Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 315 - Svengali Kill

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2024-11-24 1 0 101.98KB 45 页 5.9玖币

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SVENGALI KILL

Maxwell Grant

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 I

"IN full view of four thousand people he is going to die." The hand that was writing relaxed. The pen

shone in the light from the lamp on the desk. "With eight thousand eyes focused on him, he will be

murdered. Not only the perfect murder, but one that is foolproof and one for which I cannot be held.

"I feel buoyed up, tensed, but it is a pleasurable tenseness. I imagine this sensation will continue until he

dies. After that? Who knows... will the zest depart from life? I cannot tell, nor do I care. What is

important is that he is to die and die as no man ever has."

The potential murderer smiled. His plans were all made. The guns had been switched. The cue sheet was

at the theatre. All that remained was to phone. He dialed the number.

"Yeah, sorry but I can't make it tonight. Strep throat. Uh huh, Billy will be able to take over. I've coached

him. Sure. He has the cue sheet. There's nothing he can forget. Don't worry, it will be all right."

He listened to the voice at the other end. Then he said curtly "You know I'm sorry, Gall, but what can I

do? I can barely talk now. What do you think my voice will be like at eight thirty? Okay, I knew you'd

understand. Bye now." He hung up.

That did it. The plan was finished. If Barry Owden went up on stage, tonight, as he was almost sure to,

he would die.

If he didn't go on stage that night, another night would do. The potential murderer got up and stretched.

He smiled. He was satisfied. Looking in the mirror at his fairly young, rather handsome face, he

wondered if anyone could see the death in his eyes. He shrugged. No sense in getting silly about all this.

There was no mark of Cain that could appear to brand him.

Feeling his chin thoughtfully he realized he needed a shave. He grinned again. No reason to allow a little

thing like a murder to interfere with neatness. He would shave.

He was halfway through with his shave when the doorbell rang. He answered it with his half-soaped face

making him look bizarre.

"Darling! Good to see you. C'mon in." He put his dry hand on the pretty girl's shoulder and guided her in.

She smiled. He looked more like himself today.

"Go finish shaving, foolish." She sat down on one of the rickety hotel chairs.

"I hate to have you come to dumps like this, Betty, I..." His voice trailed off as he twisted his mouth to

shave under his bottom lip.

"I'm sure I don't mind, so why should you?"

"Aurgh..." His voice was muffled.

"Don't try to talk till you're finished." She settled herself back. Dear, foolish, sweet Andy. He worried

about more things than anyone she knew.

He came out of the bathroom arms akimbo, mimicking an acrobat. "Ta-daaa..." He threw her the towel.

"A fine acrobat you'd make. Why, you didn't even pretend to fail twice. They can only do something on

the third try."

On the third try... this would be the third time... this time he could not fail. Owden must die. He shrugged.

Better to put the whole thing out of his mind till tonight.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Starved. Let's grab a bite. I have to do some shopping. All ready?" She smiled.

"Sure, all ready." He certainly was. There was nothing left to do. The rest was in the lap of the gods. He

threw on his coat and grabbed her by the arm.

In the elevator the operator looked at them enviously. He felt his pimply chin and thought, some guys

have all the luck... a good-looking chick like that... in show business, what's he got to worry about?

"How're you, Charley?"

"Pretty good, Mr. Ager. Pretty good. Got a tip on the ponies if you want it."

"Why not? Today's my lucky day."

"Pimlico, the third race, Johnny Dodds."

"I'll put a buck on it for you, Charley."

"Thanks a lot, Mr. Ager." He watched them leave. Her trim straight back, his broad shoulders. Some

guys did have all the luck. His mouth twisted. He hoped the horse ran last. To hell with the buck bet.

In the restaurant of the run down hotel, Andy said, "If you see anyone who even looks like Gall, let me

know. He thinks I'm sick."

"How come, Andy?" She looked at him quizzically.

"Just don't feel like working today."

"Who's taking your place?"

"Stupid."

"Who... oh, you mean poor Billy Boy..." She thought a moment. "But, can he do it?"

