Torture

CHAPTER I. Out of the Storm

A NICE night!” exclaimed Joseph Radd, sneering a little as he spoke. “A fine night for a murder!”

He leaned back in the old, rickety chair and laughed mirthlessly. Another gust of wind came tearing across the tumbling river from the heights on the other shore, rocking the shack on its foundation, and rattling the two windows. It swept in through the cracks around the door and made the lamp flicker and almost go out.

“A fine night for a murder!” he repeated, as he got up and went to the door, trying to stuff some old newspapers into the cracks to stop the wind.

The rain seemed to be beating against all sides of the shack in solid sheets. It hammered at the old roof, and now and then a few drops seeped through and fell to the floor. We had moved the table to one corner, beneath a good spot in the roof, and now sat beside it, watching the flickering lamp. There was a fire in the old stove, but we were thankful that it was not so cold that. we were obliged to build a big one. The shack probably would have burned over our heads had we done so.

Joe Radd left the door and resumed his seat beside the table. We continued our conversation, talking in low tones despite the howling of the storm, for we were not eager, you may be sure, to have our words overheard by any one, least of all by some snooping officer of the law.

“Fishing is good!” said Joseph Radd; and he grinned at me through the uncertain light cast by the lamp.

I grinned back at him.

The shack was on the bank of the river above the city. We had rented it two months before. We had fishing gear, too, and now and then, for the sake of appearances, we were compelled to put out and fish. Occasionally we caught enough to dress and sell to one of the retail markets half a mile below, bass and carp and perch and catfish. But that was not the sort of fishing Joe Radd meant.

Perhaps we looked like honest fishermen, and certainly that was our intention. We knew the lingo of the trade, too, and some of its tricks. We lived like honest fishermen of the poorer sort, a thing that we did not like, but we found it necessary.

“Nice life!” Joe Radd said. “And we have put up at the swellest hotels in the country, and quarreled with their managers because the salad dressing wasn't to our taste. Nice life, indeed! But it is profitable, all right!”

We were beginning to find it so, for the police seldom bothered an honest fisherman, we had found. So we fished when it was necessary, for the looks of the thing, and at night we crept away from the shack and went here and there in the city and took what it pleased us to take, especially since there were few safes that were mysteries for Joseph Radd or me.

You understand, of course? We had worked in many localities, and never twice had we followed the same plan. Never had we been convicted. Only a few times had we been arrested, and then only on suspicion. Our finger prints and measurements and photographs never had been taken by men at any police headquarters.

We were doing well. Joe Radd thought so, and so did I. For years we had been together and had worked together, and with Tim Morgan. Our interests were closely allied in many ways.

Morgan lived in a cottage in the city now, posing as a salesman searching for a new position. This gave him a chance to visit the offices of large firms and gather information for us. Jessie Radd was his wife. There had been a time when I had attempted to get her to marry me, but she had preferred Morgan. Despite that, I continued to be right-hand man of Joe Radd, her brother, and tried to treat Morgan decently when we met.

He gathered valuable information for us, you see, did Tim Morgan; and he never visited the shack. Nobody knew that Mrs. Morgan was the sister of Joe Radd, or that I was acquainted with her. We communicated in certain ways, though.

“I don't like the way Tim Morgan has been acting lately,” Joe Radd said now, during. a lull in the storm. “I have an idea that he wants to get rid of us and strike out for himself. I wouldn't care—only for Jessie.”

Let me explain here that Joseph Radd worshiped his sister, and had from childhood. He had not favored her match with Tim Morgan, but had held his tongue because he thought that it meant Jessie's happiness. Joe Radd had wanted Jessie to marry me. I'll never forget the day of the wedding. Joe Radd cried like a baby after the ceremony—acted more like a mother than a brother of the bride.

“You've got her, Tim Morgan!” he had said. “And you be good to her, Tim Morgan, or you'll answer personally to me!”

He watched them like a hawk, too, for a time, but did not seem to see anything wrong. I was not sure, however. I imagined at times that things were not going right with the Morgans, and thought Jessie was too proud to say so—or else that she said nothing because she feared that Joe would hurt Morgan.

We were persons outside the law, of course, and yet we could stand together, be loyal to one another, as well as honest folk. Joe Radd and I, for instance, were as close as two men could be.

“We are friends, John Botter!” he had declared, on one occasion. “When you say that, you've said it all—we're friends!”

And now, while the storm raged, we considered the cracking of a safe in a certain office far downtown, making our plans according to the information we had received from Tim Morgan the day before. We intended to do it the following night.

