A great pianist must have a great pair of hands. His own or someone else's!
BY HAROLD LAWLOR
THE night of the first day that I worked for him I knew that Ondia Hurok was terrified either of the teakwood casket or its contents. I didn't know why—then. There were a number of things I didn't know that first night, because I hadn't as yet had an opportunity to talk with Leonie.
The thing really began for me with the rapping on my bedroom door at two o'clock in the morning. The knocking wasn't loud, but there was an urgent insistency about it that finally penetrated the uneasy fitful slumber into which I had fallen.
I awoke, but lay there a moment without moving, thinking—I'd heard the sound in a dream. The freak March thunderstorm that had blown up at midnight had died by now. But the wind still howled and whistled about the penthouse which Ondia Hurok had leased atop the St. James, so convenient to Aeolian Hall just next door on the street level of the same skyscraper.
The rappings came again, rousing me completely.
I stuck my long legs out of bed, shrugged into a robe, and went to the bedroom door, throwing it open to reveal my new employer, Ondia Hurok, standing just outside in the darkened hall.
And Hurok held the teakwood casket in his hands.
That was the first time I ever saw it uncovered. A lidded, ornately carved box it was, about a foot and a half long by six inches high and wide—in size, not unlike the sort of box you rent in a safety deposit vault.
But for the moment I paid no attention to the casket. And of the horror it contained I hadn't the faintest conception, of course. Good God, how could I have? In this, the fifth decade of the twentieth century?
No. It was the ghastly appearance of the man himself that made me stare. He was in heavy white silk pajamas, without a robe—or that is, what was left of heavy white silk pajamas. They'd been literally clawed almost entirely from his body. I say clawed advisedly, because his naked brown chest, his hard flat stomach and tanned thighs, were blood-streaked and welted—as if from the claws of a venomously angry black leopard.
He was a handsome specimen as he stood before me, with a superb physique like a V set on an I. Handsomer by far, certainly, than I. And I wondered again, wincing inwardly, if that was why Leonie had jilted me unceremoniously to marry him so suddenly a month before in Miami.
All this fleetingly while I recovered from my initial amazement. Behind him the apartment was darkened and silent. Of Leonie herself there was no sign.
I found my voice. "What in God's name has happened to you?"
It is difficult, admittedly, to appear debonair while one is nearly naked, but Ondia Hurok managed the feat somehow. But he couldn't hide the sheer stark fear in his black onyx eyes. Nor did he answer me directly.
He said suavely, "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Welch. Or may I call you Giles? And may I ask one very small favor of you?"
He knew damned well he could do both. He'd hired me, hadn't he? Though in what capacity I was yet to learn. Leonie's hysterical letter of a week before had told me little or nothing. And genius itself seldom made explanations, I found. At least, I supposed he was a genius. Known in Europe as a concert pianist, his fame here had been somewhat obscured by the war, and America, for the most part, had yet to hear of him.
But I said now, "Of course. Anything. But first let me help you. You've been terribly clawed."
"A few scratches," he said. "They don't matter."
He was lying, and I knew it, despite his casual manner. If the scratches didn't matter, something did. For fear again had licked like a hot flame back of his slanted eyes.
HE CAME into my room, and half-closed the door behind him. He held the black teakwood casket negligently under his left arm, and held out his right hand to me. Resting on the palm of it was a thick golden key, which I immediately assumed fitted the teakwood casket, for the box had an old-fashioned keyhole, shaped like a Moorish doorway, edged in the same gold.
"Keep this key for me until morning, will you, Giles? In a safe place, of course. I'll ask for it then."
"Certainly," I agreed. "But I wish you'd let me wash those wounds and apply antiseptic. They look pretty deep to me. I can't understand what—"
He froze instantly. "Keep your conjectures to yourself, if you please!"
I stifled a sharp reply. An even temper isn't one of my assets, but I kept my mouth shut—for Leonie's sake, I told myself.
It was almost as if Hurok read her name in my mind. "Oh," he added, at the door, "and not a word of this to Madame Horuk, if you'll be so good. While here, we're occupying separate apartments, and evidently she hasn't heard the—disturbance. I prefer that she should remain in ignorance."
I bowed coldly in assent.
He was gone then, as abruptly as he'd come, leaving me to stare at the white panels on the door he'd closed so softly behind him.
I turned on the bedside lamp and switched off the ceiling light. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed, and stared mystified at the key in my hand. Why in the name of all that was holy had he left the key with me instead of the casket? When it was so obviously the casket that he feared? I'd seen it at once. Oh, he'd held the coffer carelessly enough under his arm, but all the while he'd talked to me he hadn't been able to help stealing furtive, apprehensive glances at it. It was as if the thing exerted some strange fascination over him, as if he'd been both attracted and repelled at the same time.
I called up a mental picture of the casket as I'd just seen it. A small dull black box, elaborately carved, with a golden Moorish keyhole and fancifully wrought hinges also of gold. It had a foreign look, but surely there was nothing about it intrinsically to cause a man to eye it with such obvious terror, tinged with triumph?
Unless there was something in the casket.
But—what? It had presented no suggestion of great weight as Ondia Hurok had held it so lightly under his arm. No sound had emanated from it, though once I'd imagined I'd heard a faint scratching, so faint that I couldn't be sure.
I shook my head, and shrugged. Placing the thick golden key in the drawer of my night table, I switched off the light and again stretched myself out on the bed.
But not to sleep. To listen instead to the wind sobbing mournfully about the eyrie Hurok had rented atop the St. James. And to think longingly of Leonie. And to wonder again and again what creature on earth or in hell—what manner of thing—had clawed so ferociously the body of Ondia Hurok.
I HAD stared unbelievingly at the curt note I'd received the month before from Leonie in Florida.
"Giles: (it had read)
I married Ondia Hurok, the pianist, yesterday. I'm sorry.
Leonie."
We had planned to be married in June. The damned note left me dazed. I don't think it really sank in until took it to Glocky—Papa Glockstein, under whom both Leonie and I had been studying piano. I took all my troubles to Glocky. He was almost the only father I could ever remember.
His glasses slid farther and farther down on his rhombic nose as he read it. "Du lieber Gott!" he muttered at last in stupefaction. "Ondia Hurok! But the liddle Leonie—she was in loff with you, Giles, boy!"
