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Chapter Eight
When Hell Locked Its Gates

AS JEFFREY FAIRCHILD drove up out of the tunnel under the river, he looked again at the sky. Suddenly, he stiffened at the wheel. The purple beacon atop the Victory Building went out even as he looked at it. It was out for a full minute, while Jeffrey's roadster wormed its way through the nearly empty Manhattan streets—and then it flashed on again.

But now it was a different light. That illusion of topless height had gone; the beacon's tip lost itself visibly into darkness. The glow was steadier, without that eerie sparkle which had given it a queer light of its own.

Jeffrey could have sworn that now the beacon was dead and cold as it had not been before . . . Perhaps, he hazarded, there was an investigation going on as a result of his warning broadcast. He stamped on the gas pedal, and raced northward.

An ambulance siren's scream warned him of his recklessness. As he slowed down, he heard others—ambulances, police cars, private automobiles whose drivers seemed to jam one hand to their horns, as they bore down, all toward the same point—the Victory Building in Columbus Circle.

Jeffrey traveled with them, and it was soon unmistakable what grim cavalcade he had joined.

The monsters were answering a summons that had been tacit in the strange broadcast from Station WVI. In terrifying quantities, they had come from their secret places, with their twisted and hideous bodies, with unimaginable things reflected in their wide unblinking eyes. . . .

And then Jeffrey saw the windows, knew why they came. For even behind drawn curtains, a splash of purple threaded out from various lofty angles of the Victory Building's interior—that was the life-light for creatures of sentient death, the ultra-violet salvation of the dreadful and pitiful malformed things that breathed and moved. He parked his car, and pressed into the crowd.

Near the doorway, the pack thickened oppressively. From the harried policemen who were keeping the thing from becoming a stampede, he knew the authorities were in on this, at least to the extent of cooperating. How much more did they really know. . . . How far did they really trust that surprise broadcast from the new station?

Soon Jeffrey would know . . . a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and someone said, "Jeffrey Fairchild!" in a voice almost too weary for surprise

Jeff looked up into the haggard face of Captain Manning, a grey-haired and soldierly police officer, in uniform. "Hello, Captain," Jeffrey said quietly. "You're just the man I want to see."

Captain Manning said, "Is it important, Mr. Fairchild? If it's not, I've got my hands full enough. . . ."

"Damned important," said Jeffrey grimly. "I want to search the Victory Building, and I want you to come with me."

"It's been done," said Manning tersely. He added, in a lower voice, "You shouldn't be here, Mr. Fairchild. The Commissioner's in there now, talking to the head of this medical committee, whatever its name is. I think they're talking about you. You'll probably never hear of it—it's so cockeyed, but if you want to wait at the entrance and talk to the Commissioner when he comes out. . . ."

Jeffrey was known throughout the force as one of the Commissioner's oldest friends, and though he would never have used that influence to deter the humblest rookie cop from his duties, his word carried weight with the entire department. "Suppose you tell me what it's all about," he suggested. "Why are they talking about me, and who's the head of the Committee, as it calls itself?"

Manning swore, then answered, "Some of these docs are damfools when they get away from medicine. Fellow named Borden—a big doctor, they say—is boss in there. He's been talking high, wide and handsome, about what the department ought to do to you for the Mid-City Hospital fire."

Jeffrey gasped, and Manning continued, "Of course, there's nothing for you to worry about. We'll settle that headache before it gets to you."

Jeffrey's lowered eyelids almost concealed the hard thoughtfulness of his gaze. Borden! Borden, whom the monsters in his own basement had accused of almost unbelievable malpractice . . . Borden, whom he himself had elevated to a position of trust and importance in that ruined hospital . . . Borden, head of this mysterious Committee . . . the streets were violet with filtered light, but the lights in Jeffrey's brain were red.

He thanked Manning, and pushed back toward the entrance. If he could make Tom Wiley, the Commissioner, understand what was going on . . . the Mid-City Hospital had been Jeffrey's, and at the core of Borden's guilty soul, there must be a desperate, snakelike urge to accuse before he was accused himself.

Borden couldn't be dismissed as a medical man gone haywire out of his own sphere.

