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Jailer of Souls - Henry Hamilton Edmund Craigie · The Jailer of Souls

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the Jailer of Souls. This is a
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  Speaker 1: liberyvox recording. All liberyvox recordings or on the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit liberyvox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Read by yoganand The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, southwest of the Law all the way westward
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  Speaker 1: in the Smoker, the man in the high crowned black
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  Speaker 1: steedston had taken no part in the conversation. He had
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  Speaker 1: appeared to dose, slumping in the high back seat as
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  Speaker 1: the train rushed onward into the golden afternoon. The three
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  Speaker 1: men at his bag had been busy with an interminable
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  Speaker 1: round of poker Draw Jackpot and stud Tuce's Wild and
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  Speaker 1: seven Card Peak. They moved across the aisle now as
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  Speaker 1: a long train sload for the brief stop, a two
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  Speaker 1: horse canyon, facing him obliquely and a little to his left.
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  Speaker 1: Twice at thrice they had essayed to draw him into
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  Speaker 1: the talk, but the man in the black stetson had
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  Speaker 1: been oblivious. He had continued taciturn morrows almost one matter said,
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  Speaker 1: but he had not been asleep. Rather, he had listened
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  Speaker 1: with all his ears, as their voices had reached him
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  Speaker 1: between hands. Yes, try bone, been there myself. They run
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  Speaker 1: things pretty much to soothe themselves. Wide open shaw, you
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  Speaker 1: might call it a dead open and shut reposition. I'll
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  Speaker 1: tell a man. The laugh that followed had come to
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  Speaker 1: the man in the black stetson with a curious grating.
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  Speaker 1: No shoting, gamblers, cornmen, it's a regular crook's paradise. And
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  Speaker 1: as that fellow rooke, the eyes of the man in
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  Speaker 1: the black stetson narrowed abruptly at the corners. For a moment,
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  Speaker 1: as the curtain is drawn swiftly from right left, something
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  Speaker 1: arose to peer out of those eyes, glowing deep down
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  Speaker 1: like a still festering flame. But it was gone upon
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  Speaker 1: the instant. And as that fellow rooke, the man had said,
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  Speaker 1: off a sudden, he had stopped short, as if he
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  Speaker 1: had been muzzled. Presently his voice had come again dry.
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  Speaker 1: Matter of fact, I see that rays, carpenter, and it'll
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  Speaker 1: cost you just twenty iron men to call plainly that name.
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  Speaker 1: Rook had been taboo. The speaker had been silently reminded
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  Speaker 1: of it. The man in the black stetson, he had
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  Speaker 1: been known as black Steve Anister in the back blocks
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  Speaker 1: at Ulumulov before he had made of that name a
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  Speaker 1: by word in the Honker tanks and the gambling hills
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  Speaker 1: from San Francisco northward to the wind River Country and
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  Speaker 1: beyond it. Black Steve Anister was sitting upright now, but
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  Speaker 1: he had retired behind a widespread copy of the Durango
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  Speaker 1: County Gazette. He was not reading it, however, although he
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  Speaker 1: was looking through it at the three men just across
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  Speaker 1: the aisle, studying them through the pin pricks he had
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  Speaker 1: made in it himself unseen. Anister had arrived in New
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  Speaker 1: York only the week previous from Sarah bier Javar, and
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  Speaker 1: he had not waited even overnight before he had begun
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  Speaker 1: the long journey, broken at Washington for high which had
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  Speaker 1: taken him now half way southward across the state of Texas.
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  Speaker 1: Presently the long train would cross the Pig House. Beyond it,
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  Speaker 1: the serrated rampets of Godelupez dry Bone was just between. Anister,
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  Speaker 1: studying the men, frowned abruptly, yawning behind his hand. Two
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  Speaker 1: of the men he put down for ranches sheep men
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  Speaker 1: probably there was about them. None of the glamor of
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  Speaker 1: that vester which lingers even now the person of a cattleman.
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  Speaker 1: And these men were negligible. But the third man would
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  Speaker 1: have been noticeable anywhere. He was a bull spulk of
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  Speaker 1: a man, heart featured mouth, a straight gash above a
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  Speaker 1: heavy chin, barbed to the blood. The observer across the
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  Speaker 1: aisle would have said cowman, and registered a bull's eye
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  Speaker 1: with it point blank. The two whoever with him, evidently
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  Speaker 1: with interest in common, were scarcely friendly with the cowman,
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  Speaker 1: if such he was, it was evident in their attitude
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  Speaker 1: the constraint which had fallen upon them following that mention
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  Speaker 1: of Rooke. But the man in the black Steedston continued
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  Speaker 1: to study the big fellow through the holes in his newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: The hard face tanned a rich saddle color, the nose
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  Speaker 1: flattened to a smudge of flattering nostril, the cauliflower year.
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  Speaker 1: He had heard the name Ellison once or twice. Somewhere
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  Speaker 1: deep down it had sat vibrating a chord of memory
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  Speaker 1: that brought with it, incongruously enough and altogether a different setting,
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  Speaker 1: a padding ring under twin, blazing as the tad then
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  Speaker 1: shuffle of sliding feet a man, huge, brutish, broad fist
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  Speaker 1: like stone malts, yet for all his bulk, a very
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  Speaker 1: cat for quickness. He put on his paper now to
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  Speaker 1: find those hard eyes pouring into his ellison or water.
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  Speaker 1: But the man's name was had shifted in his seat.
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  Speaker 1: The glance that he turned now upon the stranger and
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  Speaker 1: the black stetson was searching, probing. There was a truculence
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  Speaker 1: in it, a fierce, bright, avid staring like an animal's savage,
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  Speaker 1: in its very directness, like a challenge, which in effect
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  Speaker 1: it was. Aister returned the look eye for eye with
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  Speaker 1: a bitter, brooding insolence in which there were apparent a
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  Speaker 1: certain mockery, his eyes in a wailed gleaming like the
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  Speaker 1: sun and water. For a long moment their glances engaged
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  Speaker 1: in a silent duel like rapier points. Then the giant
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  Speaker 1: with the cauliflower year wented a sound between a grunt
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  Speaker 1: and a snort, turning to the window, his gaze outward
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  Speaker 1: across the flat levels of the adjacent prairie in a
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  Speaker 1: kind of sightless tear. There had been no reason in it,
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  Speaker 1: no logic that anister could see, But for the moment
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  Speaker 1: he had owned to a sudden sense of crisis. It
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  Speaker 1: had seemed to him for a moment that in the
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  Speaker 1: giant's eyes there had been an almost annoying and understanding look.
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  Speaker 1: But the man could have no business with him. Of that,
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  Speaker 1: he was certain the fellow was just a bully, probably
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  Speaker 1: a big, hulking lump of beef, who resented, as it
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  Speaker 1: might chance, Anister's undeniably cosmopolitan air, the sodonic flicker, and
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  Speaker 1: the gray green eyes, the cool, contemptuous appraisal. But after all,
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  Speaker 1: it had been the giant who had begun it. And
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  Speaker 1: yet somehow Anister was thinking that he had seen him before,
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  Speaker 1: and oddly illogically enough, he found himself liking the men.
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  Speaker 1: Why he could not have told Black Steve Anister, with
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  Speaker 1: the heart of a cougar and a conscience of a wolf,
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  Speaker 1: as a disgruntled enemy, had at one time phrased it,
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  Speaker 1: could have sat into that game, had he been so minded,
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  Speaker 1: with profit to himself pecuniary and otherwise. But he had
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  Speaker 1: preferred to play the hand that had been dealt to
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  Speaker 1: him later, drybone, that would be another matter. Now. His lean, strong,
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  Speaker 1: hawk like face darkened abruptly with the thought behind his eyes,
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  Speaker 1: and then for Anister had eyes in the back of
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  Speaker 1: his head. He was suddenly aware that the conductor was
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  Speaker 1: advancing along the aisle. The three men opposite had seized
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  Speaker 1: the conversation as if at an order. Two or three
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  Speaker 1: of the remaining passengers stared curiously, after the manner of
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  Speaker 1: their kind. They were small tradesmen, merchants, going on beyond
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  Speaker 1: the border of tisson. As the conductor halted at Anister's elbow,
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  Speaker 1: excuse me, mister, mister, he began Anistor. The answer was low,
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  Speaker 1: even controlled, but beneath the silken tone there ran a
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  Speaker 1: hint of iron. Mister, Anistor repeated the conductor, will you
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  Speaker 1: just a moment please. Annest rose following the official outward
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  Speaker 1: toward the vestibule, and as he went he could feel
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  Speaker 1: those eyes, avid, curious, pouring into his back. He permitted
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  Speaker 1: himself the ghost of a cold grin. As the conductor,
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  Speaker 1: turning in the entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.
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  Speaker 1: I am sorry, sir, he said, Lo you getting off
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  Speaker 1: at drybone, aren't you. The words were less of a
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  Speaker 1: question than a statement of fact. Aniston nodded. The conductor,
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  Speaker 1: a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old
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  Speaker 1: time line. Rider shot a quick glance over his shoulder.
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  Speaker 1: Then he said his tone even matter of fact, I
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't if I was you, Annistor stared, then producing his
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  Speaker 1: cigar case, lighting a long black invincible, the twin to
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  Speaker 1: which the conductor had selected, he remarked casually, they are
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  Speaker 1: good cigars. In the trenches we smoked woodbines across between
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  Speaker 1: tar heel and alfalfa. You have a lot of alfalfa
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  Speaker 1: out ya eh. And the third light, as we used
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  Speaker 1: to call it, most always caught us three men lighting
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  Speaker 1: up from the same match. You know. His tone abruptly hardened.
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  Speaker 1: The glance that he turned upon the conductor now was
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  Speaker 1: like a lance of flame. Well, I'm not superstitious, but
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  Speaker 1: will you tell me why it is significant that the
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  Speaker 1: conductor was breaking a rigid company rule by joining Anneston
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  Speaker 1: a surreptitious cigar. Now he turned guiltily as a voice
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  Speaker 1: sounded from the corridor to back. Excuse me, but could
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  Speaker 1: I trouble you for a light. The third man, as
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  Speaker 1: Anester could see, was tall and heavily built, with broad
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  Speaker 1: shoulders and a curiously small head. He had a sharp,
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  Speaker 1: acquisitive nose and a mouth tight lipped and thin anester
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  Speaker 1: worst and reading men, was abruptly conscious of an instinctive
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  Speaker 1: and overmastering repungeance, for the man's eyes were cold and sleepy,
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  Speaker 1: lidded like a snake's, roving between Anister and the conduct
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  Speaker 1: in a furtive scrutiny. The match was still alight. Anister,
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  Speaker 1: his hand steady as a rock, extended it to the newcomer, who,
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  Speaker 1: with an inarticulate crunt, lighted his cigarette, turning without further speech,
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  Speaker 1: backward along the corridor. Anister waited a moment until he
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  Speaker 1: was certain that the man was out of year shot.
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  Speaker 1: Then the third light eh, he murmured, his tone abruptly harded. Well,
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  Speaker 1: and why shouldn't I get off? He asked grimly. The conductor,
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  Speaker 1: for a moment, seemed at a loss. It is like this,
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  Speaker 1: mister Anist, he said slowly. I'm a new man on
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  Speaker 1: the sp but I have been hearing a lot no gossip,
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  Speaker 1: you understand, But a conductor hears a good deal, by
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  Speaker 1: and large. And this is a cow country. Oh, it
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  Speaker 1: used to be pretty wild in spots. Trybone. Now they
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  Speaker 1: run things pretty much to suit themselves, he paused, in
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  Speaker 1: a visible embarrassment. There's a party of four back there,
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  Speaker 1: and the diner. I couldn't help over you what they
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  Speaker 1: were saying. And well, I'm just repeating what they said,
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  Speaker 1: and no offense, that's all right, interrupted anister, evenly gone.
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  Speaker 1: Why they said, continued the conductor, that you were an
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  Speaker 1: Eastern gambler, a confidence man, that you were not wanted
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  Speaker 1: here in Drybone, that it wouldn't be exactly healthy for
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  Speaker 1: you if you stopped off. That's all I thought you'd
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  Speaker 1: be wanting to know. And if you'll take my advice,
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  Speaker 1: even if you hadn't asked it, I'd say, go on
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  Speaker 1: to Tombstone. You can figure it out from there, thanks,
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  Speaker 1: answered anister. Shortly. I'm getting off at Drybone. How soon
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  Speaker 1: are we do? Fifteen minutes, replied the conductor, glancing at
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  Speaker 1: his watch. But if I was you, sir, I would
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  Speaker 1: stay aboard. It's a bad crowd there, as I happened
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  Speaker 1: to know. And they've got a branch of the s
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  Speaker 1: s S there, only they've work it to sooth themselves.
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  Speaker 1: Tar and Feathers is just a picnic with that gang.
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  Speaker 1: They are a stem winding bunch of assassins. I'll say.