"It says here," I said. I guess the sound I made was meant to be a careless laugh, but it was a lousy failure. "Apparently women can switch their affections with all the ease and celerity of a fireman changing his pants."
Glocky laid a hand on my shoulder sadly. "You are bitter, isn't it? You are young, boy, and that is the time when the heart breaks easily. But—another Spring, another pretty face, and the so-broken heart is whole again, not so? Glocky knows."
Ah, well. I wouldn't argue with him. Glocky was so old. If he'd ever known what it was like to be in love, he'd forgotten long ago. But me, I'd love Leonie till I died. I couldn't help myself.
But I only said, "You spoke Ondia Hurok's name as if you'd known him."
"Long ago, in Wien, when he was young." He thought a moment and said a strange thing then. "I hope, for the sake of the liddle Leonie, that he has changed."
He wouldn't let me question him further.
"When the liddle Leonie returns, Papa Glockstein will find out why she married him."
"She's coming back?" I hadn't expected that.
Glocky looked surprised. "Why, Giles, haven't you heard? Hurok is to play with the symphony at Aeolian next month. So you see, cheer up, Leonie will be back."
I didn't know what good that was going to do me—when she was another man's wife. I told myself bitterly that I never wanted to see or hear from her again. And I honestly thought that I wouldn't.
BUT just a week before Hurok's scheduled appearance with the symphony orchestra there came that second hysterical letter from Leonie. That letter that made me wonder what was wrong, and what manner of man Leonie had married so hastily.
"I know I've forfeited the right to ask anything of you, ever again. But Giles, don't refuse me. I'm so afraid! And of what—I do not know.
"Listen! Hurok wants to hire a man—I think I know why—I mean, I'm afraid I know why. But I'm pretending to know nothing. A secretary, he says. At my suggestion Hurok is writing to Glocky to recommend someone. Giles, please! Go to Glocky, and apply for the job. Please!
"If you get it, we must meet as strangers. There's something wrong with Hurok."
The whole letter sounded unlike her. Leonie had never been a timid sort of person, never one to jump at shadows. But she was certainly afraid of something, or someone.
Naturally I thought it was Hurok.
The soreness had worn away a little from the first blow she'd dealt me, and it never occurred to me to ignore her request now. I loved her too deeply, though I was determined never to let her see it. But I lost no time in getting in touch with Glocky, and applying for the job.
I shoved him Leonie's letter, and his furry gray eyebrows climbed toward his scalp. "Ah, so. Perhaps Hurok has not changed, then, so very much."
I said impatiently, "Well, what's wrong with the man?"
"He was such a cruel liddle boy, Giles. Ach, Gott, what is the word? Sadistic, yes. Long ago I warned him he would bring bad trouble on himself one day. Perhaps he has at last."
But when I met them at the train, everything seemed all right on the surface. I introduced myself to Hurok, who was carrying what I now believe was the teakwood casket, wrapped in a canvas cover. He eyed me sharply, then presented Leonie, who was looking Slavic and beautiful in Persian lamb and a shako, her long black bob like a waterfall over her collarless coat.
Following her instructions, I bowed politely. "Madame Hurok, how do you do?"
"Mr. Welch," she murmured.
But when Hurok had turned to attend to the luggage, she moved a little closer. "Oh, Giles," she said softly. "You cared enough to—"
I was determined to be distant, too proud to let her think I still cared. "I can't understand all this mystery," I said. "Your husband only wants a secretary."
She looked hurt at my coldness. "Secretary?" You couldn't call it amusement, that brief smile that twisted her lips. "Bodyguard, you mean."
That startled me. "Who's threatening him?"
"I—don't know." But she knew something. There was just the shadow of fear for a minute on her face. Then she said swiftly, "I'll get in touch with you as soon as I can, and we'll talk."
And it was that night, while the wind howled and mourned, that Hurok brought me the golden key to the teakwood casket.
And the fear was in his face, too, though tinged with a sort of morbid triumph.
CHAPTER II
AFTER I'd showered and dressed in the morning, I started out to find Ondia Hurok. It was high time I was learning just what my duties were to be.
I left the room, but before I could pull the door shut behind me, the telephone rang. I re-entered, leaving the door hanging open.
"Hello," I said, picking up the receiver.
There was the sharp intake of breath at the other end. "At the old meeting place. At noon. Hurok will practice till two."
The click of the receiver at the other end of the line, then. But despite the soft, breathless, hurriedness of the anonymous voice, I'd recognized it as she'd know I would. Leonie's.
I was still standing there, the receiver in my hand, when there was a short cough behind me. I turned. Ondia Hurok was standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on me unblinkingly.
"That isn't an outside wire," he said, nodding toward the telephone. There was accusation, suspicion, in his voice.
"Oh." No one else was in the apartment but Leonie. I thought fast. "Stupid of me. I was trying to get the desk to—to send up cigarettes."
"Indeed?" Hurok's eyes shifted to the chest of drawers next to the bathroom door. I followed his glance. The man missed nothing.
There was a carton of cigarettes on top of the chest.
Whatever he thought of my lie, he said nothing further. He just let his silence hang in the air ominously.
"I'm ready for work," I said, changing the subject clumsily enough. "I suppose there will be fan mail to answer, as well as other correspondence? Or—just what are my duties to be?"
He waved a hand carelessly. "There's no hurry. In a few days—" He let his voice trail off vaguely.
I began to wonder if perhaps Leonie hadn't been right, after all, in saying it wasn't a secretary that her husband wanted.
Hurok went on. "I've come for the key I gave you last night.”
"How are you feeling this morn—"
"The key, please," he said, effectively stopping my question. He must have been in pain still from that clawing, but he gave no sign of it.
I shrugged and turned to the night table, feeling his eves boring into my back as I did so. Retrieving the key, I handed it to him. And I think I would have risked his anger and questioned him about the teakwood box, then, only he said something else that drove every other consideration from my mind temporarily.
"You knew Madame Hurok before?" he asked sharply. "This was her home town, I know."
So. He was suspicious already. And I hadn't improved matters with my clumsy lie about the cigarettes.
But I kept my face blank. "No. We'd never met before. After all, the city is large."
And I looked him right in the eye.
He left then. But whether he believed me or not, I couldn't tell. Mentally I pictured him going through the hall, returning to his room. To open the teakwood casket? To find therein—what?
