12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

He looked down into black darkness; but from the bottom of the darkness came a faint sound of shuffling movement. With a creepy tingle working across his scalp, he picked up his torch again and sent the beam down the shaft.

Ten feet below him, a face looked up with dull staring eyes that blinked painfully even in the faint ray of his flashlight. There was something hideously familiar about it, as if it were the blanched wreck of a face which he ought to know. And in another second his blood ran cold as he realized that it was the face of Ivar Nordsten.

VII

The face was not quite the same. The nose was less dominant, the complexion had a yellow tinge which the financier's did not have, the eyes lacked the faded brightness which Nordsten's possessed; but it was recognizable. It had given the Saint such a shock that he found it difficult to speak naturally.

"Hullo, sunshine," he said at length. "And who are you?"

The man's mouth worked hungrily, like an animal's.

"All right," he said, in a curiously stiff hoarse whisper, as if he had half forgotten how to use his voice. "I'm used to it now. You can't make me suffer any more."

"Who are you?" Simon repeated.

"I'm you," said the man huskily. "I know now. I've thought it all out. I'm you--Nordsten!"

The Saint's nerves were steady enough now. Somehow, that last shock had been a homoeopathic dose, wiping out everything else; he was left with the dizzy certainty that the trail had turned into a stranger course than anything he had dreamed of, and with a grim curiosity to find out where it led.

"I'm here to help you, you fathead," he said. "Tell uncle what it's all about."

The man below him laughed, a horrible quivering dry cackle which sent an uncanny chill down the Saint's spine, as if a spider had crawled there, in spite of the recovered steadiness of his nerves.

"Help me! Ha-ha! That's funny. Help me like you've been helping me for two years. Help me to keep alive so that I can die at the right time! I know. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Then the wild voice fell to a whisper. "Help," it breathed, with a fearful intensity. "How long? How long?"

"Listen," said the Saint urgently. "I------"

An then, as if his command had turned back on himself, he broke off and listened. He could hear the scratching again. It was outside the library door--on the door itself. . . . There was a faint thud; and then an instant's electric silence, while he strained his ears for he knew not what. . . And then, shattering the stillness of the house, came a frightful coughing scream that rang up and down the scale in an eldritch howl of vocal savagery that stopped the breath in his throat.

Looking down stupidly through the trapdoor, Simon saw the parchment face of the man who looked like Nordsten turn whiter. The dull eyes dilated, and the stiff unnatural voice rose in a sobbing cry.

"No, no, no, no," it shrieked. "Not now! Not now! I didn't mean it. I'm not ready yet! I'm not------"

The hairs prickled on the nape of Simon's neck; and then, with an effort that hardened his eyes to mere slits of arctic blue, he got up from his knees and lifted the heavy stone trapdoor again.

"I'll see you later," he said shortly and lowered the trap much quicker than he had raised it.

In another second he had fitted the square of dummy parquet over it, and he was rolling out the carpet again to cover up the traces of his inspection. Whatever else his curiosity might demand to know, there was the screeching shadow with the yellow eyes to be accounted for first-- everyone in the house must have been awakened by that unearthly yell, and he would achieve nothing by being discovered where he was. Whatever it might be, the Thing in the hall had to be dealt with first, and he preferred to take it on the run rather than let his nerves get the better of him again. With his automatic in his hand, he went back to the door and switched out the lights. No one would ever know what it cost him to turn the handle of the door with that screaming horror waiting for him on the other side, but he did it; and his nerves were like ice as he drew the door sharply back and waited for whatever his fate might be.

Something soft and yet heavy hissed past him and landed on the parquet beside the central rug with the same scratching noise as he had heard before, and once again his nostrils twitched to the queer musty odour which they had detected on the stairs. In the pitch darkness he heard the claws of the beast scrabbling for a turning hold on the polished oak, and kicked out instinctively with his bare foot. His toes bedded into something furry and muscular, and for the second time that fiendish worrying yell wailed through the blackness.