The Thrill Book

Issues

The periodical only ran in 1919.

Volume 1:

No.2 (March 15)

No.3 (April 1)

No.6 (May 15)

No.7 (June 1)

No.8 (June 15)

Volume 2:

No.1 (July 1)

No. 2 (July 15)

No.3 (August 1)

No. 4 (August 15)

No. 5 (September 1)

No. 6 (September 15)

Volume 3:

No. 1 (October 1)

No. 2 (October 15)

Down the Coast of Shadows

Down the Coast of Shadows

By

Perley Poore Sheehan

Part 1

CHAPTER I.

After hours.

Swan, night watchman in the Wycherly Building, put down his can of coffee, hastily wiped his heavy yellow mustache with the back of his hand, and listened. There it was again—the thin, fine shrill of a muted electric buzzer. There was an excuse for it, if the thing seemed incredible to Swan. He had been night watchman in the Wycherly Building for going on twenty years, and this was the first time that anything like this had happened. To conceive of any burglar, or any other trespasser whatsoever, choosing the Wycherly Building as a place for a raid would require more imagination than Swan possessed.

He was a big, heavy man. Massive would have described him. A Swede. In his cap and uniform he was not so much the Viking as he was the ogre—mammoth and pale, magnified by the light of the lantern at his side. A moment before he had been eating and drinking his midnight lunch with the brutal gusto of a hungry giant. There was the look about him now of the roused ferocity of any primitive creature disturbed at its feeding.

He started to his feet. He pawed out a big revolver and held it ready in his hand.

Now, had there been some one to shoot or grapple with, Swan would have been instantly ready. But there was a mental problem involved—a number of them, in fact. And while Swan's brain was capable enough, in an emergency like this it was apt to be slow.

His mind still reverberated with the original shock. What sort of an intruder could this be?

Midnight. The Wycherly Building. The heart of New York's financial district—far within the dead line cast about this part of town by the regular police. The Wycherly Building itself, a thing of awe even in the daytime, because of the man whose name it bore and the power and the craft he represented.

Another buzzer sounded in a slightly different key.

That first buzzer had announced that the intruder had entered by the front door. The second buzzer revealed the intruder passing through the hall.

There had been scarcely any delay, and yet a locked inner door protected the hall from the entry, and the whole building was dark. There was no electricity in the whole vast building except that of the small batteries supplying the alarm signals. The building was old. It was so complicated—intentionally so—that no ordinary visitor could find his way about it, even in the daytime, without a guide. Wycherly had enemies. He lived in dread of assassination. No madman was ever going to drop in on him un expectedly with a bomb in his hand. Madmen had tried it, and other cranks, merely to be lost in the maze of passages and dragged away before they could find the man they were looking for.

All this was a part of the mental problem confronting Swan.

Another element of the problem was the fact that none of the five or tenscore employees of Wycherly having access to the building would ever dream of coming here at night—not even in the early night, let alone midnight.

It was as if all of them shared Wycherly's own well-known fear of the dark. Not in twenty years or more, or ever, to Swan's precise knowledge, had any member of the Wycherly office force come back to the building after hours.

Another buzzer rang.

Swan cast a final glance about him with his big blue eyes—lantern, unfinished food, dollar clock ticking noisily and unconcernedly at the minute past mid night. He abandoned all this. His slow mind clicked to another point of progressive thought. Still holding his revolver, he reached down with his left hand and unfastened his heavy brogans. He scraped them off. A moment later this cubby-hole of his was deserted.

Outside the cubby-hole there was a corridor. Along one side of this were a number of windows, heavily grated, a little lower than the sidewalk, but through which the street lamps cast an uncertain light. But even without this pale-blue illumination that Swan knew so well, he would have been perfectly at home. It was his habit to roam the building in the dark—through the labyrinth of passages and anterooms, public and private offices.

There was something in his nature that made him braver in the dark—a matter of heritage or training or both—like certain Great Danes that are mere overgrown puppies by day, tigers at night. Not that Swan was absolutely fearless. There was a chill of fear about him now. And yet this fear was not altogether native, either. There wasn't a burglar in the two hemispheres that he wouldn't have grappled with or shot at or clubbed.

