The Vault of Death, page 6
When the dial bad swung over to the right until it stopped. Harper placed a handkerchief over the handle in the door and tugged with his weight against it. He heard the bars click back as the handle swung over to the left.
Harper did not immediately open the door of the vault, however.
He crossed the room once more to a door which led to a hallway. That door was locked, bolted from the inside, as it had been when Simms was in the room. But now Harper quietly slipped (he bolt so that he could noiselessly open the door. When he had done that he took a coil of light, strong twine from his pocket, looped one end around the knob on the door of the vault. He unwound the cord so that he still held an end in his hand as he reached the door which led to the connecting room —the door which he had previously unlocked.
Harper pulled on the cord. The door of the vault swung slowly open. As it opened the edge of the steel door came in contact with the copper wire. There was a sputtering flash of greenish light, then the room was in darkness.
Harper slackened on the cord The loop slid down the polished handle of the vault to the carpet Harper jerked open the door to the connecting room, stepped into the second room and pushed the door shut behind him.
From his previous inspection of the place, Ben Harper had familiarized himself with every detail of his surroundings, and his mind never overlooked men the smallest detail which he had once observed He was, therefore able to move soundlessly through the darkened room until he came to another door which led to a corridor. He opened this door a crack, placed his ear against it, and listened.
He could hear voices in the corridor. Apparently, several of the employees had clustered there in an expectant group*
“…wouldn’t do it for a million dollars. I don’t think bis life is worth a snap of my fingers.”
“Bosh and nonsense I” another one said ” I’d do it in a minute. That electricity business is all hooey. How could an electrical connection with a vault door make a hole in a man’s neck?”
“Well, we’ll find out pretty soon” the first voice said “The fuse blew out two or three minutes ago. That shows he opened the door.”
“How long are they going to wait?” “Twenty-five minutes, I think,” the other said, “unless he opens the door sooner.”
Steps sounded in the corridor. Then Delamy’s voice said importantly, “All right, you folks, just keep away from the doors, if you will. I think you’d better go down to the room at the end of the corridor and wait down there” “ Yes, sir,” said one of tbe voices. There was the sound of more footsteps, then the sound of Harrison Gale’s voice as he said, “I suppose we’ve got to wait the twenty-five minutes out”
“Unless Harper calls before that, yes,” Delamy answered.
Suddenly, from the far end of the corridor, there sounded a woman’s voice raised in shrill expostulation: ”…can’t let him do it! You’ve got no right to 1 Your lives aren’t worth that much. He’s taking chances that you wouldn’t take. I’m going in there with him.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, a masculine voice that boomed authoritative protest, then the slamming of a door.
Several seconds elapsed. Then there were feet once more in the corridor, and a woman’s voice, shrill with excitement, said,”That was Elizabeth Crail. She insisted she was going in there with him.”
Harper stiffened to attention.
“She’s gone in there?” Delamy asked.
“Yes,” said the woman’s voice. “We couldn’t stop her. and…”
Harper waited to hear no more. He turned and rushed back across the dark room, his hand groping for the knob of the door which led to the chamber of death.
He found the knob, wrenched the door open.
From the inner room all was darkness and silence.
“Miss Crail,” he catted softly.
He heard the sound of a startled gasp.
” Are you all right?” he called.
“Y-y-y-yes,” she said, and her voice was choked with sobs.
“Where are you?”
" Over here. I thought this was your body. I thought you were dead.”
“No,” he said,” that’s Simms. Walk toward the sound of my voice. Keep beating your hands in the air.”
“B-b-b-beating my hands in the air?” she sobbed.
“Yes,” he said, “and that’s important. That’s important as the very devil. Come toward me at once.”
He stepped into the room and started flailing his own arms up and down, brushing himself with tu$ hands.
Suddenly he heard her give a choked scream, and, a moment later, she said, “I t-t-t-touched something. Something was trying to get to me. There’s something else here in the room.”
” That’s all right,” he told her. “Hurry! Come toward me.”
