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CASTLE DANGEROUS · The Jailer of Souls

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  Chapter twelve of The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This Liberal Box recording
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  is in the public domain. Read by Yoganan The Jailer of Souls, Chapter
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  twelve, Castle Dangerous. Alone in his cell beneath the courthouse, Black Stevehanister
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  sat in silence, gazing northward through the barred window to way invisible in the
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  thick darkness. Just across the street. The road ran straight as an arrow
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  from the bow to the dark forest, rouding in a changeless silence, where
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  lay the House of Fear. Childers would have had his wire long since,
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  but by the time that help could come, it would be too late.
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  Anister, fatalistic after a fashion, felt this to be the fact, even
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  as he hoped against help. But there were many any whisper one tomorrow it
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  would be too late. Head bowed in his hands, oblivious. At first,
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  he had heard it as a thin whisper, like a knife blade against
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  silence. It penetrated inward. Now with a dull rasp of metal upon metal
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  from without, sit tight, old timer, I'm coming through. There came
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  a muffled thud, a twist anster reaching forth, a hand found it clasped
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  in thick, droping fingers. Then, as he thrust head and shoulders through
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  the sundered bas a, shadow up rose gigiantic against the stars. The voice
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  came again, in a quick rumbling whisper. It's may old timer pill Anester.
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  Crawling through the opening, alighted upon soft turf, he heard Allison's low
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  chuckle as following the giant he passed along the lee of the building, to
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  where, showing merely as a black blot against the night, there stood an
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  automobile, its engine just turning over with the low, even purr of harnessed
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  power. At twenty paces, it was scarcely audible above the rising of the
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  wind. Thanks full, said Allison. Now he turned abruptly as a dim
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  figure rose upward just beyond for a moment. Anister set himself for the onslaught
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  there in his hair, and went out. It gripped the hard hand of
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  tell Kane. Allison done, told me, mister Anista, he said,
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  And so I come a fanning and a fogging this way from mohave certain show
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  I don't aim to leave no friend of mine. Hawk tied in no calaboose
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  anestor, his heart warming to these friends debated with himself, then turned to
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  Allison with a sudden movement. Bill he said, and putting the carts on
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  the table with you, and tell here. He told them briefly of the
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  message from Mary, the need of haste, then of his mission, and
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  of the help that was even now due, or would be with the morning,
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  if they were coming with him northward along that road of peril. Word
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  must be left behind, Kane thought a moment, then, wheeling swiftly with
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  muttered word, he disappeared in the darkness to return presently with the good news
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  that he had fixed it with the station agent. The latter had just come
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  on. He was a friend of Kane's and no friend of Rooke and company.
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  He would see to it. Kaine said that the reinforcements would be wont
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  boarding the car. They swung out cautiously along the silent street under the pale
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  starts, northward along the shadowy road. Presently there would be a moon,
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  But just now they went onward in a thick darkness, with just a head,
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  the dim loom of the road flowing backward under the wheels, which presently
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  ran like a ribbon of pale flame under the bright beam of the lights a
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  half mile from the town, and Bull, who was driving, opened up,
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  and the car leaped forward with the rising drone of the powerful motor thirty
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  forty fifty miles an hour. The wind of their passage drove backward like a
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  wall as the giant's voice came now in a rumbling laugh, some little speedbagon,
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  mister anister, hey, they said, And that's whatever it ought to
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  be. The man who owns it, who did on it half an hour
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  ago, he's some particular's say, because it's mister Hamilton drugs. Anister laughed
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  grimly in answers, speaking a low word of caution, as after perhaps a
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  half hour of their racing on rush, the lights glimmered on dark trees to
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  right and left. Somewhere a boat here, I think, he said,
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  Low, three outside guards, I understand we'd better stop a little way this
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  side. Bull touch it now, look as a big car slid slowly to
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  a halt. The moon rising above the trees showed them perhaps a hundred yards
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  just ahead a low rambling stone house, its windows like blind eyes to the
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  night. Upon its roof, the moonlight lay like snow, and even at
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  that distance it was sinister forbidding, as if the evil that was within had
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  seeped through those stones outward in a creeping tide. Looks like a mog,
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  offered Allison with a shrug of his great shoulders, as a three alighting pushed
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  the car before them into the wood, then guns out. They went forward
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  slowly among the trees. Anister had formed no definite plan of attack. The