But was this a burglar? And, if so, what sort of a burglar?

Instead of following the corridor in a direction that would have brought him to the stairs leading to the front hall, and thus up and back of whoever it was that had entered there, Swan had trotted off in the other direction, around the acreage of storage vaults in the basement of the Wycherly Building. A turn to the left, then to the right, and he would be at the foot of a secret stairway leading up into the very heart of the Wycherly maze—a stairway that had been designed, in fact, as one of the several avenues of escape at Wycherly's disposition in case of danger or annoyance.

Wycherly had never been photographed, never been interviewed, never been served with a process.

Swan crept up the secret stairs.

The faint—the very faint—hum of the alarm signals that had come to him during his silent but speedy progress had told him that the intruder was coming this way. It was this that was so ghostly about it; not even he, with all his long training and familiarity with this place, and his pass-keys and his general liking for the dark, could have come faster, could have come with greater directness.

Swan pushed the door at the head of the stairs wide open. He was just in time. He heard a quick, light footstep, then the lisp of a key.

He himself was in the darkness. To the left were the offices of Grierson, Wycherly's factotum and private secretary—a man almost as greatly feared as was Wycherly himself. To the right were the offices of Wycherly. Separating these two groups of offices was this small private passage, one of the myriad. And Swan's mind, slow but sure, had served him well. The passage was one of the best lit in the building—lit whitely and almost brilliantly by an arc lamp just outside a neighboring window, and through this brilliance the intruder would have to pass.

Swan tilted up the muzzle of his big revolver—ready to fire, ready to spring; a Great Dane in the dark, so far as strength and courage were concerned, but a coiled adder in his power of sudden death.

CHAPTER II.

The Wycherlys.

Is that you, Swan?”

“I—I—good heavens—I2”

“You are a faithful guardian, Swan.”

The intruder was Wycherly himself. Yet, even while Swan's slow brain was compelled to a belief of this amazing fact, it was compelled to an acceptance of facts even more amazing.

Nor yet was the acceptance complete. Was it Wycherly? Or was it a ghost? Was that Wycherly's voice—Jacob Wycherly's voice? Or was it the voice of that Joseph Wycherly, Jacob's brother, who had died upward of a year ago? In other words, who was it—Jacob Wycherly alive, or Joseph Wycherly dead?

If any one had asked Swan—say an hour ago—if he believed in ghosts, Swan would have laughed at him. He was that type. All beef and brawn. He believed in what his eyes could see and in what his hands could feel, what he could taste and what he could smell. His was the make-up of a perfect night watchman. His perfection in this respect would have been no less had he been the nocturnal guardian of a cemetery or a morgue.

But it was this very quality that was undermining his confidence now. These were facts that he was up against—facts that stood the test of even his hard-and-fast ideas as to what constituted facts.

In the first place, how had Wycherly seen him when he, Swan, had been standing in the pitch darkness here at the head of the stairs?

In the second place, how had Wycherly himself come so speedily through all those dark rooms and corridors that separated this place from the remote outer door?

And, in the third place, how came it that Wycherly spoke so gently—so with a voice that was like the all-but-forgotten voice of this Wycherly's dead brother Joseph?

These three questions—and there may have been others—knocked on Swan's brain with cold knuckles lightly, swiftly in those first few instants of recognition and broken speech. And there was no telling what old dormant superstitions they may not have waked in Swan; for, after all, Swan sprang from a race that had believed in trolls and things down through the ages.

No, it was Wycherly himself—Jacob Wycherly.

He had stepped out into the comparative glare of the light that came from the street. He stood there looking across at Swan with a slight smile, although Swan was still crouched in the darkness. Swan had not had the sense yet, nor scarcely the time, to put his gun away. Swan was still at grips with those facts that were not facts, was still chilling in response to the spirit raps of those cold knuckles on his brain.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Swan.

“Did I frighten you?”

“No, sir, but2”

“My coming was unexpected.”

“Yes, sir.”

Not like Jacob Wycherly to talk like this to an employee, and him among the humblest. Joseph Wycherly might have done it. But Joseph Wycherly was dead.