He heard her stumble once. Then she lurched forward and fell into his arms.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “Just keep your hands moving and…
He broke off as the door of the room behind them opened and then closed. Steps hurried across the room. A flashlight stabbed its way through the darkness. Then the beam was extinguished.
“Hush!” Harper whispered, and threw his arm around her shoulders.
A figure glided across the room.
Suddenly the beam of the flashlight stabbed up toward the ceiling, and, across the beam of the flashlight flitted a huge silent shadow, a black ominous something which left a vague, indistinct impression of a silent menace, a death which flitted through the air, casting grotesque shadows but nuking no sound.
The beam of the flashlight swung in a half circle, came to rest upon Elisabeth Crail.
A man’s voice said, “You damned little she-devil! You would have to interfere.”
Harper caught the glint of blued steel in the light which sprayed out from the flashlight.
” Look out!” he shouted, and lunged forward.
The gun spurted flame. The roar of the explosion filled the room.
Harper, unarmed, flung himself upon the man who had fired the shot. He heard Elizabeth Crail scream and drop to the floor.
” Keep up beating about you with your arms!” Harper shouted.
A second shot singed his hair with it's flame as the man swung the gun and fired.
Harper lashed out with his left. The flashlight was flung upward, slipped from the man’s hand, pinwheeled up into the air, throwing its beam in a twisting circle, and then crashed to the floor and went out. The room was in darkness.
There were steps in the corridor. A voice screamed some inarticulate warning.
Arms encircled Harper. He sensed that his adversary was try ing to swing the gun so that he could use it to advantage. But Harper was close to the man’s own body. He slammed his heel down on the man’s instep, swung his arm around so that he could grab the gun wrist.
“Damn you!” the man screamed, and struck with the gun. The barrel crashed down on Harper’s temple. He felt the floor rock and sway beneath him, felt great waves of black nausea engulfing his consciousness. He tried to hang on, but felt the strength ooze from bis arms. He realized that he was slipping, and then felt fingers at his throat. He crashed to the floor. The other was on top of him. The fingers pressed against bis windpipe.
Harper was conscious of men Storming at the door. He tried to shout to the men to go around the other way, through the communicating door, but he could make no sound.
He tried to push off bis assailant, but there was no strength in his arms. He felt his wind was being shut off. Then, suddenly, the grip relaxed. The man above him swayed, gave a low moan and pitched forward.
Harper sucked welcome air into his lungs, kicked off the inert body, screamed to Elizabeth Crail, “Get that door open!”
But she needed no instruction on that score. Site had already thrown the bolt on the door. Now she flung it open. Light streamed into the room. Spectators stood in a startled circle in the doorway.
A police whistle sounded from somewhere in the corridor. Steps pounded along the floor. The door of the connecting room was pushed violently open.
Lights biased in the adjoining room, and the illumination through the two doors was sufficient to show some circling body flitting about the ceiling of the room—a great winged creature which flitted silently in a hysteria of circular motion.
It dropped toward Harper. Harper, on one knee, struck at it with his arm, smashed his fist against the creature, sent it hurtling across the room, where it crashed into the door of the vault and dropped to the floor.
Three uniformed policemen and two plainclothes men came pushing through the door of the connecting room.
“What the hell’s going on here?” one of the men demanded.
Harper turned his face to the circle of white, frightened faces which had clustered in the doorway.
Taber Boxman lay inert on the floor. A small hole in the back of his neck was the only visible wound.
“It stood to reason,” Harper said,
I “that the five men in this company were being preyed upon by one of their own number. Everything indicated it. Millers was killed by the attack of a dog. The dog was incited to that attack by the voice of some man who was not in the room. It was, therefore, a voice which came over the loud* speaking telephone. An attempt was made to Marne that voice on Carl Draper. That was merely a stall. Millers wasn’t listening to the conversation which was taking place in the reception room at the time of his death. The testimony of his own secretary indicates that. Therefore, he must have been called by someone who had access to that telephone. That might have been an employee. It was more probable that it was one of the members of the partnership.