I didn't know. And Leonie's story was to enlighten me only a very little, and to puzzle me even more.
“THE old meeting place."
I knew where she meant. The balcony tearoom of a downtown department store, cheap and quiet. It seemed strange to see her sitting there on the red leather bench, waiting for me at noon. I'd met her there so many times before. And though I told myself I was a fool, still my heart leaped just as gladly at sight of her as it ever had in the past.
I hoped I didn't show it.
There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask her, but she said, "Please, Giles. After lunch."
So it wasn't until we were having coffee that she said, "It was good of you to come. And to take the job, as I asked. I treated you so shabbily."
Some devil made me say it. "Well, well. This is news."
Her lashes fell. "I deserved that, I know," she said, low. She looked at me then. "But—what's done is done." She sighed. "I've made a terrible mistake."
There were tears in her eyes. I could no longer pretend indifference. "Leonie, why did you marry him?"
"I—I don't know. Honestly, I don't. I think I must have been hypnotized. Hurok was at Aunt Flo's when I reached there. She'd picked him up somewhere —you know how hipped on music she is, even though she knows nothing about it, really—and she'd installed him in the house as a guest, with a Mason and Hamlin for him to practice on. She'd even sound-proofed the room she'd given him, at his request.
"He didn't come down to dinner that first night, and I didn't meet him at all. But after dinner I was out on the terrace alone. And I could hear him playing through the open window. And, Giles, he was playing—the piano part of Czarnowitz's Seventh Piano Concerto!"
She knew I'd be startled, and I was. "On a record, you mean?"
"No, no! He was playing it himself."
I looked at her disbelievingly. "You know that's impossible. Nobody could play the Seventh but Czarnowitz himself. It's common knowledge."
Leonie nodded. But she persisted in her statement. "He was playing it superbly."
"It's impossible," I said again. This made me forget all about the teakwood casket. I was no maestro, but I knew something about music. "Czarnowitz had a phenomenal handspan. Abnormal, really. Nobody on God's earth ever had a pair of hands like his. Those chords of the Seventh, Leonie! They're impossible to anybody else. When Czarnowitz died last rear, remember they said the Seventh would never be played again? Sylvia Satterlee mourned about it three Sundays in a row in the Globe."
"I know all that," Leonie said impatiently. "That's why Hurok's playing it dumbfounded me. I just stood there on the terrace, but I'd been transported to another world, really. Presently Hurok came out, and my shadowy figure must have startled him. I told him I was Mrs. Masterson's niece, and he lit his cigarette lighter and held it up so he could see my face.
"I suppose there must have been something very near adoration in my eyes. I whispered, 'You were playing it. The Seventh. How?'
" ‘Ah, you know it can't be played by anyone else,' he said. The lighter was still flaming and I could see his face plainly. The most peculiar expression was on it. A mixture of—of terror and triumph. Yes, that was it. And he laughed softly, `They said Hurok was not so great as Czarnowitz, the fools. They shall see! But of this, nothing—until after I've played the Seventh in public for the first time. It shall be a little secret between you and me, yes?' "
Leonie looked pleadingly across the table at me. "Perhaps the secret made a sort of—of bond between us. Or perhaps I was just fascinated, mesmerized. I told you I didn't know. But we were married—three days later."
I SAID gently, "But there's something else.
"You're afraid, Leonie, I can see it." "Yes," she shivered. "It's Hurok. No. no, don't look like that, Giles! He hasn't been cruel to me—yet; though he's insanely jealous and I shouldn't care to anger him. That's why I didn't want him to know that you'd known me before. But—he's afraid. Of Something. And think I know what it is. He's alternately elated and terrified, until sometimes I wonder if he's quite sane."
I said nothing.
"Something peculiar happened the third night after we were married," Leonie went on. "I woke up. It must have been about three o'clock in the morning. Something had touched my throat. It was cold and clammy, as if it had come from a tomb. Then it moved up to my face, passed over my features as if striving to recognize them in the dark. I remember screaming then, just once. And I must have fainted immediately.
"When I came to, all the lights were on, and Hurok was slapping my face gently to rouse me. I looked around, terrified, but there was no one else in the room. I told Hurok what had happened, and he said it must have been a nightmare. He himself, he swore, had noticed nothing.
"But, Giles, he was lying. He knew what had touched me. His face was putty-colored, and great drops of perspiration stood out all over his forehead. He was shaking like a leaf, and though he tried to conceal it from me, I saw that his pajamas were torn as if he'd been struggling violently with someone."
"And he made no further explanation?" I asked, wondering.
"None. I pretended to believe him. It seemed—simpler. Besides, there was a terrible expression on his face that forbade further questions. But in the morning there was something else. I went to the closet, and the door was locked. Hurok came upon me struggling with it. Without a word, he took the key of the closet from his pocket, opened it, and came out carrying—a teakwood box."
Ah. The casket again. "I've seen it," I admitted.
"The night before, when we'd retired," Lennie said, "the casket was lying on the dresser. Hurok always seemed to hate to have it out of his sight. But sometime during the night, he must have got up to lock the casket in the closet. It made me wonder. Why? Was the casket bound up in any way with the attack on me—the attack he stoutly insisted had been a nightmare? I think it was. Because, Giles, I know this much. Hurok is mortally afraid of that teakwood box!"
It was only then that I told her of the key he'd given me the night before.
But this puzzled her as it had me. "Why should he give you the key instead of the box, if he were seeking protection from it?"
I didn't know, either. But I told her of the appearance he'd presented when he'd knocked on my door, and the way he'd been horribly clawed.
She nodded. "You see? There's something, or someone, after him."
"But if it's something in the box, why doesn't he get rid of the thing ?"
"Because, though he's terrified of it, he loves it, too. It’s as if he were chained to it. I've seen him actually— oh, gloating is the only word that expresses it. Gloating over that teakwood casket."
"But after the attack on me," Leonie concluded, "Hurok began to speak of hiring a secretary—a male secretary. But I knew in my heart he wanted another man near—as a sort of bodyguard—just in case lie loses what little control he has Dyer this thing that menaces him."
Well, that could be. It might even explain why he left the key with me, that he might not be tempted to open the box to gloat over its contents. But what in the name of God could the casket contain? A venomous serpent, a blood- thirsty animal? Surely it was too small to hold any animal large enough to wreck such violent damage, such lacerations as I had seen with my own eyes on Turok's tanned body?
