by Don Wilcox
The clock struck eleven-thirty. Perhaps the houseman would be asleep by this time. His quarters, I had been informed, were in the rear basement room; and I had no intention of disturbing him with my prowling.
The door between the first floor and the basement was locked. The clock struck midnight before I finally found a key, and by that time I was fairly impatient to get on with my venture, and consequently more or less reckless about the amount of noise I made. I walked down the basement stairs and turned on lights as I went.
I stopped, listened, heard nothing. At last I was in the room I had glimpsed from the outside, and a dim light showed me the mysterious mass of instruments. I gazed with an awe that was more than I can define. I felt a mysterious sense of power. Even though I had no more idea than a child as to what all these huge tubes and coils and turntables and levers added up to, I thrilled at their very beauty.
I could see the reflection of my shirt, elongated into a white saber, up the length of the largest metal tube. This brilliant metal pole sloped upward gently, and I noticed that the two small tubes I had seen from the outside—the double-barreled shotgun—were an elongation of this telescopelike piece of metal.
Perhaps the instrument was a telescope, I thought. Bending downward I tried to find an eyepiece, thinking that I might catch a glimpse of some planet or star over the skyline of the city, but my search was futile—and so was my inspiration. For after all, why should there be such a profusion of electrical equipment if this were only a telescope?
The only items I could single out as familiar were the paper-thin plates of colored glass, obviously to be used for filtering out different colors of light, and a hand switch.
My hand was on the switch, but I did not mean to snap it. However, I was suddenly shocked by the entrance of the houseman. I turned with a start, and the switch snapped beneath my hand.
Zwoom-m-m-m!
At once the room was ringing with the quiet hum of motors bedded on concrete. A purple spark sputtered across a gap—the gap widened—the spark crackled and roared—and my eyes winced under the terrific light. Blindly I groped for the switch; then in fear of the thundering delta of electric sparks, I backed away.
I knew the houseman was shouting at me. I couldn’t hear a word he said; nothing but his mad roar against the clattering torrent of power.
The houseman’s hand slapped the switch off. The roar died away, and the streams of sparks were now only lingering white streaks playing across my dazzled eyes. A hand clutched me across the chest and I dizzily staggered backward.
The houseman’s face was the face of a demon. He shoved me against the wall, and from the look of him I believe he would have shot me down if he had had a gun. His arms reached out this way and that, expecting to grab something to club me with, but his search was cut short, for I snatched a crowbar hanging on the wall.
“Lay off me!” I yelled. “Your damned telescope’s nothing to me!” The words halted him—or perhaps the crowbar had something to do with it.
“I’m Buffler’s nephew,” I said, remembering that the houseman had not seen me at close range before. “If this is my uncle’s telescope, I’ve got a right to look at it.”
The houseman looked at me closely, as if trying to size up how much I knew or suspected. He relaxed a little.
“I didn’t mean to start off the fireworks,” I added. “If I’ve done any damage, I’ll pay for it.”
I hung up the crowbar and walked to the stairs, and I knew that the houseman’s eyes were following me suspiciously. I glanced at the stairs to see another pair of eyes on me—and Jonathan Buffler’s white eyeballs were protruding more than ever.
“Sorry if I’ve upset your sleep, Uncle,” I said, hesitating at the foot of the stairs.
I snatched at the first lie that came to my mind.
“Aunt Mary used to keep some of my favorite books down here in the basement storeroom. That’s what I came down to get . . . and then I saw this telescope and thought I’d look at some stars.”
My uncle continued to glare at me, and the houseman stood at one side of me with his fists on his hips. Neither one seemed disposed to speak, whatever it was he might be thinking.
“Or is it a telescope?” I added.
“It is,” said Jonathan Buffler, with a glance at the houseman.
“It’s partly a telescope,” said the houseman, “but it’s chiefly a cosmic ray apparatus. I’ll tell you about it some time when we get it working on one of the stars.”