"I wrote the whole thing out. If he can't read, why it's just Gall's bad luck."

"I'm sure he can read. I saw him looking over a tip sheet." Andy smiled grimly. The dope better be able

to read... if he couldn't...

The time dragged. It seemed to take days before the fat sloppy-looking waitress took their order, then it

seemed a week before she got back with the droopy-looking ham and eggs.

"They look a bit tired, don't they?" Andy asked of no one in particular.

"Whadda ya want, the Ritz?" The waitress was tired of smart guys. "I don't lay the eggs, ya know." She

flounced off.

"I wouldn't bet on it." Andy said.

"Shh... it's not her fault."

He stared at the pretty face across the table. "All right, I'm sorry I'm snappy. Dig in. How bad can an egg

be?"

The coffee was lighter than tea, but not quite as light as milk. He looked at it in despair. "I suppose if you

ask for black coffee you get it brown."

"Don't be so picky." She smiled. "This isn't the first bad hotel you've ever been in."

"It just seems to be." His face was set as he poured the weak coffee into him. Fleabags, crummy trains,

lousy food, lousier food, lousiest food. There had to be a superlative, he supposed. Even if it was

superlatively bad.

She watched him while he drank his coffee and smoked a cigarette. She had never been able to form any

idea of his age. He was the perennial juvenile. He might be thirty, but he might just as well be forty. There

was nothing to give you any clue. His eyes were old, but there were no crow's feet around them. He was

good looking, but that was no help, for he'd probably be that till the day he died.

He dressed like a young man, that might be part of it... she gave up as she always did. He would not give

any indication of his age. Along with the mystery of his age was the even more annoying one of why he

wasted his life working as a poorly paid assistant to a phony hypnotist... Now there was a man she really

loathed... S. Gall.

The cape he affected off and on the stage... phooey. Maybe it was good publicity, but when he

pretended that he was a real hypnotist she wanted to laugh in his face. She'd seen him making up his face

before going out into the street. Tweaking his eyebrows so they'd look more Mephistophelian.

Blackening his brows and swirled mustache so he'd look more sinister. It was laughable.

But why did Andy stay on working for the man? He had potentialities far beyond that. It wasn't even as

though he were stage struck for he wasn't. He disliked it intensely. He was always talking about the

phonies you had to put up with. The grasping agents, the low pay, the ephemeral life of performers...

He was thinking, as he looked at her pert profile, I wonder what she'd say if I told her I was going to kill

a man tonight... would she get up and go to the cops, or would she wait till he told her why?

That why was the beginning and end of his life. How to explain that it was more important that the man

die than that he, Andy, live?

He paid the check and said, "If you're going shopping, I probably won't see you again before the show

tonight."

She looked puzzled and asked, "But if you're telling Gall that you're sick; how come you're going to the

show?"

Inwardly he cursed his own stupidity. The first mistake. "Well, it's just that I want to be on hand if Stupid

louses things up too much." Weak, but he couldn't think of anything better on the spur of the moment. He

couldn't say that he wanted to be there to see his victim die. This was a sample of just how careful he

would have to be from now on.

She said, "If you're going to hide out at the show I probably won't see you till afterwards."

"Right, I'll pick you up at the bar."

She smiled and it was a lovely thing, "Till then."

He waved as he walked off. The next time he saw her, his plot would have come to a climax. The man

would be dead. He grinned.

CHAPTER II

THE theatre was dark. The curtain went up on time which was rather remarkable. You had to admit that

Gall's entrance was effective. Corny, but effective. He was tall, dark, arched eye-browed, the very

picture of what the layman thinks a hypnotist should look like.

His black cape swirled after him as he strode out onto the stage center. The cape made him look even

taller than his six feet. His hair pushed up into a pompadour added to his height, too.

