The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

“Listen to me and you’ll see perfectly . . . I have a piece of tape that I want you to cut for me . . . Here it is. Cut please.”

  Yolanda made a motion with the scissors, though there was nothing to catch their blades.

  “There,” she said. “I have cut it.”

  “Good. I have a few questions for you, Yolanda. Whatever I ask you will answer. What is your age?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Are you in love?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Who is the man?”

  “Carter O’Connor.”

  “Do you expect to marry him?”

  “I’m afraid he will marry someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Katherine Knight. They are very close friends. I think she has already won him.”

  “Why don’t you take him away from her?”

  “They are both my friends. I want them to be happy and successful.”

  “I am your friend, Yolanda, you may tell me anything. You may be confidential with me. Do you understand?” Tolozell repeated the question before he got an answer. It came, a slow, hesitant, “Yes.”

  “You are ready to tell me your deepest secrets because I am your friend. Your very best friend.”

  “My best friend,” said Yolanda, “is John How.”

  “I,” said Tolozell in a low, mysterious voice, “am John How.”

  “No,” she answered calmly. “John How is dead.”

  “I am John How, invisible to you, the spirit of John How hovering over you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes—John. What do you want?”

  “Have I told you where the treasure of the Chiams is hidden?”

  “No,” said Yolanda. “Tell me.”

  “But I have told you. You know, don’t you? You haven’t forgotten. Come, tell me where it is.”

  Tolozell breathed tensely as he waited for the answer.

  “I—I don’t know. You never told me. You only said—”

  “Yes, go on!”

  “That the White Paper Wand would lead me. That is our secret.”

  “Yes,” Tolozell whispered. “Our secret!”

  He looked down at the wand. A few moments before, he had caught the silver knob so that Yolanda would not be awakened by the sound of its fall.

  Now he picked it up again, cunningly catching the knob in the tips of his fingers. He moved backward, keeping his eyes on the hypnotized girl.

  The wand! Old Chiam magic! So it would lead him—

  His other hand moved to catch the white-wrapped stalk. It was his left hand, the one with the perpetual twitch. The big stocky fingers touched the white surface.

  Pffoooooossssssh!

  The sphere of white flame burst from his hand. The blinding explosion filled the room for an instant, and was gone.

  Gasping and choking, Tolozell ran toward the dragon arch, his hands clutching at his cheeks as if to protect the ragged black whiskers.

  But the explosion was done. Everything was as quiet as before. The little trail of gray smoke, climbing into the blue ceiling lights, could barely be seen. Yolanda had not moved.

  Tolozell stole back cautiously.

  He picked up what remained of the wand, a silver knob on the end of a simple metal rod.

  “Put it down, please,” said Yolanda in a low, casual voice. “It belongs to me.”

  Tolozell devoted the next few minutes to restoring the quiet sleepy state in his subject. She offered no resistance, but after the violent disturbance he feared that her cooperative attitude might be at low ebb. Soon he was talking with her again, receiving very satisfactory answers.

  He began to question her about the

  Tolozell doll she had made. Did she really believe she might do anything to improve the character of “that showman, Mr. Tolozell?”

  “Mr. Tolozell is a very evil person.” Yolanda replied quietly. “But my treatment of this new doll may have profound effect.”

  “Why is Mr. Tolozell so evil?”

  “He wants to steal the vast treasures which belong to the Chiams.”

  “We must never let him do that,” said Tolozell. “I’ll help you protect those treasures from him, if you’ll let me . . . I’m your friend . . . Where are the treasures hidden?”

  “I don’t know. Only the White Paper Wand knows. The paper will lead us.”

  Tolozell swore under his breath. The paper was all gone. No, there was still that damned caricature she’d made of him.

  There it hung, awaiting his command.

  The clock’s hands passed from midnight to one while the Siamese hypnotist exerted his futile efforts on the white paper doll. He did not touch it. That lesson had been learned. But he did do virtually everything else in the way of experimenting, handling it with tongs or gloves, talking to it, saying all manner of magic incantations over it.