There was a man behind Borden—maybe a devil, the monsters had told Jeff. And that could only be the Octopus himself! Everything Borden said or did would be calculated to dupe organized medicine and organized justice until it was too late to retrench, until New York was delivered over to the enemy. . . .

But it wasn't yet too late. It couldn't be. There'd been no report to the public of an official investigation, and Jeff could reach Tom Wiley before one was made. . . .

But what if Tom Wiley never came out of that building? No—the man he had to reach was Borden! And the report that must be made was the revelation promised by the Skull Killer!

 

Jeffrey found himself in the great entrance hall of the Victory Building. He had seen other skyscrapers when they were new, he had seen the Queen Mary when that giant floating palace had first docked in New York; he was accustomed to the city's newest and finest hotels. But he had never—not in all his life—seen an interior like that great hall.

It was lofty, nearly five stories high, with starkly subdued indirect lighting that gave the impression of unfathomable violet depths and heights. Each wall panel held its mural—and so cleverly had the murals been designed, that the figures represented there also gave that topless, boundless impression. Jeffrey realized that the representations were simple, most of them merely huge, realistic, portraits or impressions, of contemporary scenes from the city. Yet somehow, they seemed to be the work of an artist with torture in his eyes. . . .

Then it came to him. They were exactly like the thing the city was fast turning into! An eerie and uncertain place, with limitless possibilities of stark tragedy, of malformed beings with crippled, tortured souls!

Jeffrey shuddered, and made for an elevator. The crowd that had been so dense in the street outside had ample room in the hall. . . . Here, even those incredibly warped figures seemed dwarfed to inconspicuousness by the chamber's shadowed proportions.

"I want to see Dr. Borden," Jeffrey told the uniformed elevator man, whose hard eyes measured him.

A denial seemed to hover on the other's lips.

Jeffrey said, "I'm Mr. Fairchild—Jeffrey Fairchild."

If Manning's warning hadn't been unfounded, and if the things he himself suspected of Borden were true, that name should have an effect on a henchman of Borden's—and it did. The hard look in the elevator man's eyes was replaced by a queer purposefulness. "Fortyfifth floor, sir," he muttered.

Jeffrey entered the car. He noticed that he was the only occupant of the elevator, which made no stops between the first floor and the forty-fifth.

In the gleamingly sterile corridor of the forty-fifth floor, a woman in white sat at a desk. The place looked exactly like a hospital, Jeffrey thought. This must be the headquarters of the Citizens' Emergency Medical Committee. But a queer sort of hospital, for no sound echoed through the long corridors, there were no red-cheeked young girls in blue-and-white uniforms wheeling trays and smiling at internes. About it all was that ominous sterility which seemed to

extend farther than germ life.

"I'd like to see Dr. Borden," Jeffrey told the woman at the desk.

Mechanically, she inquired, "Who's calling, please?"

"Jeffrey Fairchild."

The woman's eyes stared up at him. "Straight down that corridor, then turn to your left."

Uneasily, Jeffrey strode down the long hallway. No lamps were visible, but the windowless hall was bright as the sky at early dusk. . . .

After narrow yards of walking, he came to a cross-hall, and took a left turn. He had met no one, heard no one. It was almost too easy, this entrance of his, and he sensed some abrupt reception that must have been waiting in these silent offices for him.

The left hall ended after twenty yards it a sort of booth where a young man in white sat cleaning surgical instruments. Jeffrey asked him, "Can you tell me where to find Dr. Borden?"

A small dagger-like scalpel slipped from the young man's hands, but he did not look up. In a strangely monotone voice, he countered, "Who did you say you were?"

Jeffrey again gave his name—and the young man looked at him through eyes as opaquely sharp and radiant as the steel of his surgical blades. "Straight ahead," he directed, pointing down a turn in the corridor. "Fifth door on your right. Just walk in."

The young man did not look up again as Jeffrey passed. . . .

He opened the fifth door on his right, looked about before he entered. The room seemed empty, but there was a curtain stretched across its width, and he guessed Borden might be behind that curtain.

Jeff left the door ajar and stepped softly inside. . . .

Then behind him the heavy door clicked quietly.

