Pedro Pulls Through!
Adapted from THE MONSTER by Anon. Amalgamated Press, 1926.
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The Night of the Thirteenth
The night was hot and sultry, without a faint breath of wind. There was thunder in the air, but now it was the hush before the storm, still with that deathly silence that makes men start at little sounds.
James Craddock stood by the long window of his bed-room and stared out into the night.
"Another year," he muttered, and a faint, mirthless smile appeared on his dark, thin face, with the baleful eyes. Some men had said that James Craddock had the face of a devil. "Another year gone. Again it has come round. Again it is the night of the thirteenth."
The night of the thirteenth. There was something in that thought to twist his lips weirdly in that dreadful, mirthless smile.
He was a bent, misshapen figure there in the gloom. A middle-aged man was James Craddock, with long arms and claw-like hands and almost a hump upon his back. A thin dressing-gown was wrapped loosely around him, and old leather slippers were upon his feet. Behind him the luxuriously furnished bed-room was in darkness like that of a tomb, but outside the starlight alone shone faintly over the garden and the trees at the cliff-edge and on the sea beyond.
Not a breath of wind. The trees were motionless — a row of sombre fir-trees. The sea was like a pond, smooth as glass, black as jet, not one ripple to catch the starlight. James Craddock's eyes wandered over the scene.
"It's hot," he told himself, and wiped the perspiration from his brow with a skinny hand. "I sha'n't sleep well to-night, not in this heat."
He stared up at the sky. A heavy bank of inky clouds was lying away to the west, drifting slowly towards the house on the cliffs, the fringe of the coming storm. Somewhere round the corner of the house a dog yawned. James Craddock could hear the snap of its teeth as it closed its mouth afterwards. Again the grin came upon his face.
"But the brute won't sleep to-night," he muttered. "It will be on watch."
His glittering eyes roamed over the dusky lawns. His bed-room was on the ground floor. That was an eccentricity of his. He hated upper rooms. Long years spent in African bungalows were the cause of this perhaps. He glanced again at the sky, where that bank of sinister cloud was rifting up over the stars, glanced again out to sea, where the water lay so still, stared for a moment or two at the dark outline of the house on the headland, over a mile away, high on the cliffs above the sea, as was his own house. He thought of Steinruck, the man who lived there — a man he did not like. Then his thoughts returned to that other thing which seemed to be obsessing him.
"The night of the thirteenth!" He turned away from the window abruptly, with a cackle of dry laughter. "Well, well! The dead can't return from the grave. McQuay swore to kill me on the night of the thirteenth, the poor fool, but he died himself on that night. Well, well!"
There was a tap at the door.
"Come in!" cried James Craddock. And his young secretary, Hamilton, entered.
"You rang?" asked the young man.
"I did," snapped Craddock. "You've been a long time coming. I want you to take that confounded calendar away."
"The calendar?" echoed the young man in surprise.
"Yes, the calendar," snapped his employer. "Take it away! Don't stand there looking like a fool!"
Hamilton groped his way across to where the calendar hung upon the wall. The big number 13 could be seen dimly, heavily black on the white paper. He took it from the wall.
"Anything else, sir?"
"Nothing. Get out!"
Hamilton's lips pursed, and his eyes gleamed for a moment. Used as he was to James Craddock's ways, however, he left the room without answering. The door clicked softly behind him.
"Glad that's gone!" muttered James Craddock, as he threw off his dressing-gown and climbed into bed. "That great black figure 13 was horrible!"
Suddenly he shuddered.
He could not sleep. He lay staring through the gloom, watching the stars go out one by one as the pall of cloud slid over the sky. The silence was broken now. A faint breath of hot air stirred in the garden, bringing with it a far-off mutter of thunder.
"It's hot!" he told himself for the tenth time. "Like Africa, almost. Like — like that night when young McQuay died and swore that — that — " He broke off, licking his dry lips. "But McQuay's dead," he told himself, staring round in the dark. "Dead! And I helped bury him! The dead can't rise from the grave, not even when — "
A faint sound in the garden caused him to start and tremble. A cold perspiration stood out on his brow. Then he grinned that dreadful, mirthless smile.
"You're all nerves!" he told himself impatiently. "Pull yourself together!"
But he was staring at the window now. And the perspiration crept out again on his brow. What was that which he had heard? A dull, soft thud, thud, thud. Someone crossing the lawn? Someone coming through the dark, coming to his room? Ah, what was that? What was that?
His eyes were wide, showing the white all round the staring pupils. He had half raised himself on one elbow, head turned to the window. Thud, thud, thud, soft and steady across the lawn. He was sure of it. A heavy footstep on the gravel.
Then came the crash of thunder, rumbling and echoing across the heavens, drowning the terrible choking cry that was torn from the very terror-stricken heart of James Craddock as he saw a moving shape at the window.
* * *
It was Woodburn, the footman, come to his master's room with his early tea, who found James Craddock lying dead on the floor, strangled. He was only a young footman, and the sight was too much for him. He fainted and when he recovered there were other people in the room — Hamilton, Raines, the other footman, and Briggs, the butler. They told him it had been his scream that had brought them to the spot. Woodburn did not even remember that he had screamed.
There seemed to have been a terrible struggle in that room. The curtains of the bed were torn down, a chair was broken, most of the bedclothes were on the floor. But, as Hamilton remarked — he seemed very cool — the great storm in the night would have drowned all sound of it.
It did not take long for the local police, hastily summoned by telephone, to reach the house, lonely though it was, and four miles from the village. But the local police wanted further help, and by evening Scotland Yard was on the scene.
Detective-Inspector Martin, of the C.I.D., soon found things that bewildered him utterly at Seaview House, the house where James Craddock had died on the night of the thirteenth. There were marks on the lawn, for instance, deep marks that at first he had taken for footprints, but which were like no human footprints that Martin had ever seen.
And to the local inspector he said, with a grunt:
"This is a case for Blake. I'll try to get him down."
He went to the telephone, got a trunk-call through to London, and was soon in eager conversation with someone at the other end of the hundred-mile wire. It was clear to the local man that this was none other than Sexton Blake, the famous detective of Baker Street.
At last Martin hung up the receiver. He turned to the local man with a grim smile on his bulldog-like face.
"That's all right, then," he said gruffly. "Blake'll be down here to-night."
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