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  Speaker 1: So far they've operated undercover mostly and down here in
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  Speaker 1: the southwest. Well, it ain't a lot different in some
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  Speaker 1: ways then it was thirty years ago. You'll see, because
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  Speaker 1: they are southwest of the law is at it. Anester
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  Speaker 1: laughed shortly. Well, much obliged, old timer, he said, I
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  Speaker 1: won't forget it, but I'm getting off. The long train
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  Speaker 1: was slowing for the station stop, and stir striding to
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  Speaker 1: his seat, caught on his heavy bag. For a moment,
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  Speaker 1: he stood, considering his gaze under lowered lids upon the
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  Speaker 1: long coach and its passengers. In a swift, squinting appraisal,
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  Speaker 1: the three men were gone. Somehow they had found out
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  Speaker 1: who he was. Well that made little difference, he reflected grimly,
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  Speaker 1: except to force matters to a shore rown, and the
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  Speaker 1: sooner the better. For there was a man in Drybone.
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  Speaker 1: Anester had known him in the old time, and it
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  Speaker 1: was with this man, unless he was greatly mistaken that
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  Speaker 1: his business had to do, he would put it to
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  Speaker 1: the touch. Then he would sit into the game and
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  Speaker 1: would come healed, and they could rip up the deck
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  Speaker 1: on him and welcome. He was turning to the door
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  Speaker 1: when of a sudden there came to him a second warning.
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  Speaker 1: There was a swish of skirtch a sudden odor of violets.
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  Speaker 1: Anester had a glimpse of her blond head beneath the
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  Speaker 1: close fitting talk as a girl passed him, disappearing in
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  Speaker 1: the doorway, and there on the flooring at his feet
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  Speaker 1: was a squire of white Anester. Stooping, retrieved it, holding
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  Speaker 1: the card upward to the light. Stay on, doord trybone
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  Speaker 1: is not safe for you, be warned in time. There
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  Speaker 1: was no signature. Anister made a little clucking sound with
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  Speaker 1: his tongue, his face set like flint. He was alone
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: in the car. The train had stopped. Now as bag
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  Speaker 1: in hand, he shouldered through the doorway, and then, abruptly,
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  Speaker 1: as if materialized out of air, a face grint into
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  Speaker 1: his lips, drawn backward from the teeth in a soundless snow.
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  Speaker 1: It was a big man with a cauliflower year hombray,
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  Speaker 1: he said, without preamble, in a house carrying whisper. Take
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  Speaker 1: an old timer's advice. Go back and shut down, you savvy.
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  Speaker 1: This place it ain't exactly healthy for a young fellow
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  Speaker 1: like you. I'm telling you for if you don't. Anist's
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  Speaker 1: cold stare was followed by his voice low insize you're
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  Speaker 1: blocking the doorway, he said, with a sort of freezing quiet.
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  Speaker 1: The Giant's heart no twisted in a sneer, his great
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  Speaker 1: paw reaching upward with a glowing motion, blunt fingers upon
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  Speaker 1: Anister's shoulder. Then what followed happened with the speed of light.
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  Speaker 1: You can't get off here, mister the Giant was continuing
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  Speaker 1: when the words were blotted out, Anister's right fist behind it,
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  Speaker 1: the full weight of his two hundred pounds of iron
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  Speaker 1: hard muscle curved in a short arc. There was a
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  Speaker 1: spanking thud. The big man lifted from his feet, crashed
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  Speaker 1: into the front door frame, a slumping face downward in
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  Speaker 1: an aimless huddle of sprawling limbs. The hell you say,
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  Speaker 1: grinned Black Steve Anister, leaping lightly to the platform, with
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  Speaker 1: never a backward glance. Such was a manner of his coming.
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  Speaker 1: The end of chapter one, chapter two of The Jailer
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  Speaker 1: of Souls. This Liberty Box recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Read by yoganand The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, The Hand in the Dark, the one hotel
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  Speaker 1: and dry bone was the mansion house. Anister crossing the lobby,
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  Speaker 1: was aware of a wailed hostility in the stairs directed
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  Speaker 1: at him from the group of loungers in the doorway.
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  Speaker 1: They gave ground grudgingly as he came in with a
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  Speaker 1: sort of covered truculence. Here, as he could see, there
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: was a curious mingling of the old West and the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: new men, whose attire would have created no remark, say,
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  Speaker 1: even in Newark. Others booted and spurred, cartridge, belted and pistoled,
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  Speaker 1: but all, as he noticed, with fore headgear the innerva stetson.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Once in his room and the door locked and bolted,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: he busied himself for a moment with a sheaf of papers,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: several of them adorned with a huge official seal. They
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: crackled as he put them in an inner pocket. Then,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: dressed as he was, he lay down upon the bed,
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  Speaker 1: but not to sleep. It was late hard upon midnight
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: when the sound for which he had waited came, with
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the soft whirring of the window weights. The sound was
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  Speaker 1: not loud. It would not have awakened him had he
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: been asleep, but anister could hear it plainly enough. He
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: had removed his shoes upon retiring. Now in his talking feet,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: he approached the window, a black glimmering oblong against a
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  Speaker 1: windy night without. As he watched, the faint whirrings ceased,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a pair of hands appeared suddenly out of the darkness,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: fingers hooked into the window sill. Anister drew a faint,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: hissing breath in a star shrine, for there was no moon.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: The fingers showed in a luminous grayness against the sill,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: claw like, malformed, like the talons of a beast, which
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: in effect they were. Andester knew them upon the instant,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: for in far off Java, for instance, he had seen
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: those hands are rather the same, and yet not the same,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: And in that instant he had acted both hands upon
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the window sash. He brought it down with a crash
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  Speaker 1: upon those fingers. There followed a yelp of pain inhuman
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: dog like, a groaning curse, the slam of a falling ladder,
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  Speaker 1: a heavy thud, silence. Anester smiled grimly in the darkness.
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  Speaker 1: Whoever it was the intruder would never be certain as
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to whether that window had crashed downward of its own
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: accord or not. And leaning in the window, Anester raised
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  Speaker 1: it cautiously again. After a moment he heard presently the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: slow drag of retreating footsteps. After all, it had not
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: been much of a drop. Closing and bolting the window,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: he unrest in the darkness and with the facility of
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: an old campaigner, was asleep and snoring beneath the blankets
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: between two ticks of the watch. But in the morning
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: a surprise awaited him. Always an early riser, he was
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: breakfasting alone in the empty dining room when the waitress
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: brought him a note, beyond noting that she was pretty
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and that she did not look like a waitress. Annestor,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: somewhat engrossed in the business and hand for a moment,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: stared at the envelope with unseeing eyes. Then ripping it open,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: he took in its contents in one swift, flushing glance.
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  Speaker 1: My dear mister anistor, I would be very glad to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: see you at my office at ten this morning, if
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you're able to be there. It was signed simply, Hamilton droke.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Annester grinned fleetingly in answer. Well, it's not another warning
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: at any rate, he said, half aloud, turning to the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: consideration of his breakfast bacon. Then at a low voice
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: at his back, he turned did you say your coffee
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: needed warming, sir? It was a waitress. Annister had turned
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the note face downward on the table with a quick
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: flirt of his thumb. How long she had been there
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: behind him, he could not tell, for he had heard
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: no sound. Thanks now, he said shortly, his hard eyes
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: boring into hers with an almost insolent appraisal. Yes, she
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was pretty and more than that, her violet eyes darkening
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: now under his abrupt, almost savage scrutiny, and a voice
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that was like a bell, just trembling out of silence,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: anestor spoke, have you been here long? In drybone? I mean?
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: He asked? The waitress smiled, and it was not the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: smile of a waitress. Anester was convinced. Now with a
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: girl like that for a partner, was his unspoken thought.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: He could well no, sir. The girl made answer with
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: a sudden affectation of primness. I came in yesterday, sir,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: on the same train with you. Sir, I I've just been engaged, Anester,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: repressed and absurd, prompting to ask her how many times
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: she had been engaged before, and to whom and at what.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Her eyes were assuredly hypnotic with lashes long and delicately fine. Hm,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: he rumbled an answer. Was it possible, after all that
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: she had been the girl in the Crimson talk? And
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: with a card in his pocket, for a moment he
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: was tempted to show it to her instead, Well, I
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: hope you like it here, he said, you'll know me
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the next time, And for a moment he could have
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: sworn that in the face of the girl that had
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: come all at once a curious, almost a baffling look
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: ut one's enigmatic and self revealing. But the entrance of
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the vanguard of breakfasters interrupted. He watched her for a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: little as with a swaying, lilting steps, she moved off
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to minister to the late comers, his eyes speculative. Then
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: turning once more to the letter, he readad it as
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: a man reading a cipher. If you're able to be there?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Could there be a double meaning in that? For if
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Ruke had sent that midnight visitor, then there was no
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: lengths indeed, to which he might go for the hand
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: like a beast's paw upon the window sill had been,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: as Anister had known upon the instant, the hand of
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the thug, the decoit, the strangler, warnings thrice repeated. A
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: hand in the dark a waitress was not all she
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: seemed an invitation swave, And as Anister conceived it ironic,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: it was a situation not without its possibilities for action.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: And Black Steve Anister loved action. Perhaps after all, he
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: was to have it now, whether he would or no.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Rooke he had known aforetime, But he was convinced that
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the latter would not recognize him, save as Black Steve Anister,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: wastreul of the wide world, gentleman, adventurer and waiting to
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the high gods of adventure, and derring doe knight, errant
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of the highways and byways of Criminopolis. Scarce, a black sheep, indeed,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: but a wolf of the long trail end of the night.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Rooke had known him as such in the days when,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: as jackal for certain vested interests, the black bearded lawyer
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: had run fall of young Anister, just then beginning a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: hectic carrier of spending, which but three years in the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: past had abruptly terminated with Anister's complete disappearance from joyce
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: chass Palace and disc greately gilded temple of high Hazard,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: For he had dropped out of sight, lost as a
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: stone is lost in the sea green waters of oblivion,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: save for an occasional ripple thereafter which proclaimed him Black
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Sander Beech comber chevalier de industry until one memorable evening
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: a twelve month gone. But Ruke would be knowing nothing
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: of that. Anister had come home from the south seast
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to find his father gone and a note did not
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: look for me, for you're not my son, And an
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: exhaustive inquiry had failed even to suggest the slightest clue.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: The elder Anister could have written his check for seven figures,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and it appeared, following his disappearance, that he had done so.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: They had come in from north to south, and east
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and west steadily, and as it seemed, with purpose, But
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: as a clue to his whereabouts, they had been unawailing.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: But from the moment of his discovery of that note,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Black Steve Anister, visiting a certain office in a certain
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: side street not far distant from the capital, had surprised
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: his guardian with a terse that of of your Childers,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I've come to take it up. The man called Childers
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: had bent a keen look upon his visitor. Now they
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: might have described it as unpleasant stun Well, you know
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: just what that means, eh, he had said, You'll be
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: merely a cog all link. Remember that, Yes, Anister had answered.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And there the interview had ended. And so Black Steve Anister,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: serving two masters, had come to drybone, and the end,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: as it might chance of the long trail leading westward
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: into the setting sun. He rose from the table, now
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: going out into the pale spring sunshine. On his way
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: to the office of Hamilton Drook. He found the building.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Presently it was a court house. There was a figure
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: of blind justice with the scales just over the entrance.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Anister reflected sardonically that here in Carter County, distant from
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a civilization, at present as remote as a moon, she
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: was probably also deaf and dumb, And presently at the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: head of her dark flight there was the office with
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the legend Hamilton Drooke, a torny and consolate law. There
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: was a small sign at the corner of the door.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: In obedience to its invitation to walk in, Anister, his
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: hand upon the knob, in a noiseless pressure, abruptly flung
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: it wide a split second before the opening of that door,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: And while his hand was on the knob anist had
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: seen a thought that he had seen a swift shadow
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: passed suddenly across the ground glass panel. There was a
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: grating sound of a chair being moved backward. Then standing
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: in the doorway, Anister's eyes narrowed. He stood rigid, tense
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: for the man facing him across a stained and battered desk,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: lean head like a vulture, set upon white shoulders, mouth
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like a straight gash, with its thin, bloodless lips, cold
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: eyes fixed upon him in a silent ophidian brightness, was
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a third light. As he had called him, the man
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: whom he had met for a moment back there in
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the smoker of the Transcontinental the end of chapter two
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Tree of the Jailer of Souls. This liberyvox recording is
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by Yoganan The Jailer of
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Souls by Hamilton Craigie, chapter three, Behind the aras mister
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Anister greeted the man at the desk, you didn't know me, eh, well,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: it's a long time, three years, and my beard, he
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: passed a bony hand across his chin. I sacrificed it
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: long ago. It is scarcely the fashion. Now he waved
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a hand indicating a chair at his left. Sit down,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: won't you we can talk better. So Annister seated himself,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: his eyes upon the cold eyes chest across that the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: man who sat there had inspired those warnings. He had
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: little doubt that he had sent that midnight assassin against him.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: He was convinced, And yet he was at a loss
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to find the reason. Rouke was not aware, could not
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: be aware of a certain fact known only to himself,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Anister and a certain man just than twenty five hundred
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: miles distant in that dim office, hard by the capital.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It was beyond the bounds of possibility. Now it could
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: scarcely be that he told himself. And of a sudden
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: a cold rage shook him so that he trembled, his
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: hands flat upon the desk top, bawled suddenly into fists.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: This man, this swore, secret knave, with the eyes of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: ice and the implacable grimm mouths, sat there now, removed
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: from him merely by the width of the narrow desk.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: And if it were true that which he suspected, then
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: this man, this chuckle, this prince of plunder, with the
