened
ear-drums.
As marksmen, Dick's companions were good yodelers, nothing more. Or maybe
they were shooting at an imaginary target. Certainly it was something stranger
than any human.
Following the aerial tram in its trip across the mountain gorge was a
cloaked figure, black against the grey cliff. Like a whirligig in a breeze it
was slithering down the slightly slanted cable, gripping it with upraised
hands!
In this haste for flight, Dick's companions were outdistancing this
intrepid pursuer and thereby making their bad aim worse. But there was a fresh
reason for their hurry. Toy-like bursts were punching the high rock that the
aerial tram had left; not bombs, but grenades, that sent sickening, singing
quavers along the cable. Men who formed tiny vengeful figures were throwing
them, in an effort to blast the cable from its moorings!
The car stopped with a hard jolt that pitched Dick and his hounded
bodyguards to the safety of the far platform. On his feet, Dick was being
rushed along another brink to a spot where the path turned between two
boulders.
With a last look across his shoulder, Dick sought sight of the cloaked
figure on the cable but failed to see him in the gorge's gloom. Friend or foe,
Dick hoped the amazing venturer had reached safety too. If he hadn't, he never
would, for a fierce whine from the darkness told that the cable had snapped
loose. From far away and below, came the tiny crash of the ill-fated aerial
car
as it reached wooded depths.
Into Dick's pounding brain floated a strange new recollection of a
haunting laugh, which could only be the creation of a fevered mind. Yet that
weird, parting taunt persisted with the thrumm of the motor that sped the
automobile in which Dick now rode.
The mental echo clung to the slap of waves, as they swashed and pummeled
a
jouncing boat which later carried Dick through absolute darkness, along with
new
companions that he couldn't see or recognize. It all seemed the continuation
of
an impossible dream which held Dick's reeling senses in its whirling midst.
All this motion leveled off at last. Out of an interminable lull, Dick
found himself lying on a padded shelf that was carrying him head-on into the
night. He never would have recognized it as the berth in a sleeping car, but
for the piping whistle that kept floating back from up ahead, the shrill note
peculiar to a European locomotive.
So Dick Whitlock was on a train, going somewhere, away from something he
didn't want to remember, those days and weeks, during which a grey-eyed man
called Doctor Greug had hurried him with probing questions that brought back
every trivial recollection from Dick's past life.
One newer memory had somehow wedged itself into Dick's tormented mind. He
voiced it with mechanical lips just as he was lapsing into sleep. It was a
name, induced by another piping trill from the locomotive whistle and Dick's
lips curled contemptuously as they spoke it.
What Dick said was: "Friedrich."
CHAPTER II
THE Starview Roof Garden had imitation stars in the form of electric
light
bulbs that flickered in various sizes and colors beneath its ample ceiling.
That was good enough for Dick, now that he was back in New York and among
friends, though he doubted that he would call them friends much longer if they
persisted in asking him to relate adventures that he wouldn't want to talk
about even if he could remember them.
"So you found yourself in Switzerland -"
"That's right," acknowledged Dick, speaking to the group impersonally.
"Riding in a railway train, though how I landed there, even the conductor
didn't know."
Men were leaning on their elbows, interested in hearing more, even though
it might be delivered piece-meal, when Jerry Trimm interrupted.
"Let's have another round of drinks," suggested Jerry. "Maybe with a few
more, you chaps will realize that Dick wants to forget whatever he still can't
remember."
Dick gave Jerry a straight stare and a grateful nod. That would have
closed the subject if it hadn't been for Claire Austley. The blonde gave Dick
a
blue-eyed stare that would have hurt, if Dick hadn't remembered other eyes
that
could focus much more effectively. Dick's lips tightened hard, then relaxed
into a sentimental smile.