The two brothers had looked alike. The thought was Swan's. Both had been small men, spare of build, slightly stooped, lean of face, high of forehead. But no one would ever have taken one for the other. In his heart the big night watchman swore at himself. Why should he be thinking of Joseph Wycherly at all, when Mr. Joseph was dead? It was the voice. It was the smile. It was the soft speech.

“You're a fool,” said Swan to himself.

He felt like a fool as he himself stepped forward into the confusing light from the street lamp in his stocking feet. Shoving back his revolver into the holster against his stomach and making a mess of it, his hands were trembling so. He explained.

“I am glad to find that you are so faithful,” said Mr. Wycherly, pausing with his hand on the door bf his office and smiling at him again.

“Thank you, Mr. Wycherly.”

It was Mr. Wycherly—Mr. Jacob Wycherly—that square-topped derby with the broad brim that the cartoonists had made familiar throughout the world, pulled down to the ears—ears that were thin and outstanding—and down to the eyebrows—eyebrows that were white and beetled. Ah, no! No one would ever mistake Jacob Wycherly for any one else on earth—or off the earth, like that dead brother of his—after one good look into or from the small eyes under those beetled eyebrows.

Yet, even now Swan Swensen was struggling with his facts.

“That's a formidable-looking weapon, Swan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what would you have done had you found—a stranger here?”

“I guess—I'd make him throw up his hands.”

“And if he had declined?”

“I'd maybe have had to shoot.”

“But who could wish to come here without authority at this hour? There is nothing to steal—certainly nothing worth a human life.”

Swan's mind was struggling with these new complications.

“But you've—I've heard it said2”

“Go on, Swan. You needn't be afraid to express yourself. What was it you were about to say?”

“I beg your pardon, sir; but, you know, they do say you've some bad enemies.”

“Eh? Quite so! Well, perhaps I have earned them.”

A statement like that, coming from old Jacob Wycherly, sounded so odd that even Swan's slow mind expressed itself almost instantly in a look of added amazement.

“Shall I—light the gas—in your office for you, sir?”

Wycherly apparently hadn't heard him. He stood there, slender and stooped, in the pale radiance, his eyes on the floor.

“Perhaps I have earned them,” he repeated. His thought must have taken a correlative turn. “Tell me, Swan, do you happen to remember my brother?”

“You mean2”

“Joseph.”

“Him who died?”

Swan was trying to cover his confusion by a bush of words. His confusion grew as he saw that his employer was looking at him with a vague smile.

“What's the matter, Swan? Why are you so confused?”

Swan dodged the later question, answered the previous one. “Yes, sir. Indeed I do, sir. Everybody remembers him.”

“Ah! Why?”

“He was so good, so kind. Why, it seems to me like only yesterday that he stood here—where you are standing now—and talked to me in this same gentle way. It was that—I was thinking of him—and when you spoke of him—I kind of felt—you won't think me crazy, sir—I kind of felt somehow as if you was him.”

The Swede started a laugh—a rueful laugh. But he checked himself at the other's gravity, fearful that he had given offense. Anyway, Swan hadn't really wanted to laugh. He had come too close to expressing a sober—not to say a solemn—truth; and once more it had been as if there were cold knuckles rapping, softly rapping at the top of his head.

“What if I should tell you,” said Wycherly in a voice that was sweet—if sweetness in his connection were imaginable—“that—my brother—still lives?”

“Still lives?”

“Aye! Down that Coast of Shadows—where we all cruise a while—before we go out of sight of land2”

CHAPTER III.

Written in the dark.

There are two explanations of what followed. One explanation is that there was one of those momentary failures of electric current or a fault in the carbon or a flare of wind, causing an unexpected shadow to fall across the place where Wycherly had stood. Another explanation is the equally simple, albeit less material, one that Swan's own perceptions had suffered a momentary lapse. Such lapses are common enough—you are looking at the pages of a book, some thought intervenes, and there for a moment the book has disappeared; or you are listening to a speaker, your attention flickers, and during that instant the speaker's voice is lost.

In any case, Wycherly disappeared.