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: heart of a hyena and the conscience of a wolf,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: why he had harned his quittans a hundred times over.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: The flat black shape of the automatic hung in a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: sling under his left arm pit. Anister had forgotten that
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: he knew merely that he was face to face with
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the man whom he had come twenty five hundred long
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: miles to meet. He saw him now as through a
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: crimson mist, and for the moment the careful plan that
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: he had made that too, was forgotten, lost, the almost
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: overmastering impulse to drive his fist into that face so
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: close to his, the cold eyes, the pallid's sneering mouth.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Something of this must have shown in his face, plainly
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: visible to the man who faced him Across the desk.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: There was a semi twilight in the room, even by day. Now,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the lean head thrust forward like a striking snake. There
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: came a sudden, brief explosion of movement, a darkening flash,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: as a hand holding the heavy automatic swung upward, level
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: with his visitor point blank. At such a distance it
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: would be impossible to miss. There was a curtain just
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: behind him, anster I had noticed upon entering. Now at
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: his back. It rippled suddenly along its length, as if
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: at the passage of a heavy body just behind the
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: lawyer smiled thinly. Ah, my friend, he said, it is
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: so easy to be indiscreet, and one must meet forts
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: with force. This it is theatrical if you like. But
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: it was just a little demonstration of my preparedness. I thought,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: you see. There came a sad only flicker in the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: near set eyes. The voice spurred, now in the semi darkness,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: like a cat's I must protect myself. There are reasons,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you see. I thought for a moment that you ah
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: meditated to resort to violence, and violence is something that
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I diplore, my friend. And here I am surrounded by
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: violent men, sudden and quick in quarrel, as a poet
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: has it, Sometimes they are difficult to control. Annister had
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: himself in hand. The veiled threat with which the lawyerd
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: ended bothered him, not at all now casually, as it seemed,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: but with the lightning reposter of the duellist. His hand
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: reached out. There came a sudden wrench, a twist, a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: snarling oath from Rook, and Annister, pocketing the pistol, smiled grimly.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Now in answer, now we can talk better, so he mocked,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the balance of power. Hah, look, now, let me tell
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: you something. You left the big town for your health.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: That was three years ago, wasn't it. I didn't recognize you,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: but it was a pretty close shave at that. He laughed,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: but there was a ring of menace in it. His
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: hard eyes held the pale ones of the lawyer with
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a chill malevolence. Roke. He said, Lo, you are as
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: croaked as a ram's horn. You're a bent twig. I
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: wouldn't trust you this side of hell further than I
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: could see you, and not even then. Now, his voice
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: cracked suddenly in the thick silence, like the cracking of
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: a whip. You had the infernal goal to send me
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: here after you had accounted for me by the left hand. Eh.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I left that window open, because, if you want to know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I was expecting something of the sort. And now the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: hand holding the pistol became rigid as a rock. I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: want the reason why. In a holy minute, mister Hamilton,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: roke or else. For a heart beat, the face of
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the lawyer seemed swollen to a poisonous whiteness. The veins
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: in his neck and temple stood out on bridges. Then
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the long spatulate fingers spread white with a curious flicking
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: motion tombstoneward. The curtain bellied outward suddenly, as if an answer. Abruptly,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Anister felt for a heart beat, as something that was
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: like a cold wind blowing upon the back of his neck,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and it was a wind of death. Something slid past
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: his shoulder with the speed of light, talons of steel
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: tombstoneward pressing at the base of his brain. He heard
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: a hoarse, whistling croak, a sound that was nothing human.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Then there is but one answer to that strangless grip,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and it is a secret known only to a few
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Anester had learned it, no matter where, and in the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: learning he had paid. Now an infinite esmal split second
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: before the beast pause had encircled his throat. His forefinger
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and thumbat flashed upward, hooped as steel gaf is hooked
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: between those fingers and his throat. There followed a straining heave,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a cry inhuman, beast like, like the mewing of a
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: cat Aniester rising to his feet, leaned abruptly to the left,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: straightened with one quick explosive heave of his powerful shoulder muscles,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and the body of his antagonist catapulted over his head,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: flung clear of the desk. He landed heavy on one shoulder,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: point twitched a moment, lay still. It was a flying may,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and none but the master could have summoned it. Anister
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: turned the unconscious man over his foot. Chivero, he muttered
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: between set teeth. He shivered slightly in the humid air
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of the warm room. For the man was an Ecuadorian savage,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a jungle beast. Once in Quito, Anister had seen two
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: or three flat faced, rather handsome savages. How aware Ruke
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: had acquired the fellow. Only the lawyer could have said,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: according to his savage code, he had been faithful, as
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a tiger is faithful to his trainer, his keeper. Anistor,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: brave as he was, could have preferred a rattler a
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: ferdy lance for company. He turned now with an apt moment,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: to Rope, who slumped in his chair, sat staring at
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the huddle figure of the Indian where he had fallen. Now,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: said Annister, I've a notioned, mister Hamilton, rogue to shoot
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: first and ask questions afterward. However, I confess I am
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: still a trifle curious as to your motive. Nor so
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: since the second, pleasant little interlude with your man Friday. Here,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Now may I ask you why the lawyer's lips were moving,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: fumbling together without sound, fingers trembling like a man in
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: a fit. At length. He lifted dull eyes to his interrogator.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: This he enunciated thickly, gesturing toward the huddle figure on
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: the carpet. It was to save my life, That is
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the truth, Anester. You must believe the reason for the others.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I did not know it was you there and the smoker.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I thought, that is, he appeared to breathe of a sudden,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: like a man who had been running. We had a
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: report that you are quite another man, one who was
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: ah would be antagonistic in fact, to certain operations. And
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: so he spread his hands quide with a little flicking gesture.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: That's why. But now, of course you will understand, yes,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: answered Annister bluntly, I understand you thought I was an operative. Eh, well,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not that kind of an operative. But this manner
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: became all at once sharp, incisive. The gaze that he
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: bent upon Rouke was the shrewd look of a man
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: who seized his opportunity ready to his hand. Cunning was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: in that look, and an infinite guile. The lawyer did
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: not miss it. Here was something that he could deal with.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: He had known of Anistor's reputation as of old. It
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: had been none of the best, certainly, And with that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: knowledge now there came a measure of reassurance. And if
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: he was any judge of men, here was one whom
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: he could use. The acquisite of gleaming in the eyes,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the hard, incisive mouth, the predatory, forward thrusting tilt of
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the head. If he Roke was a judge of men,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: here was a man whom he could use. Old Travis
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Anistor had disinherited him, the son who had been a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: waster in the far off places of the earth. That
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: was an added reason. And at the thought there came
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a pale gleaming in the lawyer's close set eyes, like
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: the sun on water. Travis Anestor, and Travis Anistor had disappeared. Well,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of course he had heard of it. His voice reached
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the younger man in a purring whisper. As I have hinted,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: mister Annistor, I'm interested in certain operations, shall we call
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: them speculative. For some time now I have been in
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: need of a certain silent partner, or rather the doctor.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: He caught himself with the click of his strong, white,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: even teeth. Annistor's face continued impassive, save for the keen
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: eyes wailed now under lowered lids. Rogue continued anist, he said, suddenly,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: as if he had abruptly come to a decision. I
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: lay my cards on the table with you. I need
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a man and he cannot refer to be too scrupulous.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Do you understand? There? The doctor tells me, I've been
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: overdoing it. He gave a faint, wintry smile. We are
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: out of the beaten track here, southwest of the law
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: as you might call it. He lowered his voice to
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a faint, hissing sibilance. I will expect you to ask
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: no questions. You have been a coal man. There is
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: certain interest in the north and the northeast of us.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I am naming no names. Understand, there's a good deal
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of range left as he now, and now listen to me.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: His voice went on for perhaps five minutes. Anister listened
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: in a heavy silence, and all the time, although the
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: lawyer had not once called a spade a spade, the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: thing that he had unfolded was clear enough. It was
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: an old story with something of a novel twist. First,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: there were the outfits, scattered north and northeast, as Rouke
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: had said, the running off of a few cows, for instance, rebranding,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and the rest of it. It was an old story
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: to anist. But there was something more. Anister, as he listened,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: realized that the thing was pigged worthy, indeed of the keen,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: devising brain that had evolved it. A good many of
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the ranches had for some time past been owned and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: operated by the packers themselves. Three of these, the bar Tea,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the Cross Circle l the Flying Yeue, were northward from
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: dry Bones, scarce one hundred miles. But there were still
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: other outfits, And as Anister listened, he was hearing again
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a name, or rather a symbol, the name and the
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: symbol of masked and hooded violence. And it was S. S. S. Rouke,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: it appeared, was a moving spirit of it in Drybone
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: at any rate. But as the tail unfolded, Anister, putting
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: two and two together, supplied for that cryptic symbol a
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: name nationwide and respected the name of a great company,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: an octopus indeed, which with Hamilton Rooke as its agent,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: planned nothing less than the ruthless despoiling of those independent
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: cattle men, who, out of a desert of sand and sage,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: had won a living for their stalk and for themselves.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: The rear guard of the order, now, as it seemed,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: indeed caught in the far flung tentacles of a monster,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: unscrupulous and without soul. Anistor's part in it was to
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: be simple. He was to do nothing as yet until
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the lawyer should give the word. But a man was wanted,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a gunfighter, a man bred to violence, who would not
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: consider too closely the method or the means. For as
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Ruke had said, his eyes upon anister in a sudden,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: biting scrutiny, if as a first step, say, the owners
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: of these outfits should er disappear, there was to be
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: no outright violence. It appeared murder. That was an ugly word.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: But it was of course possible that they might be resistance.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: But there would be a fortune in it. Anestor's part
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: would be comparatively simple. He would merely carry out his orders.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Rooke eyeing him now in a close lipped silence, watched
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: as a spider watches from his ambush. Anestor would be
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: needing money. If the lawyer knew his man, and he
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: thought that he did, here was something that would be
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: a liver, and a powerful one. Anister lifted his head.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Then he brought his hand palm downward to the desktop.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: It was a moment, slow, even controlled. I am with you,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: he said, Good, exclaimed the lawyer. Now I want you
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to go over to the club. There are a few
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: men there I'd like you to meet. Ha. At his exclamation, Anister, turning,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: followed his rigid pointing finger. The huddle figure and the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: carpet had disappeared. There had been no sound, no sign.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: The Indian had vanished. The end of chapter three, chapter
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: four of The Jailer of Souls. This liberyvox recording is
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: in the public domain, read by Yoganan The Jailer of
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Souls by Hamilton Craigie, Chapter four, The Face in the Moonlight.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Anister had thrown in with Rooke, but he trusted him
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: no further than he would have trusted a cougar a
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: mountain cat. At the club, as the afternoon wore on
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: to evening, he had met four or five men beaten
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the County judge, a red face tippler with on the surface,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: a heartiness that was repellent. Lun the hotel proprietor, a
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: vast asthmatic man with a small ports in eye. Deventry,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the land commissioner, whose British accent Anister noticed, would on
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: occasion flatt into a high nasal whining that was reminiscent
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of sag Harbor, a Buzzard's bay. The rest hard faced
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: typical of the environment, and mister put down for the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: usual lesser fry hangers on chackles, as it might chance
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: housemen in the parlance of the poker room, and mister
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: knew the type well enough. They seemed hospitable, but once
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: or twice Anister had thought to detect in their glances
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a grimly curious look of a prizal and of something more.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: There had been a game going, but he had not Satin,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: nor had the lawyer invited him. The visit had been
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: meant plainly enough, as a sort of introduction. We were
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: all here, yeah, Rok, had said. But it was apparent
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: too that there was one or two others who were absent.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Anister heard several references to Bull, but for the most
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: part there was a silence beneath which Anister could feel
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the tension. It was like a fine wire vibrating deep down, almost,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: he might have said, a certain, grimly quiet anticipation of
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that which was to come. Presently, the telephone tinkled loud
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: in the sudden stillness. Anister could hear the voice at
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the other end, harsh, strident, with a bestial growl that
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: penetrated outward into the closed room. He can't come, came
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: from the man at the telephone. Bull yeah, and I reckon.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He seemed some disappointed. Anister noticed that the tension at
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: all at once relaxed, and with it, as he could see,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: there was plainly visible in the faces about him, a
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: certain disappointment. It was as if they had been waiting
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: for something, something well, that had not materialized. There was
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: a laugh or two, a word stifled Nutterans, one or
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: two of the men, glancing at Annie stand away, gave
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: an almost imperceptible headshake. Even Rooke, as Anister could tell,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: appeared relieved as the newcomer rose, turning to the company
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: with a conventional good night. For just a split second,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: it seemed to Anister that something was about to happen.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: For a moment, he saw or fancy that he saw
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a quick, silent signal flash, then from eye to eye
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: lune the hotel man had half risen in his chair.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Out of the tail of his eye. As he was
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: turning toward the door, Anister was aware of a quick ripple,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a moment, the shadow of a sound, like the movement
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: of a conjurer manipulating his cart's white hands flashing in
