Shadow, the Mysterious Detective/Chapter 15

Helen Dilt!

Better, much better, would it be for her to die at once, if she was to be called on to long endure the torments that were devised and executed by the ugly-faced hag who presided over that private mad-house.

The hag was literally a fiend.

And a fiend in human form at that.

We speak of the natural love that resides in the human heart, that is an indestructible part of it, that is born with it, and never departs until the member has ceased to pulse, and lies silent and heavy in the heart that contains it.

This fancy is a pretty one.

Few of us are there who do not try to paint humanity as more humane than it really is.

Instead of love being the natural resident of the human heart, it is something that is cultivated.

Left to itself, the feelings of the human heart are as savage and fierce as those that reside in the hearts of the Indians of the plains, or of the tigers in the Eastern jungles.

The old hag was one in whose heart tender feelings had never been cultivated, and she was not burdened with sensations of sympathy or pity.

On the contrary, the natural inclinations of a cruel nature had been cultivated until it had become callous to all sensations of pleasure save at the sight of the sufferings of some living, breathing thing.

There is money in a private mad-house run by unscrupulous persons, and several evil men had advanced the money and set this human fiend up in business.

Few people have an idea of how easy it is, when there is a splendid property to reward the horrible deed, for relations to get a wealthy member of the family adjudged insane.

A single eccentricity is sufficient to do the thing.

And once the person is declared insane, into a private mad-house he is inveigled, never again to see the light of day. And there he is kept until he is actually driven mad, or until death steps in and releases him.

The old hag had given herself, and delighted in, the name of Tige.

It was a corruption or contraction of tigress.

And it was into such hands that poor Helen Dilt had fallen!

Again and again did the hag stick a big pin into Helen.

And again and again did she exultantly laugh at the evidences of pain which the poor creature could not avoid displaying.

"Will you be quiet and docile?"

A jab with the pin.

"Will you?"

Another jab.

"Will you?"

Another prod with the bright pin, whose point was reddened with Helen's blood.

"Will you, I say?"

Still another jab.

"Yes—yes," Helen almost shrieked.

"It's a good thing for you if you will bear your promise in mind," said Tige, grimly. "I always make people regret breaking their word with me."

Helen was left for some hours stretched on the bed, her arms and feet extended and secured by ropes to the four corners of the bed.

There was agony to be endured in even this quiet position.

Place a pound weight on the palm of your hand, and endeavor to keep that hand extended, for, say five minutes.

Can you do it?

You think you can, that is if you have never tried it.

Try it now.

You will not be able to do it.

Long before the five minutes have expired your arm will be a pathway for a succession of spasms of pain such as you have never felt before.

All that you can voluntarily endure, quadrupled and more, Helen was forced to pass through because of the strained position of her arms.

It was terrible.

The pains that shot through her arms were frightful for a while, and then the intensity diminished and her arms became numb and felt as if dead.

She could no longer feel the cords so tightly fastened to her wrists.

Her arms were perfectly bloodless, and to all intents and purposes were dead.

They might almost have been amputated without causing her any pain.

Food was finally brought her by a male attendant, a short, thick-set, bull-headed individual, with the most brutal expressioned face of any that Helen had ever seen.

He released her arms, and then lifted her by the shoulders to a sitting posture on the bed.

Her hands were useless.

She could not raise them, could scarcely more than barely move her fingers.

The attendant laughed gleefully.

"Don't they feel bully, eh?" he said, as he noted Helen's face twitch with pain.

What anguish she presently suffered!

The tingling and burning as the blood began to flow back into her arms were something awful.

"Tige understands the 'biz' if any one ever did," said the bullet-headed attendant, laughing gayly. "But, I say, ain't yer hungry? 'Cos if yer ain't, there's no good of my stayin' here with this grub, which yer hain't touched these last ten minutes."

But, although he badgered Helen, he did not take his departure with the food.

He knew better than that.

Tige had ordered the food taken to Helen, and if she cared to eat it he dared not leave until she had done so.

The old hag wanted to do nothing as yet that could in any way injure Helen or disable her.

She made a point of doing with her patients exactly as was ordered by her customers, and Brown had as yet not told her what he wanted done with Helen.

Brown was expected when night had again fallen, and the hag's expectations were not amiss.

Brown came.

At once he was closeted with the hag.

"Come, Brown, spit out just what you want," Tige impatiently said, some minutes later. "I positively refuse to act on hints, so you might's well say plumply what you want."

Brown was thoughtful.

It was his usual style to make people take what he wanted for granted, as in the case of McGinnis.

This enabled him to lay back in his chair and say:

"I did not tell you to do anything of the kind. If you chose to put that interpretation on my words I can't help it. It wasn't my fault that you did."

He was a wily man.

But Tige was equally as wily.

Her safety lay in forcing her customers to commit themselves, and knowing that she would take no steps as regarded any patient without having received point-blank orders.

Brown was Helen's uncle.

Property of hers, which he had robbed her of, he managed to hold himself without question. But he dared not sell it or try to transfer it.

If Helen were insane, then it would be policy to prove her identity, be appointed her guardian, and then when she died, the court would decide that he was the legal heir, and confirm him in his title to the property.

It was this which he was now conning over in his mind.

"Well?" from Tige.

"The girl is insane?"

"Of course," with a curl of the lip.

"I should like to carry her before some big physicians, and have them certify to the fact."

"In other words, you want me to drive the girl to real insanity? Is that the plain English of it—yes or no?"

"Yes."

"And if it can't be done?"

"She must be put out of the way unless you can drive her mad," Brown said, in a low tone. "Fix your own price for the job; I only ask that you do it well."

This was the horrid compact that they entered into regarding Helen.

Poor Helen! poor—poor Helen!

With fiendish zest the hag set about her horrid work without loss of time.

That very night Helen was gagged to stifle her cries, and was securely bound to the bed, after which Tige amused herself by stripping the victim's feet, and then pulling the nails from her toes with a pincers.

And during the terrible ordeal, the sweat-drops of awful agony rolled down Helen's face, and she writhed and strained, but in vain, to burst the bonds which held her.