Nothing but an echo and a memory did he leave behind him—a memory of that shadowy, haunting presence, and then the echo of those strange words of his:

“Aye! Down that Coast of Shadows—where we all cruise a while—before we go out of sight of land2”

Swan Swensen put up a beefy but tremendous hand, and found his forehead damp. He was shaken by a slight chill, and ascribed this—knowing it to be a lie—to the fact that he had been standing here without his shoes. And all the time some other part of that primitive mind of his was throwing up a vision out of his boyhood in Sweden—the shore of the sea, misty, a coast of shadows as ever was, with the illimitable ocean on one side and the illimitable land on the other.

He had a poetic flash: Wasn't life like that?

Then he pulled himself together and was Swan Swansen, the night watchman, again. He catfooted forward to the door of the private office and leaned his ear against a panel of it. Some one was moving in there. Wycherly! Who else could it be? And what had unnerved him so?

But as Swansen started to withdraw he was unnerved again. He heard his employer's voice:

“Come in, Swan.”

Yet Swan was sure that he himself had made no sound. How had the man in the office known that he was listening there? It was but another detail in keeping with all that had already occurred. It was to be followed by another.

For, as Swan opened the door in response to the summons, he was surprised to find the room in complete darkness. There were no windows in this room. It suited Wycherly better so. It was ventilated by a system of vents instead of windows; for windows were dangerous when a man had enemies. Sometimes cranks threw things through windows. And, this time, as Swan stood there on the threshold of darkness he was frankly shivering.

“I think,” came the pleasant voice, “you may light the gas, after all, Swan.”

And was he also hearing the scratch of a pen—the scratch of a pen in this dark room? He was. He saw that he hadn't been mistaken the moment that the match flared up, for there at his desk sat Wycherly writing. He had already written half a dozen lines. He went on writing without looking up as Swan brought the tremulous flame to the hood of the desk lamp. Apparently it made no difference to the writer when the hood went incandescent and the room that had previously been so dark took on white radiance, especially the top of the desk.

Still Wycherly went on writing—went on writing as Swan stood there and stared down at him with pale and bulging eyes. Wycherly still had his hat and his overcoat on. He had been wearing gloves and carrying a cane. These lay on the desk at the side of the blotting pad. Swan recognized the cane.

“My best friend,” as Wycherly had once called it, as he used it to smash the camera of some overbold newspaper man. It was a heavy ebony stick with a gold knob.

Then Wycherly looked swiftly up. Said he:

“This was the cane I did it with. Do you think you can remember?”

Remember what? And what had Mr. Wycherly done with this cane? “You are Mr. Wycherly,” the night watchman was saying to himself. “There's the long thin face—the long thin mouth—the long thin nose—and the paleness—and the eyes—ah, those bright little eyes looking out from under the overhanging white brows—like a hungry ferret in winter.” But aloud Swan said:

“Yes, sir!”

“This was the cane I did it with,” Wycherly repeated. “But there; I hope that you shall never have occasion to refer to it, Swan. By the way, you are alone here in the building. I wonder if—of course I could summon my secretary, but it would be a pity to disturb him—I wonder if2”

Wycherly had been speaking softly. He was blotting what he had already written. He stopped both speech and action in response to a pounding that ran through the silence of the building as of some one trying to break in a door. Swan also had forgotten the queer and nebulous occupations that had been secretly occupying him just now.

“Cavanaugh,” he said. “That must be Cavanaugh.” Swan knew the sound. “He's the policeman on the beat—a friend of mine. He's a good man, sir—you won't misjudge him—but sometimes he'd drop in2”

“A policeman! A friend of yours! Just the thing! Go let him in. Ask him to be good enough to step this way a moment. I shan't detain him.”

Swan was emboldened.

“He's got a big family, sir. One of his children is sick. It would go hard for him if2”

“I'm glad you mentioned it. Go let him in.”

Swan hurried away. There must have been some little commotion when he mentioned to Cavanaugh that Wycherly was on the premises and asking to see him.

“'Twould be like him,” whispered Cavanaugh, “to report me—get me broke.”

“There's something queer about him,” whispered Swan.

