The Empty Coffins (9 page)

The rain had ceased now and a freshening wind was driving ragged clouds over the nearly-full moon. Meadows glanced up at it briefly.

“Make driving a bit easier,” he said. “Hop in.”

Peter did so and relaxed into silent preoccup­ation in the bucket seat. He had no further words he could find until he was alighting outside the front door of his home.

“Try not to worry too much, Peter,” Meadows said earnestly. “I'm sure I'm right in the way I'm handling this—”

Peter did not answer. Meadows saw him look aside and give a sudden start. The next thing Meadows realized was that the dark, inscrutable face of Rawnee Singh was looking at him through the open car window, the moonlight shining on his oblique eyes.

“I think you had better get out of your car, Doctor,” he said, a gun glinting in his hand.

Peter stepped back, keeping his hands raised. Singh motioned deliberately.

“Quickly, Doctor! In case you are wondering how I got here, I managed to open the boot of your car and hide inside. Fortunately for me you did not drive very rapidly. I knew you must eventually come out to your car so—”

Singh stopped, the noise of Meadows' automatic briefly splitting the quietness of the night. Peter saw the flash of the gun, then Singh rocked on his feet. His own weapon fell out of his hand and he collapsed motionless at the side of the front wheel.

Meadows clambered out and examined the mystic quickly. Then he straightened up.

“Dead,” he announced briefly, his face hard in the moon­light. “I'm sorry if you don't like the swift ret­ribution, Peter, but it had to be done.”

Peter did not say anything. He was looking at the red stain marking Singh's oriental costume above the heart. His mackintosh was thrown open around him, looking oddly like wings. After a moment or two Peter came forward and took hold of the mystic's wrist. There was no pulse beat.

“Saved me the job of trying to find him,” Meadows commented. “I'll take him back to my surgery and the police can see him when they turn up in the morning. You might give me a hand to get him into the car.”

Peter did so, but not with any enthusiasm. At last the slumped body of the mystic, his mackintosh drawn roughly around him, was in the bucket-seat next to Meadows as he returned to the wheel.

“Try and get some rest,” he said earnestly. “You need it after that attack tonight. I'll be around in the morning in readiness for an invest­igation of the old chapel.”

With that, as Peter nodded slowly, Meadows wound up the oar window, reversed, and drove away towards the gates. Peter stood thinking, and frowning, then with a sigh he pulled out his key ring and let himself into the house. All was silent. His housekeeper had presumably retired long ago.

He thought briefly of making himself a drink and a sandwich, then dismissed it from his mind. He was in no mood for eating. In fact his mind was concentrated solely upon two things—Elsie, and the murder of Rawnee Singh. He was still convinced it would have been better to question him first. Of course, he
had
had his gun ready and—

Peter shook his head confusedly to himself, went up the dark staircase, and presently gained his bedroom. For a little while he debated whether or not he should undress, get into bed and try and sleep properly—then, knowing only too well that he would never succeed, he lighted a cigarette and settled down in the armchair by the window.

Almost immediately he found his mind going back over the baffling things that had happened to him. He sat gazing into the still moonlight, seeing the entreating face of Elsie in the midst of those few imploring words she had spoken; then he saw Rawnee Singh, lips tight, revolver in hand. And across the whole crazy picture drifted a vision of Elsie's empty coffin. In the dead silence Peter could hear again the queer, terrifying thud his shovel had made when it had struck the lid of her coffin.

He stirred impatiently and crushed out his cig­arette in the ashtray beside him. Again he heard a thud and for the moment thought it was his imag­ination; then he gave a start as he realized there really
had
been a sound, and apparently it had come from somewhere outside. Instantly all his senses were alert. He hurried to the window, flung back the half drawn drapes to their fullest extent, and peered into the night. There did not appear to be anything except the tranquillity of the countryside, an impalpable mist lying over it in the moonlight.

He was on the verge of throwing the window open wide and looking outside; then changed his mind. If there
was
something there, determined to get at him, the most sensible course was for him to wait and see what happened. It would give him the opportunity to defend himself if that were necessary. So he moved back from the window and took up a position in the deep shadow by the ward­robe. Never had he regretted more that he had no gun.

