A half mile from the town, and Bull, who was driving, opened up, and the ear leaped forward with the rising drone of the powerful motor, thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour; the wind of their passage drove backward like a wall as the giant's voice came now in a rumbling laugh:
"Some little speed-wagon, Mr. Annister, ha?" he said. "An' that's whatever! It ought to be. The man who owns it—who did own it half an hour ago—he's some particular, I'll say! Because—it's Mister Hamilton Rook's!"
Annister laughed grimly in answer, speaking a low word of caution as, after perhaps a half hour of their racing onrush the lights glimmered on dark trees to right and left.
"Somewhere about here, I think," he said, low. "Three outside guards, I understand. We'd better stop a little way this side, Bull . . . that's it. Now, look!"
As the big car slid slowly to a halt, the moon, rising above the trees, showed them, perhaps a hundred yards just ahead, a low, rambling, stone house, its windows like blind eyes to the night. Upon its roof the moonlight lay like snow, and even at that distance it was sinister, forbidding, as if the evil that was within had seeped through those stones, outward, in a creeping tide.
"Looks like a morgue," offered Ellison, with a shrug of his great shoulders, as the three, alighting, pushed the car before them into the wood.
Then, guns out, they went forward slowly among the trees.
Annister had formed no definite plan of attack. The red ribbon at that window-bar might or might not be visible under the moon, but, the guards eliminated, it seemed to him that, after all, they would have to make it an assault in force. Pondering this matter, of a sudden he leaped sidewise as a dim figure rose upward almost in his face.
Spread-eagled like a bat against the dimness, the figure bulked, huge, against the moon as Annister, bending to one side, brought up his fist in a lifting punch, from his shoe-tops.
It was a savage blow; it landed with the sound of a butcher's cleaver on the chopping-block; there came a gasping grunt; the thud of a heavy body, as the guard went downward without a sound.
"One!" breathed Ellison, as, trussing their victim with a length of stout line brought from the car, they left him, going forward carefully, keeping together, circling the house.
But it was not until they were half way round it, with, so far, no sign of that signal for which he looked, that they encountered the second guard.
He came upon them with a swift, silent onrush, leaping among the trees, a great, dun shape, spectral under the moon, fangs bared, as, without a sound, the hound drove straight for the giant's throat.
A shot would bring discovery; they dared not risk it. Annister could see the great head, the wide ruff at the neck, the grinning jaws . . . Then, the giant's hands had gone up and out; there came a straining heave, a wrench, a queer, whistling croak; Ellison, rising from his knees, looked downward a moment to where the beast, its jaw broken by that mighty strength, lay stretched, lifeless, at his feet.
By now they had come full circle, when, all at once, Annister, peering under his hand, sucked in his breath with a whispered oath.
Fair against the bars of a window, low down at their right, there was a dark smudge; the ribbon, black under the moon. Annister's heart leaped up in answer, as, with a quick word, he halted his companions in the shadow of a tree. A moment they conferred; then Ellison and Annister could almost see his grin in the darkness spoke beneath his hand:
"Why, that'll be easy! I've got m' tools; they're right here in my pocket, Mr. Annister! Those bars ought to be easy! For a fair journeyman sledge swinger, it'll be easy an' you can lay to that!"
"Good!" whispered Annister in answer. "But—hurry!"
The moonlight lay in a molten flood between them and the house. But it was no time now for deliberation. Crossing that bright strip at a crouching run, the three were at the window; Annister's harsh whisper hissed in the silence, through those iron bars:
"Mary!"
For a heart-beat silence answered him; then, faint and thin, in a faint, tremulous, sobbing breath, there came the answer:
"Steve—thank God!"
Annister had spoken the girl's name without thought. At that high moment forms had been futile; that whisper had been wrung from him, deep-down, as had her answer. And then the soft rasp of steel on steel told that Ellison was at work.
But the giant was working against time. At any moment now might come the alarm; they had no means of knowing the number of those within those walls; perhaps even now peril, just behind, might be stalking them, out of the dark.
And still that soft rasp went on, until, at a low word from the girl, the giant, laying down his file, bent, heaved, putting his shoulder into it; and the bars sprang outward, bent and twisted in that iron grasp.
Annister, his hand reaching for the hand of the girl, went inward silently, to stand a moment, without speech, in the thick darkness of the little cell. But it was no time for dalliance.
Kane and Ellison behind him now, he set his shoulder against the door, as, Ellison aiding, it splintered outward. with a soft, carrying crash. Ahead of them, along a dark, narrow: corridor, there had come on a sudden a sound of voices, murmurs; Annister, going toward that sound, saw suddenly an open door; light streamed from it as the murmur of voices rose:
"My friend, I bring you—forgetfulness . . ."
The words came in a sort of hissing sibilance as Annister, reaching that doorway, halted a moment as the tableau was burned into his brain:
He saw his father, helpless, his face gray with the hideous terror of that which was upon him, in the grasp of two cloaked and hooded figures, their dark faces grinning with a bestial mirth.
And before him, hand upraised and holding a curious, funnel-shaped object at which the man in the corner shrank backward even as he looked, he saw a tall man with a black, forking beard—the same that he had seen that evening at the corner of the street; the same that he had seen in that dim backwater of Rangoon, the Unspeakable—the man with the dark, foreign visage, and the eyes of death.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE JAILER OF SOULS
ANNISTER'S GUN went up and out as the black-bearded man, turning, saw him where he stood.
Travis Annister, parchment-pale, took two forward, lurching steps, as the doctor, backing stiffly against the. wall, hands upraised, called something in a high sing-song, savage, inarticulate.
Then—everything seemed to happen at once. A snarling, animal outcry echoed from the passage just without; it rose, as there came a far, gobbling mutter of voices, and the pad-pad of running feet.
The hooded Familiars, as one man, turned, and the long knives flashed, luminous, under the lights, as Kane and Ellison, meeting them half way, raised their heavy guns.