 

He wheeled about, pulled at the inside handle. The door was locked. Jeffrey cursed aloud, and darted behind the curtains.

There was nothing. Not a chair, not a stick or a straw to indicate that the windowless square chamber had ever been entered before. The walls were white, and gave somehow the impression of porous-ness, like the sound-proofed walls of a broadcasting studio. Jeffrey had been locked inside a white square box, with ten cubic feet of air and a curtain.

He tried shouting, and the sound of his own voice hit back at his eardrums with hammer-force in that sealed chamber. From a distance of a few feet he fired his revolver at the invisible door-lock, and the detonation nearly deafened him, while his bullet caromed harmlessly from a steel plate beneath that porous white substance.

He felt at those walls with his hands, searching a weak spot, and suddenly felt the walls warm under his touch. That warmth was increasing. . . .

Jeffrey stepped back, and then, from under the white porous wall-covering there shone a violet radiance, a strange pulsing light that seared his eye-balls and radiated heat that seemed to penetrate with rhythmic sequence beneath his skin, into the very marrow of his bones!

Now the walls seemed alive with that shimmering fluid glow, the light and the heat were somehow rendered indirect by that asbestos-like substance that coated the walls, so that his skin did not break, but he felt the veins in his body swelling with excruciating pain, as though his blood were reaching a boiling point. Then, as he fought for breath to find release through his vocal chords, that seething irradiance died, and the walls once more became dull and white.

The insufferable heat was seeping out of his veins, his heart, which had momentarily seemed to cease beating except in harmony with that pulsing glow, slowly came back to normal. Jeffrey found himself crouching unnaturally in the middle of the room, as though his flesh had shrunk, causing contraction in all his muscles, dried and seared by the heat.

Slowly, with infinite effort, he was able to knead his limbs to normal semblance, then he stood silently—and waited.

For he knew now that the "treatment" would be repeated. It would be repeated over and over, until he—Jeffrey Fairchild—had become a monster, a dried and rotting corpse, requiring for its abnormal functions the indigo glare of the ultraviolet light—needing for sustenance the warm blood of his fellows.

The cause and the cure were the same—ultra-violet radiance differently directed first caused these malformations, and later enabled the monsters to survive. Penetrating into the very marrow of the bony structure where blood corpuscles were manufactured, its heat brought about an aberration of functions, broke down the stages of evolution, reduced blood to its simplest elementals, and at the same time effected the necessary changes in the living cells to enable them to survive, provided they were subjected to that very radiance which had first caused their distortion.

Far back, in the very first stages of evolution, when the simplest forms of life had crawled out of the primordial swamps, the ultraviolet contained in sunlight must have caused parallel changes in the structure of living things—distorted them, changed them into what their fellows must have felt were monsters, until sunlight had become a necessity, without which their life could not continue.

It was a matter, in some respects, of resistance, which culminated in the building of a new type of life. The process would not be too rapid, Jeffrey knew, as he experienced his breathing spell. These things having become clear to him, certain elements of the fiendish activities of his enemy were more understandable, also.

The Mid-City Hospital fire, and the purple glow which had seemed to bathe the walls of certain parts of the building, had emanated from walls built as the walls of his chamber were built, from rooms in which transformations such as he was about to undergo had been effected on other unfortunate humans. . . .

Borden was behind it, and Borden had been ready to resume operations elsewhere! The Mid-City Hospital had been destroyed so as to obliterate all evidence of those indigo walls. . . .

Borden, then, Jeff figured, had found another backer for his nefarious activities than the philanthropic patron of the Mid-City Hospital, and that backer was the builder and owner of the Victory Building. He must be the Octopus himself!

But the other hospitals—the other sick-wards whence also human malformations had emanated—what about them? Would they too be destroyed tonight so that there would be no evidence, so that the enemy would remain triumphantly unsuspected, entrenched in the very heart of Manhattan in the guise of a philanthropic organization which stamped out its own corruption and bled society in the process?

The walls were cool again, and Jeffrey moved painfully about the room. Like a trapped animal he sought desperately for an opening in his trap, a means of escape from this locked, white-walled hell. . . .

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Framed