“It’s out of order now,” said Buffler. “I shouldn’t have messed with it,” I agreed.
“Stay away from it,” said the houseman. “Your uncle makes me responsible for keeping it under lock and key. If it had been anybody but you, I’d have crowned ’em.”
“I shouldn’t have dug up a key in the first place,” I said. “Had trouble sleeping so I came down for a book.”
“Get back to bed,” said Buffler, and his night-shirted bulk turned and trudged up the stairs. I followed. The door between the basement and the rest of the house locked behind us.
Again I went to bed, but not to sleep. I listened for an hour or more, and at last I heard Buffler slip down the stairs, and the basement door clicked. There was no doubt in my mind that he and the houseman were having an earnest conversation.
The thunderbolt struck home the next morning. A telephone call brought the strange news that cut through me like a knife. Shortly after midnight, a scrubwoman had died while at work in Gertrude Becker’s pink-mirrored room at Buffler Tower!
CHAPTER IV
Shadows of Murder
The death of a scrubwoman may seem a very small incident. There was nothing about a scrubwoman’s dying while at work to give the police a headache. Nor were the coroner’s talents put to any test. The coroner’s verdict of death from a heart ailment was accepted without question, so far as I know, by all who knew the woman.
A second telephone call, this time from Dr. Ramsell, assured Jonathan Buffler that there was no need for him to come if he was ill, for everything was taken care of and the office force had gone back to work as soon as the body had been removed.
The death of a scrubwoman was a very small incident. But it was enough of an incident to strike a terror through me—a terror that possessed me, hypnotized me, bound me in invisible shackles.
I sat in my room with my head in my hands, looking out across the river park toward the downtown skyline. There stood the Buffler Tower, a dismal gray shaft pointing up to the leaden clouds, almost obscure in its outline, for there was a fine drizzle in the air this morning.
Lights were on in the city’s downtown offices, and I could see the top floor of the Buffler Tower as a row of dotted lights through the gray mist. Was it possible, I kept asking myself, that an electric eye from this distance could sort out those dotted lights, and choose the one that was pink?
And was it possible that a ray from this distance could leap to those swaying pink mirrors—quartz mirrors that reflected everything they could catch to every inch of surface in the room. I shuddered. In my hand there was a strange lingering feeling—the feeling of striking a lever or snapping a switch.
From Jonathan Buffler’s room came a continual low hum of voices. Although my uncle remained in bed with his blindfold over his eyes, he was not too sick to converse with the houseman. This low muffled conversation was to go on for hours—today, tomorrow, the next day—and every hour of their ghastly secret talk was to leave me more and more depressed.
I must have been an ineffectual weakling during those hours. Why I did not call Dr. Ramsell and pour out my direst suspicions to him, I cannot say. I wonder if a hit-and-run driver may not experience the same terror that I felt—a terror that is blinding—a terror that says: “I didn’t do it. I don’t know anything about it.”
I rubbed my hand and tried to brush the memory of that accidental snap of the switch out of it. But my ears echoed with the roar of purple sparks, and the smell of humming motors was in m
y nostrils.
A police car moved slowly along the wet street. I thought it was going to stop, and my heart went wild. It came even with our driveway but did not turn in. It disappeared on down the street, but the scare it left upon me was as blinding as the band across Buffler’s eyes.
From that moment on, the deadly instrument concealed in the basement room, together with the switch I had struck and the exhibition of deadly power I had seen, all went behind a blind spot in my consciousness. I refused to remember them. For me they were out.
“Olin!” It was Buffler’s deep, suffering voice that called.
“Coming,” I answered, and with hesitant step I went to his room.
“Read to me,” he said. “I may have to lie here for several days, and I’ll need you beside me constantly. Find a book and read to me.”
I complied with his order. What I read was of no importance; indeed, I read almost without listening to myself, and I doubt whether he listened. For, as I soon realized, his only purpose was to make certain that I did not leave the house!