  He hung it up again, fixing it so that it was free to slide or turn in any direction. Then he stimulated it with a variety of sounds, clinking glasses, parlor chimes, light tapping on Chinese gongs. Before he had exhausted his array of trial-and-error experiments, the hotel’s attendants came into see where the weird sounds were coming from. They were followed by Jeff Cotton.

  “If you’ve got to make all that noise,” Jeff growled, “why the hell don’t you take it down to the basement?” With that, Jeff reached for the paper doll, and it passed out of existence with a quick poof!

  Tolozell, white with rage, cleared the blue-lighted lobby of everyone but himself and Yolanda. She was still sitting there, eyes wide open, yet apparently unconcerned by all these goings-on.

  “What was that superstition you were telling me a little while ago about the paper dolls?” Tolozell began, and there was an ill-suppressed brutality in his manner. He was like a bull determined to crash something that wouldn’t vanish at the touch of his horns.

  “It is no superstition,” said Yolanda. “Did you see what happened to that doll of Tolozell?”

  “It burned up.”

  “Yes, er—” Tolozell’s left hand was for a moment as paralyzed as a stone. “Who do you say I am?”

  “You told me that you are the invisible spirit of John How.”

  “That’s right,” said Tolozell, growing more comfortable. He drew up a chair and faced Yolanda. “You are right. Whatever happens to the doll will happen to the person. Aren’t you glad that Tolozell will soon be out of the way?”

  He narrowed his eyes and waited for an answer.

  “Truly, I am glad,” she said slowly. “Then there is murder in your heart,” he said fiercely.

  “No,” the girl was calm. “I have no murder in my heart. I didn’t touch the flame to the doll.”

  “Oh. So that’s how it works. If you had done it—”

  “Then I would no longer be trustworthy,” said Yolanda.

  “Now we’re getting places. Ah . . . Our enemy Tolozell is gone. We’ve nothing more to worry about. Come, let us enjoy ourselves the rest of the evening.”

  “I only feel like resting,” said Yolanda.

  But a moment or two later she responded to the hypnotist’s suggestion that they try some imaginary games. She preferred to cut some more paper dolls, she said, and the floor was the best place to work. So Tolozell drew her chair out of the way. But as to the games, his scheme was to get her thoughts completely away from paper dolls. If he could work it, a surefire advantage was all his.

  “We are in an airplane,” he said. “We are having a wonderful ride. You are at the controls.”

  Yolanda smiled. “I like running an airplane.” She seemed to take great delight in pantomiming the pilot of a plane. “Where shall we go?”

  “Down,” said Tolozell. He placed the scissors in her hands. “This is the lever for controlling the power.”

  A moment later he brought the pretty little paper doll of a dancing girl. It was the cut-out of Katherine Knight. He said, “Here is a robe which the pilot must have to keep warm at high altitudes. Put it over your lap. There. Hold ont
o it with your left hand. Keep the power control in the right. Now . . . We’re going down. We’re about to land Cut off your power . . . Cut it off!”

  The orders were called with such a sharp command that there was only one natural thing for the hypnotized subject to do. That was to obey. With scissors in one hand and a paper doll in the other, the doll’s head poised almost within the blades, Yolanda was being forced to “Cut it off. Cut it off!”

  To Tolozell’s utter surprise, Yolanda simply dropped the scissors.

  “We’ve already landed,” she said quietly. “I cut the power off a long time ago. But wasn’t it a wonderful ride?”

  Tolozell didn’t answer. Like a tiger that had just been beaten out of a meal he paced the floor in rage.

  Suddenly he snatched up the scissors and took the Katherine Knight doll out of Yolanda’s hands.

  He deliberately slashed into the neck. A few jagged strokes and the head dropped to the floor at Yolanda’s feet.

  He placed the body of the paper doll back in her hands, also the scissors.

  Something was amiss. A hypnotized subject shouldn’t have done what Yolanda did then. She deliberately threw the scissors across the room.

  Tolozell picked them up and started to bring them back. The girl must have them in her hands when she came out from under the hypnotic spell, and she seemed about to emerge.