And, anyway, would either of these be cause for gloating?
What was this terror—imprisoned in teak?
CHAPTER III
AS LEONIE and I were leaving the tearoom, I noticed a little man with a dark-green hat sitting on one of the red leather benches in the foyer. He held a spread newspaper in front of him, but, somehow, I had the impression he was watching both of us over the top of it.
Downstairs, as we waited for a cab, the little man in the dark-green hat was standing at the cigar counter. But when the clerk asked him what he wanted, he shook his head.
In the cab, I looked back. There was another cab behind us, and I was certain who its occupant would be. We were being followed, and I wondered why. Had Hurok set a watchdog upon us?
I resolved to find out without saying anything to Leonie.
In front of the St. James, our cab halted, and I said, "You'd better go in alone."
"I suppose so." She thought I meant for another reason, and I think she really realized for the first time that she was married to another man. For she cried. "Oh, I hate this furtiveness!"
I stayed in tile cab while she entered the hotel alone, then I told the cabbie to drive on. I looked through the rear window. The cab behind hesitated for a moment in front of the St. James, then came on after mine.
I smiled to myself in satisfaction. Two blocks further on, I paid off the driver and left the cab. Under pretense of looking at a display in a men's shop whose window acted as a mirror, I saw the little man in the green hat alight from the cab in which he'd been following.
Satisfied, I walked on, turned a corner, and ducked into a doorway. Presently the plump little figure passed, anxiously looking ahead. I fell into step behind him, caught up to him, and said softly, "You were looking for me?"
He started. But if I'd expected him to attempt escape or denial I was disappointed. He said, instead, "Yes, I was. I want to talk to you. You're connected in some way with the concert pianist, Ondia Hurok?"
He had a faintly foreign accent.
I said, "And if I am?"
"Please." He looked around, and saw the door of a tavern a few steps farther on. "Let's go in there where we can talk uninterrupted."
Mystified, I followed at his side, ready to grab him if he attempted to run. But he seemed content with the way things had turned out. We found a table at the back of the place, and when we were settled with beer before us, I said, "Well?"
He looked at me defiantly. "I want my money. The money Hurok promised me."
I'd expected to hear almost anything else. I said, in surprise, "But if Hurok owes you money, why come to me? Why not go directly to him?"
Because the little man was afraid—afraid of Ondia Hurok. He wanted his money, but safely, from a go-between.
Little by little, under my questioning, his story came out. His name was Stepan Gafke, and he'd been employed as caretaker of a small cemetery near a little town called Mydia, in Poland. One rainy night last fall a tall handsome stranger had approached him in his little cottage.
What in all the world, if he could have it, did Gafke most desire, the stranger wanted to know?
Gafke was prompt to answer. "Passage to America, and a little money." He'd lived there once, returning to Poland to care for an aging parent since dead. Now, if only some miracle—
The stranger had laughed. "Miracles sometimes happen."
A FEW nights later the stranger returned. He dangled a strip of plane tickets before Gafke's eager eyes. All these, and five thousand dollars besides, would be his, if Gafke, on a designated night, were to leave the cemetery gates unlocked, and remain in his cottage with his eyes and his ears closed. The tickets now; the money later.
Gafke had not hesitated for very long.
But there had been trouble, great trouble afterward. A vault had been opened during that night, and a body disturbed. Whose body, Gafke had never learned. But the scandal was hushed up so thoroughly, he was sure it had been the corpse of someone very important.
The cemetery authorities had been suspicious of him, and he had fled possible prosecution. And he'd never received the money the stranger had promised him. Only the tickets. They were not enough.
In America he had seen a picture of the tall handsome stranger who'd approached him on that rainy night last fall. The man had been Ondia Hurok.
I heard him through, and sat there biting my thumbnail. So Hurok numbered grave-robbing among his other talents? It was preposterous. Why should a man of his standing in the musical world run the risk? And what could he possibly hope to gain by it?
The little man broke into my thoughts. "So you see?" he said childishly, "I want my money, or I'll tell."
I don't know whether I really believed his story or not. But one thing was certain—the affair was complicated enough already without Gafke muddling it further. I determined to get rid of him for all time.
I laughed aloud, and sneered, "And who would believe you? Your word, against Hurok's?"
The little man looked faintly alarmed. "But it's true! It happened in Poland, just as I said."
"Poland is far away." I narrowed my eyes. "You know, I think there's a word for what you're trying to do. Blackmail!"
Gafke jumped to his feet. "No, no!"
"And do you know the penalty for blackmail, in this country?"
His jowls were trembling. He couldn't answer.
I jerked my head toward the door. "Beat it."
He beat it. I never saw him again.
I waited five minutes, then thoughtfully went back to the St. James. In the lobby, on impulse, I stepped into a phone booth and called Sylvia Satterlee, music critic of the Globe. I'd had an idea, a crazy idea, and there was something I wanted to learn.
SYLVIA remembered me. She was even cordial. She'd once been in love with an uncle of mine.
But when I told her I was working for Hurok, she snorted.
"Met that lad in Salzburg, before the war," she said crisply, "and confidentially, Giles, he stinks. A rude, ill-mannered, egotistical, fat-headed—"
When she paused for breath, I said, "He's going to play Czarnowitz's Seventh tomorrow night. It's all very hush-hush."
I had to hold the receiver away from my ear then till her excited voice died down a little.
"He'll be the most colossal flop!" she screamed. "He must be out of his mind to attempt it when failure is certain. No one could play that but Czarny. And did they hate each other's—uh—intestines! Remind me to tell you of their feud sometime. Hurok was insanely jealous of Czarny's great success—I mean, he was really pathological about it, Giles, dear, and—"
"There's one thing, Sylvia," I broke in, before this could go on all day. "Can you tell me where Czarnowitz is buried?"
"Buried? What a peculiar— But, wait, just a minute."
I waited till her voice came over the wire again.
"Giles? Czarny is buried in a little town called Mydia—yes, Mydia—in Poland."
I hung up then, and stood there for a minute looking blankly at the telephone.
And I wondered.