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: a beveldering passade, But nothing happened. Leaving, he had walked
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: slowly toward the hotel, turning over in his mind the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: story that had been told him by the lawyer. And
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: there was one more question he wanted to ask him,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: a question that had to do with the squire paper
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: that he had come upon among his father's papers in
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: New York. For it had been this chance discovery that
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: had sent him posth hayste to Drybone and the lawyer's office.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Thinking these things, he was turning the corner to the hotel,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: when out of nowhere, as it seemed, a man had
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: passed him, walking with a peculiar dragging shuffle. Seen under
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the moon. For a moment, this man's face had impressed
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: itself upon Anister. It was dark and foreign, with high
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: cheek bones and what seemed curiously out of place in drybone,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: a black mustache and professional vandyke. Anister, watching the man,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: saw him turn into the doorway he had just quitted.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: It was the entrance to the club, two rooms above
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: the saddler's shop at the corner of the street. Halting
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a moment to look after the man, Anister was wondering
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: idly who he might be, certainly not the man called bull,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: if there was anything in a name, And then abruptly
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: he was remembering what the lawyer had let fall about
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the doctor. Perhaps that was who he was. He had
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: had a distinctly professional air. The man's eyes had lingered
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: upon Anister for a moment, and for a moment the
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: latter had been conscious of a curious shock, for it
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: had been as if the man had looked through rather
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: than at him. Those eyes had glowed suddenly in the darkness,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: gray green, like a cat's in the abrupt, ferocious basilisk stare.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Anister and his day had seen some queer corners and
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: some tight places, and rang own. For example, he had
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: penetrated to a certain dark house in a dim black water,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: stinking and dark, with the darkness of midnight, even at
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: high noon. And it was there in that dark house,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: which shuttered windows like blind eyes to the night, that
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: he had seen that which was not good for any
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: white man to have seen, the right of the Sati,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the blood stone of Siva, the destroyer reeking with the sacrifice. Aye.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: And more. And something now at that time half perceived
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and dimly understood, came again to the sight of the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: dark face with its high cheek bones and black forking beard.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: For he had seen a creature with the face, and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: yet without a face, muling and mowing like a cat
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: now come from horrors. And the practitioner had been the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: man who but just now passed him at the corner
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: of the street, the man with a dark foreign visage
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and the eyes of death, the end of chapter four,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Chapter five of The Jailure of Souls. This liberyvox recording
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by yoganand The Jailure
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: of Souls by Hamilton Craigie, Chapter five, Partners of the Night. Annister,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: pausing a moment at the corner of the street, was
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: conscious of a feeling of coldness, like a bleak wind
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of the spirit, as if death in passing had touched
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: him and gone on. For the face of the man
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: whom he had seen had been like the face of
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a damned soul, unhuman Satanic in its sheer, visible malevolence.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So might Satan himself have looked after the fall somehow,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Although the man had looked straight ahead, seeming to see
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: merely with the glazed indwelling stair of a sleepwalker, Anister
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: had felt those eyes upon him. He was certain that
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: he had been seen and known, But now he had
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: other things to think about. He had intended going to
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: the hotel. Now on an impulse, he bent his steps
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: away from it, turning to the building in which where
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the offices of Rooke. But he did not enter by
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the main doorway. There was an alley farther along. Into
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: this he melted with the stealth and caution of an Indian,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: feeling his way forward in the thick darkness to Whey
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: as he had marked it earlier in the day. There
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: was a rusty fire escape. Its trunks ran upward in
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: the darkness. They creaked now under his hand as he
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: went slowly up. Rooke's office was on the second floor. Anster,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: reaching the window, found it locked, but in a matter
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: of seconds had it open with a soft snick of
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a steel blade between sash and bolt. The thing was
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: done with the professional deftness, as if, say, the man
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: who had opened the window had done that same thing
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: many times before. Now crouched in the darkness by that
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: dim squire of window, the introder stood silent, listening, holding
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: his breath. A sound had come to him, faint and thin,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: as if muffled by many thicknesses of waltz. It penetrated
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: outward from the private office with a snack and slither
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: of rasping steel and steel. And at the instant that anister,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: with a grim smile in the darkness, recognized it for
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: what it was. He knew too that someone had been
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: beforehand with him, someone interested also in Hamilton Rooke. For
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the sound that he heard now loud on the singing
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: silence was the sound of a steel drill upon a safe.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Anister had seen that safe. It was scarcely more than
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: a strong box a sheet steel, but thin a can
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: opener could have ripped it from end to end easily
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in no time at all. Rooke must feel secure. Indeed,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: he thought to put his trust in so flimsy a repostery,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: unless perhaps he had other means the Indian, for instance,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the savage, who but a few hours ago had missed
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: with his long talents for Anister's throat by inches. But
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: somehow Aniston did not think that the javarrow would beyond God.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: There was no burglar alarm protection, he had made certain
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of that. But the man who was now busy with
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: that safe must have come up by the stairway. Doubtless
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: he was on familiar ground. Perhaps he might be some
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: disgruntled confederate of the lawyers. Well, he'd have a look
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: see at any rate. Advancing silently on the balls of
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: his feet, Anester traversed the length of the outer office,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: peering around the doorway to where, under the dim glow
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of a single droplight, a figure back toward Anister, knelt
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: before the safe. The droplight, carefully shaded, would not be
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: visible from without hundred s cone shaped radiance. Anester could
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: see merely that the man was wearing a cap pulled
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: low over his forehead. But something in the attitude of
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: that kneeling figure, the turn of the head, the deft
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: darting movement of the hand, was strangely familiar. Anester grinned
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: in the darkness at the same moment that he was
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: aware of a curious contraction of the heart. This lone
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: hand cracksman worked evidently without confederates, unless possibly he might
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: have a lookout posted on the sidewalk below. He spoke
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: barely above a whisper. Hello, he said, pretty careless, aren't you? Now?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's safe? The figure wirled. The hand
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: holding an automatic came upward with the speed of light,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: then dropped limply at her side as the girl surveyed
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: him with a stony look. It was a waitress of
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: the mansion house. Well, she said, you've caught me, but
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: it looks to me as if I beat you to it.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Black Steve Anister, Oh, I've heard of you, mister Black Steve. Well, love,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you've caught me. What are you going to do about it?
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: The darkly beautiful face was scornful, the violet eyes under
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the light stormy with the something that Anister could not
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: all define. Anister bitter slip to find her like this,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: and all at once realization came to him with a
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: sudden tightening of the heart. This girl, waitress or not,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: crook or not, He had to confess that in all
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: his wanderings up and down the earth, he had never
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: met her like a girl in a thousand. He had decided,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: back there in the dining room of the mansion house,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: what a partner she would make now, with a girl
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: like that for a partner. On a sudden impulse, he
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: leaned forward, his eyes upon the safe door. It swung outward.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Now somehow she had opened it pretty smooth, he commented
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the communism. After all, eh, you've worked it. Now before
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: we have a look, I want to tell you something.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I I am looking for a partner, Miss uh, Miss Allerton.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: She told him in her eyes, a sudden, leaping spark,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the brief, baffling, enigmatic look that he had seen back
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: there in the hotel dining room. But it was gone
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: again even as she spoke. All right, partner, she said, Lo,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: when do we start right now? Answered Anister, his gaze
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: upon the girl, frankly admiring. He'd expected the usual feminine evations,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: a play for time, hesitation, anything, but this ready acquaiscence.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: In his abrupt proposal. It was not entirely sure of her.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: His admiration for her beauty, her poise had nothing to
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: do with the cold judgment, whispering now that the whole
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: affair might after all be a blind a trap, devious
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: in crooker, as the devious in crooked turnings of Hamilton Drook.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: But with anister to decide was to act bending, he
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: swung by the safe door, groping forward with exploring hand.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: His back was toward the gull. Consequently, he did not
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: see the sudden revealing gleam in the violet eyes, the
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: quick hardening of the mouth. Swinging forward his pocket flash
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the light danced glimmering upon a packet of papers, a
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: sheaf of documents. Anister, running over them, swiftly gave a
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: quick exclamation, his hand in a lightning moment, palming something
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: which is secreted in an inner pocket. He turned sidewise
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: to the gul lord. He exclaimed, disgustedly, nothing but papers, partner,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: We are out of luck. Evidently the girl had been oblivious. Now, however,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: her quick flashing fingers sought at the contents of that safe,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: as with the practiced hand, to leave them, as had
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: anist inviolate, save for that oblong of paper, reposing now
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: in the pocket of his coat in the shadow of
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: the entrance. It was black dark. As they parted. The
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: girl did not live in the hotel. She told him
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: that had been part of her plan. They would meet again,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of course, but once in his room, and with the
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: shades drawn and the door locked and bolted, Anister, taking
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the paper from his pocket, smoothed it out under the light.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: He looked, then looked again, breath in drawn sharply through
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: clenched teeth. For that paper was a canceled check. It
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: had been drawn to cash, and the signature in a
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: hand that he knew upon the instant was the signature
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: of his father, Travis Anista the end of chapter five,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: chapter six of The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: This liberty was recording is in the public domain read
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: by yoganan The Jailer of Soults Chapter six, The Living Ghost,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Anister had heard nothing from Rooke other than that he
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: had been again invited to a further session of the
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: club for that evening. Alone in his room on the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: morning following his adventure on Rooke's office, his eye had
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: been caught and held by a news item printed on
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: an inside page of the Durango County Gazette. He had
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: nearly passed it over, but now the lines leaped out
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: at him as if they had been blazoned across the paper.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: In a double column spread Travis Anist still strangely missing
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: retired capitalist con since January foul play feared, and separated
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: from it by the width of a single column. He
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: read retired banker disappears new Bold Humiston a suicide friend's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: fair for safety. But it was at a third the
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: item tucked away in an obscure corner that anisters stifled
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: a quick word in his throat. New Bold Humeiston had
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: been a friend of his father's. It was an odd coincidence,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to say the least of it. And the story went
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: on to say that three other men, all nationally known,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: had so to speak, between sons disappeared as completely as
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: if the earth had opened and swallowed them. And that
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: third news item, irrelevant as it might have been, told
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: of an incident owed and unusual enough. It had happened
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: in Palos Verde, distant from Drybone, a long twenty miles
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of hazardous mountain trail. A man had come in rags
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: and tatters. At first they had taught him a desert rat,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a prospector, light headed from starvation, for his incoherent babble
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: had proclaimed him no less a personage than Rodman Axeworthy,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: prominent banker of Mahave, the Sheriff of Palos Verde. On
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: the off chance adwired Mohave and the word had come
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: back that Axworthy had been missing, they were sending a man.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: With the arrival of this man, however, the mystery deepened,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: for it appeared that the derelict was indeed Axeworthy, and
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: yet not Axworthy at all. For whereas the true Axeworthy
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: had had a high aquiline nose and a wide, generous mouth,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the derelict was nob nursed, swarthy. Where the banker had
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: been fair, he was simply another man. But there had
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: been this about it. On the banker's left forearm, underneath
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: there had been a curious birthmark. The derelict had spoken
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of it, but upon examination the arms showed smooth and bare.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: They investigated from Mahave had been obviously skeptical, until abruptly
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the ragged claimant had taken from his pocket a curious
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: removable bridge. A dentist in Mahave who made it, he said,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: could identify it. It fitted perfectly. This looked like proof,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: but the thing was obviously impossible. And then as Axeworthy
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: was being taken back to Mahave, he went suddenly stark, staring, crazy,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: repeating over and over with reference to the bridge, it's
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: a one thing. They didn't get the one thing. And
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: there the matter rested, save that upon arrival in Mohave
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: the bridge was found to be missing. The emissary from
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Mohave seemed to remember a dark faced stranger who had
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: been seated opposite them in the train, but that was all.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: The man had jostled against this charge. Upon alighting, the
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: last proof, if indeed it might be called a proof,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: was gone. Anister frowned thoughtfully. He smiled upon that canceled
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: check in his pocket, and he was remembering one other thing,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: and that was the Squire paper, which he had found
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: among his father's effects. For on it had been a name,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: or rather too, the name of Hamilton Drooke, and of
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: another unknown to Anister. And as to that axe Worthy case,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: it was common knowledge that lunatics, for instance, entertained frequently
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: the delusion that they were people of importance. There was
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: nothing new in that. Somehow, it seemed to him that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: he held in his hands the pieces of a jig. Saw
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: puzzled that, even if put together, made but a patchwork
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: of motives and design, which, yet, if he could but
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: find the key, would be as clear as crystal. That
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: paper found in his father's office, The interview with Childers
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: at Washington, the long trip westward, the warning message on
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: the train, the big man with the ice blue eye
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: and the square jaw of a fighter, the attack in
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the hotel, the meeting with Rouke, and the meeting with
