“What does this mean?” yelled Carver.
“Go in,” said Sidney Zoom, “and sit down.”
The man whirled in a fear and fury. He lashed out with his fists, bit, struck, clawed and kicked.
The dog rushed forward, but was sent to the floor at a single sharp command from Sidney Zoom. Zoom’s long arms wrapped around the panic-stricken, struggling figure, bore him from the floor, carried him to the chair, flung him down.
A strap circled the body, held it. The arms and legs frantically kicked. Sidney Zoom secured one of the arms with a strap which was fastened to the arm of the chair. Then he secured the other arm. Next he strapped the legs.
He made his motions with a swift efficiency which showed skill and practice. And he pinioned the flying arms and legs with a speed of motion that indicated the great strength which was in those long, sinewy muscles.
Zoom stared down at the man and nodded.
“How does it feel?” he asked.
“Good God, are you mad!” screamed the man, struggling against the straps.
Zoom shook his head.
“Very sane, thank you. I thought you might like a little taste of that which is to come. The chamber with the green door, the iron chair, the electrodes. Presently, I shall turn on a little current. Not too much. Just enough to let you know how you’ll feel when the state gives you the big jolt. They say that prisoners rise against the straps, that the chair shivers with their agony.
“It’s all for the best, the performance of justice. You have killed, and you shall be killed. You have lived by the sword and you shall die by the sword.
“I’ll go out for a while and you can sit and see how you look. Let your mind think ahead to the thing, that is in store for you.”
And Sidney Zoom, stooping, backed through the green door, closed it after him.
There was a mirror in the other side of that green door. It was so adjusted that the occupant of the chair stared at his reflection every time he raised his eyes.
There was also a little peek-hole in the door, just to one side of the mirror. Through this hole, Sidney Zoom, unobserved, could study the features of the man who occupied the chair. It was a subtle bit of third degree which Zoom had perfected.
He pressed his eye to the opening, watched Edgar Carver.
Carver stared, fascinated, at the reflection of himself in the chair. His complexion was a sickly yellow. His eyes were wide and there was sweat dripping from his forehead.
The man tore his eyes away, strove to look elsewhere and failed. The eyes, fascinated, always came back to that reflection.
After a few minutes Sidney Zoom opened the green door.
“Why,” he asked, “did you kill Muriel?”
“I didn’t kill her,” said Carver.
Zoom leveled a finger.
“My friend, you have one chance, and one chance alone to escape the torture of that chair. I want a confession. If you confess to me you stand some slight chance of escaping the embrace of the electric chair. If you fail to confess, then nothing can save you.”
“I have nothing to confess,” insisted Carver, the sweat dropping from his forehead.
“Very well,” said Sidney Zoom, “I shall summon the police. They will take you to jail. You will be convicted, sentenced, and the fate that is in store for you will weigh on your mind day after day, sleepless night after sleepless night!”
And he stepped outside, closed the green door.
He heard the man’s scream as the eyes once more sought the grim reflection.
“No, no! Come back! Come back!”
Sidney Zoom opened the door.
“Almost too late, my friend,” he said, and his voice held the timbre of a solemnly tolling bell.
Edgar Carver burst into speech.
“I’ll tell it all! I didn’t mean to kill her. I swear I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do, I was between the devil and the deep sea. I had to do it! You won’t understand. You don’t, you can’t understand! It’s horrible.
“I got drawn into it, a little at the time. It started when I got to taking a few stones on my own. Then I felt I was likely to be caught. I knew they were going to take an inventory. The shortage would be discovered. I had to do something.
“I knew this gang of gem thieves, I arranged to get in touch with one of the men in that gang. I wanted them to rob the place so that my own shortage would never be known.
“I didn’t tell him I was short. He was a fence, I guess. He didn’t do the work himself. He said he could arrange to have it done for me. But, he said I’d have to rip the gang of when there was a heavy shipment of valuable stones coming in, and that I’d have to see that the vaults were on open so they could make a clean-up and a quick getaway.
“I never met the real gangsters. I carried on everything through the fence. The girl, Muriel, knew something was going on. Maybe she’d been dipping in some, herself. I don’t know.
“I only know that the gang staged the stick up. But things didn’t go right. The watchman was a fool. They killed him. That was the first time I realized what I was up against. There had been a murder, and I was in on the job!
“It meant the chair! Think of it — the chair! The chair!”
His voice rose to a crescendo of hysterical fear, then trailed into silence as he sat and shuddered.
Sidney Zoom regarded him with unsympathetic eyes.
“But the girl’s death,” he said, “What of that?”
The man went on with his story.
The girl was wise, too wise. She knew what was in the wind, and she started to hijack the proposition. Just before the gang came in, she made a sweep of the cream of the stock. She got a bunch of the stones that were the best values and could be the most easily sold.
“Then the stick-up, and the gang found, when they went to fence the stuff that they had the inferior merchandise, and not as much of that as they should have. Naturally, they thought I was the one that had pulled the fast one on ’em, and the fence sent for me and gave me something to think about.
“That started me using my wits. The fence gave me twenty-four hours to produce the missing stones. If I didn’t produce them within that time I was to be put on the spot.
“I hunted up the girl and found that she had left her apartment. I figured she’d go to spend the night with Stella Denny, so I hot-footed over there and stuck around. The girl came in to the apartment house. I caught her in the elevator.
“She denied it at first, and then admitted what she’d done, but claimed she’d ditched the stones. Then when I got to pressing her, she told me I could either like it or lump it, and that if I said anything more she’d tell the detectives what she knew and I’d fry for murder.
“That was what set me crazy. The idea of being in the power of Muriel Drake, having her threaten to spill what she knew, and send me to the chair. I knew right then that it was my life or hers, I figured she had the stones on her somewhere.
“And if I didn’t get those stones I was going to be croaked. If the girl talked, I was due to be killed. So I grabbed her and choked her. I guess I was crazy at the time.
“And then the damned broad didn’t have the stones on her at all. It was a pickle. I chucked her body against the comer of the elevator and beat it. No one knew I had been waiting in the corridor for her, and there wasn’t any one moving at that hour of the night. I’d run the elevator way up to the loft before I started in working on her, and there wasn’t any one who had heard a thing.
“So I just pressed the button which took the elevator to the third floor, got out, closed the door. When the door closed that made the contact, and the elevator went down. I ducked out by the stairs and came out the front.”