After what seemed an interminable time he caught his first glimpse of something. It was fluffy and silvery in the moonlight, just above the edge of the windowsill. Peter watched it in fascination, trying to decide if it were some kind of animal—then as it came higher and changed position he realized it was blonde hair flowing free, and that Elsie's face was outside the win­dow, her hands clawing gently at the glass as though she were in a prison from which she could not escape.

Instantly Peter hurtled from his hiding place and opened the window. He caught at her cold, trembling body and pulled her by main strength into the room. She swayed dizzily, her eyes closed. Peter stared in horror for a moment at the red smears glistening about her lips and on her even teeth; then he whirled her up bodily and laid her on the bed.

She began to move uneasily, like one in troub­led slumber. Her slender arms seemed to be trying to grasp round something; her legs moved gently up and down as though, in her dreams, she fancied she were running.

“Elsie,” Peter whispered, close beside her ear. “Elsie, it's I—Peter. Say something to me—Elsie, beloved!”

She moaned a little and tossed her head from side to side. Peter switched on the table lamp and studied her more intently. Her shroud was dry now, he noticed, which seemed to suggest she had made her journey since the rain had ceased. But the bottom of it, and her naked feet, were splashed with still wet mud.

Peter frowned a little to himself. If she had come all the way from the cemetery across fields, and maybe part of the lane, her feet would have been cut to ribbons—yet they were not. Dirty, yes, but uninjured.

“Elsie!” he insisted, gripping her icy cold flesh where it protruded from the shoulders of her sleeveless shroud. “For God's sake wake up!”

His insistence seemed to have some effect for she stirred and threw up her arms, her eyes still closed. Before Peter quite grasped what had happ­ened her hands had locked at the back of his neck and he was being dragged down towards her face.

He made no immediate resistance, quite confid­ent that he could break free if necessary. But he found that he was coming nearer those defiled lips with every second. He strained backwards, but to his amazement found the girl's apparently limp arms had supernormal strength. Though he resisted, he was powerless to prevent his lips meeting hers. It was the one thing he wished—had Elsie been his wife; but this was a ghoulish nightmare, this sudd­en lascivious craving on her part for his kisses. Time and again, even though he struggled, his lips were crushed on hers and from them he could detect the deadening, crippling odour of the grave itself. She was foul, unclean—something dead yet still alive.

Savagely he made to tear free but she still clung, her hands locking into his hair so that he could hardly move his head with her dead weight hanging on to it. He seized her shoulder and tried to push her away: instead she rose with him, her eyes closed, a look of speechless suffering depicted upon her features as though, deep within her brain, some desperate struggle were taking place.

Then, suddenly, all her lassitude vanished. She tugged violently and Peter found himself flung on his back on the bed. Almost immediately her slend­er body was on top of him, her legs locked round his, her teeth striving to reach his throat. If ever he had needed proof of a vampire he had it now.

He flung up his hands and pressed hard against her shoulders, keeping her face away. She strained with all her power so that he saw the veins start to swell in her neck. Her eyes opened abruptly and stared at him. They were blue, as they had always been, but there was a blank, dead stare in them that made his stomach turn over.

Abruptly she got the mastery. As he sank back Peter realized it was not so much that she was superhumanly strong as that he was weak—probably from the poison in his system. It was a condition of which Dr. Meadows had warned him.

“Elsie!” he implored frantically, as her expres­sionless face with the bared teeth came down to him again. “Elsie, it is Peter! For God's sake—!” he shrieked, as he felt her strong teeth bite into his neck.

What happened then he was not quite sure, but there came a sudden thunderous pounding on the bedroom door.

“Mr. Malden, is anything wrong?” called the voice of his housekeeper. “Mr. Malden! Did you cry out just now—?”

The effect of the hammering and voice on Elsie was extraordinary. Her teeth grip on Peter's neck relaxed and she sprawled in a dead weight upon him, hardly breathing. Peter managed to get words out.