For three days I did not leave, nor did I talk on the telephone or have any other communications with the outside world. Not that he forbade me to use the telephone; he simply invented ways to block me. And I, seeing through his artifices, acceded to him. He watched me like a hawk, and I watched him the same way.
As for meals, he had the delivery trucks bring whatever he wanted. As for his business, he barked a few sharp orders over the telephone to Gertrude Becker each day. As for his illness, he flatly refused to have Ramsell or any other doctor meddle with him; and whenever I threatened to override this decision, he cajoled me so cunningly that I let him have his way.
Was I afraid of him? Of course I was! His acting was too superb. I knew he was insane. I knew he might murder me the first time he caught me napping. I saw plainly on that point.
For the one passion that pounded through his arteries was a plump blonde named Jewel, who had cleverly held out for marriage, and who had fed the flames of his agony by completely ignoring him for the past three days—the sickest days of his life, no doubt.
I sat beside his bed, reading to him, watching him, wondering whether he watched me through his blindfold, wondering how he expected to dispose of me. Perhaps I would never know how Aunt Mary had died; but it was clear as crystal to me now that Gertrude Becker, his Number One secretary, would die simply and easily, and that there would be no mystery. The answer would be—“heart attack.”
I went to my room, adjoining his, and began a letter to my parents. I had only put down a few words when—“Olin!” Buffler’s insistent call interrupted me. “What are you doing, Olin?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Come here, Olin . . . Did I hear you open that stationery drawer? . . . Are you writing a letter? . . . To whom? . . . Read it to me.”
I got up angrily and returned to his room.
“It’s private,” I snapped. “I don’t think you’d be interested.”
“Of course I’m interested. Your parents are my relatives. They’re to inherit part of my wealth. What are you writing them?” He drew himself up in bed angrily. “What are you writing them?”
“None of your damned business!” I retorted.
Jonathan Buffler tore the blindfold off his eyes and sprang up. His bulky form bounced toward me, and his mad protruding eyes caught sight of the letter which I’d been afraid to leave on my desk.
“Give it to me!” he roared.
I backed away from him and crumpled the letter in my fist. He came at me, reaching with his puffy fingers and yelling,
“Give it to me!”
I swung my fist at his heavy jowl. I didn’t mean to hit so hard, but fear and hate and physical power are all bound pretty closely together in my make-up, and there was a lot of fear turned loose in the impact. Jonathan Buffler’s pear-shaped head gave under that blow, and his humpty-dumpty frame tottered backward on bent knees.
His eyes closed and he groped for the bed, groaning and coughing.
The houseman came up the stairs, sidled past me and walked across to Buffler’s bed. I started to move away.
“Just a minute,” said the houseman, “till we see what’s going on here. What happened, Buffler?”
The stricken man only answered with long drawn-out groans and shakings of his soggy head that made his thick lips sputter. He fumbled to get his blindfold over his eyes, and the houseman helped him. At the same time there was a quick exchange of whispers. Then the houseman turned to face me and carelessly brought a pistol out of his pocket, which he weighed in his hand.
“All right, Olin,” he said in a casual tone. “The old man wants to see that letter you’re writin’, so cough it up. Buffler’s orders are law with me. Let’s have it.”
I dug the wad of paper out of my pocket and tossed it over. The houseman stuck his gun in his pocket and unwadded the paper. He read aloud:
Dear Mother and Father,
If I should suddenly die and my death should be attributed to heart attack—
“Well?” Buffler demanded.
“That’s all there is,” said the houseman.
“The hell!” Buffler sputtered. He slipped his blindfold up on his forehead, turned on his side, and glared at me.
“What are you plotting, suicide? What the hell are you hinting at?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You lie. You’re hinting at murder! A murder!”
He came up to a sitting position and pushed his weight up slowly with his arms. His voice had come out with a scream on the word “murder,” but now as he slowly came to his feet and moved toward me, his talk came forth as a hoarse rasping whisper.
