SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN. Abraham Merritt
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have heard aright.
“Very well,” he said. “And that mind whose existence you doubt knows —all of you there is to know. He summons you! Come, Kirkham, it is time for us to go!”
So! I had met what I had started out to find! They, whoever they were, had come out into the open at last.
“Wait a bit,” I felt my anger stir at the arrogance of the hitherto courteous voice. “Whoever you may be or whoever he may be who sent you, neither of you knows me as well as you seem to think. Let me tell you that I go nowhere unless I know where it is I’m going, and I meet no one unless I choose. Tell me then where you want me to go, who it is I’m to meet and the reason for it. When you do that, I’ll decide whether or not I’ll answer this, what did you call it—summons.”
He had listened to me quietly. Now his hand shot out and caught my wrist. I had run across many strong men, but never one with a grip like that. My cane dropped from my paralyzed grasp.
“You have been told all that is necessary,” he said, coldly. “And you are going with me—now!”
He loosed my wrist, and shaking with rage I jumped to my feet.
“Damn you,” I cried. “I go where I please when I please—” I stooped to pick up my cane. Instantly his arms were around me.
“You go,” he whispered, “where he who sent me pleases and when he pleases!”
I felt his hands swiftly touching me here and there. I could no more have broken away from him than if I had been a kitten. He found the small automatic under my left armpit and drew it out of its holster. Quickly as he had seized me, he released me and stepped back. “Come,” he ordered.
I stood, considering him and the situation. No one has ever had occasion to question my courage, but courage, to my way of thinking, has nothing whatever to do with bull-headed rashness. Courage is the cool weighing of the factors of an emergency within whatever time limit your judgment tells you that you have, and then the putting of every last ounce of brain, nerve and muscle into the course chosen. I had not the slightest doubt that this mysterious messenger had men within instant call. If I threw myself on him, what good would it do? I had only my cane. He had my gun and probably weapons of his own. Strong as I am, he had taught me that my strength was nothing to his. It might even be that he was counting upon an attack by me, that it was what he hoped for.
True, I could cry out for help or I could run. Not only did both of these expedients seem to me to be ridiculous, but, in view of the certainty of his hidden aides, useless.
Not far away were the subway stations and the elevated road. In that brilliantly lighted zone I would be comparatively safe from any concerted attack—if I could get there. I began to walk away across the Park toward Whitehall Street.
To my surprise he made neither objection nor comment. He paced quietly beside me. Soon we were out of the Battery and not far ahead were the lights of the Bowling Green Station. My resentment and anger diminished, a certain amusement took their place. Obviously it was absurd to suppose that in New York City anyone could be forced to go anywhere against his will, once he was in the usual close touch with its people and its police. To be snatched away from a subway station was almost unthinkable, to be kidnapped from the subway once we got in it absolutely unthinkable. Why then was my companion so placidly allowing each step to take me closer to this unassailable position?
It would have been so easy to have overpowered me just a few moments before. Or why had I not been approached at the Club? There were a dozen possible ways in which I could have been lured away from there.
There seemed only one answer. There was some paramount need for secrecy. A struggle in the Park might have brought the police. Overtures at the Club might have left evidence behind had I disappeared. How utterly outside the mark all this reasoning was I was soon to learn.
As we drew closer to the Bowling Green entrance of the subway, I saw a policeman standing there. I admit without shame that his scenic effect warmed my heart.
“Listen,” I said to my companion. “There’s a bluecoat. Slip my gun back into my pocket. Leave me here and go your way. If you do that, I say nothing. If you don’t I’m going to order that policeman to lock you up. They’ll have the Sullivan Law on you if nothing else. Go away quietly and, if you want to, get in touch with me at the Discoverers’ Club. I’ll forget all this and talk to you. But don’t try any more of the rough stuff or I’ll be getting good and mad.”
He smiled at me, as at some child, his face and eyes again all kindness. But he did not go. Instead, he linked his arm firmly in mine and led me straight to the officer. And as we came within earshot he said to me, quite loudly:
“Now come, Henry. You’ve had your little run. I’m sure you don’t want to give this busy officer any trouble. Come, Henry! Be good!”
The policeman stepped forward, looking us over. I did not know whether to laugh or grow angry again. Before I could speak, the man in the Inverness had handed the bluecoat a card. He read it, touched his hat respectfully and asked:
“And what’s the trouble, doctor?”
“Sorry to bother you, officer,” my astonishing companion answered. “But I’ll ask you to help me a bit. My young friend here is one of my patients. War case—aviator. He hurt his head in a crash in France and just now he thinks he is James Kirkham, an explorer. Actually, his name is Henry Walton.”
The bluecoat looked at me, doubtfully. I smiled, in my certain security.
“Go on!” I said. “What else do I think?”
“He’s quite harmless,” he gently patted my shoulder, “but now and then he manages to slip away from us. Yes, harmless, but very ingenious. He evaded us this evening. I sent my men out to trace him. I found him myself down there in the Battery. At such times, officer, he believes he is in danger of being kidnapped. That’s what he wants to tell you—that I am kidnapping him. Will you kindly listen to him, officer, and assure him that such a thing is impossible in New York. Or, if possible, that kidnappers do not conduct their captives up to a New York policeman as I have.”
I could but admire the deftness of the story, the half humorous and yet patient, wholly professional manner in which he told it. Safe now as I thought myself, I could afford to laugh, and I did.
“Quite right, officer,” I said. “Only it happens that my name really is James Kirkham. I never even heard of this Henry Walton. I never saw this man here until tonight. And I have every reason in the world to know that he is trying to force me to go somewhere that I have no intention whatever of going.”
“You see!” My companion nodded meaningly to the policeman, who, far from answering my smiles, looked at me with an irritating sympathy.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he assured me. “As the good doctor says, kidnappers don’t hunt up the police. Ye couldn’t be kidnapped in New York—at least not this way. Now go right along wit’ the doctor, an’ don’t ye worry no more.”
It was time to terminate the absurd matter. I thrust my hand into my pocket, brought out my wallet and dipped into it for my card. I picked out one and with it a letter or two and handed them to the bluecoat.
“Perhaps these identifications will give you another slant,” I said.
He took them, read them carefully, and handed them back to me, pityingly.
“Sure, lad,” his tone was soothing. “Ye’re in no danger. I’m tellin’ ye. Would ye want a taxi, doctor?”
I stared at him in amazement, and then down to the card and envelopes he had returned to me. I read them once and again, unbelievingly.
For the card bore the name of “Henry Walton,” and each of the envelopes was addressed to that same gentleman “in care of Dr. Michael Consardine” at an address that I recognized as a settlement of the highest-priced New York specialists up in the seventies. Nor was the wallet I held in my hand the one with which I had started this