“I—I was dreaming, Mrs. Dawlish.... Sorry to alarm you.”

“Oh, then that's all right. I expect you will have many bad nights with so much worry on your mind.”

He heard her feet go back along the landing and a door closed distantly. Perspiring heavily, aware of a warm trickle of blood down his throat, Peter forced Elsie's weight from him and reeled off the bed. Lurching to the dressing table he peered at himself in the mirror. He had received nothing worse than a skin bite, dangerously near the jug­ular had Elsie carried out her apparent intention. Whipping out a handkerchief he dabbed at the wound then turned back to the bed where Elsie lay limp end hardly breathing, moisture from her efforts gleaming across her forehead.

A thought was beating through Peter's mind. Her attack had ceased the instant Mrs. Dawlish had broken into the proceedings. That seemed to suggest that she had not been acting of her own volition; that some kind of mental link had snapp­ed at the interruption. But if Rawnee Singh were the controlling medium, and he had been shot dead—? Peter pressed finger and thumb into his eyes in weariness; then he remembered that Singh had men who probably worked for him.

The puzzle was altogether too profound for immediate solution. The uppermost thought in his mind was at this moment Elsie was with him—alive, after a fashion. It was, to him, the only thing in the world that really mattered. To keep her safe was the thing and, regardless of the danger, try and trace the spot where it seemed the villainy was centered—in the vicinity of the old chapel.

His mind made up, Peter raced from the bedroom, and down the stairs to the telephone. Whipping it up he rang Dr. Meadows.

There was a long pause and then Meadows answer­ed, his voice sounding as though he had only just awakened from sleep.

“Yes? Who is it? Dr. Meadows here.”

“It's Peter, Doc. Look, in the face of what's just happened I'm not waiting for a party to go and search the chapel ruins; I'm going tonight. I want your help—and your gun. Elsie has tried to attack me, and from the way she failed I think hypnotism is the explanation of her behaviour.”

“Hypnotism? Elsie?” Meadows repeated hazily. “What's happened exactly?”

Peter gave the details, and by the time he had finished Meadows seemed to have become thoroughly awake. His voice sounded crisp and matter-of-fact again.

“I'll pick up two men from the village on my way over, and they can keep an eye on Elsie,” he said. “Then we'll head for the cemetery. As you say, maybe we'd better act. I can't understand Elsie operating under hypnotism when Singh is lying dead in my surgery. However, we'll work that one out later. Better let your housekeeper have the facts then she'll know what's going on. I'll come right away.”

“Okay.” Peter put the telephone back on its cradle and then returned upstairs to the bedroom. To his relief Elsie was lying exactly as he had left her. He had feared during every minute he had been absent from her that she might disappear again.

For a moment he contemplated her and then went to the window and looked outside. In the moon­light he beheld the most material of things—a ladder propped up against the side of the house, which Elsie had evidently used. He recalled now the bump it had made when she must have pushed it into place.

Which raised another problem. How had she had the strength to heave the ladder into position? He knew from his own experiences with it that it was anything but a featherweight. Baffling points, certainly, yet in some odd way they cleared his brain. It made him happier to think that there could be perfectly normal happenings in the midst of the other-world atmosphere in which he seemed to have existed for so long.

He turned back to the girl at last and made her more comfortable on the bed; then he hurried to the bathroom and returned with a basin of warm water and a sponge. He sat bathing her face gently and watching redness float from the sponge into the water from where he had wiped her lips. Care­fully he studied the colour and then realized what it was...cochineal dye. A lot of the pallor in her complexion seemed to disappear too under the action of the wet sponge.

He had come to the end of his task and was dry­ing her face with the towel when she suddenly stirred, evidently revived by the action of the water.

“Peter...,” she whispered, looking at him fixed­ly; and he felt his heart race with joy as he not­iced that the blank stare had gone. Instead she was wondering, looking inexpressibly tired, but at least human.

“Elsie! You recognize me!” Peter put aside the bowl, towel and sponge and gripped her shoulders gently.