THAT night the teakwood casket entered the picture again. After calling Sylvia, I hadn't seen Hurok all day. He was in the soundproof studio of the penthouse, alone. He wouldn't permit anyone in the room with him while he was practising. And Leonie had told me at lunch that she would be out with friends for dinner and the theater.
But at eleven o'clock as I was preparing for bed, Hurok knocked on my door, and I opened it. He was fully dressed this time, and if he bore fresh scars they were hidden beneath his clothes.
In his two hands, he held the teakwood casket. But he did not speak of it at first.
Instead he said, "You were out this morning, Giles?"
“Yes.”
He looked at me. "Madame Hurok was out this morning, too."
His elliptical statements didn't fool me. He was suspicious of both of us, and artfully trying to get me to trap myself. Sometimes a strong attack is the best defense. Remembering this, I said coldly, "Are you suggesting there was any connection?"
"My dear Mr. Welch!" He eyed me blandly. "How could there be? And if there were—it would be very, very sad, wouldn't it? What is mine, I keep."
It was a warning. I said nothing. Apparently satisfied that he'd gained his effect, Hurok held out the box.
"Will you keep this for me overnight?" He eyed it strangely, looking harassed tonight rather than terrified. His mouth was beginning to twitch, and inwardly I agreed with Leonie's estimate of the man.
If he wasn't insane, he was certainly emotionally unstable, for his moods seemed to change with the wind.
I took the box from him in silence and put it on top of the dresser. I knew he wouldn't answer any questions I might put to him, questions that were seething within me.
He stood there a moment, a hag-ridden figure if there ever was one. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his beaded forehead. And he said nervously, "If—if you should notice anything unusual about the teakwood casket, pay no attention. It—it won't mean anything.”
He was no sooner gone than I saw the key to the casket on the floor. He must have pulled it from his pocket with the handkerchief and the thick carpet had muffled the sound of its fall. I picked it up, and started to open the door and call after him. But with my hand on the knob, I hesitated, tempted.
I might never have such a chance again. The casket and key might never both be in my possession at one time.
Weighing the key in my hand, I went over to the dresser and put my ear against the teakwood casket. There was no sound from it.
I lifted the casket and shook it slightly. Still no sound. And it was impossible to tell from the weight of the thing whether or not it contained anything.
I was thinking, naturally, in the light of its past performances, that it held a creature of some kind. But if such a creature were in there, it must be either dead or in a comatose condition.
I stood there a minute thoughtfully, wondering, weighing the possibilities of what manner of unknown horror I might unleash. Then I put the key in the box and opened it, raising the lid slowly, ready to slam it down at the first hint of danger.
Nothing happened.
I drew a deep breath, boldly threw the lid back, and looked in.
THOUGH the box was not empty, it was an anti-climax of a sort. And my first feeling was one of acute disappointment and let-down.
The teakwood casket was lined with crimson velvet, and on a small pillow of the same velvet rested what appeared to he plaster-of-paris casts of a pair of hands. They extended from a point just above the wrists to the end of the exceedingly long spatulate fingers with their glossy colorless nails.
The wrists faced the ends of the box, and the hands themselves were placed one upon the other, much in the same manner in which the hands of a corpse are disposed.
They were pale ivory in color, and I touched them with a tentative forefinger. They were smooth and cold. Curious now, I leaned a little closer. Then, gingerly, I picked one of them up.
Seen closer, in a brighter light, I marvelled at the wonderful work it represented. The ridges in the fingernails, the wrinkles at the knuckles, even the short dark hairs with which the back of the hand was dusted, all were faithfully, miscroscopically, exactly reproduced.
It might almost be the actual hand of a man.
AND then I jumped, and nearly dropped the thing in my disgust. The story Gafke had told! Of Ondia Hurok, and the disturbed vault in the cemetery at Mydia.
Shuddering a little with revulsion, I replaced the hand in the teakwood casket with the other, shut and locked the lid, not noticing in my disgust that I left the key in the lock.
I knew now. Those abnormally long fingers. These could only be the hands of Vladimir Czarnowitz, cut from his exhumed corpse!
It wasn't until I was calmer that I realized nothing was explained, and I was more in the dark than ever. I still thought the casket contained the hands of Czarnowitz, stolen by Hurok to be gloated over in his pathological jealousy. But even so—what then had been menacing Hurok? Apparently trying to kill him?
Dead hands?
It was ridiculous, impossible. Some intruder, some living being must be responsible for the attacks on Hurok. Some human being who wanted the teakwood casket and its contents. That could be the only possible explanation.
A little relieved, I went to bed. I awoke once that night, thinking I heard the sound of scratching.
Only half-awake, I pushed myself up on one elbow and listened.
The sound was not repeated.
Satisfied, I fell asleep again, innocent of the fury I had unknowingly let loose. Fury, frustated in its real purpose, that was to expend itself savagely on the darkened stage of Aeolian Hall, many stories below.
THE next morning—the morning of the day that Ondia Hurok was to play with the symphony orchestra—there was hell to pay.
Hans Schiltz, first violinist and concert-master of the orchestra, sent for me. I had met him casually when we'd first arrived. I went down to Aeolian Hall to see what he wanted, wondering not a little why he had sent for me.
He was waiting for me in the little green room behind the stage, pacing nervously back and forth.
"You sent for me?” I asked.
"Yes, the strangest thing has happened." He whipped out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. "I'm afraid to let Mr. Hurok know about it. The concert is tonight, and—well, you know these artists. It takes very little to throw them off."
I was completely mystified and must have looked it. For he took my arm, and said, "Come. There's nothing you can do, but I thought someone connected with Hurok ought to see it."
He led me out onto the stage, bare of everything at the moment except the great sprawling black concert grand which Hurok was to play that evening. I took one look, and it was unnecessary for Schiltz to explain himself further.
God only knows who had got at that piano, tearing at it in an insensate fury. But someone certainly had. The strings were ripped entirely from the instrument and lay in coiled masses on the floor, like the intestines of some disembowled beast. And the ivory had been stripped from the keys, and great gouges and scratches marred the dull finish of the ebony case.
I could only stand there, my jaw ajar.
"That's the way I found it when I arrived this morning," Schiltz said. "It was in perfect condition last night. The question is, who destroyed the thing?"
But I said slowly, "You mean, who is determined that Hurok shall not play tonight?"
Schiltz stared at me. "Surely you can't believe that's the reason behind this vandalism? Who do you suspect?"
