“Get in,” said Gibbons harshly.
“What if I won’t?” blustered Hertz.
The answer came so suddenly that he gasped. Powerful fingers clutched his arm. He was lifted off his feet, thrust into the car. Then the gray-haired man got in beside him, and the car moved ahead.
Fury and fear welled up in Jason Hertz’s mind. His lips opened and he gave a loud, involuntary cry.
“Fool!” hissed the man beside him.
Hertz shrank back in his seat, afraid of what he had done. For his cry had echoed startlingly through the night. A light flashed somewhere on the wall of the prison — another and another. A siren rose like the voice of some monster, beginning with a throaty gurgle and lifting into a furious, spine-chilling wail. The purple shaft of a searchlight on one of the prison towers winked on. Its shimmering beam moved, swung downward, centering on the car. An instant later Hertz cried out again in a frenzy of fear.
For a flickering pinpoint of light leaped out on the wall of the prison. There was a staccato rattle like the drum taps of doom. And, in the air around the speeding car, there came the deathly whine of steel-jacketed bullets.
Chapter II
UNDER the lawyer’s hands, the roadster leaped ahead in the darkness like a live thing. A machine-gun bullet struck against the metal back of the car. Another passed screamingly between the two men’s heads, slapped against the shatterproof windshield, and sent spider-web lines radiating in all directions.
Hertz, his face white and ghastly, crouched whimpering in his seat. He stole a sidewise glance at the lawyer’s features, saw the hawklike nose, the jutting chin, and deep-set eyes. The man was driving calmly, as though death were not riding the wind behind him.
They passed at last beyond the searchlight’s range, and the bullets ceased to come. There would be pursuit; but it seemed nothing outside of a bullet could catch that speeding car. Under its long, low hood the smoothly running motor rose into a mighty paean of power. The speedometer needle swung to sixty, seventy, eighty as the car leaped ahead along the dark road. Hertz spoke again.
“You gotta tell me where I’m going. I won’t stand for this.”
“No?” The single word was ironic, mocking.
“Where you taking me — that’s what I wanta know.”
It seemed that a grim smile spread over the lawyer’s face. He was silent, and leaden fear gnawed at Hertz’s heart again. He only knew that they were leaving the city behind; that they had reached a country road. Then the car swung sidewise, turning off the smooth macadam. It passed along a dirt lane between rows of pines that moaned and whispered in the night wind. They came to a jarring stop.
“Get out!” said Gibbons.
The mystery of the night seemed to deepen. Hertz’s nerves were almost at the breaking point. He crouched back, showing his teeth, his hands hooked like talons.
“I won’t!” he shrieked. “I’ll — I’ll—”
Under the instrument-board light he found himself looking into the sinister muzzle of an automatic. His craven spirit weakened.
“All right I’ll go. Take that gat away. Don’t shoot!”
But the gun was not withdrawn. Hertz walked ahead, trembling, with the gun in his back, and the outlines of a house suddenly rose out of the blackness before him. It looked like a farmhouse, low and ramshackle.
A key grated in the lock. He was pushed inside and the door closed after him. There was the stuffy smell of deserted rooms and musty carpets. Gibbons appeared to know what he was about. He pushed Hertz into a rear chamber, struck a match and lighted an oil lamp. The windows of the room were tightly boarded up. Gibbons thrust a chair forward and motioned Hertz to sit down.
Alone with the mysterious lawyer, Hertz had a deeper sense of dread. The compelling eyes of Gibbons were upon him again. He sensed mystery behind them, and power. It was as though they were boring into his very soul. The voice of the lawyer sounded harshly.
“You are free of prison, Jason Hertz. In return you are going to give me information!”
So, that was it! A snarl rose on Hertz’s lips. His eyes gleamed wickedly.
“I won’t tell you nothing. I don’t know nothing!”
The gray-haired man before him smiled again and drew a clipping from his pocket. He held it in front of Hertz’s face. It had been cut from a newspaper — CATRELLA KILLED AT SCENE OF TORTURE MURDER.
“He was one of your pals, Hertz. You’ve seen the papers in prison. You know that murders are being committed — men tortured to death. Joe Catrella was in on it in some way. Give me the names of his friends.”
The question came relentlessly; but Jason Hertz shook his head.
“I don’t know nothing — I won’t talk,” he cried.
He’d heard rumors of the series of hideous killings that were baffling the police. Prominent people found dead — tortured. “The Torture Trust,” the papers called it. Fear sealed his lips. He knew little; but he dared not tell even that. Death was the penalty meted out to a squealer in the underworld, and there was mystery and horror behind this murder wave that eclipsed anything he had ever heard of before. There was an uncanniness to it that made his spine crawl. He wished he had stayed in jail.
“I don’t know nothing,” he repeated wildly.
HIS voice died in a gasp. He found himself looking into the eyes of the lawyer, found himself unable to turn away. Like a bird staring at a snake, he was held fascinated.
The lawyer’s face was coming closer to his — closer, closer. The lawyer’s eyes were pools of blazing light.
Hertz cowered in his seat, pressing till the rungs of the chair cut into his back. Terror of the man before him rose in his throat and seemed to choke him. He sensed again that he was in the presence of a person who had powers beyond his knowledge — vast depths of strength and magnetism. It seemed that his own brain was being battered into submission.
“Think back, Jason Hertz. It is March, 1933. You have not been caught by the police as yet. You are not in jail. You are with Joe Catrella, plotting evil. What is your understanding with him? Who are his friends?”
The eyes of the lawyer were relentless. His voice went on droningly. Jason Hertz felt himself slipping — slipping into the mysterious depths of hypnosis.
From drowsiness, Hertz went into laxity of posture, slumping in his chair, staring with glassy eyes into the face of the man who called himself Crawford Gibbons. Then slowly his body became rigid; his fingers tightened around the arms of the chair; his legs pressed stiffly against the floor. He was in the third stage of the hypnotic state, the stage known as catalepsy; his will completely under the dominance of the strange man before him.
“You will speak, Jason Hertz. You will answer my questions.”
Sweat broke out on the forehead of the escaped convict. Fear still fought for control of his subconscious mind. But the man in front of him substituted another fear, deeper, more imminent.
Gibbons reached around the side of Hertz, his forefinger extended. He pressed the tip of it against Hertz’s spine.
“There’s a machine gun at your back, ready to blow you to pieces, Hertz! You can feel it there, pressing, pressing. You must speak. Who were Catrella’s friends? Who gave you your orders when you were with him?”
A gurgle came from Hertz’s lips. They moved slowly. The cords in his neck stood out.
“I — don’t — know!” he gasped. “The Bellaire Club. We hung around there. Panagakos, the manager, may have been — I got notes in the blue vase — telling me what to do — the vase on the dance floor. So did Catrella. We never knew — who the big shot was — the guy we was working for. We sent notes to him the same way. Don’t kill me — for God’s sake! That’s all I know; I swear it. They got me — in that spaghetti-joint holdup — when I tried to make a little dough for myself on the side. I had a moll and she—”