Mask of Death Page 3

  _3. The Stopped Watch_

  Down at the lobby door, a long closed car slid to a stop. From itstepped two people. One was a tall, broad-shouldered man with ahigh-bridged nose, long, strong jaw, and pale gray eyes under heavyblack eyebrows. The other was a girl, equally tall for her sex,beautifully formed, with reddish brown hair and dark blue eyes.

  The two walked to the registration desk in the lobby.

  "Ascott Keane," the man signed. "And secretary, Beatrice Dale."

  "Your suite is ready for you, Mr. Keane," the clerk said obsequiously."But we had no word of your secretary's coming. Shall we----"

  "A suite for her on the same floor if possible," Keane said crisply. "IsMr. Gest in the hotel?"

  "Yes, sir. He is in the tower office."

  "Have the boy take my things up. I'll go to the office first. Send wordup there what suite you've given Miss Dale."

  Keane nodded to Beatrice, and walked to the elevators.

  "Secretary!" snorted the key clerk to the head bellhop. "What's he wanta secretary for? He's never done any work in his life. Inherited umpteenmillion bucks, and plays around all the time. Wish I was Ascott Keane."

  The head bellhop nodded. "Pretty soft for him, all right. Hardest job hehas is to clip coupons...."

  Which would have made Keane smile a little if he could have heard, forthe clerk and the bellhop shared the opinion of him held by the rest ofthe world; an opinion he carefully fostered. Few knew of his realinterest in life, which was that of criminal detection.

  He tensed as he swung into the anteroom of the office suite. Gest, oneof the rare persons who knew of his unique detective work, had babbledsomething of a Doctor Satan when he phoned long distance. Doctor Satan!The mention of that name was enough to bring Keane instantly fromwherever he was, with his powers pitched to their highest and keenestpoint in an effort to crush at last the unknown individual who lived foroutlawed thrills.

  As soon as he opened the door, it was apparent that something was wrong.There was no one sitting at the information desk, and from closed doorsbeyond came the hum of excited voices.

  Keane went to the door where the hum sounded loudest and opened that.

  He stared in at three men bending over a fourth who lay on the floor,stark and motionless--obviously dead! Keane strode to them.

  "Who are you, sir?" grated Kroner. "What the devil----"

  "Keane!" breathed Gest. "Thank God you're here! There has just been amurder. I'm sure it's murder--though how it was done, and who did it,are utterly beyond me."

  "This is your Ascott Keane?" said Kroner, in a slightly different tone.His eyes gained a little respect as they rested on Keane's light gray,icily calm eyes.

  "Yes. Keane--Kroner, vice president. And this is Chichester, treasurerand secretary."

  Keane nodded, and stared at the dead man.

  "And this?"

  "Wilson, assistant manager. He came in a minute or two ago, saying hehad something of the utmost importance to tell us about the players inthe roulette room...."

  Keane nodded. He had been told of that just before he took a plane forBlue Bay. Gest swallowed painfully and went on:

  "Wilson had just started to explain. He said something about theroulette wheel, and then fell dead. Literally. He fell forward on hisface as though he had been shot. But he wasn't. There isn't a mark onhis body. And he couldn't have been poisoned before he came in here. Nopoison could act so exactly, striking at the precise second to keep himfrom disclosing his find."

  "Doctor's report?" said Keane.

  "Grays, house physician, is on his way up now. We sent the informationgirl to get him. Didn't want to telephone. You know how these thingsspread. We didn't want the switchboard girls to hear of this just yet."

  Keane's look of acknowledgment was grim.

  "The publicity. Of course. We'll have to move fast to save Blue Bay."

  "If you can save it, now," muttered Chichester.

  * * * * *

  The door opened, and Doctor Grays stepped in, with consternation in hisbrown eyes as he saw the man on the floor.

  They left him to examine the body, and the three officials told Keaneall the details they knew of the strange tragedy that had overtakenWeems and, two and a half hours later, the nine in the roulette room.

  They returned to the conference room. Grays faced them.