  At that particular instant a tremendous disturbance sounded from the front entrance of the temple, beyond the dragon-guarded archway.

  The tall angular haggard looking man who came racing in was Slack Clampitt.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Birds of a Feather

  Yolanda didn’t need to be snapped out of a spell to know what was happening now. The tall angular man who stood before her was the moonlight murderer of Heavy.

  Under these dim blue lights he looked almost exactly as he had looked that night by the pagoda. The difference was the wild desperation in his face, the hunted look.

  “They’re on us,” Slack Clampitt hissed. “They’re comin’ for a raid.”

  “You damned devil, why’d you lead them here?”

  “I didn’t. I broke through in time to warn you, you low skunk. I’m so in the habit of doin’ your dirt for you, I risk my life—”

  “All right, all right,” said Tolozell in a low voice. He looked back at Yolanda, and she knew he was in a panic, for once. But he still had a card to play against her, and his game might still be won.

  “You see what you did, Miss Lavelle?” he rasped. “You’ve been under my spell, revealing secrets right and left. You’ve tied yourself up in a knot!”

  “You haven’t learned anything from me!”

  “You’d be surprised. You’d better come through with your whole murder story, so I’ll know how to protect you. I mil protect you—if I But you’ve got to tell me more about that treasure. Either that or I’ll let you hang for choking your friend Katherine Knight!”

  “For—what?”

  “Don’t squirm. Look, you’ve sheared her head off in your sleep. You did it because it’s symbolical of the murderous fact. You killed her last night. You’ve told me. You said it was jealousy. Now!”

  “Why, you beast!” Yolanda shrank back and ran across the hall.

  Slack Clampitt had already dived into a rear room, and his rapid fire footsteps could be heard clattering down the basement steps.

  That alone was reason enough for Yolanda to choose an ascent. A figure was coming down to block her way. It was the large, blond hotel manager. Strangely enough, in that split second of seeing him there, she remembered his face as it had glared in at the window of her home one wintry night, way back in America.

  He was no hotel manager, he was Tolozell’s assistant.

  Once she had frightened him away with a gun. Now, with Tolozell bounding up the steps after her, shouting his threats, she chose to try her bluff again upon Jeff Cotton. She sprang forward.

  He tried to catch her. She failed to dodge him on the stairs. She struck with all her force at his ankles. But he was heavy and her effort played havoc with her own balance as well as his. They went hurtling down the stairs together.

  Officers were calling from the doorways, now, marching up the outer steps with an ominous tread.

  In the fall down the steps, Yolanda had tried to cling to the beads of her gown, with the fear that they were being strewn all the way down. But she was mistaken. What had given her the misimpression was the fact that her fingers had closed on a precious stone during the fall.

  She hid it in her clothing before anyone could notice.

  Instantly Tolozell, who had dodged their fall, was in command of the situation. He caught Yolanda by the arm, jerked her to her feet, and forced her to run with him to a rear room.

  Down the basement steps they went together, Yolanda fighting, Tolozell tightening the brutal grip on her arm. He seemed in no wise concerned that Jeff Cotton had dropped out of the procession. It was a hurried moment; almost a case of everyone for himself. But Tolozell was still clinging to hope that she was the one remaining key to a treasure.

  Slack Clampitt could be seen at the farther side of one of the dark rooms off the hallway, working at a heavy wooden door.

  “Open it up, Tolo!” he coughed. “It’s the only decent lock. Get me behind it or they’ll kill me.”

  Terrifying chills shot through Yolanda, to hear the rush of footsteps overhead. Slack’s every throbbing word was like a hideous sound from the throat of a man about to be executed.

  “You’d better both get in,” Tolozell growled. “They’re aft® this gal, too, for the murder of her friend.”

  “I’ve never murdered her,” Yolanda cried. “I can’t believe she’s been murdered. And there’s nothing more I can tell about that treas—”

  “Hssh!”

  “Please believe me.”

  “Get in there and think it over. I can stall ’em off if I want to.”