“Should have been planned for to-night, John,” said Joe Radd. “We'll never have a better night for pulling off a job like that. Fine night for a murder!”

I shuddered at his reiterated phrase, though I did not know why it affected me. Certainly, neither of us intended to kill anybody, nor did we anticipate that anybody would make an attempt on either of our lives.

“The storm is getting on my nerves!” I said.

“There is some hot coffee in the pot, John. Help yourself, and then give me some,” Joe Radd replied. “We'll settle the final details of this affair, and then go to bed. We've got to get up early and fish; that will give us an excuse for going to bed early to-morrow night. Then we can get up again about midnight, and get busy.”

I poured out the coffee, pushed a cup of it across the table to him, and fetched some crackers from the box that did duty as a cupboard for us. Joe Radd always drank his coffee without either sugar or milk, but I was more fastidious. I went to the box again, and re turned with the sugar and a can of condensed cream.

“If what Tim said was right2” I began and then stopped in the middle of the sentence, for a peculiar noise had reached us through the roar of the storm. It sounded like a moan, but died away.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Joe Radd. “I heard it, too. If Tim Morgan was right, and I suppose that he took the trouble to get the correct dope, we can go ahead to-morrow night. The pay-roll money2”

Something seemed to scrape at the side of the shack. Then the wind howled again, and we could not hear the sound. But it had made us nervous.

“I wonder if the rain is undermining this palatial abode of ours?” Joe Radd said. “I'd go out and see, but this storm would drench me before I got three feet from the door. It's one devil of a night to be out, especially down here by the river!”

“It is that!” I agreed. “The storm probably will be over by morning, and to-morrow night the moon will be shining, Which will make our work all the more difficult. We should have done it to-night.”

“Why crack an empty crib?” Joe Radd questioned. “The pay-roll money will be in it to-morrow night, if Morgan gave us the correct dope. And he seldom makes a mistake.”

There came another lull in the storm, and again we heard a scraping sound on one side of the shack. Then something seemed to fall against the door.

Joe Radd sprang across the room and was quick to jerk the door open. A gust of wind rushed in, and a sheet of rain with it. The lamp was extinguished by the sudden blast, but before the light went out I had caught a glimpse of a woman's form. Joe Radd slammed the door shut again.

“Hurry with a light, John!” he called to me. “Let's see what we have here.”

I struck a match, and managed to get the lamp burning again, after having scorched my fingers on the hot chimney Then I turned around to find Joe Radd holding the woman in his arms. She had tottered forward as if completely exhausted. She was drenched, and her clothes were covered with mud.

“Over here with her, Joe!” I exclaimed, sweeping the blankets from one of the bunks. “I'll stir up the fire. She's probably been lost in the storm2”

Joe Radd started to carry her across the room toward the light; but she was not unconscious, and now she lifted her head and tried to get to her feet. I gasped, and Joe Radd cried aloud.

“Jessie! Sister!” he exclaimed.

She made an attempt to speak, but seemed to be struggling to get her breath. The light struck her face now, and I sprang forward to help Joe Radd. Then we both gasped our horror.

There was blood upon her face, that flowed from a cut beside one eye. Blood had matted her hair over one temple, and her lower lip was badly cut and swollen.

We worked like maniacs for a few minutes, getting her to the bunk and forcing her to sit on the edge of it. Joe Radd threw a warm blanket around her shoulders, and I hurried to get a pan of water. She was sobbing now, and making an effort to speak.

“What is it, Jessie? What is it, sister?” Joe Radd was asking, down on his knees before her. “What has happened? Why did you come here on such a night?”

“I thought—I'd never find you!” she gasped. “The wind—almost took my breath.”

Joe Radd poured some of the water on his handkerchief and began bathing her face.

“Did you slip and fall?” he asked. “How did your face get cut? What caused all that blood on your head? And your lip2”

She seemed to straighten, to gain sudden strength, and her eyes flashed angrily for an instant.

“Tim Morgan—did that!” she said.

And then she began sobbing wildly again, putting her hands before her face; and Joe Radd sprang to his feet beside me with murder in his eyes. I remembered his reiterated phrase: “It's a fine night for a murder!”

CHAPTER II. Too Late

THERE came a lull in the storm at that moment, and it was silent in the shack save for Jessie's frenzied sobbing and Joe Radd's heavy breathing. Presently the storm seemed to redouble its fury, but none of us noticed it. Joe Radd went down on his knees beside his sister again, and put an arm around her.

