of
Charlemagne.
With the slow beginnings of a Saintly smile
touching his lips, Simon flexed his arms, took a firm grip on the
nearest tentacles,
and swung his legs over the low balustrade.
And it was at that moment that he heard the
scream.
It was the most dreadful shriek that he had
ever heard. Shrill, quavering, and heart-sickening, it pealed out from beneath him and went wailing round the empty courtyard in horrible strident
agony. It was a scream that gurgled out of a retch ing throat that had
lost all control—the shuddering brute cry of a man crucified
beyond the endurance of human flesh and blood. It tingled up into the Saint’s
scalp like a stream of elec tric needles and numbed his belly with a
frozen nausea.
2
For a space of four or five seconds that haunting
cadence quivered in the air; and then silence came blanketing down again upon the
castle—a silence throbbing with the blood- chilling terror of
that awful cry.
The Saint loosed one hand and wiped a smear of
clammy perspiration from his forehead. He had never reckoned him self to be
afflicted with an unduly sensitive set of nerves, but there was something
about that scream which liquefied the marrow in his bones: He knew that only
one thing could have caused it—the pitiless application of a
fiendish refinement of torture which he would never have believed
existed. Recalling his flippant reflections on the subject of mediaeval dungeon frolics, he found the theme less funny than it had seemed a quarter of
an hour ago.
His heart was beating a little faster as he
worked his way down the wall. He went down as quickly as he dared,
swinging recklessly from hand-hold to hand-hold and praying
consist ently as he descended.
Down in that lighted room below him things
were blowing up an eighty miles an hour for the showdown which he had laboriously
arranged to attend in person. Down there was being disentangled the
enigma of the sardine can, and he wanted a front fauteuil for the climax.
He figured that he had earned it Only with that tantalizing bait in
view had be been able to deny himself the pleasure of picking up Rudolf
by the hoosits and punting him halfway to Potsdam. And the thought that he
might be missing the smallest detail of the unravelling sent him slithering down the
scarp at a pace that would have made a
monkey’s hair turn grey.
A dead strand of creeper snapped under his
weight, and for one vertiginous instant he pendulumed over the yawning jaws of
death by the fingers of his left hand. Looking down into the Stygian chasm as
he swung there, he sighted a nebulous shaft of luminance just
underneath his feet and knew that he was only a few inches
from his goal. He snatched at a fresh hand hold, warped himself
featly sideways, and went on. A moment later he was
steadying his toes on the broad sill of the open window and peeping
into the room.
In a high-backed, carved-oak chair, at one
end of a long oak table placed in the geometric centre of a luxuriously fur nished
library, sat the prince. A thin jade cigarette holder was clamped between his
teeth, and he was sketching an intricate pattern on the table
with a slim gold pencil. At the opposite end of the table a big flabbily built
man sat in an identical chair: he was clothed only in his trousers and shirt,
and his bare wrists were locked to the arms of the chair by shining metal
clamps. And the Saint saw with a dumb thrill of horror that his head was
completely enclosed in a spherical framework of gleaming steel.
The prince was speaking in German.
“You must understand, my dear Herr Krauss, that I never allow misguided stubbornness to interfere with my
plans. To me, you are nothing but a
tool that has served its purpose. I have only one more use for you: to
open this little box. That must be a very
small service for you to do me, and yet you can console yourself with the
thought that it will be an exceedingly valuable one. It will relieve me
of the trouble and delay of having it
Charlemagne.
With the slow beginnings of a Saintly smile
touching his lips, Simon flexed his arms, took a firm grip on the
nearest tentacles,
and swung his legs over the low balustrade.
And it was at that moment that he heard the
scream.
It was the most dreadful shriek that he had
ever heard. Shrill, quavering, and heart-sickening, it pealed out from beneath him and went wailing round the empty courtyard in horrible strident
agony. It was a scream that gurgled out of a retch ing throat that had
lost all control—the shuddering brute cry of a man crucified
beyond the endurance of human flesh and blood. It tingled up into the Saint’s
scalp like a stream of elec tric needles and numbed his belly with a
frozen nausea.
2
For a space of four or five seconds that haunting
cadence quivered in the air; and then silence came blanketing down again upon the
castle—a silence throbbing with the blood- chilling terror of
that awful cry.
The Saint loosed one hand and wiped a smear of
clammy perspiration from his forehead. He had never reckoned him self to be
afflicted with an unduly sensitive set of nerves, but there was something
about that scream which liquefied the marrow in his bones: He knew that only
one thing could have caused it—the pitiless application of a
fiendish refinement of torture which he would never have believed
existed. Recalling his flippant reflections on the subject of mediaeval dungeon frolics, he found the theme less funny than it had seemed a quarter of
an hour ago.
His heart was beating a little faster as he
worked his way down the wall. He went down as quickly as he dared,
swinging recklessly from hand-hold to hand-hold and praying
consist ently as he descended.
Down in that lighted room below him things
were blowing up an eighty miles an hour for the showdown which he had laboriously
arranged to attend in person. Down there was being disentangled the
enigma of the sardine can, and he wanted a front fauteuil for the climax.
He figured that he had earned it Only with that tantalizing bait in
view had be been able to deny himself the pleasure of picking up Rudolf
by the hoosits and punting him halfway to Potsdam. And the thought that he
might be missing the smallest detail of the unravelling sent him slithering down the
scarp at a pace that would have made a
monkey’s hair turn grey.
A dead strand of creeper snapped under his
weight, and for one vertiginous instant he pendulumed over the yawning jaws of
death by the fingers of his left hand. Looking down into the Stygian chasm as
he swung there, he sighted a nebulous shaft of luminance just
underneath his feet and knew that he was only a few inches
from his goal. He snatched at a fresh hand hold, warped himself
featly sideways, and went on. A moment later he was
steadying his toes on the broad sill of the open window and peeping
into the room.
In a high-backed, carved-oak chair, at one
end of a long oak table placed in the geometric centre of a luxuriously fur nished
library, sat the prince. A thin jade cigarette holder was clamped between his
teeth, and he was sketching an intricate pattern on the table
with a slim gold pencil. At the opposite end of the table a big flabbily built
man sat in an identical chair: he was clothed only in his trousers and shirt,
and his bare wrists were locked to the arms of the chair by shining metal
clamps. And the Saint saw with a dumb thrill of horror that his head was
completely enclosed in a spherical framework of gleaming steel.
The prince was speaking in German.
“You must understand, my dear Herr Krauss, that I never allow misguided stubbornness to interfere with my
plans. To me, you are nothing but a
tool that has served its purpose. I have only one more use for you: to
open this little box. That must be a very
small service for you to do me, and yet you can console yourself with the
thought that it will be an exceedingly valuable one. It will relieve me
of the trouble and delay of having it
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