Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 3 (1923-03).djvu/82

Rh had fallen off as Popkens' accomplices threw the skeleton to one side, stared at me out of eyeless sockets, as if grimacing in unholy glee at finding a companion after all these years. I judged, from the appearance of bits of clothing, that the skeleton was that of a girl, and indeed, some of her long hair was sticking to the wall behind me. I could feel it against the back of my neck.

Popkens kicked me in the ribs, and then climbed out of the dismal hole, assisted by one of his accomplices, who let a rope down to him. I was left in complete and terrible darkness.

Not even the Countess knew of the existence of the oubliette, Popkens had said. It must have been reached, then, through a secret passage, possibly through a hidden door. How, then, did Popkens know the passage that led to it, or even know of its existence? I remembered that the Countess recognized him as someone she had once seen at the castle in years gone by, although she could not say when or under what circumstances. Truly the man had a sinister history. His connection with the castle, and possibly with the dissolute old count, must have been far closer than the Countess suspected.

I have been in many difficult situations, but never did my prospects seem so dismal as at that moment. I have suffered worse physical tortures at Blackburn, England, where I was manacled and trussed in iron by a strong man on the stage of the Palace Theater, on October 24, 1902, and suffered brutality until my arms and wrists were torn and bleeding from the irons, of which the locks had been plugged in violation of the rules of fair play, even as they were plugged by Popkens in this instance, But in that instance I could have released myself from my tortures at any minute if I had merely admitted myself beaten instead of continuing my struggle with the irons until I finally freed myself by my own efforts. But now there seemed no way out of my tortures, as I lay naked in the mud of the oubliette, fettered to the wall, under the bed of the Maros River, in a musty cavern through the walls of which the niter was seeping.

Release from the fetters of the oubliette was not as difficult as I had feared, but my plugged handcuffs held my wrists rigidly, and the flesh was swelling beneath the cruel bite of the steel, making it doubly difficult to extricate myself. However, having released my arms from the wall, I felt more comfortable, and was enabled to disentangle my ankles from the wire that bound them. I could not climb out of the oubliette with my hands shackled behind me, but I resorted to an old trick—I bent forward and doubled my legs until I was able to loop my fettered arms around my feet and bring my hands, still shackled, in front of me.

Then fell to me a grisly task, which I think I would not care to repeat for the combined fortunes of Rockefeller and Henry Ford. My captors, after all their precautions to remove all clothing and everything that might-serve to pick a lock, had overlooked the human skeleton that lay beside me in the oubliette. I knelt on the skeleton and splintered the ribs. Indeed it was with a bone broken from the skeleton by my feet that I was able to open the gyves that fettered me to the wall, and this was not so difficult as might be supposed, after I had solved the problem of how to get hold of the bone and manipulate it. This required a good deal of contortionistic skill, but was easy aa compared with the task of opening the locks of the handcuffs that had been plugged with wood and mashed with a nail.

In my long and adventurous career I have never failed to open a lock, but this was not a legitimate test, any more than the test on the stage at Blackburn was legitimate. I had succeeded there, but it seemed as if I was facing utter failure here. I got the wooden plugging out of one of the cuffs, when the fear seized me that the false-spiritualists might return to murder me. Popkens, as I had learned from his remark about my escape from handcuffs at Cologne knew that I had opened the best locks of the German police, and he might conceivably be struck with the possibility that I could escape also from his manacles, plugged though they were.

I climbed out of the oubliette into the dungeon above it, unlocked the massive door of the dungeon (which was easy work as compared to opening some of the locks in American jails), and stepped out into a damp passageway. A ray of light wavered along the passageway, and I sprang back into the dungeon, just in time to avoid discovery. I nearly fell back into the oubliette in my haste. True enough, they had sent a man back to put an end to me. He raised his lantern and threw its rays through the barred square in the upper part of the massive dungeon door. I crouched directly beneath the opening, and he failed to see me.

I heard him fumble with the lock, and he opened the door hesitatingly; surprised to find that the key turned so easily. His back was toward me as he set down the lantern. In his right hand he held a revolver, with which he evidently intended to shoot me. I sprang upon his back, looping my handcuffed arms over his head, and bent his head back. Although my wrists were manacled, I had the advantage which attaches to surprise. I got him under me, and pressed my knee into his throat. I was choking him into insensibility when part of the dungeon floor gave way, precipitating him head first into the oubliette, out of which I had climbed a minute before. The lantern crashed into the opening and went out, leaving us both in darkness. I groped my way out into the passage, feeling my way up step, by step, for I feared hidden holes and trap-doors that might drop me into the Maros River.

I ascended a long, winding stairway, and finally saw a dim light ahead of me, and came out into a gloomy corridor in the upper part of the castle. True enough, the dungeons were reached by a hidden panel, which had been left open by the man who had just gone down to kill me. I closed it, and admired the absolute skill with which it was concealed. But the Countess and her sister Rosicka were in the power of Popkens and his unscrupulous companions, who were perhaps torturing them into giving them the document that the blackmailers wanted, and my own position was precarious, so I had little time to admire the skill of construction of that panel.

I must get away, remove my manacles, get some clothes, and summon help. I climbed out of a window in the castle tower and began to descend the wall in the fading twilight, manacled though I was. Then I remembered that in my eagerness to reach safety I had neglected to lock the door into the dungeon above the oubliette. This was the mistake that nearly cost me my life.