  “Can you do it for me too?” Slack Clampitt rasped, crowding in past the heavy wooden door at Tolozell opened it.

  “I’ve paid you off, Slack,” the hypnotist barked. He forced Yolanda into the room and started to shut the door. “There, you birds of a feather.”

  “Wait,” Slack Clampitt wailed. “Promise me you’ll get me outa the country safe. I’ll give you anything, even the damned map.”

  “Map?” Tolozell crackled like close thunder. “Why, you goddamned—”

  In the thin shaft of light Yolanda was not sure, at first, whether Tolozell had a gun. But she was sure about Slack Clampitt. He jerked a pistol to beat the hulking hypnotist.

  Strangely, his arm jumped and his shot went wild.

  Then fire blazed from Tolozell’s hand, and the tall angular man fell like a rusty-join ted skeleton into the doorway.

  “Get back, you!” Tolozell snarled at Yolanda. His big left hand swept down to jerk the fallen man along the floor, to get him out of the way of the door.

  Slack Clampitt moaned, “Who was it? Who hit me?”

  The footsteps overhead were pounding toward the rear rooms now. Yolanda’s heart sank. To make a break for freedom was out of the question.

  As she stood there paralyzed, the dying man on the floor choked out some words meant for her—the first and last words he ever spoke to her, and she knew she would always remember them.

  “This damned tightwad’ll save you from hangin’ . . . if you’ll spill the treasure secret. . . . Me—I’ll be more liberal . . . I’ll give you back your gal friend. . . . Couldn’t kill that Jane. . . . Had a soft spot for her . . . in my heart.”

  Yolanda was sure that Slack Clampitt died just outside the heavy wooden door only a few moments after she’d been locked inside the pitch-black inner room.

  She was sure, because she could hear Tolozell rummaging through the luckless fellow’s clothing for the map as soon as the agonized, half-mocking throat sounds had stopped.

  “What—you’ll—pay—for a—fool—map!”

&
nbsp; That was the end.

  Soon Yolanda could hear the bluster of the native police, and Tolozell’s stout boasting that they had come just too late to help him catch a dangerous criminal, undoubtedly the ringleader of all this hotel’s trouble.

  There were the labored steps of men bearing the body up to the next level. Tolozell’s voice faded, and at last everything was almost quiet for Yolanda.

  But neither the darkness nor the silence were terrifying to her, for by now a voice had spoken softly in her ear.

  “We birds of a feather find our way into the same dungeons, don’t we? Remember me—Carter O’Connor?”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Katherine’s Head

  “I—I don’t know how you can be here,” Yolanda gasped, “but I’ll have to believe it.”

  “Nice little place,” said Carter. “Want to look around?” He turned on a switch and a soft glow emanated from the tattered old red and blue Japanese lantern. “There. Let me look at you, Yolanda. I’ve been telling myself you couldn’t be as beautiful as I imagined. But you are—only more so.”

  “Carter! What are you doing here? What will happen to us? Do you know anything about Katherine? Have you been in this prison long?”

  “Not so fast,” Carter laughed. “We’re not going anywhere, at least not until we’ve had a chance to talk. Won’t you sit down?”

  He suggested that the heap of boxes were excellent chairs, and also serviceable hiding places from which to record the miscellaneous crimes of the Temple underworld.

  “The only voice I had trouble catching was that of Jeff Cotton,” Carter said. “But fortunately I realized he was ripe for a revolt against his high- powered master. So I bribed him.”

  “What are you talking about?” Yolanda gasped.

  “To begin at the beginning,” said Carter, “one of the city officials knew there was an underground passage to this basement. He came with me, we emerged in that corner just beyond where you are sitting, and together we took enough notes to hang Tolozell’s whole crew. What’s more, I captured Jeff Cotton a few hours ago and held him long enough to get a fuller story. I bribed him to talk by offering him a precious gem. You see, the poor fellow was impatient with Tolozell’s years of promising a big treasure. To Jeff Cotton one glittering emerald was too tempting to turn down.”