“When we consider that the partnership was so arranged that, by a system of insurance, the assets virtually vested in the survivors, we can appreciate what a clever scheme was perpetrated. Boxman made demands for two million dollars. Otherwise he threatened to kill off the members of the partnership. He stood to win either way. As a matter of fact, the other two were about ready to pay off the money. Boxman would have written another letter, in which he would have been designated a$ the man to make the contact. The other two would have turned over two-thirds of two million dollars. Boxman would have pocketed It.
“Boxman had studied hypnotism. He had been able to hypnotize the dog which Milters owned. Perhaps some people would consider that it was merely a clever act of animal training. I prefer to consider it hypnotism. At any rate, Boxman knew that 1 was on his trail as soon as I mentioned the fact that I had seen a dog similarly trained in Cranston. Therefore, he wanted to get rid of me.
“His next campaign was rather clever. The vampire bats are well known in various tropical countries. In South America there are species of the Javelin Bats. These are known as Phyllóstoma Hostátum.
“These are true vampire bats. They live on the blood of animals and men. They particularly attack men when asleep, by biting a small round hole with very sharp teeth, either in the tip of the nose or at the end of the big toe. However, when the bats arc starving and do not have an opportunity to attack sleeping men, they have been known to fasten upon the back of the shoulders and bite in the back of the neck.
“A peculiar thing about these bats is that they have a species of local anesthetic which prevents the victim from feeling pain. The wounds which they make are usually dean and seldom become infected, although the victim wilt become very weak from loss of blood. What Boxman did was merely to keep these bats in a starving condition, so that they were in a veritable frenzy for food. Then he put a peculiar active poison, probably one of the type that is used by the natives in Mow guns, on the outer gums of these bats. As soon as they bit a victim and the blood started to flow the poison from the outer lip of (he bat was picked up by the blood stream of the victim and resulted in almost an instantaneous death.
“He tried to kill me by liberating a bat which would have access to me as its first victim. lie was foiled in this attempt merely because someone had stolen my hat and overcoat, and because I had my suspicions aroused by the fact that a car was following me.
“He put one of these bats in the vault and left the windows of the room open. lie knew that, sooner or later, one of his associates would enter the vault. When that was done, he had a switch arranged so that the light would become short-circuited. As soon as Simms opened the door ot that vault of death the lights went out. There* fore he couldn’t see the bat. The bat fastened on the back of his neck. The man died almost instantly. The bat flew out of the window.”
”A potential source of death to to others?” asked Delamy.
“I think not” Harper said. “The poison on his tips would have been dissolved in the blood of the first wound.”
“How did it happen you suspected Boxman?" Delamy inquired.
“I didn’t at first,” Harper said. “I only knew that the guilty person must have been one of you five. I knew that person would realize I was getting close to a solution, and would try to kilt me, inasmuch as he had already made one abortive attempt. Therefore, I decided to close the windows, shut myself in the room under conditions identical with those which Simms had encountered, only I protected myself by opening the door of the safe with a cord”
“But,” Delamy asked, ” why did you desire to wait for twenty-five minutes?”
Harper hesitated.
“Was it,” Delamy asked, “that you expected the man who had set the trap would be the first one to look in the door? He’d look in to see whether the bat had escaped before letting the others in. Then, when Miss Crail entered the room, it forced your hand. You rushed in to rescue her. Boxman ran in to make certain she didn’t discover the bat, or, if she did, he could kill her and then escape before he could be apprehended.”
Harper shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
“That,” he said, “is merely your inference, Delamy.”
“But,” Delamy said, “isn’t it lire way you planned to play the game—to have the murderer come in to see that the coast was clear and then have the starved bat attack him?”
Harper, looking at him, said a strange thing:
“Gentleman.” he said, ” that is something I can’t remember.**
THE END
Erle Stanley Gardner, The Vault of Death
