case, overestimated Mary Roberts' value to me. If you will sit across from me, Miss Roberts, and look fixedly at the lamp"
Warningly Peters exclaimed, "Don't look directly at that thing, Commissioner!"
Did a flicker of disappointment cross Dmitri's face? Peters, as he moved from his chair to stand directly behind Dmitri, the muzzle of the automatic inches from Dmitri's silk-swathed shoulders, never knew. . . .
9. The Spider Spins
Dmitri's fat fingers touched a small button set beneath the edge of the table. And instantly, though Peters forced himself not to look up, he felt, beating against his lowered eyelids, the incredibly soothing, incredibly beautiful monotony of whirling color produced by the fantastic lamp, Abruptly, then, the ceiling light went out. Except for the diabolically cadenced, leaping reiteration of pinwheel color dancing in the center of the table like some chromatic dervish, the room was dark. Grimly Peters kept his eyes averted, kept his gaze boring into Dmitri's black, pillar-like silhouette.
Slow seconds passed. Then Dmitri spoke, spoke in that vibrant, beautiful voice of his that was like the chanting of a cathedral organ.
"You are asleep, Mary Roberts?"
There was a moment's pause. Warningly the police automatic in Peters' hand touched the sodden flesh at the base of Dmitri's neck.
Through the stillness came Mary's reply: "Master, I am asleep."
By not so much as a single, involuntary shudder had Dmitri betrayed even the slightest awareness of the cold gun-muzzle. Yet Peters knew that even now the man was planning, calculating chance against chance. . . .
"Who am I?" The words boomed like great mellow bass notes.
Mary's answer came unhesitatingly: "You are the Voice that Speaks from Beyond the Darkness. You are the Infallible One."
Peculiarly, Peters sensed that in that instant Dmitri had reached a decision....
The strong, resonant phrases rolled on, "You will forget the assignment that I have given you." There was a pause, and Peters realized with a curious, crawling anticipation that Dmitri was gathering himself together, concentrating himself upon himself, ominously.
Then the black words boomed, "Let your nerves go mad and your muscles tense and writhe until death releases you!"
"Damn you!" Peters snarled the curse; his gun-muzzle sloughed savagely into Dmitri's obese flesh. Yet the gun did not speak, and Dmitri, wincing beneath the torturing steel, chuckled. . . .
"I gambled that you would not fire," he gasped, his voice suddenly gloating. "And now we are no longer stalemated; before I will consent to release Mary Roberts from the agony she endures you will promise me immunity, and more than immunity—you will promise me protection, henceforth. Take that cannon from my neck"
The ceiling light flashed up, the whirling of the multicolored vanes slowed and died. And, as the eyes of Ethredge and Peters grew accustomed to the increased illumination within the room, the two men felt their bloodflow pause, then run like ice-water in their veins.
For Mary Roberts had toppled from her chair, and now lay weirdly, unnaturally sprawled on the naked floor beside Dmitri's table, her spine bent backward like a tight-drawn bow, the slender heels
