CHAPTER VIII.
“HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!”
The house in which Nick and Chick found themselves had been a good one, but it was now badly in need of repair.
The main hall was comparatively wide for so narrow a building, and a heavy balustrade fenced off the stairs on one side.
The detectives paused just inside the door and listened intently. The doors on the first floor were all closed and the rooms behind them appeared to be untenanted. At any rate, all was still on that floor. Subdued noises of various sorts floated down to them from above, however, seemingly from the third floor.
They looked at each other significantly. Evidently, their theory had been correct—to some extent, at least.
They approached each of the doors in turn, but could hear nothing. Under the stairway they found the expected door leading down to the basement, but, as it was locked, and there was no key, they paid no further attention to it.
Instead, they started to mount the front stairs to the second floor. The stairway was old and rather creaky, but the detectives knew how to step in order to make the least noise. Consequently, they gained the next landing without being discovered.
Here they repeated the tactics they had used below, with a like result. The sound of voices and footfalls were louder now, but they all came from the third floor. The second seemed to be as quiet as the first.
The doors on the second floor, like those on the first, were all closed, but Nick ascertained that at least one of them was unlocked.
That fact might be of great advantage in preventing discovery, in case any one should start down unexpectedly from the third floor, for the halls and stairs offered no place of concealment.
The detectives noiselessly removed their shoes before attempting the last flight, and placed them inside the unlocked room, which they noiselessly closed again.
They were now ready for the final reconnaissance.
By placing the balls of their stockinged feet on the edges of the steps, they succeeded in mounting to the third floor without making any more noise than that produced by the contact of their clothing.
A slight pause at the top served to satisfy them that the noises all proceeded from one room at the front of the house. They were already close to the door of this room, and they listened breathlessly.
Words were plainly audible now, punctuated at frequent intervals by loud bursts of laughter.
It sounded like a merrymaking of some kind. What was going on behind that closed door? Had they made a mistake in entering the house and wasted precious time in following a will-o’-the-wisp, when Helga Lund might be even then in the greatest danger?
Nick and his assistants feared so, and their hearts sank heavily.
But no. The next words they heard reassured, but, at the same time, startled them. The voice was unmistakably Grantley’s.
“That’s enough of pantomime,” it said, with a peculiar note of cruel, triumphant command. “Now give us your confession from ‘The Daughters of Men’—give it, but remember that you are not a great actress, that you are so bad that you would be hooted from the cheapest stage. Remember that you are ugly and dressed in rags, that you are awkward and ungainly in your movements, that your voice is like a file. Remember it not only now, but always. You will never be able to act. Your acting is a nightmare, and you are a fright—when you aren’t a joke. But show us what you can do in that confession scene.”
Nick and Chick grew tense as they listened to those unbelievable words, and to the heartless chuckles and whisperings with which they were received. Apparently there were several men in the “audience”—probably Chester and some of Grantley’s other former accomplices.
The meaning was plain—all too plain.
The proud, beautiful Helga Lund was once more under hypnotic influence, and Grantley, with devilish ingenuity, was impressing suggestions upon her poor, tortured brain, suggestions which were designed to rob her of her great ability, not only for the moment, but, unless their baneful effect could be removed, for all the rest of her life.
She, who had earned the plaudits of royalty in most of the countries of Europe, was being made a show of for the amusement of a handful of ruthless scoffers.
It made the detectives’ blood boil in their veins and their hands clench until their knuckles were white, but they managed somehow to keep from betraying themselves.
The employment of hypnotism in such a way was plainly within the scope of the new law against unwarranted operations or experiments on human beings, without their consent; but it was necessary to secure as much evidence as possible before interfering.
To that end Nick Carter took out of a pocket case a curious little instrument, which he was in the habit of calling his “keyhole periscope.”
It consisted of a small black tube, about the length and diameter of a lead pencil. There was an eyepiece at one end. At the other a semicircular lens bulged out.