His first thought had been of piercing eyes, cold and grey; then those
eyes of brown, warm, melancholy, but understanding. Whose they were, what they
signified, had become a blank to Dick Whitlock. It was as if the grey eyes had
so commanded when Dick received their last icy stare, but at intervals along
the line there had been rifts, pleasant interludes where brown eyes had broken
the stern rigor of a strange psychological misadventure.
All that was fantasy and here was reality - or was it?
In coming back to scenes and faces that he knew, Dick felt that he had
returned to another world other than his own. This was New York; but the
surroundings were tinsel, the people putty. They'd thought they lived, but
they
hadn't; in fact they never would until they experienced that endless drift in
a
descending parachute with the searchlights working like pointers to pick out
something on a mammoth blackboard formed by the entire sky, something which
happened to be you.
It made you big and little, all at once, with the ack-acks whistling a
hail that sizzled upward through the chute. You lived everything all over at a
time like that, everything plus a lot you'd never lived.
Maybe Claire took Dick's final smile for one of self-sufficiency; at any
rate, she didn't like it. Her gaze roved to Jerry, who made a quick warning
gesture with his cigarette. So Claire threw a vacuous smile around the table,
which was her way of asking an invitation to dance. A sleek male member of the
party took the bait and Dick watched Claire and her party get swallowed by the
throng that milled the dance floor.
Jerry said: "Let's get away for a few minutes, Dick."
They went to the Moonbeam Bar, just off the Starview Roof. Jerry ordered
a
couple of drinks; then tilted his sharp face and stated in so many words:
"You've changed a lot, Dick."
Dick gave a short, gruff laugh that befitted the tight set of his broad
jaw. His eyes, staring steadily from beneath his blocky brow, looked as black
as their surrounding hollows. If Dick had any claim to being handsome it was
in
a rugged way. Perhaps his toughening years of warfare had obliterated the
lighter moods and manners that he once possessed.
That could be what Jerry meant.
"Maybe other people have changed," expressed Dick. "They certainly don't
look the same to me."
"You mean Claire for one?"
"Yes, Claire."
"I haven't noticed it, Dick."
"You've changed too, Jerry."
That brought a mild smile from Jerry. Toying with his drink, he showed a
sudden flash of firmness that matched Dick's own.
"It sounds like the old gag, Dick," said Jerry. "Everybody being out of
step except one man."
"Why not?" returned Dick. "It can happen, you know."
"Did it happen with you?"
The pointed question brought a straight-lined furrow to Dick's forehead,
much like a scowl. But it was an expression of bafflement, not of anger.
"I lived a lifetime, Jerry," declared Dick, slowly, "a whole lifetime
following that bail-out. Not just past, but future."
"You mean you don't remember things between then and now?"
"I remember things that were part of that experience because they
couldn't
be anything else. My arm for instance." Dick thwacked his right forearm with
his
left hand and winced. "That's why I went to a hospital. Only I didn't go to a
hospital."
"No? Where, then?"
"I went to Rook's Retreat."
"You mean you thought you were at that lodge of yours up in the
Adirondacks?" Jerry gave an indulgent laugh. "You must have been delirious,
Dick."
"Only it wasn't the lodge," admitted Dick. "It was just some place like
it. I kept telling myself that in the big mirror."
"There's no mirror at Rook's Retreat."
"I guess not." Dick forced a laugh. "You know the place better than I do,
Jerry."
"I tried to hold things together for you, Dick. What else do you
remember?"
"Coney Island, but what it was doing in the mountains, I don't know. It
was a nightmare, Jerry, most of it, with whispers in between."
"People conspiring against you?"
"It seemed that way." Dick rubbed his forehead. "I wish I knew what the
whistle had to do with it."
Dick's maudlin mood brought no alarm to Jerry. Instead, the sharp-faced
chap showed a flicker of satisfaction. Then, in casual mood:
"By the way, Dick, you like the apartment, don't you?"
"It's all right, Jerry."