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the gul, the finding of that canceled check, and last
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the matter of those queerly related news items just under
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: his hand. These made a patent to be ungraveled only
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: by the warp and woof of fate and the chance
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: meeting with the bearded stranger at the corner of the street.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Consider how he would Anester's men kept turning backward to
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that meeting, and those eyes that were like the eyes
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of a damned soul, malignant cold in their abyssmal cold,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: cruelty of discarnate, evil, discarnate. That was it that would
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: express it. For the man, as he recalled him, seemed
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: somehow less than human. There had been about him an aura,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: an emanation that was like a tide rising from the depths,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: from darkness unto darkness. Anester was scarcely superstitious, but he
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: was again conscious of that icy chill. He shivered, as
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: a man is said to shiver when, according to an
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: ancient superstition, someone is said to be walking over his grave.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: He rose, walking to the window to peer outward into
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the sun washed street. The coil was tightening, he felt it,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and he was but one man against many, and knowing
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: what he knew, or suspecting what he suspected, it seemed
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: to him all at once that sunlight had flattened to
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: a heatless flaming of pale radiance. There seemed a menace
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: in it, even as there seemed a menace in the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: very air, awaiting attention, like a fine wire drawn and
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: singing at a pitch too low for a sound. Abruptly
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: he heard a sound. It was like a scratching of
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: a rat in the wainscot, faint and thin. His doe
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: was locked now looking at it, the knob turned slowly, stealthily.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: He could see it turn. Then faint but unmistakable came
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: and knock. The end of chapter six chapter seven of
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the Jailure of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This liberyvox recording
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by Yoganan The Jailure
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: of Souls, Chapter seven. Through the door. The knocking was
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: not loud. It was merely a discreet tap, but there
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: was a quality of hurry in it, and a stare
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: moving without sound on the thick pile of the rug.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Almost with the same motion, turned the key and flung
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: by the door. At first he could see nothing. The corridor,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: thick piled with shadows, even at high noon, showed merely
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: as a darkening glimmer, out of which there sprang Suddenly
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: a face like a white glimmering oval. A voice came
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: with a quick, hissing sibilance. Sh quiet, I must not
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: be seen, or else he closet door. The girl stepped
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: inwards swiftly, her white face turned to the man before
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: her in a sort of frozen calm, and Ester had
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: a vague impression of having seen her somewhere before. That
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: colden head beneath its close fitting tok the faint remembered
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: order of fresh violets, The face with the piquant loveliness
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: just now, however, white and drown it was like a
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: strain of music heard and then forgotten. Closing the heavy
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: door and locking it, he turned swiftly to the gul well,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: he said, his gaze upon her in a cold, searching scrutiny.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Isn't this a trifle sudden? But the girl lifted her
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: stony face. I have little time, she said, with a curious,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: spent breathlessness, as if she had been running. I am
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: clear richly secretary to Hamilton Drooke, that is, I was.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a secretary no longer. But he does not know
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: about it yet. She paused again, with that hard held
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: breathing moistened the stiff lips. I warned you that day
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: on the train. Do you remember I warned you because
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I knew Hamilton Drooke. I know him even better now.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: He meant to kill you, mister Anistor, and now he
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: schemes to use me. Is that? It interrupted anister dryly,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: then at a low headshake. He's stiffened. He would have
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: finished you even after your agreement, but that is not
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: his way. But he will not make use of you
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: in the way that you think. That careful plan of
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: which he told you that was just a blind There
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: are no rights near enough. The s s s that too,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: was just a part of the story. You see. He
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: wants to keep you here, that is all, until such
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: a time as he thinks it necessary to remove you.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: But his real motive, his actual plan, I know nothing about.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: I may suspect, but I do not think about it.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: She paused again, her expression bridgid. As there sounded a faint,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: half audible footfall from the corridor without it passed. He
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: would kill me if he, she continued tonelessly, that warning
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: on the train. I did that at his order. If
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: he could have frightened you off, he would have been
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: satisfied with that. But now it'll be different. I tell
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you this on my own account. And now she laid
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: a slim hand on his arm. Don't go to the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: rendezvous to night, mister anist. Allison will be there. You
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: remember him. He was a man who tried to keep
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you on that train. She smiled faintly with her lips,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: but her eyes were somber. Allison's Rook's jackle. Just as
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: rocus sentence was never completed, there came a coughing grunt
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: from just outside the door, A streak of flame from
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the half opened transom just above. The girl stiffened, her
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: face went blank. She slid downward to the rug even
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: as Anister, stapping back, the lock had flung white, the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: door gone out. He burst into the corridor as from
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: the shadows at a far corner, he fancied that he
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: heard the faint echo of a taunting laugh, but there
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: was no one there. Rushing to the stairhead, he found
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: nothing nobody. The man who had fired that shot had
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: used a silencer. He had disappeared either into one of
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the bed chambers to right and left, or down the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: stair But it was no time for speculation. The girl
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: would be needing attention, if indeed she was not already
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: past all aid. Anister had wasted no time but for
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: a heart beat. As he raced backward along the hole,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: his eye was caught and held by the quick glint
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: of metal from the carpet at his feet. Stooping as
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: he ran, he swept up the object, possibly an empty shell. Then,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: on the threshold of his room, recoiled with a gasping oath,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: for the girl had vanished. Stunned, Anister stood silent, mechanically
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: unclosing his stiff fingers upon the object, which they held
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: he stared at it, now rigid with remembrance and a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: growing fear, oddly twisted and distorted, its dull gold surface,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: glinting dully under the right. The thing that he had
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: found lay on his open palm. It was a tentist bridge.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: The end of chapter seven, chapter eight of The Jailer
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This liberty box recording is
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by yoganand The Jailer of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Souls Chapter eight, Oughts and the man Anister had been
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: absent from the room not longer than ten racing seconds.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: It was unthinkable that the girl had vanished off her
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: own volition, even had it been physically possible. Glancing around
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: the room, he saw that the windows were closed and bolted.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: The flooring was solid, substantial. There could be no ingress
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: saved by the door through which he had just come.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: There was another dough It led to the next room,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: but Anister, with the habit of inbred caution, had tried
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: it and found it locked. Now, in two swift strides
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: he had covered the space between. Had tried that door,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: setting his weight against it. As he turned the knob
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: under his weight, it gave out ward with a sudden
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: slatting clatter. They whoever they might be, had unlocked it.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: It had been through this adjoining room that they had
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: taken the gull. Anister, glancing swiftly around this room, saw
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: that it was obviously unoccupied. The bed had been made up.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: There was no sort of clue that he could see.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: The invisible assassin had had a key. That was it,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: of course, But as to the rest of it, Anister
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: could only speculate. It was an impasse and a mystery.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Going downward to the dining room, as it was now
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: past noon, he glanced toward the desk. But if he
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: had had any thought of reporting the attack upon the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: girl or her disappearance, he thought better of it. He
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: would keep his own counsel, a decision held by a
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: sight of Lund, the hotel proprietor, who lounging at the desk,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: raised his sleepy lidded vulture gaze that Anister, as a latter,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: was turning toward the dining room. Anester, in that brief glance,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: thought to detect in those eyes milky peeled a wailed,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: sodonic flicker. If behind this latest happening there was the
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: fine Italian hand of Hamilton drop Lunn was in cahoots
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: with the lawyer. Of that there could be little doubt,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: for as Anister was convinced there had been a menace
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: in those eyes half turned to his an insolence, a bright,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: burning truculence that, as he turned into the long dining hall,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: brought the swift blood to his cheek in a dark tide.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: But at his stable, another surprise awaited him. Mary Allerton
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: was gone. The heavy handed swede who served him told
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: him that she had left suddenly that morning. A message
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: had come for her, it appeared, but the substitute could
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: tell him nothing further. Anester let it go at that.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Rising from the table, he went outward to the long bar,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: a cool, pleasant oasis, indeed, in the fierce heat of
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: the drowsy afternoon. He greeted the bart and, a tall
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: man with the white shoulders of a coal man, with
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: a smile. The man had been friendly, in fact, he
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: had been the sole friend that Anister appeared to have
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: made since his arrival and tryborne. Now the bartender leaned forward,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: speaking in a whisper behind his hand. Watch your step,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: mister Anist, he said. Anister gave an almost imperceptible nod,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: then his shrink before him upon the stained and battered mahogany.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: He glanced side voice along the rail, to where at
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: the far end two men stood together, eyeing him under
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: lowered browse. To Anist, it seemed that there had fallen
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: a sudden quiet. Just prior to his entrance, he had
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: heard talk and laughter, the clink of glasses. A thick
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: target oath now there appeared to rise and grow attention,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: as if something electric in the air. Anister felt it
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: in the white face of the night of the apron,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: the sudden silence, the rigid figures of the two men
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: at the end of the long bar behind him. A
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: little to his left, three men were seated at a
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: table bristow sheriff of drybone, a big man with a bleak,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: pale eye and a mouth like a straight gash above
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: a heavy chin barbered to the blood. With him were
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: two other men whom he did not know. Lund was
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: nowhere in sight. The taller of the two men standing
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: at the bar turned and Anister recognized him as Tucson
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Charlie Westerwald, a gunman with a dangerous record. Westerwald was
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: swearing a high crowned of white stetstin Anniston marked it
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: at the distance beneath it. The fierce hawk like face
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: turned now in his direction, the thin lips set stiffly
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: in a sullen thought. The old West had passed, with
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: the passing of the remoda, the trail herd, the mining camps,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the wide free range of the long horned cattle was
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: no more. But Drybone had not changed, save that the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: loading pins had gone. A cow would be a curiosity,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: but the lawless spirit of the ancient West remained southwest
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: of the law. Indeed, Drybone was a law unto itself,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: and now a bottom annister the menace. It appeared that
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: he had walked into a trap the judge, the sheriff.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: What mockery of law there was? And Ester knew that
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: it would be against him either way, attacking or attacked.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: He was certain of it. As Vesterbilt, moving slowly along
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: the bar, halted, when perhaps three paces distant, elbow raised
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: right and extended, claw like in a stiff, thrusting gesture
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: of bowis guns. It was a gesture of the killer,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the preliminary for the lightning down thrust of the stiff fingers,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Andester knew that well enough. Now. The gunman's case, sleepy
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: lidded like the falcon's, bowed into his His voice came
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: with a snarling violence. Mister black Steve Anister, he said,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: without preamble, I understand you're some wizard with the canister.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: IY a bad hombrey. Master been a little bird done
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: told me, and that bird was sure lock. I'll tell
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: a man, but me. His tone hard into a steely rasp.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not thinking o such a much. It was a trap.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Anister knew that now, just as behind the gunman he
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: could almost see the dark face of Roque with its
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: sneering grin the lawyer had inspired it. His automatic hung
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: in a sling under his left armpit. But even if
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: he could beat Vestabel to the drawer, he knew well
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: enough what the restlet would be as shot in the back,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: sigh from the men sitting just behind awe arrest, and
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: the mockery of a trial to follow it. Either way,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: he was done. His own eyes held the gunman' snow,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: glancing neither to the right nor to the left. He
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: was conscious of a movement from the three men at
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: the table. Westerwal's companion a short tall like man with
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: the pale eyes of an albino, had stepped backward from
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: the bar. Anister felt, rather than saw his hand move,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: even as his own hand came up an outward with
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: lightning speed, flames straight from his pistol with the motion.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Once in a generation, perhaps a man arises from the ruck, who,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: by an uncanny dexterity of hand and eye, confounds and
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: dazzes the common run of men. As a conjuror throws
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: his glass ball on air swifter than eye can follow.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: So Anister, crouching sideways from the bar, threw his bullets
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: at Vesterbuldt. The gunman, bending forward at the hips, crashed
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: to the sawdust in a slumping fall. As the albino,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: firing from the hip, whirled sideways as Anister's second bullet
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: thrilled him through the middle. For the tenth of a second,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: like the sudden stoppage of a cinematograph, the tableau endured.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Then Anester, whirling had covered Bristow. Whare He's set. The
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: two men with him, white faced, hands pressed flat upon
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: the table top, stared silent as Anister spoke, You saw Bristow,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: he said, low, and even his eyes upon the cold
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: eyes of the sheriff in a bright, steady, inquiring stare.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: Now what about it? For a moment, a little silence held.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: Then Bristow, moistening his stiff lips, nodded his gaze upon
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Anister in a sudden, tazed, uncomprehending Look. All right, mister Anister,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: he said, heavily. They came looking for it. I reckon,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: well you were that quick, Anister smiled, grimly, pocketing his
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: pistol vesterbilt lay where he had fallen a dead man.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Even as he had gone for his gun, lips still
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: twisted in a sullen thought. The bow legged man, stiff
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: fingers clutching his heavy pistol, lay face downward in the sawdust.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: The bartender, with an admiring glance at Anist, leaned forward
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: as Bristow and the two men with him went slowly out.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: They may try to get me for it, mister Anister,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: he said, But I'm no man's man, well not Rooks,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: and he can relayed to that. Bristow and his friends