It was designed to serve the same purpose as the periscope of a submarine torpedo boat—that is, to give a view on all sides of a given area at once. The exposed convex lens, when thrust through a keyhole or other small aperture, received images of objects from every angle in the room beyond, and magnified them, in just the same way as the similarly constructed periscope of a submarine projects above the level of the water and gives those in the submerged vessel below a view of all objects on the surface, within a wide radius.
Nick had noted that there was no key in the lock of the door. Taking advantage of that fact, he crept silently forward, inserted the wonderful little instrument in the round upper portion of the hole, and, stooping, applied his eye to the eyepiece.
He could not resist an involuntary start as he caught his first glimpse of the extraordinary scene within.
The whole interior of the room was revealed to him. Around the walls were seated three young men of professional appearance. Nick recognized them all. They were Doctor Chester, Doctor Willard, and Doctor Graves, three of Grantley’s former satellites.
They were leaning forward or throwing themselves back in different attitudes of cruel enjoyment and derision, while Grantley stood at one side, his hawklike face thrust out, his keen, pitiless eyes fixed malignantly on the figure in the center of the room.
Nick’s heart went out in pity toward that pathetic figure, although he could hardly believe his eyes.
It was that of Helga Lund, but so changed as to be almost unrecognizable.
Her splendid golden hair hung in a matted, disordered snarl about her face, which was pale and smudged with grime. She was clothed in the cheapest of calico wrappers, hideously colored, soiled and torn, beneath which showed her bare, dust-stained feet.
She had thrown herself upon her knees, as the part required; her outstretched hands were intertwined beseechingly, and her wonderful eyes were raised to Grantley’s face. In them was the hurt, fearful look of a faithful but abused dog in the presence of a cruel master.
Her tattered sleeves revealed numerous bruises on her perfectly formed arms.
The part of the play which Grantley had ordered her to render was that in which the heroine pleaded with her angry lover for his forgiveness of some past act of hers, which she had bitterly repented.
She was reciting the powerful lines now. They had always held her great audiences breathless, but how different was this pitiable travesty!
It would have been hard enough at best for her to make them ring true when delivered before such unsympathetic listeners and in such an incongruous garb, but she was not at her best. On the contrary, her performance was infinitely worse than any one would have supposed possible.
She had unconsciously adopted every one of the hypnotist’s brutal suggestions.
There was not a vestige of her famous grace in any of her movements. The most ungainly slattern could not have been more awkward.
Her words were spoken parrotlike, as if learned by rote, without the slightest understanding of their meaning. For the most part, they succeeded one another without any attempt at emphasis, and when emphasis was used, it was invariably in the wrong place.
It was her voice itself, however, which gave Nick and Chick their greatest shock.
The Lund, as she was generally called in Europe, had always been celebrated for her remarkably musical voice; but this sorry-looking creature’s voice was alternately shrill and harsh. It pierced and rasped and set the teeth on edge, just as the sound of a file does.
Nothing could have given a more sickening sense of Grantley’s power over the actress than this astounding transformation, this slavish adherence to the conditions of abject failure which he had imposed upon her.
It seemed incredible, and yet, there it was, plainly revealed to sight and hearing alike.
A subtler or more uncanny revenge has probably never been conceived by the mind of man. The public breakdown which Grantley had so mercilessly caused had only been the beginning of his scheme of vengeance.
He doubtless meant to hypnotize his victim again and again, and each time to impose his will upon her gradually weakening mind, until she had become a mere wreck of her former self, and incapable of ever again taking her former place in the ranks of genius.
There was nothing impossible about it. On the contrary, the result was a foregone conclusion if Grantley were left free to continue as he had begun.
The very emotional susceptibility which had made Helga Lund a great actress had also made her an easy victim of hypnotic suggestion, and if the process went on long enough, she would permanently lose everything that had made her successful.
Outright murder would have been innocent by comparison with such infernal ingenuity of torture. It seemed to Nick as if he were watching the destruction of a splendid priceless work of art.
He withdrew the little periscope from the keyhole and straightened up. One hand went to his pocket and came out with an automatic. Chick followed his example.
They were outnumbered two to one, but that did not deter them.
Helga must be rescued at once, and her tormentors caught red-handed.