"I thought it would be tough, getting the one you wanted. You probably
didn't know about the shortage here in New York. Funny, though, the fellow who
had it didn't mind moving out. Of course he's making a profit on the sublet -"
Jerry stopped short, because Dick wasn't listening. Those deep-set eyes
were turned toward the mirror beyond the bar. Maybe Dick was thinking of
something more important. Jerry decided to prompt him.
"The new place will be better," promised Jerry. "The trouble was getting
workmen to install the furnishings you told me to buy."
Dick shook away his stare.
"What furnishings?"
"The auction stuff." Jerry paused, then added significantly. "From the
boat."
Dick's gaze narrowed.
"It was all in the letter," reminded Jerry. "The one that came a few
months ago - from Paris."
"But I wasn't in Paris," argued Dick, "not even before that last bombing
mission."
"Maybe Eric Henwood mailed it for you."
Dick's eyes widened in real surprise.
"You know Eric?"
"Certainly," laughed Jerry. "He's right here in New York." Rising, Jerry
clapped a hand on Dick's shoulder. "Come on, we'd better be getting back to
the
table."
"Eric." Dick muttered the name as they walked along. "No, it couldn't be
Eric. It's another name - if any."
Jerry was holding out a case of cigarettes. Dick started to take one with
his left hand, then shifted. He was getting out of that habit on trifling
things that didn't bother his right hand too much.
"Another name -"
"It wasn't a girl's name, was it?" put in Jerry, casually. "Or was it?"
"There was a girl," said Dick, slowly, "but I don't know her name. I
never
heard it. A wonderful girl."
"I thought so."
Dick stared at Jerry blankly.
"Why?"
"Because of the way you've forgotten Claire. You really have, you know. I
don't think she likes it."
Dick wasn't in a mood to care. They had reached their table and under the
flicker of the artificial starlight, Dick began to exercise his right hand
with
a pencil. His chat with Jerry had stirred one recollection, at least. On the
back of an announcement card, Dick was drawing a picture from memory, a
portrait upon which all his vague recollections seemed to gather and focus.
Leaning on his elbows, Jerry was watching, much intrigued. The music
ended, but neither noticed it, until Claire's voice spoke from beside them,
caustic in its light ripple.
"I didn't know you could draw, Dick."
"Learned how, years ago," said Dick, still working on the finishing
touches that were putting just the right expression into the portrait's eyes.
"Thought I'd forgotten how, but I hadn't. Funny, how many things came back to
me."
"She's lovely," said Claire in a tone that meant the opposite. "Who is
she?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe she'll come back to you. Or isn't she one of the things that
you've
forgotten?"
What Claire said didn't count. Holding the finished picture at arm's
length, Dick sat amazed at his own skill. His right hand had certainly gained
something during its idleness, for the picture was a perfect replica of the
sympathetic face that had haunted Dick all during his delirium.
Unless the face had been a sheer fabric of imagination. Unaware of a stir
at the opposite side of the table, Dick kept staring at the sketch until
Jerry's hand started lifting at his elbow. The men were getting up to meet
someone who had just arrived. A bit annoyed, Dick complied with the ceremony,
raising his head as he arose.
It was then that Dick Whitlock really stared.
Straight across the card that he still held, he saw the original of the
penciled face, the girl with those deep brown eyes and russet hair, who
belonged in the whirl of impossible adventures that had never happened!
CHAPTER III
A DAPPER assistant manager was introducing the dream girl to Dick's
companions, who, as members of the social set that regularly patronized the
Starview Roof, were entitled to meet any celebrity.
In his confusion, Dick didn't catch the girl's name, but he had hopes, for
Claire, in a style subtly feline, invited the brunette to take a chair between
herself and Dick. By this process of self-eclipse, Claire actually won a
ringside seat from which she observed what followed.
