All the indicators on the board, except that for Old Tower Number Three, were now turned. Captain Dunlap relaxed in his chair, sighed heavily and lit his pipe. Lazily his eyes wandered back to the indicator board.
The unturned indicator for Old Tower Number Three held his gaze and utter sadness gripped him for a moment. Night after night, promptly on the hour, he had seen the indicator for Old Tower Number Three flip jauntily to the left and had heard the tinkle of the little bell on the board. It had always seemed to him that the indicator for Asa Shores’ tower turned with more pep than the other indicators, that the bell had tinkled more cheerily, that good old Asa Shores’ report carried a note of cheerfulness that lightened the lonesome watches of the night.
Now the old tower was cold, even as poor old Asa was cold; the doors were locked and barred. Never again, thought Dunlap, would be heard Asa Shores’ familiar song on the quiet night air. What were the words to that song?
“_When I am dead and buried deep, “I’ll return at night to take a peep “At those who hated--_”
Captain Dunlap suddenly sat erect in his chair. The pipe fell from his lips and clattered on the floor, as his lower jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide to stare at the indicator board; for--
The indicator for Old Tower Number Three was moving--moving, not with a quick turn to the left, but in a hesitant, jerky way that caused the root of every hair on Captain Dunlap’s head to tingle. Never before had the captain seen an indicator behave like that. In fact, the indicator system was designed and constructed in such a way that, being controlled by electric contacts, the various indicators would snap into position when a push button in each tower was pressed by the guard on duty in that tower.
In short, an indicator, in accordance with all the rules of electricity as applied to the system, must remain stationary or jerk to the left when the button in the tower was pressed. But here was indicator for Old Tower Number Three wavering, trembling to the left, only to fall back repeatedly to a vertical position. Then again, jerkily, hesitantly to the left, as if a vagrant soul strove to brush aside the veil that banished it from the living.
Captain Dunlap sat rigid and watched the uncanny movements of the bright brass indicator. Vague, fleeting, chaotic thoughts of crossed wires, practical jokers, wandering souls tumbled one after another through his brain.
If only the bell would not tinkle! If it did ring? Well, death then, though it had taken away what was mortal of Asa Shores, had not conquered his eternal vigilance and strict attention to duty.
Farther to the left wavered the indicator, hesitatingly, uncertainly, then--_the bell rang_!
A weak, slow ring, it was, that sounded strange and unnatural in the deathlike silence of the dimly lighted lookout.
* * * * *
Captain Dunlap was a brave man. He had smilingly faced death a dozen times in Granite River Prison.
But always his danger was known to be from living, breathing men. Abject terror gripped him now; a nameless terror that seemed to freeze the blood in his veins, contract every muscle and nerve of his body, smother his heart.
But even then reasoning struggled for recognition in his mind. What if it were a part of Asa Shores, a part of him that remained on earth to defy death and carry on? Hasn’t Asa always been Captain Dunlap’s friend? Why should he fear the spirit of a friend?
Dunlap reached forth a trembling hand, took the receiver from the hook and slowly, reluctantly, placed it to his ear. How he wished, hoped, prayed that no voice would come over the wire!
But it did come, preceded by a faint whispering sound:
“Old t-t-t-tow--” a long pause, then weakly, almost inaudibly, as if the message came from a million miles away--“Old t-t-tower n-n-n--three. S-S-Sho--”
Another pause, a jumble of meaningless words, then a chuckle. God! Asa’s familiar chuckle!
“On duty. All O-O--all O--”
A light laugh, a sharp buzzing sound, a sigh, the faint tinkle of a bell, then silence!
Dunlap heard no click of a receiver being replaced on a hook. The line was apparently still open.
Still holding the receiver to his ear, the captain moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. His free hand went involuntarily to his forehead in a vague uncertain gesture and came away damp with perspiration. Must he answer that ghost call? Must he speak to the _thing_ that held the line.
When he at last spoke his voice was husky, a strange voice even to him:
“Who--who did it, Asa? Who--who--if you are dead--if this is you, Asa, tell me--_who did it_.”
Again that queer, unfamiliar buzzing sound. Then, from Old Tower Number Three, or from beyond the grave perhaps, came a faint, whispering, uncertain voice:
“He--he--it was....”
The voice ended in a gurgle.
Dunlap replaced the receiver on the hook, and as he did so his eyes rested on the indicator board and he gasped sharply; for the indicator for Old Tower Number Three went wavering, trembling back to a vertical position on the time dial!
This unheard-of behavior of the indicator was the deepest mystery of all. The indicators, each controlled independent of the others by push buttons in each tower, were constructed mechanically to turn only from right to left.
The indicator for Old Tower Number Three had _turned back from left to right_!
* * * * *
Captain Dunlap made no effort to solve the mystery.
Old Tower Number Three was securely locked and could not be approached except by crossing over the wall from New Tower Number Three on the Southeast corner of the wall, or from Tower Number Two on the Northeast corner of the wall. Dunlap himself had closed and locked the doors and windows of the tower. There was but one key to the tower doors, and that key was in Dunlap’s pocket.
Unlike the other towers, Old Tower Number Three could not be entered from the ground outside the wall. It was built solidly of stone from the ground up, and the only entrances were the two doors communicating with the top of the wall on either side of the tower.
Besides, strict orders had been given that no one enter the tower unless ordered there by a shift captain. And, too, in the glare of the arc lights near the wall, it would be impossible for anyone to cross the wall to the tower, without being seen by other wall guards.
Could the mysterious report have come from one of the other wall towers? Impossible for this reason: When the push button in one of the wall towers--say, that in Old Tower Number Three--was pressed by the man on duty there, the indicator on the board in the captain’s lookout turned to the left a quarter-turn on the time dial, the small bell on the board rang and all telephone connections with the other wall towers were automatically cut off until the captain had replaced the telephone receiver on the hook after receiving the report from Old Tower Number Three.
Dunlap said nothing to Bill Wilton when the latter returned to the yard lookout, after making his round in the yard. It would be best, he reasoned, to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious call. They would only laugh at him if he told them about it. If the indicator had not returned to a vertical position on the time dial he would have some proof on which to base his wild story of the ghost call. But the indicator had, before his own eyes, returned to its former position after the call.
An hour later, at two A.M., Dunlap fearfully watched the indicator for Old Tower Number Three. Reports from all other posts had been received. Then, just once, the indicator trembled uncertainly, made almost a quarter turn to the left and snapped back to a vertical position. At three o’clock it did not move. Nor did it move at four o’clock.
A week passed. Not a tremor disturbed the “ghost tower” indicator.
Then, one morning at one-thirty o’clock, an unearthly, piercing scream in the cell house awaked half the men in the building and sent the cell house guard scurrying down to cell twenty-one on the corridor; for it was from this cell that the blood-chilling scream had come.
The bloodless, perspiration-dampened face of Malcolm Hulsey, the “lifer,” was pressed against the bars of the cell door when the guard arrived. The convict’s great hands grasped the bars and his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bulk, clad in only a regulation undershirt, twitched, started and trembled from head to foot. A horrible fear distended his eyes, his teeth clicked together and the muscles of his face worked spasmodically.
“Sick, Hulsey?” the guard demanded, hardened to such nerve-shattering outbursts in a building full of tortured souls.
“I saw--I saw--” Hulsey began, his teeth chattering and rendering speech well-nigh impossible. “I saw--Oh, Mr. Hill, please give me a cellmate--_now, tonight!_ I--I’m a sick man, Mr. Hill. Nerves all shot to pieces, I guess. Can’t I have a cellmate to talk to, Mr. Hill?”
“What did you see?” the guard asked.