'Keep your eyes open, Pop,' the police inspector called back as he headed for the door. 'Blow that whistle I gave you if you hear anything. We'll come running. Morgan's around some place.'
'I will, Inspector,' Pop Dillon answered, staying carefully in front of the seated figure in the electric chair — a figure with a black cloth over its face, with a metal plate clamped to its skull, with straps holding its wrists and ankles in place.
''Night now,' Inspector Mansfield said and went out, following his men.
As the door closed, the figure in the electric chair stirred. Burke Morgan lifted the false bands that seemed to bind his arms and legs. He pushed back the metal bowl on his head and lifted the black cloth from his face. He winced as his stiffened shoulder protested.
'Seemed like they were here an hour,' he said. 'Good thing they were in a hurry, my shoulder was getting pretty bad. But, you see, they never gave me a second look.'
'Oh, it was very smart,' Pop agreed. 'But now what can you do? If you go out even in a police uniform, they'll recognize you; there are so many of them.'
'I don't think so. But anyhow I'm going to stay here for a couple of hours until they move to another part of the park. If anyone comes back, we'll work the same trick. I'm going to take it easy right here in this chair, and you can sit there, in your old rocker. We'll wait together, Pop.'
Pop only nodded. It seemed to him he had heard Jack the Ripper ask, 'And what does he plan to do about you when he leaves, Pop?' But he didn't feel he should pass the question on to Burke Morgan.
'Turn out that light,' Morgan directed. 'They know you're staying here and that you can't sleep with the light on.'
Obediently, Pop pulled the cord. The tall, thin man swore.
'Pretty Boy Thomas and the girl!' he said. 'Their faces are shining in the dark!'
'Phosphorus,' Pop told him as he settled into his old rocker. 'They're supposed to be ghosts, sort of, watching you die. You should hear the spiel I worked up. It's very dramatic.'
'That's enough gab. I could get sore about that exhibit idea of yours, but I won't.'
Pop leaned back comfortably. Many a night he had drowsed until daylight in his old rocker. He watched Morgan trying to relax in the rigidity of the prop electric chair, and knew that Morgan's shoulder must be getting worse now — a lot worse. Morgan began to twitch uneasily.
'The laddie is suffering for a drug. Morphine, I suspect.' That was Dr. Crippen, whispering in his ear.
'He's got it bad.' That was Dillinger, making the observation in a cool, professional manner. 'They probably gave him a shot when they sprung him, and now he needs another. His nerves probably feel like copper angleworms inside his skin.'
Pop agreed. He'd seen too many addicts in the carny business not to know the symptoms. Burke Morgan was suffering. But Pop couldn't do anything about that. He closed his eyes. His breathing became deep and regular. In a few minutes he was snoring a little.
The tall man in the chair on the little platform listened to the snores and scowled. The pain in his shoulder had settled down to a burning sensation interrupted by fleeting stabs of pain. He could feel the sweat standing out on his forehead. His hands twitched. He wanted to yell, curse, make a break for it, shoot his way through the police outside.
But he did nothing. That was how a man got himself killed — through acting impulsively. He'd killed Pretty Boy Thomas impulsively, and they had caught him. Now he settled himself in the chair, determined to be still, and he was. He pin-pointed his concentration on getting through the night.
He had been here, in Pop Dillon's waxworks museum, many times. Now, in the darkness broken only by the faintest of light coming from a street lamp outside the windows, he could feel the wax figures of cutthroats, footpads, killers and victims all around him. He could feel them almost on the point of moving, of speaking. No wonder Pop, after so many years, could hear the dummies talk. In the silence, Burke Morgan found himself waiting for a voice to break the quiet.
'Morgan…' He could almost swear that he had heard his name spoken. 'Burke Morgan…' He had heard it! He looked toward Pop. By the faint light he saw Pop asleep in his chair, lips parted as he snored, chest rising and falling unevenly.
Burke Morgan licked his lips. It was the craving for the white stuff. He shouldn't have taken that first shot when they got him out of the prison van. But it had helped. Now he'd turn off his imagination. It took imagination to have the electric chair gimmicked by a bribed electrician, to figure on being transferred, to plan a getaway, to carry it out in spite of everything going wrong. But he mustn't let his imagination get away from him now. He could wait it out. He had before.
The silence stretched out and out, like a rubber band being pulled until it had to break, but wouldn't. He clamped his teeth together and gripped the arms of the chair to still the shaking of his hands.
'Burke Morgan…' He heard it plainly this time, but he knew it was a sound in his mind, not in his ears. The phosphorescent face of Pretty Boy Thomas seemed to be smiling at him. 'How does it feel to be waiting for them to pull the switch at midnight? How does it feel to know you only have a couple of minutes left?'
He almost answered before he realized it. Then he clamped his lips shut. That was how you went mad, talking back to voices that weren't there. Again the silence stretched out to the breaking point.
'He doesn't know.' It was a girl's gentle voice. He looked at Alice Johnson and could swear he saw her lips move. 'Tell him he's just dreaming he's free and he'll understand.'
'That's all this is, Burke.' And this time he knew he could hear Pretty Boy's voice. 'You're dreaming of us. It's almost midnight and you need the white stuff bad and they've strapped you into the electric chair. You can't bear to die so you're dreaming that you've escaped, dreaming you're going to get away. But you aren't.'
Burke Morgan closed his mouth and shut off the answer he had almost made. He'd heard about this business of imagining you were free just before they pulled the switch on you. The mind escaping from reality, they called it. But this was real. This was no dream.
He bit his lips until the blood came, and the faces of Pretty Boy Thomas and the girl ceased to be alive, became mere wax masks again.
Silence, stretching, stretching -
'Almost midnight,' Alice Johnson said, and Morgan jumped.
'You'll be joining us in a minute,' Pretty Boy said. 'Listen, you can hear the big clock striking midnight now.'
He did not have to listen. The first stroke of the big tower clock set the air to vibrating, and it was the sound of a knell tolling, tolling for him.
'It'll be over soon.' Pretty Boy's voice was almost gentle. 'On the sixth stroke they'll throw the switch and three thousand volts will crash into your body and burn your nerves and short circuit your brain. Listen, there's the fourth stroke — and the fifth — '
Burke Morgan seemed to hear a whole chorus of voices whispering the count together.
He tried to shut them out, shut out the clanging clock, shut out everything. But he could not shut out the venomous hiss of electric current surging into the chair. He could not ignore the great shower of sparks that flamed around his head, his hands, his feet, the smell of burning…
Burke Morgan leaped up wildly. He gave a single scream, and it seemed to him a hundred throats echoed it. Then silence, darkness, nothingness.
Pop Dillon settled back into his old rocker. There would be photographers and reporters there early and he wanted to be on hand for them. There would be columns in the newspapers tomorrow about The Chamber of Horrors. Oh, it would be a fine summer. Now the police had finally gone, taking with them the bodies of Burke Morgan and poor Officer Hendryx, two for the morgue who would eventually be immortalized in wax in the Chamber of Horrors.
'Pop.' It was Pretty Boy Thomas' voice — yes, it was. 'That was clever, Pop. Even to me it sounded like my own voice.'
'And mine did to me.' That would be Alice Johnson speaking in her shy, soft voice.
'Well, after all, I was a pretty good caster,' Pop answered modestly, but pleased by the praise. 'I was one