It was a conversation they were to renew later. Cavanaugh was of a race that has ever dealt with the invisible side of life as much as it has with the visible and material side—more with the invisible side perhaps, although none would have suspected it on looking at Cavanaugh himself. Not quite so heavy as Swan, but stalwart, clean, and pink. And Cavanaugh, even more than had Swan, might have suspected that there was something “queer” about Jacob Wycherly this night. For, as the big policeman, accompanying Swan, came to the open door of the private office there sat the man so many execrated, and there was something about him to suggest the picture of a saint.

For Wycherly had taken off his hat, lifted his face as if in reverie. His thin white hair was glistening in the dusk like a nimbus. There was a whiteness and a chastity about his face seldom seen on any face except in death or in the almost equal detachment of a purifying sleep.

And Cavanaugh thought that he had known Wycherly-—had known him as the police knew him—the “Tenement King”—owner o£ a thousand drab homes and a thousand drab shops, incubus of the very poor, fabricator of the raw human material for hospitals and prisons. Cavanaugh knew no lack of imagination. Also Cavanaugh had known families whom this same Wycherly had dispossessed.

“No, s'help me, it couldn't have been him!” said Cavanaugh to himself.

CHAPTER IV.

“In witness whereof.”

Good evening, Cavanaugh,” said Wycherly, coming out of his apparent reverie. “I am sorry to trouble you.”

“No trouble, Mr. Wycherly.”

The policeman had raised his gloved hand to a salute. His hand lingered to remove his uniform cap altogether.

“But I wanted a couple of witnesses to my signature,” said the millionaire. “I couldn't have been more fortunate; two better men for the purpose I couldn't have found in New York.”

Swan and Cavanaugh exchanged a swift glance. Here was confirmation, had any been needed, that what Swan had intimated was true enough. Wycherly was glancing over what he had written. His face was still sober and white as he looked up again.

“It won't be necessary for you to read what I have written here,” he said. “Of course you may if you desire. But that may be depressing to you. I'd rather that you wouldn't.”

“That's all right, sir,” said Cavanaugh.

“Thank you. And, after all, your signatures have nothing to do with the contents of the paper; they merely attest to the genuineness of my own. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The paper was the private stationery of Wycherly—the official stationery would be the better term—for Wycherly held private correspondence with no man.

“See. I sign here,” said Wycherly, and he signed. “You may well watch me,” he said, with a slight laugh. “I dare say that this signature hasn't been written out in full for the past twenty years.”

“How do you sign your checks?” asked Cavanaugh, with frank curiosity.

“Grierson does that. A heartless creature, that secretary of mine—as heartless as a machine, but as honest, or should I say exact? There: Jacob—Corlears—Wycherly! I dare say not a dozen persons in New York even know that my middle name is Corlears.”

“They mostly refer to you, sir,” said Cavanaugh, “as 'J.C.'”

Wycherly smiled. “Yes, 'Old J. C.'”

Swan scrawled his laborious fist onto the paper at a place indicated by the millionaire. It took every ounce of Swan's mental and physical power to write his name. In the present circumstances it did. It was different with Cavanaugh.

There was an intuitional quality about Cavanaugh. Even if there hadn't been, the years that he had spent on the police force had been educational in a way, had made him something of the specialist. The police force had been a university for him, one that had given him a degree, so to speak—Doctor of Humanity. He couldn't help it. He wished to violate no confidence. The rich man had expressed a wish that he should not read this paper that was thus being attested with such formality. On the other hand, it had been expressly stated that there was no objection to such a perusal.

“Shall I sign in full?” asked Cavanaugh.

And already his eyes had sought the top of the sheet.

“Yes, in full.”

“J-a-m-e-s2” wrote Cavanaugh. But his eyes of a humanitarian specialist had already taken in the upper lines of the manuscript. First, the place and the date; then the address:

My Dear Mary

“H-e-n-r-y2” wrote Cavanaugh.

He was leaning close to the paper. He knew that Wycherly could see nothing but the back of his head. He read:

For your own protection …

And then Cavanaugh got a thrill all his own, one that went right to the core of his Celtic soul. Wycherly had spoken to him.

“She is my—my niece,” said Wycherly. “She is—Joseph's daughter.”