  "Wilson died of a heart attack," he said. "The symptoms areunmistakable. His death seems normal...."

  "Normal--but beautifully timed," murmured Keane.

  "Right," nodded the doctor. "We'll want an autopsy at once. The policeare on their way here. They're indirectly in our employ, as are all inBlue Bay; but they won't be able to keep this out of the papers for verylong!"

  "Where are Weems and the rest?"

  "In my suite."

  "I'd like to see them, please."

  In Doctor Grays' suite, Keane stared with eyes that for once had lostsome of their calm, at the weird figures secluded in the bedroom. Thisroom was kept locked against the possibility of a chambermaid or otherhotel employee coming in by mistake. An unwarned person might well havegone at least temporarily insane at the sudden sight of the ten in thatbedroom.

  In a chair near the door sat Weems. He was bent forward a little asthough leaning over a table. He stared unwinkingly at space. In his handwas still a champagne glass, raised near his lips.

  Standing around the room were the nine others, each in the position heor she had been in when rigidity overtook them in the roulette room.They stared wide-eyed ahead of them, motionless, expressionless. It waslike walking into a wax-works museum, save that these statuesque figureswere of flesh and blood, not wax.

  "They're all dead as far as medical tests show," Grays said. There wasawe and terror in his voice. "Yet--they're not dead! A child could tellthat at a glance. I don't know what's wrong."

  "Why don't you put them to bed?" said Keane.

  "We can't. Each of the ten seems to be in some kind of spell that makesit impossible for his body to take any but that one position. We've laidthem down--and in a moment they're up again and in the former position,moving like sleep-walkers, like dead things! Look."

  He gently pulled Weems' arm down.

  Slowly, it raised again till the champagne glass was near his lips.Meanwhile the man's eyes did not even blink. He was as oblivious of thetouch as if really dead.

  "Horrible!" quavered Chichester. "Maybe it's some new kind of disease."

  "I think not," said Keane, voice soft but bleak. He looked at a nighttable, heaped with jewelry, handkerchiefs, wallets, small change. "Thatcollection?"

  "The personal effects of these people," said Gest, wiping sweat from hispale face.

  Keane went to the pile, and sorted it over. He was struck at once by acurious lack. He couldn't place it for an instant; then he did.

  "Their watches!" he said. "Where are they?"

  "Watches?" said Gest. "I don't know. Hadn't thought of it."

  "There are ten people here," said Keane. "And only one watch! Normallyat least eight of them would have had them, including the women withtheir jeweled trinkets. But there's only one.... Do you remember whoowned this, and where he wore it?"

  He picked up the watch, a man's with no chain.

  "That's Weems' watch. He had it in his trousers pocket."

  "Odd place for it," said Keane. "I see it has stopped."

  He wound the watch. But the little second hand did not move, and hecould only turn the winding-stem a little, proving that it had not rundown.

  The hands said eleven thirty-one.

  "That was the time Weems was--paralyzed?" said Keane.

  Gest nodded. "Funny. His watch stopped just when he did!"

  "Very funny," said Keane expressionlessly. "Send this to a jeweler rightaway and have him find out what's wrong with it. Now, you say yourassistant manager was struck dead just as he said something about theroulette wheel?"

  "Yes," said Gest. "It was as though t
his Doctor Satan were right therewith us and killed him with a soundless bullet just before he couldtalk."

  Keane's eyes glittered.

  "I'd like to look over the roulette room."

  "The police are here," said Grays, turning from his phone.

  Keane stared at Gest. "Keep them out of the roulette room for a fewminutes."

  He strode out to the elevators....

  * * * * *

  His first concern, after locking himself into the room where nine peoplehad been stricken with something which, if it persisted, was worse thanany death, was the thing the assistant manager had mentioned beforedeath hit him. The roulette wheel.

  He bent over this, with a frown of concentration on his face. And hisquick eyes caught at once a thing another person might have overlookedfor quite a while.

  The wheel was dish-shaped, as all roulette wheels are. In its roundedbottom were numbered slots, where the little ivory ball was to end itsjourney and proclaim gambler's luck.

