There was a hideous grinding noise and a portion of the hill large enough to carve an entrance for the car slid open. Rankin drove in and killed the engine. We were in a small, cube-like room that served as a hidden garage. Just then, a door at the far end slid open and a tall, rigid man approached us. Steffen Weinbaum's face was much like a skull; his eyes were deep-set and the skin was stretched so tautly over his cheekbones that his flesh was almost transparent.
"Where is it?" His voice was deep, ominous.
Wordlessly, Rankin got out and I followed his lead. Rankin opened the trunk and we pulled the sheet-swaddled figure out.
Weinbaum nodded slowly.
"Good, very good. Bring him into the lab."
Chapter Two
When I was thirteen, my parents were killed in an automobile crash. It left me an orphan and should have landed me in an orphan's home. But my father's will disclosed the fact that he had left me a substantial sum of money and I was self-reliant. The welfare people never came around and I was left in the somewhat bizarre role as the sole tenant of my own house at thirteen. I paid the mortgage out of the bank account and tried to stretch a dollar as far as possible. By the time I was eighteen and was out of school, the money was low, but I wanted to go to college. I sold the house for $10,000.00 through a real estate buyer. In early 14
September, the roof fell in. I received a very nice letter from Erwin, Erwin and Bradstreet, attorneys at law. To put it in layman's language, it said that the department store at which my father had been employed had just got around to a general audit of their books. It seemed that there was $15,000.00 missing and that they had proof that my father had stolen it. The rest of the letter merely stated that if I didn't pay up the $15,000.00 we'd go to court and they would try to get double the amount. It shook me up and a few questions that should have stood out in my mind just didn't register as a result. Why didn't they uncover the error earlier? Why were they offering to settle out of court? I went down to the office of Erwin, Erwin, & Bradstreet and talked the matter over.
To make a long story short, I paid the sum they were asking, I had no more money. The next day I looked up the firm of Erwin, Erwin & Bradstreet in the phone book. It wasn't listed. I went down to their office and found a For Rent sign on the door. It was then that I realized that I had been conned like gullible kid which, I reflected miserably, was what I was.
I bluffed my way through the first for months of college but finally they discovered that I hadn't been properly registered. That same day I met Rankin at a bar. It was my first experience in a tavern. I had a forged driver's license and I bought enough whiskey to get drunk. I figured that it would take about two straight whiskeys since I had never had anything but a bottle of beer now and then prior to that night. One felt good, two made my trouble seem rather inconsequential. I was nursing my third when Rankin entered the bar.
He sat on the stool next to me and looked attentively at me.
"You got troubles?" I asked rudely.
Rankin smiled. "Yes, I'm out to find a helper."
"Oh, yeah?" I asked, becoming interested. "You mean you want to hire somebody?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm your man."
He started to say something and then changed his mind.
"Let's go over to a booth and talk it over, shall we?"
We walked over to a booth and I realized that I was listing slightly.
Rankin pulled the curtain.
"That's better. Now, you want a job?"
I nodded.
"Do you care what it is?"
"No. Just how much does it pay?"
"Five hundred a job."
I lost a little bit of the rosy fog that encased me. Something was wrong here. I didn't like the way he used the word "job".
15
"Who do I have to kill?" I asked with a humorless smile.
"You don't. But before I can tell you what it is, you'll have to talk with Mister Weinbaum."
"Who's he?"
"A scientist."
More fog evaporated. I got up.
"Uh-uh. No making a human guinea pig out of yours truly. Get yourself another boy."
"Don't be silly," he said, "No harm will come to you."
Against my better judgement, I said, "Okay, let's go."
Chapter Three
Weinbaum approached the subject of my duties after a tour of the house, including the laboratory. He wore a white smock and there was something about him that made me crawl inside. He sat down in the living room and motioned me into a seat. Rankin had disappeared.
Weinbaum stared at me with fixed eyes and once again I felt a blast of icy coldness sweep over me.
"I'll put it to you bluntly," he said, "my experiments are too complicated to explain in any detail, but they concern human flesh.
Dead human flesh."
I was becoming intensely aware that his eyes burnt with flickering fires. He looked like a spider ready to engulf a fly, and this whole house was his web. The sun was striking fire to the west and deep pools of shadows were spreading across the room, hiding his face, but leaving the glittering eyes as they shifted in the creeping darkness. He was still speaking.
"Often, people bequeath their bodies to scientific institutes for study.
Unfortunately, I'm only one man, so I have to resort to other methods."
Horror leapt grinning from the shadows and across my mind there flitted the black picture of two men digging by the light of an uncertain moon. A shovel struck wood the noise chilled my soul.
I rose quickly.
"I think I can find my own way out, Mr. Weinbaum."
He laughed softly. "Did Rankin tell you how much this job pays?"
"I'm not interested."
"Too bad. I was hoping you could see it my way. It wouldn't take a year before you would make enough money to return to college."
I started, and got the uncanny feeling that this man was searching my soul.
"How much do you know about me? How did you find out?"
16
"I have my ways." He chuckled again. "Will you reconsider?"
I hesitated.
"Shall we put it on a trial basis?" he asked softly. "I'm quite sure that we can both reach a mutual satisfaction."
I got the eerie feeling that I was talking to the devil himself, that somehow I had been tricked into selling my soul.
"Be here at 8.00 sharp, the night after next," he said.
That was how it started.
As Rankin and I laid the sheeted body of Daniel Whetherby on the lab table, lights flashed on behind sheeted oblongs that looked like glass tanks.
"Weinbaum," I had dropped the title, Mister, without thinking, "I think – "
"Did you say something?" he asked, his eyes boring into mine. The laboratory seemed far away. There were only the two of us, sliding through a half-world peopled with horrors beyond the imagination.
Rankin entered in a white smock coat and broke the spell by saying,
"All ready, professor."
At the door, Rankin stopped me. "Friday, at eight."
A shudder, cold and terrible raced up my spine as I looked back.
Weinbaum had produced a scalpel and the body was unsheeted. They looked at me strangely and I hurried out.
I took the car and quickly drove down the narrow dirt road. I didn't look back. The air was fresh and warm with a promise of budding summer. The sky was blue with fluffy white clouds fleeting along in the warm summer breeze. The night before seemed like a nightmare, a vague dream, that, as all nightmares, is unreal and transparent when the bright light of day shines upon it. But as I drove past the wrought iron gates of the Crestwood Cemetery I realized that this was no dream. Four hours ago my shovel had removed the dirt that covered the grave of Daniel Wheatherby. For the first time a new thought occurred to me.