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  red ribbon that window bar might or might not be visible under the moon,
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  but the guards eliminated. It seemed to him that after all they would have
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  to make it an assault, and foot pondering this matter, all of a
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  sudden, he leaped sidewise as a dim figure rose upward, almost in his
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  face, spread eagle like a bat against the dimness, The figure bulked huge
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  against the moon as Anister, bending to one side, brought up his fist
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  in a lifting punch from his showtops. It was a savage blow. It
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  landed with the sound of a butcher's cleaver on the chopping block. There came
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  a gasping grunt, the thud of a heavy body as a guard went downward
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  without a sound. One breathed Allison, as trusting the victim with a length
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  of stout line brought from the car. They left him, going forward,
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  carefully, keeping together, circling the house. But it was not until they
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  were half way round it, with so far no sign of that signal for
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  which he looked, that they encountered the second guard. He came upon them
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  with a swift, silent orn rush, leaping among the trees, a great
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  dun shaped spectral under the moon, fanks bared as without a sound, the
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  hound row straight for the giant's throat. A short would bring discus. They
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  dared not risk it. Anester could see the great head, the white rough
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  at the neck, the grinning jaws. Then the giant's hands had gone up,
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  and out there came a straining heap, a wrench, a queer whistling
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  croak. Allison, rising from his knees, looked onward a moment to wear
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  the beast, its jaw broken by that mighty strength, lay stretched lifeless at
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  his feet. By now they had come full circle, when all at once,
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  Anester, appearing under his hands, sucked in his breath with a whispered
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  oath fair against the bars of a window. Low down at their right there
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  was a dark smutch, the ribbon black under the moon. Anister's heart leaped
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  up in answer, as with a quick word. He halted his companions in
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  the shadow of a tree. A moment they conferred. Then Allison and Anest
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  could almost see his grin in the darkness, spoke beneath his hand. Why
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  that'll be easy. I've got my tools. You're right here in my pocket,
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  mister Anist. Those bars ought to be easy for a fair the journeyman's
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  slitswinger. It'll be easy, and you can lay to that good, whispered
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  Anister. An answer, But hurry. The moonlight lay in a molten flood
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  between them and the house. But it was no time for deliberation. Crossing
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  that bright strip at a crouching round the tree, were at the window,
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  Anester's harsh whisper hissed in the silence through those iron bass marry for a heart
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  beat, silence answered him. Then, faint and thin, in a faint,
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  tremulous, sobbing breath, there came the answer, Steve. Thank god,
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  Anester had spoken the girl's name without thought. At that high moment,
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  forms had been futile. That whisper had been wrung from him deep down,
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  as had an answer. And then the soft rasp of steel on steel told
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  that Allison was at work, but the giant was working against time. At
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  any moment now might come the alarm. They had no means of knowing the
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  number of those within those walls. Perhaps even now peril just behind might be
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  stalking them out of the dark. And still that soft rasp went on until
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  at a low word from the girl, the giant, laying down his file
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  bent, heaved, putting his shoulder into it, and the bass sprang outward,
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  bent and twisted in that iron grasp. Anister his hand reaching for the
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  hand of the girl, went inwards silently to stand a moment without speech in
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  the thick darkness of the little cell. But it was no time for dalliance.
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  Caane and Ellison behind him. Now he set his shoulder against the door,
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  as Allison aiding, It splintered outward with a soft, carrying crush.
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  Ahead of them along a dark, narrow corridor. There had come on a
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  sudden sound of voices, murmurs anester going toward that sound, so suddenly an
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  open door, light streamed from it. As the murmur of voices rose,
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  my friend, I bring you forgetfulness. The words came in a sort of
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  hissing sibilance, as anister reaching that doorway halted a moment, as the tableau
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  was burned into his he saw his father helpless, his face gray with the
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  hideous terror of that which was upon him, in the grasp of two cloaked
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  and hooded figures, their dark faces grinning with the bestial mud, and before
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  him, hand uprising and holding a curious funnel shaped object, at which the
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  man in the corner shrank backward. Even as he looked, he saw a
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  tall man with a black, foking beard, the same that he had seen
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  that evening at the corner of the street, the same that he had seen
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  in the dim backwater of Rangon, the unspeakable, the man with the dark
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  foreign visage and the eyes of death. The end of chapter twelve,