The Empty Coffins Read online

“Stop,” Meadows ordered at length. “And you can lower your hands, Peter.”

  Peter did so and turned to find Meadows putting his automatic away. He glanced about him.

  “Do you like my factory?” he asked dryly.

  “Factory?” Peter looked at him in blank wonder. “But what in hell is all this about? I thought you—”

  “You thought I was on your side. Yes, I know. No, Peter, I was never that—never from the moment you came into the picture and took Elsie away from me. I told you how much I love her. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember! But you said you were so much older than she that you were glad I’d stepped in.”

  “My dear Peter, don’t be so naive. I hate you, and always have. I’d have wiped you out long ago only it did not quite fit in with my plans.”

  “So that’s it!” Peter tightened his lips. “You’ve been back of everything! But why, in heaven’s name? What on earth’s the idea of this set-up?”

  Meadows indicated the enormous globes in which liquid frothed and foamed.

  “See that?” he asked. “It looks like port wine, doesn’t it? It isn’t though. It’s blood.”

  He stood grinning ghoulishly as Peter looked up.

  “This is a converter plant,” Meadows went on, half sitting on a nearby bench whilst his assistants resumed their mysterious tasks. “I freely admit I do it all for money, and like most things in this world anything that has money in it involves a certain amount of risk. I have taken plenty of chances to get this factory going. Smuggling machinery, acting the part of the nice village doctor… But it’s been worth it. It is making me a fortune.”

  “You mean blood is?” Peter asked hazily.

  “After it has been treated, yes. Some time ago, when the vampire business first came up, I mentioned to you—in a quite unguarded moment, I must confess—that my blood-capsules were making quite a comfortable income for me. I meant it. The one thing that makes them so beneficial is the fact that their basic ingredient is genuine human blood, so treated with other chemicals that analysts have not suspected the truth. That was when I took my biggest risk—when I submitted the capsules to the public analysts for their blessing before putting them on the market. I got away with it, but so great was the demand I began to run low on supplies of basic blood.”

  “Now I begin to understand,” Peter whispered. “The vampire business was a cover-up. All you wanted was enough bodies to supply blood and you couldn’t do it openly because that would have been murder—so the vampire business began.”

  “Exactly.” Meadows was smiling broadly. “Rather ingenious, don’t you think?”

  “Ingenious!” Peter cried, “Why, you’re nothing but a fiend! You must be to think up such a plan!”

  “I have benefitted the world,” Meadows answered, preening himself in his ego. “Thousands, unaware of what they have consumed, are in better health than they have ever been. As a doctor, that to me is the main thing. What are a few lives against

  the recovery of health for thousands? I have a wonder formula, Peter, and I was prepared to kill if need be to make it work out. It has been well worthwhile. I have made a fortune, and I shall go on making one. That is assured. The only two

  people who looked likely for spoiling me were that damned mother-in-law of yours, Mrs. Burrows—and Rawnee Singh. I took steps to dispose of them. Which leaves me free.”

  “No it doesn’t.” Peter shook his head deliber­ately. “The Yard will find you before you’re through, and you’ll be hauled into court as the most diabolical murderer of all time.”

  “The Yard? Those fools?” Meadows raised his eyebrows and laughed cynically. “They’re utterly bogged down, Peter, and will remain so. I have laid my plans too well for them to upset them. And you will certainly never tell anything because

  you won’t leave here. The only other person who might have done so was Elsie—and now even she cannot because when I gave her an injection to­night I poisoned her!”

  Peter was silent for a moment, absorbing the words; then as their full meaning struck him he flung himself forward and gripped the sadistic doctor by the throat. Almost immediately however he was whirled back by the assistants and held tightly.