I shrugged, and wished I'd kept my mouth shut. "No one in particular."
"Anyway," Schiltz said, "if your theory is correct, our unknown vandal failed in his purpose. For the concert will go on tonight as scheduled. I've already called Weber and Garst, and they'll get another instrument over here for us in plenty of time. The thing is—I feel it is wiser not to tell Hurok what has happened. No sense upsetting him."
I thought it over a moment and nodded agreement.
"The concert is going to be a mess anyway," the little man continued fretfully. "No one can play that damned Seventh. Hurok will only limp through it if he gets through it at all. Bradsky, our conductor, must have been mad to agree to Hurok's proposal to put it on. He regrets it now, all right."
"Why?"
"Because," Schiltz said excitedly, "if you can believe it, Hurok has absolutely refused even to rehearse with the orchestra! I tell you, it's unheard of, for orchestra and soloist to go on cold !"
I LEFT him there, shaking his head dubiously. And in the elevator, I wondered why Hurok was so unwilling to let anyone hear him play the Seventh before his scheduled appearance tonight —so unwilling, in fact, as to go to the extreme of refusing to rehearse with the very men with whom he was to appear.
Upstairs, I had no sooner left the elevator at the penthouse floor when Hurok rushed at me from nowhere.
"You fool!" he cried. "Where is the key to the teakwood casket?"
"In the box," I answered as calmly as I could. "You dropped it last night, and I picked it up and put it in the lock."
I waited for him to ask me if I'd opened it and seen its contents. But he was too preoccupied with something else.
"In the box!" he screamed, as if I'd been unspeakably stupid. "You might have killed me! Look!"
He led me down the hall to the closed door of his bedroom.
Our unknown vandal had been busy up here, too.
The white-painted panels of the door were scratched and gouged down to the bare wood, just as the concert grand in Aeolian Hall had been.
"Forget you've seen this," Hurok snarled. "Say nothing to anyone. It's the least you can do for me, after the damage you've already done."
"I don't agree," I said. "I think the thing for us to do is to find out who's doing this damage. Who is making these attacks on you."
"Who?" Hurok looked surprised at first, then, for some unfathomable reason, amused. "Who?"
But his amusement faded fast enough when I said calmly, "I think I know."
The question I'd expected earlier came then. "You opened the teakwood box!"
"Yes," I admitted. "But the one who is making these attacks on you is someone—someone who—"
He'd recovered himself. The thin smile was again on his lips. "Yes? …Someone who?"
"Someone who is seeking," I said boldly, "the thing you stole from the cemetery at Mydia."
For a moment I thought he meant to hit me. His face purpled, and his eyes grew positively maniacal. Then he froze, and his voice was cold and even. "It would be as well, Mr. Welch, if you did not concern yourself with matters that are none of your business."
He turned then and was off toward my room, and I could do nothing but follow. The door was open, and Hurok rushed in, picking up the teakwood casket still bearing its key. He showed no fear of the thing now. His body was between me and the casket, but I'm sure he opened it. And I'm sure it still contained the hands, for he emitted a grunt of satisfaction.
THEN, without another word, he pushed past me, and I watched him go down the hall toward the studio.
My puzzlement only increased. And it didn't add to my peace of mind to reflect what an unheroic part I was playing in all this. But what could I do? I couldn't fight someone I couldn't put my hands on. Until this mysterious intruder who was terrifying Leonie and Hurok put in an appearance, my hands were tied.
IT WAS agreed that I was to escort Leonie to the concert that evening, occupying seats that had been assigned for Hurok's use through the courtesy of the management.
By seven I was dressed, and went into the living room of the penthouse to wait for Leonie.
But she was already there, in the darkened room lighted by only one or two dim lamps.
"Hello," she said softly as I came in.
She was looking more beautiful than ever in a tight clinging gown of some gold-colored stuff, and the furs she was to wear were tossed in a careless heap on a chair near the door.
I went over and sat down on the sofa beside her, before the dying fire. "Where is your—" I stopped. I couldn't say "husband," not tonight. Not now. "Where is Hurok?"
"Still dressing, I think. Giles, have you learned anything further about—about the box?"
I hesitated. After all, why alarm her needlessly? I said nothing about Gafke or the casket. But I did tell her Hurok was suspicious—of us.
She heard me through. Then, "Do you think he's insane?"
I shrugged. "No. That is, not any more than the rest of us. After all, I guess, we're all more or less cracked on one subject, at least."
"Perhaps you're right." She sighed, and looked at me in the dusk. "What's your particular insanity?"
Perhaps she said it idly. Perhaps she'd already guessed that I was still in love with her. It was torture for me being near her like this, smelling the faint fragrance of her perfume, knowing I had only to reach out an arm to draw all that sweetness near. What if she had married someone else? She was mine. She'd always belonged to me until, in a moment of madness, for which she wasn't really responsible, she married Hurok.
I said thickly. "My insanity? You. And you know it."
She sighed again. And then she was in my arms, and my lips were on hers, and in all the world there might have been only the two of us.
We were still pressed close together when the ceiling light clicked on abruptly. Leonie and I sprang apart. But it was too late.
Hurok was standing there watching us, his face dark with fury. He was in evening clothes, and again the teakwood casket was under his arm.
"So! The strangers who had never met before!" he sneered. The words seemed to choke him. "I've been expecting this."
Leonie said nothing, stiff with surprise. And I, too, stood there silently, guardedly wailing for what was corning next, but glad in my heart that at last the thing had been brought out into the open.
But nothing happened. Hurok surprised us. Visibly gaining control of himself, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and then he laughed without amusement. "Later, Giles. Later, dear Leonie. More important business for me is at hand. But after the concert—"
There was menace in his voice, silken as it was. And I knew he would never find it in his heart to forgive us. Or to forget what he'd seen. I'd met egoists like him before, and I knew that once their pride was wounded, their exaggerated sense of possession outraged, they'd stop at nothing to salve their hurts. It only remained to be seen what form his revenge would take.
He left then abruptly as he'd come. When he had gone, Leonie moved closer to me. "Giles, I'm afraid. There's no telling what he may do."
To comfort her, I pretended to scoff. "He won't do anything. Leonie, you must leave him in the morning."
