CHAPTER IX.
POWER AGAINST POWER.
Ched Ramar placed a chair for her in the middle of the room, where she faced the large statue. Nick observed that, as he passed her, he waved one long hand before her face—twice! There was a slight twitch in the girl’s eyelids, and her stare at the image became more intense.
The tall Indian went out of the room—by the door at which Nick Carter and his companions had entered—and which was near the Buddha.
For a few moments there was stillness. Then, from somewhere came a deep, subdued voice, almost like the sighing of a strong wind.
“Come!” it said.
“What does all this mean?” whispered Chick to his chief.
“Hush!” was all Nick replied.
The girl was slowly rising from her chair. As she did so, the opera cloak dropped from her, revealing her white shoulders in the décolleté gown and the equally white arms, bare except for a jeweled bracelet on each wrist.
She stood perfectly still in front of the chair, her vacant gaze toward the brazen face of the great effigy.
“Come!” repeated the strange voice.
With measured steps she walked forward, and without hesitation went up the ladder which stood in front of the Buddha. She stood there, in about the same position that Nick Carter had seen her before. One hand rested on the idol’s shoulder, and she was looking into the large eye sockets as if held under a deep spell.
“Say, chief! Let’s get after this,” whispered Chick restively. “We can’t let this go on.”
“Keep quiet, Chick!”
“You will obey—obey—obey!” moaned the deep voice.
The girl did not speak. She only stared. Nick Carter could not see her eyes now, because her face was turned away, but he had no doubt that some intelligence had come into them, and that she was looking into those strange eyes which had appeared in the idol’s sockets on the former occasion.
“Speak! I command!” went on the idol. “You will obey?”
“Yes, I will obey,” replied Clarice, in a low monotone.
“It will be death if you do not,” said the deep voice.
“It will be death!” repeated Clarice.
“Before you leave this house, a package of papers will be placed in your hand.”
“A package of papers!” she repeated, like an automaton.
“Those papers, with the exception of a few, are the same that you brought this morning.”
“The same that I brought.”
“You will take them from here and return them to the place from which you took them. Afterward, you will go to the ball and forget where you have been—or what you have done.”
“Forget!” she answered, in the same strange, toneless accents.
“Forget utterly! Forget! Obey!”
She repeated the words slowly, and each accent was perfectly clear, although it seemed as if she uttered them without knowing that she was speaking.
It was an awe-inspiring spectacle—this fair young girl, in the fripperies of her handsome ball dress, standing there, talking to an image, and never taking her gaze from its unnatural eyes.
“That is all. You will go down the steps and seat yourself in that chair. Soon the packet of papers will be given to you. Then you will be taken downstairs to the car that brought you, and be left at the corner of your own avenue. You will not know. When you are in your home you will do as you have been commanded. Then—you will forget. Obey!”
Slowly she descended, and, with unseeing gaze, walked to the chair and sat down. From force of habit alone, she arranged her skirts, allowing her long train, which had escaped from the loop that ordinarily held it up, to sweep the floor.
“Say, chief! Are you there?”
It was Patsy Garvan. He had come out from behind the idol, and was looking about the room for his chief. He took no notice of the girl in the chair, and she betrayed no consciousness of having heard or seen him.
Nick Carter came out from behind the table, and went over to Clarice. She seemed not to know that he stood in front of her, and when he passed his hand across her eyes, they did not wink.
“She’s in a deep hypnotic sleep,” he murmured. “Well, I’ll leave her so for the present. What did you see back there, Patsy?”
“It was all such a bald fake, that it isn’t worth talking about,” replied Patsy. “He just stood up on the stepladder and gave her all that bluff, with his head shoved into the hollow. When he got through, he came down and told me to keep the door of the cupboard shut until he got back.”
“I see. Is that all?”
“Not quite. Before he went up on that ladder, he tried to hypnotize me. But I was wise and I kept thinking about other things, and he couldn’t work it. I know how to beat that game. You’ve taught me that.”
“Yes. A hypnotic subject can often resist if he or she has a strong will,” replied Nick Carter. “I shouldn’t like to say that everybody could do it, however.”
“Maybe not. But they can’t bluff me,” chuckled Patsy. “I’ve had that tried on me too often, and no one ever got away with it yet.”