  “Naturally, that disturbs you?” Meadows asked, loosening his collar. “I expected it would. It disturbs me, too. I had planned to keep Elsie alive and marry her later, but evidently it is not to be. As I said tonight, had she been allowed to recover,

  she would have remembered events down here. I had planned to bring her back here, you see, after she had killed you, but things went wrong. The hypnosis under which I placed her was broken—by that housekeeper of yours. After that I could only behave as the genial doctor once again. My only way then to keep her quiet was to administer poison.... By now,” Meadows finished, looking at his watch, “I am afraid she will be dead.”

  Peter was breathing hard. “You filthy, no-account devil! Twisting things round from the very beginning—blaming it on Singh and shooting him....”

  “He was dangerous, Peter. His gift for seeing into the future disturbed me. I soon realized he had divined most of my secret, so it was necessary to shoot him. I would have preferred an arr­anged ‘vampire’ attack but that could not be man­aged.”

  For a long while there was silence, except for the rumble of the machinery. Peter stood looking at Meadows with an expression that was half horror

  and half incredulity. Then he shook free the hands of the assistants.

  “You don’t have to hold me,” he snapped. “I know when I’m licked.... What I don’t understand is why you tell me all this? You could have shot me at any time on the way here. Why didn’t you?”

  “I enjoyed seeing you walk to your death,” Mead­ows explained, “and also, when your blood-drained body is returned to the cemetery for others to find I wish to leave the appearance of a vampire attack, just as I had hoped I could fix things when Elsie attacked you in your bedroom. As for my telling you everything— Well, there is a certain delight in doing so, seeing how little you ever suspected me.”

  “Obviously it’s true what they say of criminals,” Peter said bitterly. “That to accomplish a crime for its own sake is meaningless—but to brag about it is everything. You’re the same as the rest of the killers—Crippen, Mahon, and all the brood, only you’re about the filthiest of the lot.”

  A glint came and went in the doctor’s eyes. “To benefit humanity is not criminal,” he said deliber­ately.

  “That’s only a paltry excuse. You’re a killer!”

  “Have it your own way,” Meadows shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference, anyhow. I’m even prepared to be generous enough to explain anything which baffles you, then you can take all the answers with you to the grave.”

  Peter hesitated, wondering if anything could be gained by a lightning attack. Since he was going to die anyway he might as well pass out fighting. Then he realized he would not stand the ghost of a chance. The assistants were watchful nearby, and he himself was still weak from his earlier ordeal when Singh had been his supposed attacker. No: perhaps the best course was to try and gain time and hope for a last minute rescue somehow.

  “What about Singh?” he asked grimly. “Was his forecast about Elsie phony, or what?”

  “As I said at the time, I believe it was gen­uine. He foresaw that her life was in danger, as indeed it was, because I had planned what I was going to do.... Anyway, before she came into the picture, George Timperley was my excuse for killing off people. He was removed from his coffin sec­retly—a death mask was made in plaster of his features, and one of my men here—approximating George in physical dimensions—became George Timp­erley thereafter, wearing a shroud and the death mask. He wore a rubber covering over arms, shoulders and legs, which would give a deathly flabbiness to anyone seizing him. He was also impregnated with chemicals to give that deadly, foul odour of the grave. Messy for him—but essential, eh Harry?”

  The assistant addressed as Harry sm
iled crook­edly.

  “Well worth it, Doc, for the benefit we get out of it.”

  “Then it was this man who attacked Madge Paignton, killed Mrs. Burrows, and then attacked you and me?” Peter demanded.

  “Of course. I got myself involved purposely so as to allay any suspicion against me. The deaths of the two men after Madge Paignton were also the work of Harry here. He carried appar­atus with him for draining off the blood of his victim. It was pumped back to here by a buried pipeline running through the cemetery. In cases where he was too far from the cemetery to use that method two other assistants were nearby with containers. All very thorough you see. Naturally, Timperley was kept out of his grave until such time as he had served his purpose. Then Elsie took over.”

  “I assume,” Peter said, “that it was this assistant of yours who attacked Elsie whilst I was with you that night?”