“Tell me!” he said.

His voice was calm enough, but I did not like the tone of it; it grated, sounded like a chisel trying to bite into cold steel. Jessie tried to cease her sobbing, and wiped her eyes, and presently she spoke.

“It began soon after we were married—his abuse,” she said. “I was too proud to say anything about it then. You don't know Tim Morgan—you men. You're fools to trust him.”

“I guess he's square enough with us,” Joe Radd said.

“But he isn't. He's been planning to quit you, Joe. The other night he pulled a trick with another man, and left you two out of it.”

That statement startled us, you may be sure. Joe Radd's eyes met mine, and then he turned away again. There are certain rules and regulations observed by those of the underworld, you know. A man does not easily cast aside his pals and pick up others. At least, he is not supposed to be working with two sets of pals at the same time.

“He had a quarrel with this fellow—who calls himself Kentucky Kline,” Jessie went on. “He is a big brute of a man. Tim Morgan always complained that you two were not hard-hearted enough at times. He—he wanted to run with one of his own kind, I suppose.”

She stopped and began sobbing once more. Joe Radd motioned for me to keep silent, and waited for her tempest of tears to be over. Then he patted her on the shoulder.

“Tell me, Jessie,” he said again.

“I don't know what it was they did, but Tim Morgan was out last night, almost until daylight, and when he came back Kentucky Kline was with him. They had lots of money and began dividing it. They were drinking heavily, too. Kentucky Kline left, growling about something, and Tim Morgan went to bed.”

“Go on,” Joe Radd urged, as she stopped and recommenced her sobbing.

“Tim was ugly when he woke, about noon,” she said. “He began drinking again, and when I asked him to stop, he abused me. I tried to find out what he and Kentucky Kline had done, but he told me that it was none of my business. Late in the afternoon, Kentucky Kline came to the house again.”

“What happened then?” Joe Radd asked.

“They quarreled once more. I couldn't understand exactly, but Kentucky Kline seemed to think that Tim Morgan had been unfair in dividing the money—swag, I suppose. Finally, Tim told Kentucky Kline to get out of the house, or he'd throw him out. Kline went away, then.

“I tried to get Tim to talk to me and tell me what he had done, and I said that it wasn't fair for him to be planning things with another man and leaving you boys out of it. I reminded him that you had picked him up when he didn't amount to anything, and had helped him along, and that Joe was my brother. He—he cursed me, then. He told me to attend to my own business, said he was about through with you boys anyway, because you were too tame.”

“And he struck you?” Joe Radd asked.

“He has struck me many times,” Jessie said, “but I always kept it from you. I was afraid that you'd get into trouble with him.”

“You tell me exactly what happened!” Joe Radd commanded.

“Well, he wanted to go out again, and I told him that it was dangerous, He had been drinking, and he always talks too much when he drinks. I told him he might say something that would set the police on his track, might mention you boys. He told me that he was going out anyway. I tried to stop him, and he threw me against the wall. I tried to cling to his arm, begging him to stay at home, and he struck me in the mouth and cut my lip. Then he struck me again and again. I don't know how many times. I ran to the door and rushed out. I couldn't go back, so ] came here.

“I didn't have any money with me, of course, and I was afraid to return and get some. The storm was terrible, and it was a long way here, hut I made it. I slipped and fell several times coming down to the river from the road.”

Jessie began sobbing again then. Joe Radd got to his feet slowly, walked to the corner of the shack, and took his cap from a nail driven in the wall there.

“Joe2” I began.

“Take care of her!” he commanded me.

Then he darted to the door. There was a rush of wind and rain that extinguished the lamp again, and I heard the door slam. Jessie cried out at that, and I made haste to strike a match and light the lamp. Joe Radd was gone.

“John!” Jessie cried, clasping me by the arm. “He'll kill Tim Morgan! I shouldn't have told Joe the truth! Stop him, John!”

“He's up to the road by this time,” I said. “I couldn't find him now.”

“Then you must go after him, John Botter. I am done with Tim Morgan, but I don't want my brother to kill him, and go to the chair for it.”

“Joe'll only beat him up2”

“Don't try to lie to me, John Botter! There never was a brother thought as much of his sister as Joe Radd does of me, and you know it. He told Tim Morgan he'd call him to account if I wasn't treated right, and you know Joe Radd will strike without thinking of the consequences!”