"I had meant to, anyway. Giles, I must have been mad to marry him. And now I'm sane! And when I'm free—"
She had no need to pursue that thought further. I caught her close again, and longed for the time when it would be like this always.
Do you wonder I had forgotten the teakwood casket completely?
STRANGELY enough, it never occurred to either of us to stay away from the concert. Perhaps we were still so dazed with our new-found happiness that we only went down to the hall like automatons, scarcely knowing what we were doing.
I remember, when we were settled in our seats, I looked around and said,
"Will you tell me what we're doing here now?”
The same thought must have just struck Leonie, for she laughed. "Isn't it crazy? But what does it matter where we are, darling, so long as we're together?"
I caught her hand and held it, not caring who might see.
The orchestra was settling itself on the stage, and there was a round of applause when Bradsky, the conductor, made his way to the stand. Silence then, while we all waited for the crowded house to grow quieter. But there was a buzz of excited comment like the droning of bees, and I caught a stifled giggle or two.
Word had spread via the grapevine that Hurok was going to attempt the Seventh, and I think most of the audience had come with the firm expectation of seeing Hurok make a fool of himself. I knew Sylvia Satterlee, across the aisle, certainly had. For she turned once, and gave me a broad wink.
I smiled faintly, then turned back to keep my eyes glued to the door at the back of the stage through which Hurok would enter.
No matter what my private opinion of the man, at least it must be said that he was a master showman. He kept us waiting for minutes, then dramatically came without haste from the retiring room. Over his evening clothes, he wore a long-flowing scarlet-lined black cape—a theatrical touch that heightened the importance of his entrance.
His pale face was infinitely cold. He must have known why they'd come, too, for his faint smile and resentful eyes conveyed an indifferent contempt that flicked the audience like a lash.
There was no applause. They resented that look, resented him already. I almost found it in my heart to feel sorry for the man. God, if he failed, they'd tear him apart with their mockery!
He threw the cape from his shoulders carelessly, letting it fall where it would. Then he seated himself, and I think he flexed his hands. We couldn't see, for his back was toward us. A nod to the conductor then, and Bradsky raised his baton, rapped sharply twice.
And the music began.
Three great chords from the piano alone, repeated four times, evoking the memory of tolling Moscow bells. A pause. Then the orchestra joining in pianissimo.
The first two movements went well, as I had known they would. Quiet, flowing, they were not beyond the talents of any well-trained musician. It was the third movement, and the finale, that would be the real test. Hurok was playing well, drawing a fine singing tone from the instrument, limpid as water in a pool.
I closed my eyes, and waited for the third movement. On the retina of my memory 1 could see those great jagged heartbreaking chords leaping over the white pages of the score.
Poor Hurok! Poor egotistical fool to think he could do it!
And then it came, the dramatic pause, prelude to the third movement. My palms were damp with vicarious nervousness. I couldn't open my eyes. My breath came quicker, raggedly, waiting for Hurok to begin, to falter.
It started. The mood changed abruptly from the previous movements. It was wilder, now. The tempo broken, erratic. Barbaric, Slavic. Harsh dissonances that melted, somehow madly, into exotic harmony.
I clutched Leonie's hand. My chest was rising and falling. He was doing it! Doing it, by God!
The tearing, crashing chords came again and again, while the orchestra seethed and incited above and below them.
The finale, now. Sweeping faster and faster. Frenziedly fortissimo. The piano like a great voice crying ecstatically above the other instruments, a legata that flowed like honey. And, at intervals the great chords evoking the bronze-throated bells tolling, tolling with thrilling majesty.
My eyes jerked open. Across the aisle, Sylvia Satterlee was leaning forward, staring like a woman demented. Brad-sky's face was purple with effort and amazement. Hurok's back was erect, pliant, only his arms flailing the instrument. No wonder Leonie had succumbed to this enchantment!
The great Moscow bells tolled again, on a note of unbearable ecstasy. Once, thrice.
It was ended.
Silence. Silence while Hurok rose, composed, contemptuous, one pale hand still on the piano.
It came then, almost unwillingly. The applause. Thunderously, in waves.
Hurok didn't acknowledge it. He didn't bow. His eyes only swept the house. But on his face was an expression of such triumph as I have never seen on the face of a human being.
Shaken, I looked at Leonie. She was leaning forward, eyes wide. She clutched my hand convulsively. "Look! Look! Those hands! They aren't—his!"
It was a preposterous statement. I thought she'd gone mad momentarily.
But I looked. And it was true. The hands at the ends of Hurok's long slender arms weren't the thin tanned hands I remembered.
These—these were a pale, bleached, almost boneless white, faintly bluish in the glare of the lights lining the proscenium arch.
These were—unmistakably, unbelievably—the hands of the teakwood casket!
CHAPTER V
TORN apart emotionally by the music I'd just heard, I couldn't seem to think clearly. Of the hands, I didn't want to think at all. Dear God, madness lay just beyond! There could be no rational explanation for what we'd just seen and heard!
But going up in the elevator to the penthouse I wished heartily I might have gotten Leonie away—now, tonight. But a blizzard had blown up, and I knew the other hotels would be full of suburbanites staying the night in town.
Yet what could there possibly be to fear? This nameless menace, this sense of brooding terror. It could be only my imagination playing tricks on me.
I was tempted to warn Leonie to lock her door, and deny Hurok admittance. But again I hesitated. And cursed myself for an imaginative, melodramatic fool. Why alarm her unnecessarily?
However I determined to be watchful myself. After I donned pajamas, I left my bedroom door open, and sat up in bed reading. It was impossible to sleep in any case, and I meant to stay awake until I was sure Leonie would have no need of me. With the door open, I could hear any sound of a quarrel, any evidence that Hurok was attempting to put into effect the threats he'd mouthed earlier. And I could reach her side quickly enough, if necessary.
But despite my vaunted watchfulness, I never heard Hurok approaching my room on the thick carpet. It was shortly after midnight when I looked up, the corner of my eye just catching the suggestion of a shadow in the doorway.
Hurok was there again, the scarlet-lined cape still over his shoulders. But the teakwood box was not in evidence, this time. There was an innovation.
He held a revolver in his hand.
My first thought was for Leonie, and my heart leaped in sudden panic. "Leonie!" I said.
His lips smiled thinly. "Madame Hurok is sleeping. I have just come from placing the teakwood casket in her room."