“Excuse me,” said Cavanaugh.

“That's all right,” said Wycherly gently. “Go on and read all of it, if you care to. I said that you were free to do so.”

Cavanaugh finished his signature, and straightened up with an added pinkness. There was a good deal of the schoolboy in the big policeman. But he was none the less very much the man.

“I did start to read it,” he confessed.

“You also have a daughter named Mary,” Wycherly put in. “Be a friend to—this Mary of mine—should she need one.” He had drawn an envelope from a drawer. He wrote the name and address:

Wycherly folded the paper he had written and put it into the envelope. He started to seal the envelope. He hesitated. He looked up at Cavanaugh, and Cavanaugh was still wondering why the great millionaire should desire that a humble cop show friendship for a member of the millionaire's own family.

Said Wycherly:

“Cavanaugh, I'm going to ask you to deliver this to Miss Wycherly yourself. Ask her to read it in your presence. She may want to ask you some questions.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cavanaugh took the envelope, placed it in the top of his cap, prepared to return the cap to his head as soon as the interview should end.

“And, Cavanaugh, listen; let no one else read it—not even—not even—myself!”

As Wycherly completed this odd declaration he closed his eyes, dropped back in his chair. The night watchman and the policeman saw a slight spasm as of pain or sudden recollection ripple across his face. They heard him whispering like a man holding an altercation and not wishing to be overheard.

Both Swan and Cavanaugh may have been a little frightened. Afterward they were agreed that all they could make out were the words, repeated several times: “Not yet! Not yet!” Then Wycherly was seen to tremble. He opened his eyes. He was staring at them.

“You can trust me, sir,” said Cavanaugh, referring to Wycherly's recommendation and wishing to put Wycherly at his ease. Cavanaugh had tact. For all he knew—so he was telling himself—Mr. Wycherly took drugs. For all he knew, the old gentleman had taken a drop too much. And Wycherly was staring so.

Swan spoke up: “Shall I get you a glass of water, sir?”

Then, had Wycherly set upon them with that ebony cane of his it would have been a surprise like this—would have shocked them, startled them no more.

For suddenly, without premonition, Wycherly's eyes had gone fierce. His mouth opened, and the voice that came out was harsh and bitter:

“What are you—you damned—eh? Eh2”

He had checked himself. Or he had been checked. Again it was the Wycherly who had been talking to them but a moment ago. He smiled at them a trifle startled, at a loss.

“Oh, yes!” he exclaimed softly and gently. “I pray that you will not consider it a bribe—either of you—but I feel that you have earned an honorarium—a modest honorarium.” He arose from his chair, went over to the private safe, knelt in front of it, began to count the combination: “Three times round to thirty-three2”

CHAPTER V.

The riddle.

Dawn came up over lower Manhattan as sweetly as over a land of meadows and woods. In fact there was a smell of meadows and woods in the air—down here where streets were ancient and dark and the high buildings soared and no flower had blossomed for a hundred years. It was as if this quarter of the town were like every other human thing—not all good, nor yet all bad; old to the shocks of misery and violence, yet maintaining through it all some gift of the primitive innocence, something of the child.

“It reminds me of some of the things that I've heard since I joined the force,” said Cavanaugh. “There's many a man serving time up the river now who was a kind father and a faithful husband. Crime was his business. That was all. Maybe old J. C. is like that—making money by ways that are dark, doing good on the sly.”

“There's something in that, too,” said Swan. “I know of a number of acts of kindness that he's done—all since his brother's death—as if—as if, you might say, he'd been trying to make up for his brother's being dead. And yet2”

Off and on. Swan and Cavanaugh had talked the morning hours away—ever since they had watched together, while old Jacob Wycherly ghosted off through the darkness of those lonely and deserted downtown streets. Cavanaugh's beat was a short one. It centered about the Wycherly Building. To and fro went Cavanaugh, like some human pendulum, covering his beat, “ringing up his box.” But each time that he passed this way he had stopped and he and the Swede night watchman had talked about the amazing visit of the night. And each time each had felt that the other was holding something back to balance, so to speak, that which he himself was holding back.