Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 03.djvu/34

 The distance to Ethredge's home was not great, and Peters, driving a police sedan, covered it quickly. The Commissioner, when he rang, let him in at once.

Definitely, Peters saw at once, Ethredge. looked ill. But Peters knew, too, that something far less easily defined than mere illness had kept the Commissioner away from his desk these past few days

"Drink?" Ethredge gestured toward a nest of bottles and an array of glasses conveniently at hand.

"Thanks." Peters helped himself to two ounces of whisky, downed it neat. The men sat down.

"Peters," Ethredge began abruptly, "I'm up against something that I can't fight alone. And I can't use the police, because I've no case that would convince a jury; I'd be thought mad. Also, Mary is involved, and her connection with this affair must never become public knowledge."

Peters nodded. "Better tell me everything, Commissioner."

"Peters, can a hypnotist cure disease in another man through subconscious suggestion? Can an adept so control his subject's mind that that subject becomes his virtual slave, even to the extent of committing a theft? Can a hypnotist cause his subject to suffer and die from a disease which heretofore has not threatened him?"

Peters looked thoughtfully at the nest of bottles.

"Sounds like Dmitri."

"Yes," Ethredge exclaimed hoarsely, "it is Dmitri, damn him!"

Leisurely the Detective-Lieutenant rose, poured a half-drink of amber-colored whisky, sat down again.

"Commissioner, hypnosis, the powers of the will, the depths of the subconscious, are to a great extent unknowns—and limitless unknowns. I cannot say that I would definitely disbelieve anything, anything at all, you might tell me concerning them. Dmitri? Certainly I believe the stories I've heard about Dmitri. Tales of men dying of loathsome diseases after willing him their money—tales of strange thefts and inexplicable gifts of which he seems invariably the beneficiary."

Ethredge leaned forward.

"Yet we can do nothing—legally."

Peters shook his head. "No, nothing—legally."

Ethredge spread out his hands and looked helplessly at them.

"Peters, I went to see the man. He has Mary under his control; I've been watching her, following her about for days. She doesn't know, and I'm tired, tired almost to death; I've had to do it all myself; I dared trust no one. Peters, a week ago Mary took her cousin Priscilla Luce's jewels, and brought them to Dmitri; God knows what he's done with them. Since then she's been trying to persuade Mrs. Leeds—Arthur Leeds' widow—to go to Dmitri's with her. God, I knoiv that the man's a monster, yet I'm helpless against him."

Ethredge paused, and slowly his hands knotted into fists, relaxed.

"Peters, when I went to see him he laughed at me. More, he said that so long as Mary had access to wealthy homes he would continue to use her, and that if I so much as attempted to interfere with him he would make her suffer, horribly. She was my vulnerability, he told me, and she was his chattel."

Peters lifted his drink to his lips.

"A venomous fellow," he said softly, "and a strategist, as well."

"Yes," Ethredge muttered. "I'm afraid that he can do everything he says."

Peters set down the small glass, empty.

"You are right. Undoubtedly he can do everything he says. And yet we are