  But the little ball was not in one of the bottom slots!

  The tiny ivory sphere was half up the rounded side of the wheel, like apea clinging alone high up on the slant of a dish!

  An exclamation came from Keane's lips. He stared at the ball. What inheaven's name kept it from rolling down the steep slant and into therounded bottom? Why would a sphere stay on a slant? It was as if a bowlof water had been tilted--and the water's surface had taken and retainedthe tilt of the vessel it was in instead of remaining level!

  He lifted the ball from the sloping side of the wheel. It came awayfreely, but with an almost intangible resistance, as if an unseen rubberband held it. When he released it, it went back to the slope. He rolledit down to the bottom of the wheel. Released, it rolled back up to itsformer position, like water running up-hill.

  Keane felt a chill touch him. The laws of physics broken! A ballclinging to a slant instead of rolling down it! What dark secret ofnature had Doctor Satan mastered now?

  But the query was not entirely unanswered in his mind. Already he wasgetting a vague hint of it. And a little later the hint was broadened.

  The phone rang. He answered it.

  "Mr. Keane? This is Doctor Grays. The autopsy on Wilson has been begun,and already a queer thing has been disclosed. It's about his heart."

  "Yes," said Keane, gripping the phone.

  "His heart is ruptured in a hundred places--as though a little bomb hadexploded in it! Don't ask me why, because I can't even give a theory.It's unique in medical history."

  "I won't ask you why," Keane said slowly. "I think--in a littlewhile--I'll tell you why."

  He hung up and strode toward the door. But at the roulette table hepaused and stared at the wheel with his gray eyes icily blazing.

  _It seemed to him the wheel had moved a little!_

  He had unconsciously lined up the weirdly clinging ball with the knob onthe outer door, as he examined it awhile ago. Now, as he stood in thesame place, the ball was not quite in that line. As if the wheel hadrotated a fraction of an inch!

  "Yes, I think that's it," he whispered, with his face a little palerthan usual.

  And a little later the words changed in his brain to: "I _know_ that'sit. A fiend's genius.... This is the most dangerous thing Doctor Satanhas yet mastered!"

  He was talking on the phone to the jeweler to whom Weems' watch had beensent.

  "What did you do to that watch?" the jeweler was saying irritably.

  "Why?" parried Keane.

  "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. And yet it simplywon't go. And I can't make it go."

  "There's nothing wrong with it at all?"

  "As far as I can find out--no."

  * * * * *

  Keane hung up. He had been studying for the dozenth time the demand noteDoctor Satan had written the officials:

  "Gentlemen of the Blue Bay Development: This is to request that you pay me the sum of one million, eight hundred and two thousand, five hundred and forty dollars and forty-eight cents at a time and place to be specified later. As a sample of what will happen if you disregard this note, I shall strike at one of your guests, Mathew Weems, within a few minutes after you read this. I guarantee that disaster and horror shall be the chief, though uninvited, guests at your opening unless you comply with my request. Mathew Weems shall be only the first if you do not signify by one a. m. whether or not you will meet my demand. DOCTOR SATAN."

  Keane gave the note back to Blue Bay's police chief, who fumbleduncertainly with it for a moment and then stuck it in his pocket.Normally a competent man, he was completely out of his depth here.

  One man with a heart that seemed to have been exploded internally; tenpeople who were dead, yet lived, and who stood or sat like frozenstatues....

  He looked pleadingly at Ascott Keane, whom he had never heard of but whowore authority and competence like a mantle. But Keane said nothing tohim.

  "An odd extortion amount," he said to Gest. "One million, eight hundredand two thousand, five hundred and forty dollars and forty-eight cents!Why not an even figure?"

  He was talking more to himself than to the president of Blue Bay. ButGest answered readily.

  "That happens to be the precise sum of the cash reserve of Blue BayDevelopment."

  Keane glanced at him sharply. "Is your financial statement made public?"

  Gest shook his head. "It's strictly confidential. Only the bank, andourselves, know that cash reserve figure. I can't imagine how this crookwho signs himself Doctor Satan found it out."