  “Certainly it was. He punctured her neck and injected a slow poison, which brought on wastage. When Sir Gerald Montrose came into the picture I simply used another assistant of mine—not here at the moment—who is an accomplished actor. The famous ‘specialist’ was, of course, a fake—but because there seemed no reason to doubt his ver­acity in view of my own reputation in the village, he was believed by the coroner.”

  “No trick you didn’t think of!” Peter cried, clenching his fists. “Double dealing and trickery from start to finish.”

  “An intelligently contrived plan,” Meadows corrected. “Naturally, Elsie was not poisoned sufficiently to cause death. I gave her drugs that gave the impression of death, or rather a form of catalepsy, in which her heartbeats dropped to almost zero. A medical man could have detected them, of course, but no medical man was called, outside the phony Sir Gerald. Certainly you believed Elsie was dead.”

  “Then?” Peter asked stonily.

  “She was buried.”

  “Which is the part I do not understand. How could she possibly come back to life after that?”

  “Her condition was such that she used up hardly any air because of her low breathing rate. There was enough in the coffin to satisfy her until we got her out—”

  “Singh swore that she never was taken out!” Peter cried. “And I don’t believe he was a liar.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Meadows said. “Let me show you something....”

  He motioned, and Peter followed him across the great underground room to an electrical switch­board. The movement of a lever started a motor into action. Following Meadows’ pointing finger Peter watched an iron elbow gently lowering a piece of the old mausoleum roof—a roughly shaped oblong, to commence with—then it took on the form of an enormous deep box. By the time the elbow had low­ered to its limit there was visible a mass of soil inside the ‘box,’ and on the top of it some graphite chippings and faded flowers.

  “God, it’s Elsie’s entire grave!” Peter cried.

  “Just so—with the coffin still inside it, empty. When the grave site was chosen, which fact I knew a day or so in advance, of course, I discov­ered it was exactly over this old cavern and factory of mine. I realized it would save a lot of trouble to lower the coffin to us instead of digging it out by night as I had originally intended. So with electrical cutters we carved through the thin rock roof and, just outside the grave sides—so as not to be visible, drove in those planks you see. In other words Elsie’s coffin was put into a box disguised as a grave, and than low­ered down here. We got her out, returned the grave into position, and there we were. If you look above you will see the sky, as it appears from the base of the open grave.”

  Peter looked and saw the dim grey streaks of dawn in the sky: then the view was cut off as the grave was returned into its position by the mechanical arm, like a lift rising into its shaft.

  “In Timperley’s case we had to dig each time,” Meadows said. “Now you know why Singh did not see anybody near this grave. We did it from below.”

  “And held Elsie under hypnotism?”

  “I did, yes. In her semi-cataleptic state she was an easy subject to control. My main purpose was to make her kill you so that I could blame your death on to a vampire—and use your blood, of course. The first time you were with Singh, when he started investigating those footprints. On that occasion I did not return to my home, as I said I was going to do. I left my car with its lights off further up the lane and hurried by a detour to this hiding place of mine. I knew that Singh would not let anything rest and so I resolved that Elsie should seem to be the means of killing you and him. I sent my men up to keep watch. When they told me you were nearing the old chapel wall I hypnotized Elsie and she left this retreat and appeared in the cloisters, her appearance conforming to that of a vampire.

  “Apparently, though, Singh had strong hypnotic powers too. He broke my hold over Elsie by speak­ing to her and almost making her normal. Ready for this possibility one of my men fired a dart into you, Peter, and you collapsed. It contained a powerful drug that made you weak for hours afterwards. However, Singh was able to make good his escape and did not reappear until we were at your house—where I shot him dead.”

  Peter did not say anything. Point by point he was absorbing the story and classing Meadows more as a madman with every passing second.

  “I tried again.” Meadows said. “When I had dumped Singh in my surgery I returned to here and drove Elsie to your home. I put a ladder against your bedroom window—unfortunately I may have banged it a little too hard and alerted you—and gave orders for Elsie to kill you. Under my control she would have done, because I knew your strength had been weak­ened by the way I’d drugged you. However, once again hypnosis was interrupted by your house­keeper.”