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: kept out of it. You noticed. Bristow'll do nothing now,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: not yet a while at any rate. But maybe they
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: sort of savvied me of watching to see they didn't run,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: no whizzer on you. He lifted the heavy cold where
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: it had lain hidden by the bar rail, thrusting it
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: in its cupboard with a grin. Well, sir, I aim
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: to see that they were sitting close and quiet, mister Anistair,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I said, thanks old time, I said, Anista, I'll not forget.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: But as he went outward into the waning afternoon, he
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: was thinking of the rendezvous of the night, for Rooke
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: would be there, and it had been Rouke. He was
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: certain who had engineered at ambush in the mansion House
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: bar the end of chapter eight, chapter nine of The
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Jailure of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This Liberty Box recording
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by yoganand The Jailure
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: of Souls, Chapter nine, the battle in the Club. The
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: time was nearly right, the clue of those newspaper items
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: the canceled checked the somewhat repellent evidence of the battered
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: piece of goldwork picked up in the corridor of the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: mansion house. Anist had been able to put two and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: two together to find some as strange as odd, say
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: as five or seven or even one, but that name
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: that had trembled on the lips of Rook's secretary remained
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: a secret. With it. Anister was convinced he would be
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: able to pull those threads together with a single jerk
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: to find them one. He had had news from Harvey.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: The dentist had identified the insane man a suspatient by
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: means of his chart. But with that face, the man
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: could not be banker axeworthy. It simply could not be,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: And yet he was. It was something of a riddle,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: and more even than that, for the things savored of
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: supernatural or necromancy, of a black art that might say,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: have had for its practitioner a certain personage with the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: eyes of a damned soul and a black, forking beard
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: curled like Mephisto's. Aester thought that it might further the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: conductor of that train had been able to describe somewhat
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: in detail, the man who had jostled the derelict and
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: his companion. The man had been a stranger to the conductor.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: He had been tall and thin, with a small sandy
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: mustache and a high arched, broken nose, and he had
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: been wearing the conventional stetson. The fellow might have been
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: disguised of courts. But if Anister could find the black
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: bearded man discover his identity, he was reasonably certain that
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: he would not draw blank. It was no certainty of courts,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: but it was worth the risk, he told himself. It'll
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: be a desperate hazard that he was about to face.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: He knew, thinking of his father, together with the remembrance
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: of that unholy and unspeakable horror that he had witnessed,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Born of the stinking shadows of the dark street in
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: a city fall and old its people, furtive worshippers of
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: strange goats, Anister felt again the crawling chill which had
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: assailed him with the passing of the tall man with
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the eyes of death. With Anister to decide was to act,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: despatching a brief telegram in court to a certain office
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: and a certain building in Washington, he went now to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: keep his ron. They were withdroke in the rest. It
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: was yet early scarce, eight in the evening, and the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: street was full of life and movement before him and behind,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: and before him and behind. As he went onward, he
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: was conscious that those who walked there walked with him
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: straight for straight. They kept their distance, moving without speech.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: As he turned the corner of the dusty street. If
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: he had had any doubt about it, the doubt became certainty.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: As wheeling sharply to the left, they kept him company
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: now still with a grim, daunting silence. A bodyguard, indeed,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: but a bodyguard that held him prisoner, as certainly as
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: if the manacles were on his wrists. It was not
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: yet dark, but with the rising wind that had come
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: a sky overcast and lowering low down upon the horizon's
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: rim to the eastward, the violet place of the lightning
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: came and went with after a little the heavy salvos
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: of thunder, like the marching of an armed host. But Anister,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: his gaze set straight, had turned inward at the entrance
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: of the saddler shop mountain the stairs, as behind him
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: he heard the heavy door slam shut. Perhaps it had
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: been the wind. But as Annister went upward he heard,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: just beyond that door the murmur of voices. They reached
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: him in a sing song mutter against the rising of
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: the wind, in a quick, growling chorus. There had been
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: something in that snarling speech to dawn, to man less
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: brave than the man on that narrow stair. But Anister
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: went upward lightly now to meet water were waited behind
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: the door, set with its narrow panel that it could
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: see merely as a dark smudge of shadow in the
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: encircling gloom. He rapped twice and the door fell open, silently,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: disclosing the long room in which, as he remembered, he
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: had sat but a few nights in the past to listen.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: As a lawyer and his crowd had waited for the
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: man called pull, the room was brightly lighted. At a
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: long table midway between door and windows, five men were
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: seated alun His fat faced, gray with a sort of
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: eager pallor, was chewing nervously at an unlighted cigar. He
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: glanced up now at Anister's entrance, turning to a big
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: man on his right at the head of the table.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: His veiled glance like the stair of a falcon sat roke.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: But it was upon the big man next to Lund
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: that Anister's glance rested with an abrupt interest as a
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: lawyer spoke. Welcome to a city, mister Anist, he said,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: in a voice that reminded Anister of molasses tripping from
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: a barrel. I want you to meet mister bull Allison.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: He's been right anxious to meet you, haven't you? Bull Anestor,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: in the passage of an eye, Flash understood this was
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: a man whom he had encountered in the vestibule of
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: the smoker, and of a sudden memory rose up out
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: of the past, and with it a picture a parrot
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: ring under twin blazing ox, the thudd and shuffle of
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: sliding feet, a man huge, brutish, broad fist like stone molts,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: yet for all his spulk, a very cat for quickness
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: prue Sir Ellison, they had called him then, a heavyweight
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: whose very brute strength had kept him from the championship.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: That and a certain easy good nature which was not
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: apparent now in the bleak staring of the eyes turned
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: now upon anister remorseless under lowered brose. Now, as if
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: at a signal, the men about the table rose. The
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: table was hauled backward to the wall, leaving a wide
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: sanded space under the lights. And then, even as Ruk spoke,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: Aster abruptly understood this gang of thieves as he knew
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: now plunder limited, as clear O ridgely had called them,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: Andester knew them now under the leadership of Rooke, for
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: an outfit which would stop short of nothing to attain
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: its ends. His eyes rowing the long room up and down,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: searched now for the dark face with its black, foking beard,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: But he was not really expecting to see it, but
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that if Rouke was the actual leader, black Beard was
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: a man higher up. Anester was somehow convinced they had
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: failed with Vesterveld and his segundo. Now, as a man
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: called Bull came forward across the floor, Rooke spoke, Listen,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: hasn't forgotten his meeting with you, anister. He says, you've
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: played him. A dirty trick, hit him when he wasn't
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: looking that right, Bill, he asked, with a certain sly
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: malice directed at the giant with the cauliflower. A year
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: and now Roge's purring tones continued. He wants satisfaction. He'll
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: get it, won't you, mister anist. For a moment, as
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Anistor's eyes boored into his, the lawyer's face showed like
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: an animal's in a rembrandous shading of high light and shadow.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Beneath the lights stripped of its mask, it was like
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: the face of a devil. Now the mouth grinned, but
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: without mird, the lips drawn backward from the teeth in
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: a soundless snarl. He laughed suddenly, and there was nothing
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: human in it, as Anister, his back to the wall,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: smiled grimly. Now in answer, he had been somewhat less
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: than discreet, he reflected, Rogue's purpose had shone in his eyes.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: He Anista, had walked into a trap from which this
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: time there could be no escape. He had meant to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: beard them to their face, ring from Roke on admission,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: as to his father, perhaps more then showed his way
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: out if need be. But now he would have to
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: fight this giant, a ring veteran of a hundred battles
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: with bare fists, surrounded by an encircling, hostile cordon, who,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: if by any chance he might prove the victor, would
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: see to it that he paid for that victory with
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: his life. Aniston knew that it was on the carts
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: that Rooke, for instance, would shoot him down as remorstlessly
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: as a man would squeeze a musquito, say, out of
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: life between thumb and finger. But it was the lawyer's humor,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: doubtless to see him manhandled, perhaps killed, beneath the drumming
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: impact of those iron fists. Calmly, he remote his coat,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: bestowing his automatic in the pocket of his trousers. He
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: did it openly, turning to face Ellison, who stripped to
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: an athletic undershirt and trousers, regarded Anister with a grinning assurance.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: He was big, perhaps twenty pounds heavier than Anister, with
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: white shoulders and deep arching chest. With his forward thrusting
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: jaw and bullet head with its stiff fell of pigs bristles,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: the long arms like a gorrilass he towered over his
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: antagonist like a cave bear, a grisly waiting for the kill,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: and like a cave bear at Rooke's snarling call of time,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: he was upon the lesser man like a thunderbolt, fists
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: going like flails. Anister, in his day and generation, had
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: absorbed the signs of hit, stop and get away under
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: masters of the art, who pronounced him as an amateur,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: the equal of many a professional performer of the squared circle.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: He was lean and hard, whereas Ellison's waistlines showed under
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the thin shirt in folds of fat. If the onlookers
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: expected to see Anister annihilated by that first furious rush,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: they were mistaken. Crouching lightly on the balls of his suite,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: he drove forward a lightning straight left, full on the point. Allison,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: coming in, took it grunting. The blow had traveled a
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: scan six inches, but there had been power in its
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: get him back upon his heels, from which as he
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: rose raging, he drove in with the ripping one two punch,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: which partly blocked by the antagonist, yet crashing through the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: latticed guard landed high upon his cheekbone with a spanking thud.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: It had been a grazing blow, otherwise the fight might
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: have ended then and there, and a step backing nimbly
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: before the giant's rush, realized that he must avoid a clinch.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: At in fighting, the giant would have the edge, those
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: mastlike arms and massive shoulders, the huge bulk they would
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: at close quarters with the drumming impact of the great fist,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: have spelled a quick ending. With the sheer slugging power
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: of the attack, he heard Rooke snoll as side stepping
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: like a sliding ghost. He countered with a long curving left.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: So far he had been holding his own. If he
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: could keep the giant at his distance, he might wear
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: him out, For this was not a fight by rounds.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: A professional pugilist fighting in the pink would have had
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: bellows to mend. At the end say, of five minutes
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: of for give and take and counter moving at high speed, circling, fainting, tucking,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Anister kept that long left in his adversary's face, forcing
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: the pace, yet keeping out of harm's waist, save for
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: an overhand swing which, landing high up upon his cheek bone,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: turned him half round, with the impact throwing him off
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: balance to a slumping fall. Up like a flash. However,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: he duck torched, evading those mighty arms that strove desperately
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: to reach him through that impenetrable god. A fight with
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: four ounce gloves can be a bloody affair enough, but
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: with nature's weapons under London Price ring rules it can
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: be a shambles. Armed with the sisters or the mailed fist,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: Allison might have wreaked havoc as a gladiator of old Rome,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: punished his adversary to the death. As it was Anister,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: his face a bloody mask where that socking punch had
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: landed gave Rooke and his supporter's heart of grace. Taking
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: bull The screaming advice was in high voice of lun
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: the others echoed it. But if Anister was in desperate case.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: The giant, sobbing now with the fury of his spent strength,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: was weaving on his feet, legs like iron columns uppore
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: that mighty strength. But a pile driving right behind it,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: the full weight of Anister's two hundred pounds of iron
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: hard muscle, sinking with an audible PLoP in his adversaries
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: midriff brought from the giant a quick gasping grunt. Allison's
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: endurance was almost done. He could take it, but hawk
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: fed from protracted period of easy living, professional fighter as
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: he had been, this amateur, with the arching chest of
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: a greyhound and the stamina of a lucy v of
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the long trail, was swearing him down, trading punch for punch.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Now Anister abruptly cut loose. With pile driving right and lefts,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: they walled in from every angle. There was a cold
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: grin on his lips now as he went round the
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: giant like a cooper round a barrel, bombarding him with
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: beveldering crossfire of hooks and swings, chaps and uppercuts. Anister,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the fight had expected the usual
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: tricks of the professional, holding in the clinches, butting the elbow,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: the heel of the hand against the face that Allison
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: had fought fair. Now as a giant, boring in against
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: that relentless attack. Faltered mouth open, labored breath sucked inward
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: through clenched teeth, Anister stepped backward, hands dropping at his sights.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Allison almost out stood, weaving on his feet, fronting his adversary,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: a queer look of surprise in his face, and a
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: something more. Anister, strangely enough, as has been mentioned, had,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: in spite of his encounter with Ellison in the Smoker,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: conceived something for the man that had been close to liking,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: somehow rough as a man was crooked by all the signs,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: the tool of Rooke and of his minions. He had
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: the blue eye of a fighter, the straight, level look
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: of a man who, though an enemy, would yet fight fair. Anister,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: breathing heavily, thrust out his hand a draw. Huh. He said, well,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: suppose we let it go at that for a moment,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: and Allison appeared to hesitate. There came again the queer
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: look in his eyes, as of surprise, wonder, and as
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: something more. There came a grating curse from Lund. A
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: sudden movement from the onlooker's roundabout Allison's great paw closed
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: on the extended hand with a grip of iron, as
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Rouke's voice rose strident under the lights, bull, are you crazy?