"I'm sorry," began Dick, "but I missed the introduction. My name is Dick
Whitlock - and yours -"
The girl was smiling, almost to the point of laughter, a contrast to the
subdued creature who had floated through the fog of Dick's nameless
recollections. She wasn't looking at Dick, but at the card he held, and now
she
plucked it lightly from his hand, to admire the sketch of herself.
"How nice," she said, in a warm alto tone. "You must have sketched me
while I was at the other table."
"Why, no," began Dick. Then, noting Claire's quick-darted glance across
the brunette's shoulder: "I mean yes - of course."
"And how appropriate," the brunette added. "I really should have it
printed on all the announcement cards."
She turned over the card which Dick had used by chance and on the other
side, Dick saw the printed announcement for the first time. It read:
NEXT WEEK
THE STARVIEW ROOF
WILL INTRODUCE
IRENE BRESLON
FAMED CHANTEUSE
PARISIENNE
Dick looked at the girl.
"You?"
"I suppose my accent surprises you," acknowledged Irene, as she nodded.
"I'm not really French, you know. I just happened to be in Paris for a long
time. I was there when the war started, and I didn't get away."
Dick gave a quick look toward Jerry, wondering if this would help explain
the Paris post-marked letter. Only Jerry wasn't interested; his eyes were on
Claire, as though seeking profit from the diversion caused by Irene.
And Claire, briefly forgetful of the scene between Dick and Irene, was
meeting Jerry's gaze with a look that was anything but vacant.
Something seemed to explode in Dick's brain with a little puff and the
mental jolt cleared his thoughts.
The people around Dick looked different now, more their own selves as he
had remembered them. All Dick had needed was the right perspective and now he
was getting it. Claire's coy but pointed remarks; Jerry's blunter statements,
all had a significance. Things had changed, but so had Dick, or he would have
noticed the difference sooner.
There was something between Jerry and Claire, something they were holding
back. They wanted to exclude Dick, but couldn't - not yet.
Dick's lips tightened grimly. He'd settle that question later with Jerry,
Claire, or both.
Right now, the best plan was to overlook the matter and concentrate on
Irene, since Claire's jealousy - if any - would be feigned. So Dick blandly
offered Irene a cigarette, using his newly active right hand to supply the
light. Over the flame of the lighter, he watched the brown eyes raise to meet
his own. Then:
"I'm sure I've met you somewhere before, Miss Breslon."
"In Paris, perhaps? After the Nazis left?"
"I didn't go there." Dick shook his head. "But possibly you met some
friends of mine. You were singing there, of course -"
"Not very long." Irene's interruption was hasty. "I was so worried about
some friends who had been stranded on the Riviera during those horrible years.
I went to see them."
"Perhaps that was where we met."
"You mean you went to the Riviera?"
"I'm not quite sure." Dick's smile was very serious. "You see, I'm a bit
hazy on just where I was, and all the things that may have happened to me."
Dick's voice was making a statement, but his eyes were questioning,
hoping
the girl would reveal some forgotten clue. Jerry and Claire, their momentary
indiscretion ended, weren't missing a thing. To them, Irene was obviously a
link in Dick's forgotten or well-guarded past and they were trying to learn
more.
So was Dick Whitlock.
"Maybe we weren't meant to meet," Dick told Irene. "It could be part of a
plan, you know, a great plan. After all, the past doesn't count, except as it
concerns the future."
Even Claire was a bit amazed at the way Dick was rushing things with this
girl. The blonde leaned forward on the table, hoping to glimpse Irene's eyes
and observe their reaction. That in turn was just what Dick was seeking, as
Jerry could tell from across the table.
Only it wasn't the future that counted with Dick except as it concerned
the past. He'd put the statement the other way about, confident that Irene
would understand. Apparently she did, for she nodded emphatically, though for
some reason she turned her eyes away.
Nobody thought to follow the direction of Irene's gaze. If they had,
they'd have noticed two men seated at a table near the broad entrance to the
Starview Roof. Small men, both; one with a little mustache, the other wearing
long sideburns that came to the bottom of his ears.
