Knibbs felt the other’s eyes boring into him, and he glared back defiantly. No words were spoken. It was a battle of minds. De Brunner’s pupils seemed to glow like coals and his whole attitude was of striving for domination.
It came to Fleming at that dramatic moment, as he fought back, that Bastian De Brunner possessed _hypnotic power, and a thrill of fear coursed through him. He suppressed it quickly, concentrating every force into his staring eyes. He must hold his own. He must not allow himself to fall under the spell.
Absolute silence prevailed in the room.
Slowly Knibbs became conscious of a numbness in the legs. It grew upon him an inch at a time, crawling like a snake past the knee and upward. He became desperate, frantic. He tried to shout for help, but no sound issued from his lips. He tried to tear himself from the chair and dash from the room, but his muscles were immovable, refusing to obey the mental impulse. Vaguely Knibbs marveled at this. It always had been his impression that hypnotic control of an unwilling subject was impossible. Obviously De Brunner possessed an extraordinary power.
Then a sudden calmness swept over him as he realized that fear would only undermine his resistance, thus adding to the other’s strength. Though this was his first experience with hypnosis — and he was accordingly handicapped by a natural awe of mysterious, unknown forces—he now coolly rallied all his faculties to defense, and once again clearly met De Brunner’s gaze.
And then the door opened and Lola entered bearing a tray.
It was this interruption plus Fleming’s rally that spelled defeat for the paralytic’s initial stupendous attempt at controlling his captive’s mind. Without a word he removed his gaze and sank deeper among the pillows. “Send Jim up,” he said in a normal voice.
Lola set the tray on a bureau and, going to the door, called softly below.
Shortly the tall, thin-lipped fellow sauntered in.
“Make this man secure in the next room,” ordered de Brunner. “I want to see him later. Needn’t gag him unless he gets noisy.”
The chap called Jim yanked Knibbs to his feet; and then they were in a small, bare room furnished only with a cot. Silently Jim pushed his helpless charge on the cot, stretched him out at full length and made him fast to the frame with stout ropes ably knotted.
“Guess that’ll hold you awhile,” he grinned as he departed.
V.
Knibbs lay there the balance of the morning and far into the afternoon. Occasional footsteps passed the door, going to or coming from the back room. Then there was a prolonged silence and Knibbs thought he detected snoring.
Fleming’s position had now become not only irksome but decidedly uncomfortable. He was stiff from lying so long in one position and his legs and arms ached where the ropes had chafed them; for he had done considerable twisting and straining in spasmodic endeavors to free himself. Quiet having descended upon the mysterious household, he determined to make one last great attempt toward this end. Gathering all his reserve force in the effort, he drew his arms together and his knees up. The ropes held. He increased the tension gradually... and felt a thrill of exultation. His right arm was loose; his freedom remained but a matter of minutes.
Fleming Knibbs was casting off the last of his shackles when his anxious, roving eye observed the door opening silently. Transfixed with horror, he waited.
A figure slipped in and approached the cot. It was Lola. Knibbs breathed easier. He arose and held her arms. “Why are you here?” he whispered. “What do you want?” For a moment, in his highly excited state, he doubted her. The next moment he was ashamed of himself.
“I’ve come to help you,” she replied softly. “De Brunner is asleep. Jim and Belden have gone to hire an auto. They intend removing you to a place where there will be less likelihood of the police finding you. By your attitude and appearance, De Brunner believes you a Wealthy man-about-town who finds sport in traveling around with detectives. And he has designs on you—just what I do not know. He may hold you for ransom. Or it may be that he intends gaining mental control of you—as he has me. He’s—he’s the devil incarnate!” she concluded vehemently. “You must escape him.”
“But—isn’t he—your father?”
“Thank God, no! I was once, at least, of a good Belgian family—the family of Langlois. But I lost everyone and everything I held dear early in the war. Distracted, I fled to Australia, where I obtained employment as secretary to the manager of the Smith & Townsend circus. It was before the full seriousness of the war had been realized and many men, particularly the older ones, had no thought of entering service. De Brunner was one of these. He was a versatile performer—a daredevil who provided half a dozen acts, But one day he took a chance too many, and dropped from a trapeze, injuring his spine. It was then he fell back upon and developed a latent hypnotic power, and I became his slave, doing his bidding, no matter what. Oh, I hate it! I hate it! If I, too, could only escape! But I cannot. He controls my body and my soul, and I am fearful of him.”
Deeply interested and excited by this personal narrative from the girl whose sweet face he had learned to adore, Knibbs forgot his surroundings, forgot his desire to escape and the need of haste, and probed for more. “When, you are under the spell, are you fully aware of what you are doing, Lola?” He used her name reverently.
“Yes; but faintly, as in a dream. Oh, I know I robbed you. I recall the details—hazily. But I could not tell you last night—with De Brunner there, and the officers.”
“Being unable to do so himself, he intends using you to carry out his criminal designs, making you his unwilling automaton, and hiding from the law behind your skirts. Isn’t that it?”
She shrank back as though struck; then, strangling a sob, braced herself. “Of course. It is plain. Yet no matter how much I fear the consequences of my acts, I fear him more. Oh—I— I wish I were — dead!”
“Please don’t say that. Things will come out right. They must. Tell me, Lola, have you—committed many—ah — crimes at his bidding?”
She sighed with relief. “No; yours was the first. It seems the idea did not occur to him until he decided to come to America. I think perhaps Jim put it in his head. Jim and ‘Red’ Belden were canvasmen—rough as they come. And when De Brunner’s savings were exhausted—”
“I see. But who was the other man — this John Ulrich, who—who died last night?”
“He, too, was a student of hypnosis — a complacent hypocrite I have always detested. De Brunner became acquainted with him in Melbourne. Another circus man, Cassius Wynn, introduced them. It may be, too, that the idea of crime through hypnotic control originated in him, or in Wynn. I cannot say. But De Brunner was master of them all, despite his infirmity. And somehow he found in me his most pliant subject.”
“Tell me one more thing, Lola. Did John Ulrich commit suicide, or was he murdered?”
“I do not know,” she said, looking at him with frank eyes, and he knew she spoke the truth, but he was no less uneasy, for he believed he knew now what had transpired the night before. “I had just returned and in a sort of stupor was mounting the steps when someone screamed. I went in and lay the loot on the bed. Jim and Belden were standing staring down at Ulrich. De Brunner said something in a sharp tone; then Jim took the loot and both of them went out quickly. I saw no more of them until this morning.”
Knibbs welcomed the projection of other suspects on the scene. It relieved him to think that, if Ulrich was knifed, either of the ex-circus men might have had a hand in it. But he had recurrent thrills of fear. For it may have been that Lola’s remembrance of that waking dream was incorrect—and that, after all, she had committed— No, no! Heaven forbid!