  “But I rang you up at home and you answered!” Peter snapped.

  “Not very difficult,” Meadows answered. “I had a hitch-wire onto your house phone, outside. I fixed it in case a call went out to me report­ing your death: that it was you who reported Elsie’s return and collapse did not make any difference. I answered just the same—and I knew that things had gone wrong again. So I got back quickly to my car, picked up two from the village who work for me, and left them to ‘guard’ Elsie. Then we—you and I, that is—came here. Simple, isn’t it?”

  Peter moved slowly, hands dug deep in his pock­ets. He was turning the whole hideous business over in his mind. Then he asked a question.

  “When Mrs. Burrows was attacked by the supposed George Timperley, how did Timperley—or rather your man—know when to attack her, and where?”

  “I was at Elsie’s bedside, if you remember. I had been planning for some time to get rid of your mother-in-law, and that night had been chosen. My man was ready. He only needed to see a light flash at one of the windows to know when to attack. I managed that with a fountain pen torch, which Elsie did not notice in her low condition. As for which room Mrs. Burrows was in, I assume my friend Harry here judged it must be the drawing room be­cause of the lights being on.”

  “Right,” Harry agreed. “Killing that old battleaxe was the easiest job of the lot. Her blood was drained off by these two boys here after I’d killed her. By that time the Doc was about ready to ‘find’ her.”

  “Why,” Peter asked dully, “did you spare me in the cemetery when I was with Singh? Why only poison me? You could have killed me, and done with it.”

  “That would have demanded firing a gun and giving myself and the boys away. Besides, the noise Singh made, and his calls for help, brought the other cemetery guardians on the scene. I made good my escape so I could be called from my home to come and attend to you. Elsie was quickly brought down here by my men.”

  “Of all the ghastly, diabolical tales I ever heard, this has them all beaten,” Peter said at last. “And you are madman enough to think you can get away with it! Don’t forget the trail left by your men when the constables were slain and their blood drained away. That can be followed, just as Singh and I followed it.”

  “The trail will simply be obliterated,” Meadows ans­wered, his ey
es glinting. “Have no fear, Peter… I have everything mapped out. This is one secret the law will never discover. Vampires are not in the ordinary routine of Scotland Yard. Singh was the main danger, but that doesn’t exist any more.”

  “I suppose the deaths of those two policemen were going to be blamed on Elsie?”

  “Of course. My men were careless in leaving a trail.... However it does not signify. I hope you appreciate what has been accomplished, Peter, and how clever make up and very convincing ‘blood’ smears on the two vampires—George and Elsie—has caused the whole village to think that vampires do exist.”

  “It can’t go on,” Peter said, clenching his fists. “Such crime as this is bound to be dis­covered. I admit you’ve planned it all quite brilliantly, and spent a good deal of money on the engineering side of the villainy, but it won’t avail you anything. Right down at rock bottom, it’s nothing but plain hatred of me and love of Elsie that has made you do this.”

  “Partly,” Meadows agreed, “but as I have told you, the fortune from blood-capsules has its att­ractions, too. I suppose it is to be regretted that the basis of the capsules demands murder so frequently, but there it is.”

  “Just the same,” Peter argued, striving to gain time, “you’ve cut your own throat. Elsie is supp­osed to be the vampire around here. Now you’ve killed her how are you going to explain whatever new murders there will be? You’ll have no vampire to blame them on—”

  “George Timperley,” Meadows answered dryly, “will return to the rampage.... Elsie will be found dead in your bedroom, made up again—since you have removed all signs of it—and your dead body, its blood drained away, will be found beside her. The whole village will mourn the passing of their gall­ant young hero who, in turn, will be expected to become a vampire once burial has taken place. You will not become one, however: George will do quite well.”

  Meadows glanced at his watch and then gave a start.

  “I am talking too long,” he said abruptly. “It will be full daylight before long and I want you back in your home before that happens—”