Nick knew that this was true. He had seen too many proofs that Patsy Garvan had a powerful will of his own to fear that he could be easily put under the influence of such a man as this East Indian. Neither he nor Chick were the kind of young men who would yield without a fight to an attack, whether physical or mental.
“Look out!” suddenly whispered Patsy. “Duck! He’s coming back!”
He slipped behind the idol, dragging Nick Carter and Chick with him.
“There’s room for all of us in here,” went on Patsy, in a scarcely audible tone. “But keep quiet. If he comes back here, we’ve got to land on him. That will be all. I don’t care if he does come.”
“Hush!” warned Nick.
If there was any weakness in Patsy Garvan which had to be controlled, it was a disposition to talk too much.
The curtain at the elevator parted, and a man came through.
“Gee!” whispered Patsy. “It’s the fellow they call Keshub!”
“One of the guards,” added Nick.
Keshub was not as tall as Ched Ramar. But he was a big fellow, and he had all the dignity of the Oriental, even though he was not of as high caste as Ched Ramar was supposed to be.
He strode into the room and looked at the big idol. Then he made a deep salaam to the image, joining the tips of the fingers of his two hands over and in front of his bowed head as he bent low, and dropping them to his sides as he straightened up.
“Teaching old Brassy to swim, I guess,” grinned Patsy.
Nick gave him a hard dig in the side, to quiet him, although he found it hard to repress a smile at this irreverent designation of the god as “old Brassy.”
Keshub turned from the idol and strode over to Clarice. Nick saw then—as he cautiously peeped around the idol, and partly concealed by draperies—that the Indian had taken from his clothing a package of papers, held together by a rubber band.
“Take!” he said curtly.
The girl sat perfectly quiet, and appeared not to hear the word. He repeated it, at the same time lifting the girl’s right hand and placing the packet in her fingers.
The touch of the packet seemed to revive some sleeping memory in her being. She clutched it tightly and arose from her seat.
“Obey! Forget!” she murmured.
“I will return in a short time and take you out to the car,” said Keshub. “Stay here.”
Whether the girl heard and understood this Nick Carter could not tell. All he knew was that she stood perfectly still, her eyes staring into vacancy, but always turned toward the idol, while Keshub disappeared between the curtains to the elevator.
“Now, Patsy! Go to that elevator and see if you can fasten it so that no one can get out of it. There is a door with gilt railings. I think it can be bolted from this side. I noticed it when I was in this place before.”
Patsy ran to obey his chief, and a low chuckle told that he had found the bolt referred to. Then there was a click as the bolt slipped into the socket, and Patsy came back.
By this time Nick Carter had begun something that had been in his mind while Keshub talked to the girl. He went to her, and staring straight at her eyes, whispered:
“Obey! The packet!”
Mechanically she held out the packet and he took it from her unresisting fingers. Then, as if another power were fighting against the influence which Nick Carter had brought to bear, she held out her hand as if to get the packet back.
He waved his hands before her face and whispered again, in the same sharp, staccato tones he had used before:
“Go to the ladder and listen again to what will be said to you from the mouth of Buddha.”
She moved across the floor, and reaching the ladder, went up in the mechanical way that always distinguished her in that particular action. When she was in her usual place there, with one hand on the shoulder of the idol, Nick slipped behind, and, going up the hidden ladder, took his place in the hollow, where he could lean forward into the head.
“Chick!” he called down to his assistant. “If anybody comes, tell me. Then, if you must, bring him down at all risks. But—make no noise.”
“Am I in on this?” asked Patsy.
“Of course.”
“Good! Here’s where we shake down the plums. But telling us not to make any noise sort of puts prickles on the job.”
With his two assistants at the foot of the ladder, ready to fly at any intruder, Nick Carter leaned forward, and, in lowered tones, spoke through the brazen lips of the great Buddha.
“You will obey!” were his first words.
As he spoke he fastened his gaze firmly on the eyes of the girl, and was encouraged when she looked steadily at him. The vacant expression had left them. This told him that he had been able to take the place of Ched Ramar, and that the hypnotic power exerted by the East Indian had been maintained by himself.
That it would not be easy to make this sort of transfer he had realized from the first. But he believed it could be done if he could concentrate himself sufficiently to overwhelm the mentality of the subject. He had succeeded now, almost beyond his hopes. The girl would do anything he commanded.