I knew it, all right. Joe Radd would think only of the cuts and bruises on his sister's face. He would not stop to consider whether Tim Morgan was drunk or sober. As soon as he saw Morgan, he would strike. Joe Radd had one of those terrible, deadly cold tempers. The expression of the killer had been in his face when he left the shack, and I knew it.

“I—I'd better not meddle in this, Jessie,” I said.

“But we must save Joe!” she persisted. “He'll not even try to cover his tracks. I know Joe Radd. He'll kill Tim Morgan as soon as he finds him, even if it is in front of a hundred men. He'll go to the chair—or to prison for life. And Tim Morgan isn't worth that much, John Botter. He isn't worth it!”

“But I don't know where to find him, Jessie,” I said helplessly.

“Start, John! Don't stand there like an idiot! Hurry to the cottage—Joe Radd will go there first, probably. If you get there before him, and Tim Morgan is there, you wait until Joe comes, and try to stop him. If you ever loved me, John; if you love me yet2”

She made the right appeal there, said the one thing that would force me to engage in this business, which I felt was between Tim Morgan and his wife's brother. Already, I was taking my cap and rubber coat from the nail in the corner,

“I'll be all right here, John,” she said. “I'll drink some coffee, and bathe my face. You hurry after Joe, and bring him back here as soon as you can. We must save him, John!”

She shielded the lamp by standing in front of it. I opened the door, darted out, and slammed the door behind me, making sure that the catch fell into place. The wind hurled me against the side of the shack and almost took my breath away; the rain pelted me.

I stopped for a moment to pull the collar of my coat up around my neck, and then bent my head and started up the slope away from the river, with the storm swirling around me. It was a terrible night, and when I thought of Jessie making her way through that storm, from the cottage to our shack up the river, stumbling through the mud and facing that wind and pelting rain, I wanted to throttle Tim Morgan myself.

3ut I knew that Jessie had been right. It was not proper that Joe Radd go to the electric chair and have his life snuffed out because he had removed a brute from the world. As she had said, Tim Morgan wasn't worth it. And the chair was such a terrible thing. I had talked once with a man who had been sentenced, and who had lived in the shadow of the chair until two days before the date set for his execution, to be pardoned at almost the last minute because the guilty man, hurt and dying, confessed. I had asked him, like a fool, how it felt. Never will I forget the horror in his voice and on his face as he told me.

I did not want to see my old friend, Joe Radd, face that horror. I knew that he would go to death a stoic in such a case, but I could not endure the thought of it. Jessie was right, I would have to save him, though it meant saving the life of Tim Morgan, too.

Sudden realization of the circumstances seemed to come to me, and I plunged on up the wet, slippery slope toward the distant road, wondering in what direction Joe Radd had gone. I scarcely thought that he had taken the boat and attempted to go down the river, for the boat was heavy for one man to handle, and in such a wind it would be almost impossible.

Anger would give wings to his heels, I knew, and I would have to hasten if I would be before him and save him. Joe Radd would think of nothing except punishing the man who had treated his sister brutally, would not rest until he had accomplished his object.

In time, I reached the road, which was almost knee deep in mud. I tried to make my way along the side of it, close to a fence, where the walking was somewhat better, but where the wind got a clear sweep at me.

On and on I went, the lights of the city always glistening in the distance and seeming to draw no nearer. I passed nobody, saw nothing except those distant lights and a flash of lightning now and then. I was drenched already, half exhausted because of my fight against the force of the storm.

Now I was passing a cottage here and there on the outskirts of the city, and knew that I was not far from the end of a street car line. The road was better here, and I could make more rapid progress. I hurried around a curve, where a hedge cut off some of the wind, and raised my head and looked down the road. There was the that marked the end of the car line; it swung backward and forward as if it would be dashed to the pavement below.

Presently, I was nearer, and I saw that there was a car waiting at the end of the line. I began running now, hoping to catch it before it started on its return trip, for they ran ten minutes apart, and every minute was precious.

I listened for the clanging of the bell, though doubting that I could hear it in the roar of the storm. On and on I ran. I reached the end of the pavement and rushed down the street in water above my ankles. I came to the end of the car, sprang upon it, stood there gasping for breath, happy that I had caught it and would not have to wait for the next.

“Little damp, ain't it?” the conductor asked me. The motorman was inside the car, too, and he looked up with quick interest as I entered.

“Bad storm,” I answered.

I was not thinking of the storm now; I was thinking that, since he was not on this car, Joe Radd must have caught the one before, and that I would be ten minutes behind him. A lot can happen in ten minutes. Men's lives have been changed in less time than that.

