There was a third stub just behind him. They told a story to the Agent. Someone else had stood here, waiting, watching — long enough to finish three cigarettes.
He struck a match and stooped down. Then he drew in his breath with a hiss. His fingers, suddenly tense, reached down and picked one of the stubs up. His eyes narrowed to steel-like pinpoints as he examined it.
On the cigarette butt were yellowish, uneven stains — the marks of the fingers that had grasped it. And the Agent’s spine began to crawl with horror, with a slow, deepening dread.
His mind leaped back to those other hands he had seen — the hands of the gray-faced deaf-mutes — the acid throwers. Their fingers, he remembered, had been stained with the fumes of the liquid horror they carried. One of them must have been standing out here, watching Betty Dale’s window.
He crossed the street at a run, entered the building. The night switchboard operator was lolling before his plugs, half asleep. The Agent asked a question in a tone that brought the man up with a jerk.
“Miss Dale,” “X” said. “Is she in?”
The switchboard operator shook his head.
“She got a call from her paper a half hour ago.”
Dread deepened in the Agent’s heart. The Herald seldom called Betty Dale at night.
“Get the paper at once,” he said. “Let me speak to the night editor.”
He went to the booth in the apartment’s lobby, picked up the instrument. The operator at the switchboard plugged in a number. The crackling voice of the Herald’s night editor came to the Agent’s ears.
“Hello. Who is it?”
“Let me speak to Miss Betty Dale, please.”
“Miss Dale? She’s not here.”
“Didn’t you call her a half hour ago?”
“No — she works here in the day.”
“You don’t know where she is then?”
“Home, I guess — why? Who’s calling?”
The Agent didn’t answer. His hands trembled for a moment as he hung up. Fear possessed him — an icy fear that crept along his spine like the touch of some loathsome reptile — not fear for himself but for small, courageous Betty Dale, who had aided him so often.
Someone other than the Herald’s editor had called her from the outside, lured her away. Someone had spied upon her movements, left cigarette butts with acid stains upon them — the badge of a hideous profession. Betty Dale had fallen under the black and awful shadow of the “Torture Trust”!
Chapter X
WITH no inkling of the menace creeping upon her, Betty Dale had settled herself for a quiet evening at home. She had slipped into a comfortable and becoming pair of lounging pajamas, propped pillows on a sofa, and drawn the bookmark from an interesting new novel.
The reading light sprayed radiance on her gleaming blonde hair, touched her long lashes, caressed the soft contours of her face and figure. She lay back relaxing after a hard day at the office.
When at midnight the call from the Herald office came, it surprised her. She was seldom called at night.
“The editor wants you,” said a voice. “A big story’s broke. He thinks you can help — an’ wants you to come right down.”
With a sigh and a philosophical shrug, Betty Dale rose and dressed. Her career had been won by a lot of hard work and self-discipline. When the paper wanted her, she made it a point to be ready.
She powdered her face, gave her hat a smart tilt, dabbed lipstick on, and descended to the street. A proportion of her success had been gained by always appearing chic and alert.
She took a cab at the corner and told the driver to make it snappy. The paper had called. The presses were waiting. There was no time to lose.
The cab rolled swiftly through the deserted streets down to the block where the Herald building rose with the lights in its many windows gleaming cheerfully. Men in the linotype and composing rooms were hard at work.
She paid the driver and stepped smartly toward the building’s entrance.
Then someone moved from the shadows beside the door. He held up his hand, signaled to her. He was a small man dressed in gray. She could not see his features, for he had a cap pulled down. They appeared to be strangely gray, masklike. She had never to her knowledge seen him before. Nevertheless she stopped.
And, in that instant, the man glided up to her. His movements were so quick, so purposeful, that she thought he was going to hand her something — thought that he must be an employee of the paper.
Instead, his fingers reached out, clutching her arm. With a quick movement that unbalanced her, he drew her back into the shadows. She started to scream, but he clapped a hand over her mouth. She tried to break away and something jabbed into her arm.
It was a sharp, keen pain like the prick of a needle. It was followed by a cool sensation in the surrounding flesh.
Betty Dale gasped and struggled and a wave of icy terror filled her. She felt a sudden roaring in her head, felt her knees giving way under her, felt as though the night were pressing in upon her from all sides. The lighted windows of the Herald building seemed to move in all directions. They seemed to explode, gyrate, whirl round and round like a galaxy of comets sweeping across an infinite sky. Then the roaring ceased. The comets grew dim. Betty Dale slipped into unconsciousness.
WHEN she awoke, feeling faint and dizzy, she sensed a jouncing motion. She tried to see, but something was over her eyes. She tried to speak and felt something else constricting her lips. She knew then that she was on the seat of a car, and she leaned back fighting the icy terror that possessed her. Her body still felt numb, paralyzed beyond the point of movement.
She realized that the sharp pain in her arm had been a hypodermic needle, an injection of some sort of drug. But who had pressed it in? Who was the strange, gray-faced man she had seen, and where was she being taken?
Fear rose in her mind. She had heard of unspeakable things, of the white slave traffic, of dark, slimy alleys of vice. Fear lay over her mind like a leaden pall.
She lost track of time. It might have been hours and it might have been minutes later that the car stopped. Then a door opened. She was propelled forward over a seemingly endless space, through an infinite duration of time. She was in some building, somewhere, but she couldn’t see or cry out.
She was pushed into a chair. The covering was taken from her eyes, and a gag was removed from her mouth. But she was in utter darkness and could still see nothing. She drew in great gasps of air, but she did not cry out. She wasn’t the sort of girl who screams or faints easily. She waited and listened in a frozen attitude of dread.
Then a light flashed on directly in her eyes. For minutes she could see nothing and no one spoke. More seconds passed and the light was suddenly dimmed. She could see around it now, behind it, and she caught her breath fearfully.
Two black-robed figures were sitting, regarding her. She saw the glitter of their eyes through slits in the black hoods that covered their faces. Somehow she sensed that she was in the presence of beings so evil that no human appeal would register. She did not speak. She waited to see what was to come.
A voice came out of the semi-gloom, out from behind a black hood. It was measured, impersonal. The tones were cultured.
“Miss Betty Dale! You are here to answer certain questions. A few nights ago you were seen at the Bellaire Club with a man who called himself Jeffrey Carter. There was a police raid. You left the club with a man who looked like Inspector Burks of the homicide squad. You were seen crossing the street with him into the shadows of a building. Shortly afterwards the real Inspector Burks arrived from headquarters. Who was the man who led you out? Who was Jeffrey Carter?”