I looked at him in bewilderment. "The teakwood casket! But what has that—?"
"Never fear, dear Giles. I have every intention of explaining clearly. Oh, most clearly, so that you will not possibly misunderstand the little surprise I have in store for you. For you and Leonie both."
I didn't like the way he was smiling, the way he was gloating over the advantage he held in my ignorance. But I wouldn't let him bait me. I put the book I held down on my knees, and managed to look at him calmly enough.
His smile faded. "What do you know of the cemetery at Mydia? And where did you hear of it?"
I hesitated. There seemed nothing to gain by lying. "Gafke told me."
"Ah!" You must know then—or have suspected by now—that the teakwood box contains the hands of Vladimir Czarnowitz?"
I nodded. "You cut them off, cut them from his dead body." Perhaps if I could goad him, trap him into carelessness. I slid lower in bed, and raised my arms above my head, my hands clutching the corners of the pillow. "It confirms what I've long suspected. You are insane."
His face darkened. "I'm as sane as you are!"
"Insane. For I know why you wanted those hands. Those hands that always made your talent inferior. You wanted them to mock. To gloat over, now that you were greater. For they, you see, were dead."
THE reference to his inferior talent must have infuriated him. He cried, "What do you know, you fool, of the years of heart-breaking work and effort that have gone into my career? And for nothing! Always to be second-best! Never, they said, would I approach the genius of Vladimir Czarnowitz! Those hands of his! Always they mocked me. I drove myself, almost killed myself, that he might not surpass me too greatly. I held my own, and he hated me for it. Hated me, I tell you!"
Hurok was choking with emotion, remembered hatred. "And then, deliberately, Czarnowitz composed the Seventh, knowing it was impossible of performance by anyone lacking those freakish hands of his, knowing that at last he had me stopped forever. Do you wonder, when he died, that I was glad, glad? And that I wanted those hands of his—to mock in turn? I wanted them, helpless, in my possession. I wanted to whisper to them every night that now I—I was greater at last than Czarnowitz. For I was living, and he was dead, a corpse, a nothing, only food for worms."
Hurok's eyes were glittering. I eyed him watchfully. If I could just keep him raving. "So you broke into the vault, stole the hands."
"Yes. Then one night, while I was gloating over the hands, I noticed that they were growing flexible. The discovery excited me. And in time they grew more and more flexible, even hollow, and I learned that I could don them, as one would a pair of gloves. That I could even play the piano wearing them. Day after day, I slipped them on, scarcely believing it was true. Till I found that they could become a part of me, subject to my will. Till I found that the Seventh was at last within my powers!"
Good God! For some time I had considered Hurok mildly insane. But I hadn't thought him a stark, raving lunatic!
"Ah, the sweet irony of it!" he cried. "Do you see it! At last I should become great—using Czarnowitz' hands! The very hands that had mocked me so long!"
But the triumph was dying now in his eyes, and bewildered fear was dawning. He shook his head dumbly. "But while the hands were docile to my will in the daytime, I found that at night they became again the hands of Vladimir Czarnowitz, possessing some strange animation of their own. And they were vengeful hands, I was to learn. Hands that hated me still, and sought to destroy me, until I was forced to keep them imprisoned at night in the teakwood casket.
"They escaped once, frightening Leonie. And here, even with the key in the lock and the box locked, they possessed an abnormal cunning sufficient to permit them to open it from the in side. They escaped again, to claw at and tear and try to mutilate me, so that I had to struggle for my life. It took every atom of my strength to overpower them."
He couldn't be talking rationally. But, good God, if his story were true! The box was now in Leonie's room! I started out of bed, but Hurok waved the gun.
"Haste is unnecessary and futile," he said, suave again. "The hands served their purpose tonight. I have no further use for them. Let them perform one last duty. Soon now we should hear Leonie's screams. The screams of an unfaithful wife. Sweet music, Giles."
I TENSED, ready to spring. But it was already too late. It came, then, Leonie's scream, shrill, ululating, piercing even through the doors that separated us.
Hurok's head turned involuntarily at the sound, the smile widening wolfishly on his lips. And in that instant, I acted. My hand tightened on the corner of the pillow, and I hurled it at his gun hand. He retained his hold on the revolver, but his hand was swept back by the force with which I'd hurled the pillow.
I leaped. I was on him then. We were struggling, panting, grunting like animals, our breath whistling hoarsely from our lungs.
My left hand caught his gun hand, held it. My right fist connected solidly with his chin. He was down then. And I was running, racing down the dark halls to Leonie's room.
Her scream hadn't been repeated. The apartment was ominously, dreadfully quiet. I prayed that I wouldn't be too late. Her door was locked and the hall lights only emphasized the gloom.
Sweat trickled down my sides as I hurled myself at that locked door. It didn't give. I tried again. And again. And on the third try, my lungs laboring desperately, the door burst from its hinges.
At almost the same instant, while I was still fumbling frantically for the light switch, something slithered from the room, down low near the floor. I had only a confused glimpse of whiteness against the dark carpet. A blurred pallor. Then whatever it was, it scuttled, crab-fashion, down the darkened hall in the direction from which I'd just come.
I found the light switch at last, pressed it desperately.
Leonie was lying back in her bed, and I thought for one horrified minute—
But she was all right. A swift examination assured me she had only fainted—a faint from which she was already rousing, thank God! She started tip with a cry of terror, and I caught her to me.
She was shuddering convulsively. "The thing, Giles! The thing from the tomb! It was here again! It touched my throat!"
She buried her face against my shoulder, and grew quieter in my arms. I was murmuring to her when I heard it.
An hysterical, unintelligible mouthing of words corning from somewhere back there in the darkened apartment. "No, no, no!” I could hear it plainly. Then the hoarse shrieks began. I'll remember those animal-like cries forever.
Leonie shuddered, and covered her ears with her hands. I pressed her back gently against the bed, and motioned for her to stay there. Then I turned and ran for the door, down the hallway, back to my room. Fearing what I thought I would find. For I knew now it wasn't Leonie that the thing had been seeking, but another.
And I was right.
Hurok was there. On the floor of my room. His eyes staring from his purple face, his tongue a swollen, black, monstrous thing between his lips.
And about his throat, clutched in a relentless grip, were the hands—the hands of Vladimir Czarnowitz!