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: This man? He's just the damn dick The end of
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: chapter nine, Chapter ten of The Jailer of Souls by
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Hamilton Craigie. This livery box recording is in the public domain.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: Read by yoghnand The Jailer of Souls, Chapter ten, in
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: the name of the law. It was out Rooke his
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: hand in a lightning step for Anister's coat, turned over
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: the lapal, holding it forward all to see. On it
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: was a small gold patch, the symbol of the Secret Service.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: The secret was a secret no longer. How long Rooke
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: had known of it, Anister could not be certain. But
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: now at the growling chorus of swift hate, he whirled
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: his pistol, came up and out. As there came a
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: startling interruption, or rather two, he heard Allison's voice roaring
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: in the narrow room. Hell's bell's, young fellow. I'm with you,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: and you can lay to that for this once anyway,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: you shock and handle yourself. He turned to Rooke and
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: the rest. Now you bumps, get going, Dick or no dick.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: I'll play this hand. As she lays, get going the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: great hand holding a heavy colt swung upward on a
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: line with anisters. As the door burst inward with a
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: crush and framed in the opening, there showed on a
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: sudden the flaming patch of the bartender Dell Cane. His
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: cowboy yell echoed throat to room, eyes placing upon the
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: hotel man where he sat. In two strikes, he had
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: joined anister and bull guns on line. The three fronted
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: the five, who faced them Silent tense, Kane's voice came clear,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: I followed you, mister anist part they tried to run
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: a buser on you. I'm pulling afraid after to day anyway,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: mister lun can have his job and welcome now. I've
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: been keeping cases on mister Rooke. He's a curly wolf,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: ain't you Rooke? A real bad hombrey and he can
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: relay to that. But I an't going northwest of nothing, yea,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: ain't now you damn short horns show some speed, but
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: there was no fighting Rooke London Company glowering, the hands
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: and plain sight weaponless. They sat in a sullen silence
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: as Anister, backing to the doorway, was followed by Ellison
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: and Kane. Outside under pale stars, the giant spoke, I
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: don't aim to be too all fired, honest, mister Anister,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: he said. I thrown in with mister Roke. That's so,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: but he has played a door tends against the middle
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: with me. I guess I reckon. I'll be moving out
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: of dry bones in two three hours, he grinned ryly
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: out of the corner of his mouth. You shall pack
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: a hefty wallop, young fellow. I wish I could tell
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: you something, but that man Drook he's as close mouthed
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: as an Indian. And that's whatever his came. Nobody knows
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: what it is. Lune may be, but they sure got
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: a stranglehold on the county. It won't be healthy for
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: me here After to night, the three men separated at
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: the hotel, Anister entering the lobby with a curious depression
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: that abruptly deepened a sudden crawling fear as a coal
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: boy brought him a note. The fare was not for himself,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: but for another, for although he had never seen the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: handwriting before he knew it. Upon the instant, ripping open
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: the envelope with fingers that trembled, he read and at
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: what he saw, his face paled slowly to a mortled,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: unhealthy gray partner. If you get this in time, please,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: I'm in the toils at doctor Elphinston's. It's a stone
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: house at the right of the road leading north from
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: Drybone twenty miles. I think I've bribed a man to
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: take this to you. And if he fails me, God
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: help me, God help us all. If you fail me,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: you'll never see me again as Mary Allerton. Because the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: devil's in charge here, and they call him the Jailer
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: of souls. I'll be watching for you at the south window.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: You'll know it by the red ribbon on the bars.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And now be careful if you get here at night,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: beware of the gods. There are three. And if it
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: is night, there'll be a rope hanging from the window.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: You can feel for it in the dark. Now hurry,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Mary Allerton, number thirty three. You will never see me
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: again as Mary Allerton. Anester was away again of that
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: crawling fear. The red bribon on the bars. The place
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: was in effect a prison then, But number thirty three
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: anest's heart leaped up. He knew the meaning of those
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: numerals well enough, he had been blind not to have
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: suspected it. But doctor Elphinston and the jailer of souls?
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Who could be the jailer of souls? But the devil?
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: And anistor fancied that he had seen the devil at
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: the corner of that street under the moon, with his
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: black forking beard and the cold eyes of death. The
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: trail was warm now, as he thought, But if he
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: were too late, He put the thought from him, turning
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: to the perusal of a telegram in code which he
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: had found waiting for him at the desk. Translated it
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: read with you Thursday with four six twenty one and
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: the others look for thirty three Childers. But there was
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: no time to be lost. Thursday was tomorrow. He would
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: have to take his chance of their finding him, for
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: there was nobody whom he could trust. Ellison had gone,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: even if he might have chanced the giant in so
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: delicate a matter, tell Caane likewise, he must take his chance.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Striding to the door, he stiffened abruptly at a drumming
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: rab and a hoarse voice in the corridor without open up.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: In there, open up, Anest a pulse in his temple,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: beating to his hard held breath, jerk back the door
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: to face pristow. Behind him three men whom he recognized
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: his hangers on at the hotel bar. They had something
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: of the look of long riders, villainous, heart bitten as
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: one man, they grinned now, but without mirth. As a
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: sheriff spoke, Aniest I arressed you for the murder of Tucson,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: Charlie Westerveldt and Bartley Patterson in the name of the law.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Anesta knew that if he resisted, they would shoot him down.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: In fact, he knew too that was what they wanted.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: It would be the easiest way under the menace of
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: the guns. He spread his hands palm downward, preceding the
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: four men down the stairs outward to the jail. But
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: as a heavy door clanked shut behind him, anister his
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: gaze in a sightless staring into the north ground in bitterness.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Spirit Mary was needing him. She was in peril the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: greater because it was unknown, and he would not be there.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: The end of chapter ten chapter eleven of The Jailer
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by Yogan and The Jailer of Souls,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven. The House of Fear, a house of silence,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: broken at times by a weird wailing, as if from
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: the pit, a house of dreams, gray in the moonlight,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: under the leprous, silvered finger of the moon, brooding now
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: a grim, gray fortress of the damned, the stronghold of
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: the beast. Dense pines grew about it, so that when
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: the wind wailed among them, like the wailing of a
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: lost soul, it met and mingled with an eerie ellulation,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: rising as if muffled by many any thicknesses of wolves,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: to end after a little with a quick shriek and
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: a sudden hush, with, after a moment, the faint echo
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: of a taunting laugh. That laugh would have struck terror
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: to the swat soul of a lucivee, if lucivees have souls.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: For it was like an eldrich howling, faint and thin,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: like the thin, tinkling laughter of a fiend, without pity
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and without ruth. Here in the sanitarium of doctor Elphinston.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: There were secrets within secrets, wallts within wolts downward, as
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: in Dante's Seventh Hell, And from this monastery of the
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: hopeless they penetrated, on occasion outward from its battlemented wallts
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: and wild frantic laughter. But there was nothing demoniac about it,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: because it was a laughter of the insane. But that
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: other laughter, like a sound heard in dreams, passes by.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: If there were any such hearing, it would shudder and
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: pass on. For the secret of that house of doom
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: was a secret, terrible and grim, a secret for him
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: who might have guessed at it, to be whispered behind
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: locked doors and with bated breath. And there had been
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: those who had whispered of the lost souls within those walls.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: And the whisper ran that they were indeed mad men,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: who had not been always mad, because they had become
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: such after their commitment to the bleak house within the wood.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: These were but whispers merely, for the power upon that
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: house was not alone, the power of evil, rising like
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: the dark tide among the pines. For in Dryborne and
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: beyond it, in Palos Verde and Mohave, it was rumored
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: that the strong arm of the law upheld it, or
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: such law say as might have issued from the devious
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: hand of Hamilton Drooke. Once and it was never repeated.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: A man had come there from the Capital. He had
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: demanded to see the doctor's patience that had been a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: long time in the past. And as the investigator had
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: stood there, viewing with a faint, creeping horror, the nondescripts
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: paraded before him, gibbering, melting in an inartic late furious babble,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: a man had burst suddenly from the line with a
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: strangled cry, Jerry, don't you know me? I'm Humiston new Bold.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: The voice had been the voice of Humiston, but the
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: face it had been the face of another, totally unlike.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: There had been no possible resemblance. But the man had
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: been sane. The investigator was persuaded of that suffering under
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: a peculiar delusion. Indeed, but sane. The man had rushed forward, then,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: baring his arm, and there on the thin, pitiful flush
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: that had once been healthy and hard, there ran a
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: curious design and red. The investigator sucked in his breath
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: as that tell tale birthmark sprang livid, unrisk case, for
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: he had seen it before. The doctor's eyes had narrowed
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: to slit. Somehow the man from the capital had gained
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: the impression that it was the first time that he
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: had seen that mark. But the investigator could do nothing.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: Birthmarks can be duplicated. He had waited, then, in a
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: curious indecision, as the bearded doctor had interposed to swove. Well,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: of course, commissioner, you are quite aware, or you should be.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: How it is these paranoiacs are noted for the delusions
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: ah magelosophalic tendencies. I should say, they believed themselves to
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: be some one else, and always a bank president, say,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: a famous actor, an author, a great general. Now, mister Humeiston,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: you knew him. I believe. Beneath the silken tone there
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: ran suddenly a hint of iron, of menace veiled but actual.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: The investigator felt it. This patient knew your name. Of course,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: the sore voice had continued, poor fellow, you must be
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: gentle with him, and there the matter had ended. Curiously enough,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: the man who had claimed to be banker Heumeiston, had,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: after that first burst of frenzied speech, kept silent. Perhaps
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: that modern gleaming in the doctor's eyes had telegraphed of warning,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: a message, a command. But the investigator went home, oddly,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: shaken to dream, like Pilate's wife, of a white face
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: with staring eyes, which changed even as he gazed into
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: the face of his friend new Bold humistone to hear,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: even in his dream, a voice, And it was the
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: voice of the living and of the dead. In a
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: bass cell six feet by six a cubicle, in which
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: there was barely sufficient headroom for a tall man to
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: stand upright, a figure stood with his hands clenched upon
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: the bars, staring outward at the grim wood visible to
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: the south. Travis Anister had abode here in this living
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: tomb three weeks now three centuries, in which, as in
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: a nightmare of cold horror, he had been away merely
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: of a face three pointed, bearded, the eyes active with
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: a malign intelligence, the lips smiling always with the cold
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: smile of death. Twice a day, the small panel in
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: the cell door had slid backward without sound, to frame
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: in the opening the face of doctor Elphinstone, like a
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: face without a body and without a soul. The father
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: of Black Steve Anister knew that it was not a
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: dream that would pass, because on the second day the
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: head had spoken. Travis Anister was scarcely a coverd He
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: had fought like a baited gristly when surprised in his
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: summer camp by the men who had brought him under
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: cover of the night to this prison house beyond the pale.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: Now at the voice, like the slow drip of an acid,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: anistor stared straight before him with the gaze of a
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: man who has abandoned hope, My dear mister Anist, the
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: voice had whispered the little matter of the check, If
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: you please, you'll make it out to cash. Ah, that's good,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: I perceive you are. Voice. It had not been the
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: pistol in the lean, claw like hand, nor the eyes
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: even brooding upon him with the impersonal cold staring of
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: a cobra. Travis and his ter might have refused if
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: it had not been for those sounds that he had heard,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: the sights that he had seen when taken at midnight
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: from his cubicle, he had beheld the administration of the cone, and,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: like Macbeth, with that one side and the sight of
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: that which came after, he had supped full of horrors.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: Until now at the bidding of the toneless voice. He
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: had obeyed three times. Thereafter, at the command of his
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: dark jailer, he had paid tribute. Nor had he been
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: of all this lost battalion the single victim. There had
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: been others. Now separated from him, scarce a dozen feet.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: A girl with golden hair sat huddled eyes in a
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: sightless staring upon the stone floor of her cell. Cleo
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: ridgely had not been killed. She had been saved for
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: a fate besides which death would be a little thing,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: a fate unspeakable, even as had number thirty three. Mary Allerton,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: removed from the others by a narrow corridor running crosswise
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: in the cell block, watched and waited now for the
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: signal of the man to whom she had despatched that message.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: It seemed a century in the past. That morning they
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: had found the rope. They had removed it without comment,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: while the ophidian gaze of the dark doctor had been
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: bent upon her with what she fancied had been a queer,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: speculative look, a look of anticipation, and of something more.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: So far, she had been treated decently enough. Her cell
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: was wide and airy, plainly but comfortably furnished, but as
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: to that look in the gray green eyes of the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: master of black magic, she was not so sure. There
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: came a sudden movement in the corridor, without a panting,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: a snuffling, and the quick pad pad of marching feet. Mary,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: her eye to the keyhole of that door, could see,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: but dimly she made out, merely the sheeted figures like
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: grim gliding ghosts, the figure rigid on the stretcher, moving
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: silently on its rubber tired wheels, then at an order,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: stealing inward through the keyhole. She recoiled. That perfume had
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: been sickish, sweet, overpowering, tense and yet sharp, with the
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: faint acrid sweetness the odor of ether. And then, although
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: she could not see it, a man in the next
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: cell had risen, white faced from his coat to sink
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: back limply as a dark hand holding that inverted corne
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: had swept onward to his face, a choked gurgle, a strangled,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: sharp cry, penetrating outward in a vague shadow of clamor,
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: and then silence, with a faint whisper of the wind
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: among the pines, the brool of the rushing river, the faint,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: half audible footfalls passing, and repassing in the corridor of
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: the Dead, Travis Anister sprang to the sweet as the