He faced the microphone and pitched his voice way down in the cellar. "Ladies and gentlemen." He

looked around the audience now that his eyes were accustomed to the glare of the footlights. Of course

he couldn't see past the first row, and a part of the boxes... you never can because of the flare and glare

of the footlights and the spots... but he could see the man he wanted to get up on the stage. He was in the

first row of the left box. Owden his name was, or something like that. He was the town skeptic and Gall's

act was premised on convincing the known skeptic of his powers. After that the rest of the act was a

snap.

From the audience Gall's eyes were wide and staring. Of course you couldn't see the white line just under

his eyelid, or the lining of black under that, but combined the lines made his eyes look like boiled eggs.

The pin spot from the balcony helped too, as did the two baby spots in the foots that were focused on his

face. The baby spots were green so that as he turned his face from side to side, vagrant, almost

unnoticeable traces of pastel green flickered to and fro across his hawklike profile.

Corny, but effective. He used every trick in the book. He had their attention. The lights and the make-up

took care of that. Now he had to sell the soap. He began his spiel.

"You have heard a great deal about the science of hypnotism. Make no mistake. It is just that, a science.

The fakers, the carnival workers you may have seen don't change the basic, real facts about this science.

"I want all of you to understand that from the time of Mesmer to the present day, one thing has been true.

Hypnotism cannot do or make you do anything that you would not do if you were not hypnotized. If you

are not a thief, no hypnotist can make you one. No one can hypnotize you and make you kill."

That line, which was true, helped with reputable men of science. Gall smiled to himself. Always tell the

truth when it cannot hurt you. That was his motto and it was one of the things that had helped him to claw

his way up from a carny to two thousand bucks a week.

"But one thing is true." He turned on his personality. It was a real thing. He could turn it off and on at will.

He projected himself so that everyone in the audience could sense it. He looked out at the audience and

you would have sworn that one after the other he was staring in turn at everyone that sat out there. "I can

hypnotize. I can hypnotize you no matter how hard you try to keep me from doing it!"

That was a lie, but it always went over. This was no exception, he could see Owden up in the box stir

restlessly. "I defy you to prevent me. Do what you will, I will conquer!"

He waited. If Owden was the skeptic that he had been pictured, there should be a response. "If there is

anyone in this audience who is stupid enough to think he can resist, let him hold up his hand."

It worked like a charm as it always did. Owden's hand shot up like a kid asking a teacher permission to

leave the room.

"You sir, in the box. You think you can resist me? Would you step down the stairs and make your way

to the stage?" Gall's face twisted in a saturnine sneer.

There was a wait. In most acts it would be dangerous to let the audience sit while nothing happened on

stage. In Gall's act the wait was dramatic. The longer the wait the higher the tension. It was good

psychology. Gall had changed hypnotism from some kind of hocus pocus into a contest. A contest of

wills. Man is a sucker for contests... witness prizefights, wars and the like.

In the rear of the balcony, Andy Ager sat. His smile was broad. It would have made anyone

uncomfortable to have seen it. Luckily the darkness hid it. Ager looked as Monte Cristo must have

looked when he said "The world is mine!"

Ager leaned forward as Owden walked up the steps that led to the stage. If only Owden could have

known that he was going to his death, it would have enabled Ager to drain the last bittersweet drop of

satisfaction from his cup of triumph.

The audience leaned forward. Gall did that deliberately. He lowered his voice so that the audience had to

pay more attention. He said, "Thank you for coming up, sir. Your name?"

"Owden. Barry Owden. And I think you're a faker."

"I see. You're going to make a tough subject. In that case..." Gall turned to an inconspicuous table behind

him and picked up a pair of headphones. He held them up as he said, "Since this will be a contest of

wills, I would like to rule out all audience sound. If you put these earphones on, all you will hear is my

voice. I will speak into the mike and the audience will hear exactly what I say to you as I proceed to

hypnotize you."

"Okay by me." Owden, a stout man in his sixties who looked like the very picture of Babbitt, took the

phones. He put them on, disarranging his few hairs in the process. The one lock of hair which nature had

left him curled up like a horn around the U of the earphones.

"Go ahead, phony. Let's see you try to put the hyp on me!"

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