They were foreign looking, and they looked uncomfortable in their baggy
tuxedoes. Dawdling over their wine glasses, they were watching Irene without
giving the fact away. Her nod was meant for them, for they resumed a
gesticulated conversation the moment they caught it, and in the course of
things they called the waiter and paid their check.
Meanwhile, snapping from her soulful mood, Irene was flashing the gaiety
that suited her Parisian background.
"Such flattery!" she was saying, not to Dick, but to Jerry and Claire.
"And he said he did not go to Paris. Ah, well, I believe him!" she patted
Dick's shoulder and tilted her head coyly. "About not being to Paris, I mean.
They say the American soldiers everywhere all ask the same questions - like
'Where have you been all my life?'"
Irene was rising before Dick could reply; in fact, Irene was practically
delivering him back to Claire, though the blonde didn't appreciate it. Claire
turned to Dick with the acid comment:
"You'd better get a new line, soldier. That one is frayed."
Dick shook his gaze from Irene's departing shoulders which were shrugging
very gracefully as the assistant manager suggested that he introduce her at
another table.
"Maybe Jerry has suggestions," Dick told Claire. "Or if you wouldn't
know,
don't tell me."
"If you mean," began Claire, hotly. "that I've been seeing Jerry too
often
-"
"Only you haven't, Claire," put in Jerry. "After all, somebody had to
look
out for you while Dick was away. Dick said so himself. Remember?"
Jerry was turning to Dick, but Claire was ahead of him, sliding a diamond
ring so smoothly from her finger that it seemed never to have belonged there.
"And here's one thing you've forgotten, Dick," Claire added. "Tie it
around your own finger for a few years as a reminder we were once engaged!"
Dick slid it in his vest pocket and waved away the apologies that Jerry
was making for Claire. True to her old form, Claire couldn't be humored until
the day after a spat, if Dick's recollections served him rightly. Before Dick
could wonder if his memory was good on that point, a waiter provided a timely
interruption by handing him a telephone message.
"From Eric Henwood," Dick told Jerry. "Says he'll be phoning me at the
apartment later. Guess I'd better be on my way. Look out for Claire and see
that she gets home all right - as usual."
Dick rose and strolled nonchalantly away, conscious that Claire must be
glaring after him and quite aware that Jerry was trying to soothe her. But
Dick
was more interested in the other table that he passed, where he was lucky
enough
to catch Irene's eyes and receive the same smiling nod that she had given him
before.
The smallish men had left their table by the entrance. Even if he noticed
them, Dick wouldn't have guessed that Irene's earlier smile had been a signal
for them.
An artful smile and a nod, a combination that spelled betrayal!
CHAPTER IV
CERTAINLY no one going down in the elevator would have guessed that the
square-jawed young man with the wavy hair who looked so at home in his tuxedo,
was Dick Whitlock, former bombardier.
There was a tall, calm-faced man in the elevator whose immaculate evening
attire was a far cry from the cloaked garb worn by a dangling figure that had
navigated a cable crossing a chasm on the Swiss border. Dick wouldn't have
believed that the two were the same, even if he'd recalled the incident
itself.
Right now, Dick was mixing all such stuff with childhood recollections of
Coney
Island.
As for the man in evening clothes, he didn't have to guess who Dick
Whitlock was; he knew.
That was why this gentleman, who called himself Lamont Cranston, had done
an about face upon arrival at the Starview Roof. He'd come there to find Dick
Whitlock and meeting him going out, Cranston had followed along.
There was a side street exit on the ground floor and Dick used it, since
the one-way thoroughfare promised a cab going his direction. To get a cab at
this hour, you walked to a lighted spot, waved your arm and whistled at every
vehicle that came along.
Only Dick didn't reach the lighted portion of the curb.
Slinking suddenly from a darkened doorway, two men with upturned collars
flanked Dick on either side and prodded his ribs with knife points. So sharp
were the points that a thrust could have proved fatal.