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: narrow door swung open to press backward against the window bars.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: As the High Priest of Horror, followed by his familiars,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: cold and hooded, entered with a slow, silent step. The
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: doctor spoke, and his voice was like a chill wind.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: My friend, I bring you forgetfulness, a brief let of
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: ass and then ah, then you'll be a new man,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: a man reborn. My friend now Anester, his face gray
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: with a sort of hideous strain, stared silent, white lipped
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: as at a low voiced order. The attendants came forward.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: The lean hand reached forward, It poised, darted, swooped, and
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: it was the cone the end of chapter eleven chapter
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: twelve of The Jailuer of Souls by Hamilton Praigie. This
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: liberal box recording is in the public domain. Read by
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: Yoganan The Jailer of Souls, Chapter twelve, Castle Dangerous. Alone
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: in his cell beneath the courthouse, Black Steve Aanister sat
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: in silence, gazing northward through the barred window to way
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: invisible in the thick darkness. Just across the street. The
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: road ran straight as an arrow from the bow to
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: the dark forest, rouding in a changeless silence, where lay
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: the house of Fear. Childers would have had his wire
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: long since, but by the time that help could come,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: it would be too late. Anister, fatalistic after a fashion,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: felt this to be the fact, even as he hoped
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: against help. But there were many, any whisper one tomorrow
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: it would be too late. Head bowed in his hands, Oblivious.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: At first, he had heard it as a thin whisper,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: like a knife blade against the silence. It penetrated inward.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: Now with a dull rasp of metal upon metal. From without,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: sit tight, Old Timer, I'm coming through. There came a
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: muffled thud, a twist. Anster reaching forth, a hand found
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: it clasped in thick, droping fingers. Then, as he thrust
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: head and shoulders through the sundered bass, a shadow up rose,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: gigiantic against the stars. The voice came again, in a
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: quick rumbling whisper. It's may Old Timer. Till Anester. Crawling
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: through the opening, alighted upon soft turf, he heard Allison's
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: low chuckle as following the giant he passed along the
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: lee of the building, to where, showing merely as a
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: black plot against the night, there stood an automobile, its
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: engine just turning over with the low even purr of
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: harnessed power. At twenty paces it was scarcely audible above
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: the rising of the wind. Thanks full, said Allison. Now
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: he turned abruptly as a dim figure rose upward just beyond.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: For a moment Anister set himself for the onslaught. Then
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: his hand went out. It gripped the hard hand of
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: tell Kin. Allison done, told me, mister anistor, he said,
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: And so I come a fanning and a fogging this
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: way from mohave certain show I don't aim to leave
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: no friend of mine. Hawk tied in no calaboose anestor,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: his heart warming to these friends, debated with himself, then
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: turned to Allison with a sudden movement, bill he said,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: and putting the carts on the table with you and
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: tell here. He told them briefly of the message from Mary,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: the need of haste, then of his mission, and of
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: the help that was even now due, or would be
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: with the morning, if they were coming with him northward
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: along that road of peril. Word must be left behind,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Kane thought a moment, then, wheeling swiftly with muttered word,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: he disappeared in the darkness to return presently with the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: good news that he had fixed it with the station agent.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: The latter had just come on. He was a friend
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: of Kane's and no friend of Rooke and company. He
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: would see to it. Kane said that the reinforcements would
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: be wont boarding the car. They swung out cautiously along
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: the silent street under the pale starts northward along the
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: shadowy road. Presently there would be a moon. But just
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: now they went onward in a thick darkness, with just
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: a head, the dim loom of the road flowing backward
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: under the wheels, which presently ran like a ribbon of
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: pale flame under the bright beam of the lights a
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: half mile from the town. And Bull, who was driving,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: opened up, and the car leaped forward with the rising
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: drone of the powerful motor thirty forty fifty miles an hour.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: The wind of their passage drove backward like a wall,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: as the giant's voice came now in a rumbling laugh,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: some little speedbagon, mister, anister, eh, they said, And that's
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: whatever it ought to be. The man who owns it,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: who did on it half an hour ago? He's some particular,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: I'll say, because it's mister Hamilton drugs. Anister laughed grimly
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: in answer, speaking a low word of caution, as after
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: perhaps a half hour of their race, Seeing on rush
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: the lights glimmered on dark trees to right and left.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: Somewhere a boat here, I think, he said, low, three
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: outside guards, I understand we'd better stop a little way
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: this side. Bull touch it now, look as a big
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: car slid slowly to a halt. The moon rising above
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: the trees showed them perhaps a hundred yards just ahead
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: a low, rambling stone house, its windows like blind eyes
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: to the night. Upon its roof, the moonlight lay like snow,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: And even at that distance it was sinister, fobinding, as
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: if the evil that was within had seeped through those
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: stones outward in a creeping tide. Looks like a mog,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: offered Allison with a shrug of his great shoulders, as
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: the three alighting pushed the car before them into the wood,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: then guns out, they went forward slowly among the trees.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: Anister had formed no definite plan of attack. The red
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: ribbon that window bar might or might not be visible
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: under the moon, but the guards eliminated. It seemed to
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: him that after all they would have to make it
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: an assault and force. Pondering this matter, all of a sudden,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: he leaped sidewise as a dim figure rose upward, almost
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: in his face. Spread eagle like a bat against the dimness,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: the figure bulked huge against the moon as anister, bending
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: to one side, brought up his fist in a lifting
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: punch from his showtops. It was a savage blow. It
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: landed with the sound of a butcher's cleaver on the
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: chopping block. There came a gasping grunt, the thud of
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: a heavy body as a guard went downward without a sound,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: one breathed Allison as trussing their victim with a length
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: of stout line brought from the car. They left him,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: going forward, carefully, keeping together circling the house. But it
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: was not until they were half way round it, with
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: so far no sign of that signal for which he looked,
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: that they encountered the second guard. He came upon them
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: with a swift, silent or rush, leaping among the trees,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: a great dun shaped spectral under the moon, fanks bard
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: As without a sound. The hound drove straight for the
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: j's throat. A shot would bring discovery, they dared not
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: risk it. Anester could see the great head, the white
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: rough at the neck, the grinning jaws. Then the giant's
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: hands had gone up and out there came a straining heap,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: a wrench, a queer whistling croak. Allison, rising from his knees,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: looked onward a moment to wear the beast, its jaw
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: broken by that mighty strength, lay stretched lifeless at his feet.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: By now they had come full circle, when all at
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: once Anster, appearing under his hands, sucked in his breath
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: with a whispered oath fair against the bars of a window.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: Low down at their right there was a dark smutch,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: the ribbon black under the moon. Anster's heart leaped up
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: in answer, as with a quick word, he halted his
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: companions in the shadow of a tree. A moment they conferred.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: Then Allison and Anest could almost see his grin in
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: the darkness, spoke beneath his hand. Why that'll be easy.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: I've got my tools. You're right here in my pocket,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: mister Anist. Those spars ought to be easy for a
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: fair journeyman's slit swinger. It'll be easy and you can
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: lay to that good whispered anster an answer, but hurry.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: The moonlight lay in a molten flood between them and
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: the house. But it was no time for deliberation. Crossing
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: that bright strip at a crouching round the tree, were
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: at the window. Anester's harsh whisper hissed in the silence
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: through those iron bass marry for a heartbeat, silence answered him. Then,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: faint and thin, in a faint, tremulous, sobbing breath, there
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: came the answer, Steve. Thank god, Anester had spoken the
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: girl's name without thought. At that high moment forms had
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: been futile. That whisper had been wrung from him deep down,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: as had an answer. And then the soft rasp of
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: steel on steel told that Allison was at work, but
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: the giant was working against time. At any moment now
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: might come the alarm. They had no means of knowing
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the number of those within those walls. Even now, peril
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: just behind might be stalking them out of the dark.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: And still that soft rasp went on until at a
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: low word from the girl, the giant, laying down his file, bent, heaved,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: putting his shoulder into it, and the bass sprang outward,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: bent and twisted in that iron grasp. Anister, his hand
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: reaching for the hand of the girl, went inwards silently
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: to stand a moment without speech, in the thick darkness
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: of the little cell. But it was no time for dalliance,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Caane and Ellison behind him. Now he set his shoulder
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: against the door, as Allison aiding, it splintered outward with
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: a soft, carrying crush. Ahead of them along a dark,
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: narrow corridor, there had come on a sudden sound of voices, murmurs.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: Aniester going toward that sound, so suddenly an open door
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: light streamed from it. As a murmur of voices rose,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: my friend, I bring you forgetfulness. The words came in
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: a sort of hissing sibilance, as Anister reaching that doorway
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: halted a moment as the tableau was burned into his brain,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: he saw his father helpless, his face gray with the
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: hideous terror of that which was upon him, in the
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: grasp of two cloaked and hooded figures, their dark faces
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: grinning with the bestial mirth, and before him, hand uprising
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: and holding a curious funnel shaped object at which the
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: man in the corner shrank backward. Even as he looked,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: he saw a tall man with a black, foking beard,
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: the same that he had seen that evening at the
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: corner of the street, the same that he had seen
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: in the dim backwater of Rangon the unspeakable, the man
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: with the dark foreign visage and the eyes of death.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: The end of chapter twelve, Chapter thirteen of The Jailure
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: of Soults by Hamilton Craigie. This liberyvox recording is in
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by yoganand The Jailure of Soults,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter thirteen. The Jailer of souls Anister's gun went up
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: and out as a black bearded man turning, saw him
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: where he stood. Travis Annister Parchment Pale took two forward,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: lurching steps as the doctor, backing stiffly against the wall,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: Hans appraised, called something in a high sing song, savage inarticulate.
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: Then everything seemed to happen at once. A snorling animal
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: outcry echoed from the passage, just without it rose as
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: there came a far gobbling mutter of voices, and the
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: pad pad of running feet the hooded familiars. As one
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: man turned and the long knives flashed luminous under the lights,
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: as Kane and Ellison, meeting them halfway, raised their heavy guns. Annister,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: covering the doctor, froze suddenly in motion as that gobbling
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: horror mounted, and then feeling that narrow way, like figures
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: in a dream, They came the outcasts, the lost Battalion,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: the men who had no right to live in They ran,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: but running rather as if pursued, than as if in
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: answer to the snarling call. There came three men, guards
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: by their dress, their face contorted agonized upon them the
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: impress of a crawling fear. They streamed past the door,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: pursue us, and pursued as black Steevanister, finger upon the
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: trigger of his pistol, saw that lean hands sweep upward.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: It flicked the thin lips, the dark faced, gray wind
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: blank the dark doctor, his gaze in queer frozen look
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: upon eternity, pitched forward upon his face. In some way,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: as Anister could understand, the madman had won free. But
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: how turning, he saw a white face at his elbow.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: As they sounded from without, the staccato explosions of a
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: mortar and a swift, hammering thunder upon the great door.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: I am new Bold, Humeiston, said the face, and I
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: am not mad, or rather, I am but mad. Not
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: northwest when the wind is southerly, he coated with a
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: ghastly smile. This devil, he pointed to the body of Elphinston,
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: has gone to his own place, but the evil that
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: he did lives after him in us. His voice rose
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: to a shriek as there came a rush of feet
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: along the corridor, a compact body of men. At their
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: head a tall man out side of whom Stephen Anister
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: flung up a hand. Well, Childers, he said, I'm glad.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: Childers spoke pantingly in quick cusps. We just made it
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: all man, he said, a day ahead. At that the
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: station agent put us on the track. We got them
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: all lunon and the rest all but Rook. He paused
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: at Anister's inquiring look, turning his thumb down with an
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: expressive gesture. We found him strangled in his office a
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: queer bousness. Anester gave an exclamation. The Indian, he said, well,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: Rooke was a third light. Sure enough again he was
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: seeing the lean avid face in the vestibule of the smoker.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: The lighted match himself and the conductor, and Rooke, the
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: lawyer's pale eyes brooding about the glowing end of cigarette.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: And again, as the picture passed, he was aware of
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: the white face at his elbow, as Mary Allerton, her
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: hand in his behind her, the golden hair and the
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: white eyes of Cleo richly turned to child ears with
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: a smile that yet had in it a hint of tears.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: He that had been new bald humeistone continued, the others,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: they're quiet now the guards have gone to follow him.
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: The others saw to that. He gestured toward the silent
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: figure on the floor. His plan was worthy of his master,
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: the devil, because it was diabolically simple. Rooke was his
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: procurer and his clearing house. You see. Rooke found the
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: victims and cash the checks that Elphinston wrung from them.
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: And then when they cleaned up, or when they deemed
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: the time was ripe, the victims disappeared. Rooke secretary. They
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: kidnapped for revenge Miss Ellerton because she knew much. They
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: suspected that she was in the secret service, and so
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: these others disappeared. He laughed, the laugh of a dead
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: man risen from the tomb. They disappeared, yes, but they remained,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: as you see myself a living ghost. But how asked
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: the young anister, in the sudden quiet, the realization of
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: what is father, and Meriad escaped, burning like a quick
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: fire in his wains. The toneless voice went on. Elphinston
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: was a surgeon, a master. You've heard of dermatology, Well,
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: it's been done in India, I believe, practiced there to
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: an extent unknown Here, of course, an anesthetic and then
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: an operation. New faces were old forged faces. The thing
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: was diabolically simple, and so when they the victims, saw
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: themselves in a mirror, sometimes they went mad. For who
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: could prove it? Who would be believed? His voice rose, died,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: gathered strength as the candle flames at the last with
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: a brief spark of life. It's done, she muttered, He's gone,
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: but his work lives after him, even as he called
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: himself the Jailer of Souls. The end of chapter thirteen.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: The End of The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie