Абрахам Меррит - Seven Footprints To Satan

Preoccupied by the necessity of completing his report, and deciding that he had had enough "relaxation," Mr. Kirkham started to leave. He had just reached the doors of the museum when a suspicion seized him. Trained by the necessities of his occupation to keenest observation, he recalled that while he was hastening to the entrance of the necklace room, following the others, some one had brushed past him going into the room. He recalled also hearing immediately afterward a sharp click, like the forcing of a lock. With his attention focused upon what was going on without, the impressions then carried with them no significance.

But now it seemed that they might be important.

Mr. Kirkham turned back instantly, and ordered the alarm to be sounded which at once closes the doors of the Museum. As he is well known at the Metropolitan, he was as instantly obeyed.

And it was that trained observation of his and quick thinking which beyond all doubt foiled the thief of the necklace.

There followed an account of the discovery of the raped cabinet, the verification of the fact that no one had gone out of the museum either during or after the disturbances, the searching of everybody in the Curator's offices, and the careful shepherding of them out one by one so no one could stop and pick up the necklace from wherever it had been hidden. It interested me to find that I had demanded to be searched with the rest, despite the Curator's protests!

I came to my interview, substantially the same in all the papers.

"The truth is," so I was quoted as having said, "I feel a bit guilty that I did not at once realize the importance of those impressions and turn back into the room. I could probably have caught the thief red-handed. The fact is that my mind was about nine-tenths taken up with that infernal report which must be finished and mailed tonight. I have a vague idea that there were about a dozen people in the room, but not the slightest recollection of what they looked like.

"When I heard the woman scream, it was like being jarred out of sleep. My progress to the door was half-automatic. It was only when I was about to go out of the museum that memory began to function, and I recalled that furtive brushing past me of some one and the clicking noise.

"Then, of course, there was only one thing to be done. Make sure that nobody got out until it was determined whether or not anything had been stolen. The entrance guard deserves great credit for the promptness with which he sounded that alarm.

"I agree with the Curator that there can be no connection between the theft and the killings. How could there possibly be? Some one, and he can be no professional because any professional would know that there was no way of selling such a thing, had a sudden crazy impulse. His probable next thought was one of sincere repentance and an intense desire to get rid of the necklace instantly. The only problem is finding where he slipped it.

"You say it was a lucky thing for the museum that I turned back when I did," smiled Mr. Kirkham. "Well, I think it was a mighty lucky thing for me. I wouldn't like being in the position that having been the first one out of the museum- and maybe the only one, for the theft would soon have been discovered- would have put me."

At this the Curator, despite his anxiety, laughed heartily.

There was more to the story, much more; but that was all I was quoted as saying. The guard whom I had seen lying across the threshold told how he had been knocked down in the backward rush, and somebody "had kicked me in the ear, or something." The second guard had joined in the chase. One paper had a grisly "special" about the possibility of the thief having crawled into one of the suits of armor and dying within it, of thirst and hunger. The writer evidently thought of armor as an iron box in which one could hide like a closet.

All the accounts agreed that there was little chance of identifying the three dead. There was not a thing in their clothing or about them to give a single clue.

Well, there it all was. There was my alibi, complete. There were Satan's chessmen now all properly clicked into place, including the three who would never be moved again. It wasn't nice reading for me, not at all. Particularly did I wince at the Curator's amusement that my honesty could come into question.

But again my double had done a good job. It had been he, of course, who had slipped by me as I had bent to tie my shoe, smoothly taking up my trail without apparent break. And it had been he whom I had passed at the obelisk as I had slipped as smoothly back into his. No one had noticed me come down the museum's steps and enter the automobile that held Eve. The diversion on the sidewalk had made sure of that. There were no gaps in the alibi.

And the three dead people who had furnished the diversion in the museum that had enabled me to steal the necklace? Slaves of Satan's mysterious drug, the kehjt. The description of their strange eyes and their pallor proved that – if I had needed proof. Satan's slaves, playing faithfully the parts he had given them, in blissful confidence of a perpetual Paradise for their immediate reward.

I read the stories over again. At eight o'clock the reporters were sent up to my room. I restrained myself severely to the lines of my early interview. Their visit was largely perfunctory. After all, there was not much that I could say. I left the report that had "preoccupied" me so greatly lying where they could see it.

I went even further. Taking the hint from my double's remarks, I sealed and addressed it and asked one of them to drop it into the Post Office for me on his way back to his paper.

When they had gone, I had dinner sent up to my room.

But when I went to bed, hours later, it was with a cold little sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. More than at any time, I was inclined to credit Satan's version of his identity.

For the first time I was afraid of him.

Early next morning, the telephone rang, awakening me. The clerk at the desk was on the other end. There was an urgent message for me, and the bearer had instructions to wait until I had read it. I told him to send it up. It was a letter. I opened it and read:

"You have done well, James Kirkham. I am pleased with you. Visit your friends at the museum this afternoon. You will receive further instructions from me tomorrow. S."

I phoned the desk to dismiss the messenger, and to send me up breakfast and the morning papers.

It was a good story, and they had spread upon it. It surprised me, at first, that they had given so much more space to the theft of the necklace than they had to the murders and suicide. Then I realized, inasmuch as there was no suspicion of any connection between them, that this was sound newspaper judgment. After all, the lost lives were only three among millions. They had been- and they were not. There were many more.

But the necklace was unique.

That, I reflected, was undoubtedly the way Satan felt about it. Certainly those three lives had seemed to him nothing like so important as had the necklace. And quite plainly the newspapers agreed with him.

The three bodies remained in the morgue, unidentified. The museum, after an all-night search, had been unable to find the necklace. That was all there was new, if new it could be called.

I went downstairs, and carried on the inevitable discussions of the affair with various members of the Club. At one o'clock a messenger brought me another letter. The name on the envelope was that of an important legal firm of which the brilliant attorney was the head.

In it was a check for ten thousand dollars

The accompanying note complimented me upon my report. The check, it said, was for that and further possible services. For the latter only, of course, in the nature of a retainer. Other work which I might be asked to do would be paid for commensurately.