For a few surprised moments, Dick thought he was back in the outskirts of
a German village under the threat of Nazi bayonets; then, remembering that
this
was New York, he gave a hard, short laugh.
These must he some of the "muggers" he had heard about, human dregs who
came into circulation when demands of war had siphoned off the best of
Manhattan's manpower. Dick thought the mugger question had been dealt with,
but
apparently there had been a carry-over. Something of a privilege, Dick
decided,
to do some settling of that question on his own.
Fists tightening, Dick didn't mind the twinge in his right arm as the
ugly
pair veered him toward their doorway. One knife was lifting, obviously for
Dick's throat. This was the time to swing hard.
Half-poised, Dick saw the nearest knife.
It wasn't a mere jack-knife, whetted to a needle point. The thing was a
regular dirk with a full-fledged blade. Its owner wasn't lifting the knife for
a stab, he was bringing it to position for a cross-slash. The face with it,
sallow and mustached, had eyes with a snake's glitter that said without words,
that they intended murder, not robbery.
A half-step backward and Dick was under the threat of a duplicate dirk
which came up with scintillating speed. A pasty-face with dark-streaked
cheeks,
showed the same venomous purpose that the other had displayed. Two snarls
meant
more than a demand for silence; they were mutual signals calling for a slash.
It was just a question which killer would beat the other to the stroke.
Right then, the poised blades froze in mid-air.
A calm tone belonging to neither of the would-be murderers, was telling
both to drop their knives. Between the shove and the vicious faces, Dick saw
the calm visage of Cranston, whose face he remembered from the elevator but
whose name he didn't know. Cranston's hands, at shoulder level, were behind
the
necks of Dick's persecutors and each fist was loaded with an automatic.
This was a cool antidote to murder, before the deed could be
accomplished,
but the savage pair did not long tolerate the threat. Like a well-drilled
team,
they suddenly dodged from the gun muzzles and spun about with double purpose.
One intended to stab Cranston; the other to give Dick the slash. If
Cranston had fired his guns, he might have stopped those deeds, but not with
certainty. Instead he whipped into a two-way maneuver of his own.
A ward with one gun met the stabbing knife with a clang that knocked it
from the attacker's hand. A swing of the other automatic forced the second man
to make an arm fling which in turn shortened his knife slash, since his elbow
was driven against Dick's chest. Bowled back into the doorway, Dick landed
half-sprawled and the knife merely carved the air above his head.
It was then that the big guns talked.
Cranston didn't aim at the snarling pair, who seemed to melt down to the
sidewalk, then come springing up again like human mushrooms, the first
reclaiming his lost knife in a deft, rapid scoop. Downward shots might have
found Dick instead of the two attackers.
Neatly planted, Cranston's shots were just close enough to make the two
men spread and Dick thought surely they'd be taking to their heels. Instead,
they dove into the scene again.
Cranston was their mutual target now and guns or no guns, Dick wouldn't
have given him a chance. He was practically flattening himself, evening
clothes
and all, as though hoping he could drop right through the sidewalk. Now Dick
was
coming to his feet intending to charge into a fray that was over before he
could
start.
Swinging arms, driving feet came up from the sidewalk to meet those
flying
dives. Instead of finding Cranston, the baggy assassins were bouncing past
each
other like a pair of India-rubber men. The amazing Mr. Cranston must have met
them with some tactics that carried these light-weights further on their way
and from the tumbles they took, Dick expected a couple of broken necks where
they properly belonged.
摘要：

DEATHHASGREYEYESbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"April1945.Therewerestrange,sinisterplansforDickWhitlock'spost-warfuture.CouldTheShadowsolvethesecretofthepastandpreventthefulfillmentofafanaticaldoctor'scrazedideas?CHAPTERITHEeyeswerethereagain,coldgreyeyes,ashardandmercilessa...

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