“You’re accusing somebody of plotting against your life. You seem to think somebody would take the trouble to kill you. Who the hell gives a damn about putting you out of the way? Who? Answer me, you damned traitor!”
I had no answer except to edge away from the bulbous maniacal eyes that knifed through me. But the houseman had slipped to the door ahead of me and stood in my path, tapping his pistol against the door frame.
“Answer me!” Buffler roared. “Who’d take the trouble to murder you? What have you got on anybody?”
“Nothing!” I blurted.
“Don’t lie! I can see right through you. I know who you’re accusing. You’re accusing me!”
His mouth spread in a hateful grimace and he pointed his accusing finger at himself.
“You think I’d kill you, don’t you! DON’T YOU! ANSWER ME!”
“Why should I?” I cried.
“Stalling!” he hissed, and a scornful smile touched his lips. “Always stalling. But I can see through you. You think you’ve got something on me. You think you’ll fix up a story for the police. You think you’ll get in on my dough in a hurry. You think you’ll break up my little party.
“But you won’t, damn you! I’ve had you sewed up since the night you busted in on the ray gun! And NOW . . .”
His furious screeching broke off at the sound of the doorbell. For a few seconds he stood almost motionless, his hands upraised, his fingers trembling, perspiration streaking down over his heavy jowls. The doorbell rang again. Slowly his hands lifted and his palms pressed over his bulbous eyes.
“I’m sick, Olin!” he wailed, bowing his head. “I’m dreadfully sick. I don’t know what Pm saying. Help me to bed. Get the blindfold on me.”
His sudden change of mood was so complete as to pass understanding. It was baffling, and yet so convincing that the hatred and terror that had filled me a moment before softened into weakness. I helped him to bed.
The doorbell continued to ring until the houseman answered it. A moment later he came back up the stairs, to tell Buffler that Jewel was waiting to see him down in the drawing room.
CHAPTER V
Jewel’s Promise
The name of Jewel was magic. The light that came into my uncle’s face was wonderful to see. A reluctant schoolboy who plays sick
until he hears that school is out, so he can go to the circus, could not change his mood any quicker than Jonathan Buffler.
But Buffler did not forget that he was a very ill man. He kept his blindfold on, I helped him dress, and the houseman and I escorted him downstairs.
Once in the presence of Jewel, he permitted himself the luxury of removing his blindfold; remarking, as he did so, that the light was killing him.
“You poor dear,” said Jewel in luscious baby talk, stroking his eyelids. “You’ve just got to get well. Your little Jewel has been all sad since you walked out on her—”
“But Jewel, I didn’t!”
“You got all huffy and walked out on me, and all I had asked for was pink mirrors in my office. You were an old meany.” She scruffed his cheeks playfully and they laughed.
The houseman nudged me and we left them to themselves. But we stayed within hearing, for that was what the houseman wanted to do, and I had no choice in the matter. I was his prisoner.
Jewel’s visit lasted for more than two hours. Buffler finally persuaded her to go back to the office. But in the course of those two hours Jewel had done most of the persuading. She had teased and pouted and cajoled; in short, she had applied all her artful wiles that had such a softening effect upon Jonathan Buffler.
It was pitiful to listen to, but in the end she had won her point. She was to have pink mirrors. Moreover, she was to be promoted from Secretary Number Two to Secretary Number One, so there would be no more occasion for her being jealous.
“Mind you,” Buffler had insisted, “keep this plan under your hat until I get back to work. I know how to handle Drizzlepuss and you don’t. So don’t go spilling the beans. I’ll be back in a few days to make the change. Until then, don’t you breathe a word!”
“Of course not, Johnny dear,” Jewel had answered. “You know how to handle Drizzlepuss.” A touch of sarcasm came into her voice. “That’s why we’re getting married one of these days—or are we?”
“Jewel, dear, don’t start that all over again.”
