Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 03.djvu/36

 man suffer, methods which we would not hesitate to employ upon you."

For an instant the pupils of Dmitri's eyes dilated. Then, his voice blandly impassive, he said, "You forget that, even if I would, I could not, in her absence, release Mary Roberts' subconscious. I am not a story-book magician, and I cannot command her conscious to come here. She will not come here again, except of her own free will, unless she brings—another with her. And that will be only on a Thursday. She did not come tonight; would you wait here seven days for her to present herself?"

Slowly Peters smiled. "Mary Roberts, at Commissioner Ethredge's request, is waiting in a small restaurant not far from here. I will telephone her." He rose, took a step toward the table.

The colossus seemed to swell in his chair like an infuriated toad. "Stop!" His chest heaved, and from his cavernous interior there issued a half-shriek, half-bellow that beat in that small room like the scream of an ape. "Stepan! Stepan!"

Peters' hand flicked to his hip. But Dmitri only smiled, smiled and shook his monstrous head.

"Your weapon will be of no avail against my Stepan."

the door opened, and the small, wholly self-effacing Stepan entered, glanced imperturbably about. He carried Dmitri's small automatic pistol in his right hand, and instinctively Peters' fingers moved, again, toward his hip, then paused helplessly as his mind recalled with sudden sharp vividness the incredible demonstration he had witnessed only a brief hour before. Too well he knew that his gun was, indeed, powerless to harm Stepan

Dmitri was grinning broadly.

"Watch these men closely, Stepan, and usher them from my house. Should they attempt any tricks do not hesitate to shoot. After all, they are here against my will, and they have threatened me."

The servant Stepan, only a slight tinge of color in his cheeks revealing that he felt any interest whatever in the proceedings, gestured with the small automatic. And in that instant Peters whipped to the floor, his hands grasped the end of the strip of carpet on which Stepan stood, his body jerked backward.

His arms wildly flailing, Stepan plunged to his hands and knees; the automatic skittered across the floor. And suddenly Dmitri, half lifting himself from his chair, was babbling unintelligible, fear-ridden words. Ethredge, as Peters rose to his feet, had pounced upon the outsplayed servant, pinioning him to the floor; Peters, his right hand at his hip, swung alertly toward Dmitri.

"I've—got him, Peters," Ethredge gasped, the little man beneath him no match for the Commissioner's sinewy strength. And chill, shuddery horror abruptly swept him as he realized that this man he touched, this squirming, writhing thing beneath his hands, was invulnerable to lead or to flame, a being that could be overpowered, but that could not be destroyed! "What'll I do with him?"

Grimly Peters snarled, "Hold on to him. I'll handle this death-ridden diabetic!"

His service automatic a blue-steel menace in his right hand, Peters walked to the table. With his left hand he lifted the receiver from the telephone and dialed a number. Warily he stooped over the table as he spoke, presently, with Mary Roberts. Then he cradled the receiver and sat down, facing the colossus.

"She will come here, at once."

Seemingly, Dmitri had collapsed. His shapeless hands lay limply on the chair