“Isn't it about time you're starting?” I asked the motorman, nervously.

“It is,” he replied. “We should have started about forty-five minutes ago, to tell the truth. But the storm has smashed things.”

“You're fooling me!” I cried. “Your lights are burning2”

“Oh, we've got power, but things are smashed farther down, and we've got orders to stay here until told to start, and to report by phone every ten minutes. Line's blocked somewhere, and they don't want any more cars piling up down in the city.”

“I'm in a hurry!” I gasped.

“And you're out of luck,” added the conductor, grinning. “We may be able to pull out in half an hour or so.”

Half an hour or so! And every second Joe Radd, perhaps, was drawing nearer the deed that would stamp him with the brand of Cain. I ran to the door of the car and opened it.

“Going to hoof it?” the motorman cried. “You'll drown, you simp!”

I did not waste time replying to him. I closed the door, vaulted into the rushing water in the street, found the sidewalk, and hurried down it. It was useless, I knew, to expect to find a taxicab in that part of the city, doubly useless to telephone for one and wait until it made the trip against the storm, even if I found a chauffeur who would attempt it.

So I stumbled onward, happy in the knowledge that Joe Radd had not been able to catch a trolley car, either. Perhaps I could overtake him—perhaps could get to the cottage first, and be in time.

I traveled mechanically, my mind dealing with hosts of things as I grew fatigued. Did you ever notice how your mind will race when you are walking a long distance, plodding along minute after minute, mile after mile? I think, looking back at it now, that it was this condition that made possible what happened afterward. I have had physicians tell me as much.

After a time I left the main avenue and cut across town toward the district where Tim Morgan had rented the furnished cottage. The wind had gone down a little, and the rain was not falling in such torrents, so that I was able to make better progress.

I reached the proper street and turned into it, happy in the knowledge that I had only six blocks more to go. Despite my exhausted condition, I ran those last few blocks, that is, I stumbled along and imagined that I was running. I had not seen Joe Radd; I began to fear that he had beaten me to the house.

And then I saw the cottage revealed by a flash of lightning. It was in the middle of the block, and there was no other near it. I ran across the lawn, and stopped at the corner of the building. There was no light shining through the windows.

I used some caution now. I went around to the rear, intending to listen and ascertain whether Joe Radd was there talking to Tim Morgan, or whether they were fighting. I only wanted to be sure of the scene before I broke in upon it.

There was not the slightest sound coming from the cottage. I came to the rear door, stepped close to it. Another flash of lightning showed me that the door was open, and that the rain was driving into the kitchen.

My heart almost ceased beating when I discovered that.

“Tim!” I called guardedly. “Joe Radd! This is John!”

No voice answered mine. I stepped inside and closed the door. I struck a match and looked around the kitchen. There was nothing unusual to be seen.

A small lamp was on a shelf there, and I lighted it, held it above my head, and opened the door that led into the little living room and dining room combined.

Tim Morgan was stretched on the floor. Blood had been flowing from a wound in his breast. A long, sharp knife that belonged to the kitchen was on the floor beside the body, its blade and handle smeared with blood.

I had come too late.

CHAPTER III. In the Torture Chamber

FOR a moment, I stood there horrified, trying to realize what had happened and all that it meant. Then thoughts of Joe Radd and Jessie came to me. Tim Morgan deserved to die, I told myself, but the law would not deal leniently with his murderer because of that. Perhaps Joe Radd would be saved from the electric chair, if some good criminal lawyer showed a susceptible jury that he had punished the man who had treated his sister cruelly. But I knew Joe Radd; he was not the sort of man to endure life imprisonment. He would die within five years.

It flashed through my mind that Jessie had sent me to prevent this crime, and that I had failed to do so. Therefore it was my duty to do as much as I could to save Joe Radd.

We never visited the cottage. There was no reason to believe that anybody knew Jessie was Joe Radd's sister, that we were connected in any way. If the police did not find that out, the crime would remain a mystery, provided that we could keep Jessie out of the way.

There were many possibilities. Joe Radd might be caught and convicted and punished, or if the police found Jessie and learned how Tim Morgan had treated her, they might even accuse her of having murdered her husband.

I wondered whether there was anything around the house that would connect Jessie with Joe Radd. The first horror had passed now, and I was moved to action. I dashed into the bedroom and opened drawers there, searching for notes, letters, scraps of paper that might prove damaging. I found nothing, and hurried into a sort of den at the front of the house.