Shadow, the Mysterious Detective/Chapter 17

so tightly that she could not rise—could not resist, Helen Dilt was put to the torture by the cruel hag, who had received orders to either drive her actually mad or kill her.

Helen at first had screamed.

A continuance of this was prevented by the hag, who gagged Helen most effectually.

Tige was a fiend.

A fiend!

The word has not sufficient meaning to describe what she really was.

If Satan ever quits his sulphurous house to take up his residence in a particular human being, he certainly was residing then in the earthly form of the terrible woman who presided over that private mad-house, and was the arbiter of the fates of so many beings who were helpless in her vile clutches.

And torture!

And the sight of human agony!

She loved them.

She loved to hear the shrieks of agony that she wrung from her victims. As prudence made it necessary to still these sounds by gags, the fiendish woman refined her cruelties the more, that the loss of this horrid music might be compensated for by the greater writhings of her victims.

Regarding Helen, her instructions were as plain as they were fiendish!

"Drive her mad or kill her!"

In few cases was she allowed so broad a latitude of action, and she proceeded to Helen's torture with the same zest that a gourmand exhibits when he sits down before a table that groans beneath the weight of some particular thing which he loves to exercise his teeth upon.

Helen was fastened to the bed securely, and, as we have said, was gagged.

And then, as stated in a previous chapter, Tige amused herself by taking a pincers and dragging out the nails of Helen's toes.

Kind Heaven, what agony that is!

It is terrible!

Terrible! Yes, and awful and horrible as well!

How Helen suffered!

How she strained—but in vain—to burst the bonds which held her!

How Tige chuckled!

How she gloated!

How she made Helen writhe and moan!

The dewdrops of agony were not long in making their appearance on the victim's forehead—great, large drops, which rolled off and down her face to make room for others.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Tige, showing her teeth like a snarling dog; "oh-ho! don't I love this! Groan and moan and twist and squirm; it is all a feast to me."

And Helen suffered so much that she would have hailed death as a welcome release.

Aye, she even prayed that she might die.

She had nothing to hope for; rescue she thought impossible, or it would have been accomplished before this. To die would be the easiest way for her.

"There, how did that feel?"

Tige asked the question with a chuckle, as she ripped another nail out of the living flesh.

Feel!

Helen was writhing in anguish.

She made one more effort to burst her bonds.

She strained until the veins were swollen out on her face and neck like whipcords, and seemed on the point of bursting.

But the work of tying her had been too well done, and she finally fell back in a state of utter exhaustion, with moan after moan coming in a sort of ripple.

"What!" exclaimed the fiendish hag; "make such a fuss about a little one like that, which came out so easily? Why, I should have considered that one a pleasure. Just wait until I get hold of the big one. Ha, ha! that's where the fun comes in. You see, it's more deeply rooted, and I've seen some I wasn't strong enough to pull until I rigged up a sort of tackle I have for the purpose."

Helen shuddered.

And well she might.

Poor girl!

It was monstrous that the law should permit the existence of such places—such private mad-houses—where such infernal wickedness can be enacted.

Tige was grinning like a hyena.

She made one or two feints of pursuing her hideous work, and then halted to gloat over the shudder which each time thrilled her victim's frame.

At last she fastened the pincers on the nail of one of Helen's great toes.

She gave a strong twitch.

Helen groaned.

The human hyena gave a stronger pull.

Helen lifted herself to the limit her bonds permitted, and flung herself against the ropes, which would not break, but held her with cruel rigor.

Again Tige pulled.

And this time pulled direct, and with an amount of strength which could not have dwelt in a less sinewy frame than hers.

Then she twisted the pincers.

Had she been free from her gag, Helen must have shrieked so loudly that she would have been heard for blocks around.

Again Tige pulled direct.

She meanwhile kept watch of Helen's face.

Her victim could stand no more.

This Tige saw.

"Now!" she hissed.

Then, exerting her strength, she threw it all into that one motion, and—— As the nail was dragged out by the roots, Helen uttered one long, quivering moan, and then laid there pallid and motionless.

One would have thought her dead.

But Tige's experience told her different.

She knew that Helen had only fainted.

And she knew, also, that the suffering she had endured would produce a nervous shock from which Helen might never recover.

Tige made no attempt to release Helen from her bonds.

She merely loosened the gag a little, that she might breathe easier.

Then flinging a pail of water over her victim, as she might have flung a worthless bone to a cur, Tige took her departure, allowing Helen to return to consciousness or die, she did not much care which.

But she did not forget to take with her the nails she had extracted.

Reaching the door of her own room, secured by a number of strong and elaborately made locks, she paused to unlock it, and then entered.

At one side of the room was a bed, in the center a table, in one recess a sofa, which, in addition to a few chairs, made up the furniture of the room, save a small glass-front cabinet that was attached to the wall.

The door of this she unlocked.

Glancing in, she gave vent to a chuckle that was perfectly horrid.

What was it—perhaps you ask—that produced this chuckle on Tige's part?

Nothing more nor less than a few score of human toe-nails, dragged out by the roots as Helen's had been.

They were the horrible mementoes that drew back to her memory those whom she had tortured in days gone by.

And to this collection she now had an addition to make, an addition furnished at the expense of a poor girl who had never wronged a person in the world, who had never made herself an enemy, but who simply stood in an evil man's way to a fortune.

Helen did not die.

No, she lived, ardently as she prayed that she might not.

And of a strength of character that is unusual in a woman, she did not suffer as great a nervous shock as Tige had anticipated.

"I guess it'll have to be 'kill her!'" the hyena-like woman muttered to herself. "But I'll not do that until I've had a little more fun with her."

Fun!

If fun it was to her, she had plenty of it. But to her victim it was something far—far different!