The Crime Cult

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A SUDDEN chill swept over Don Hasbrouck as he reached forward to place his hand upon the bell. He hesitated. He looked upward to the black windows and strange turrets of the old stone house. The cold, driving rain pelted into his face. The night — or the dismal, sinister mansion itself — brought instinctive fear deep into the man on the steps.

Hasbrouck straightened his shoulders. He couldn’t tell, for the life of him, why he hesitated, or from whence came that eerie feeling.

He was at the end of a trail, ready to enter a place that he knew well. There was no one in the gloomy house who could harm him. Reason told him that. But instinct, some age-old secret dread, fought against reason.

A shrill night wind whistled through the narrow uptown street, as if to shriek a warning. And, suddenly, Hasbrouck, in the midst of Manhattan, felt isolated and insecure.

Hasbrouck’s finger crept forward. Deliberately, he pressed the bell. The wind had died down. Now, from the depths of the house, he heard a single, muffled note, like that of a ghostly gong struck in somber silence.

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