The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

Zing-zing-zing-zing—

  CHAPTER II

  Murder on the Cliff

  With a bleeding back that was like a blaze of fire, Dave Silbert dragged himself home from work. He hoped that young Maddox—“Happy,” as the family called him—would have some salve and bandages handy.

  “If experience is the best teacher, I oughta learn fast,” he mumbled to himself.

  He avoided the busy streets. When the female military police cruised past in their official car, a limousine outlandishly decorated with imitation gold, he tried to look the other way. He didn’t want to attract any eyes. A newcomer in these parts would have some tall explaining to do.

  The mellow sun, still high in the afternoon sky, was somehow soothing to his tortured bare back. Or perhaps it was the balmy, semi-tropical air. Under a less strenuous situation he could have liked this island.

  The island’s cruelties had stung him. He had glimpsed its mysterious treacheries. He reasoned with himself that he had no obligation to stay. He should make plans to shake the sand of its beaches off his feet as soon as possible.

  But does any man walk away from a rattlesnake that has struck at him? He may still be free, unpoisoned. He may say to himself, “That rattlesnake is none of my business,” and go merrily on his way.

  No, no man does that. He seizes stones, he faces his attacker, he fights, heedless of the danger of death. Dave broke off these thoughts with a curious chuckle.

  “I’d never thought of comparing women to rattlesnakes before,” he mused, “but after twenty-four hours on this island that’s how it seems to me.”

  Everywhere he looked, he was reminded that this was Women’s Island. The boulevards were lined with statues of women—gaudily painted statues that took on a semblance of gold in the afternoon sun. Any objects so bright and conspicuous must have had a purpose.

  “That’s one way of reminding men of their inferiority,” he decided. “But nothing can do that better than those infernal whipping machines.”

  He had learned, in the thick of violence that afternoon, that the whirling whip couldn’t be dodged. It spotted you with an electric eye, and swung over you automatically.

  The one thing that he regretted more than his own lashing was what he had done to John Dennison, the gray-haired, bespeckled man at the machine ahead of him. It had happened by accident. When the whip began lashing Dave, he had swung his arms up to protect himself. In doing so, he had jerked the loose metal grip off the handle of his left-hand lever.

  The steel part had flown up and struck the sunlamp above John Dennison’s head. A shower of frosted, glass had barely missed the man’s back. But the steel had fallen to strike him on the right temple, had knocked him out cold.

  For once, the lady foreman had shown some mercy. She had hurried first aid to the elderly man—and Dave had made himself as inconspicuous as possible by going on with his work. He had fully expected a round with the authorities, which would quickly point up to, “Who are you, and where’d you come from, and how do you happen to ! be taking so-and-so’s place at this machine?”

  But the lady doctor and the lady foreman had wasted only a passing glance on him, and one of them had commented that it was strange that some of these factory workers would sometimes revert to’their original high-energy state.

  On reaching the gate of the Maddox home, Dave Silbert stopped. A small boy was sitting on the steps, talking with two lady callers—no other than Jane and Eudora. Again the sight of Eudora’s beauty fairly took Dave’s breath away. He crouched back of the hedge, listened.

  “Happy’s not here,” the little boy insisted. He was Danny Downs, a next door neighbor, and he knew Happy Maddox wasn’t at home. “I’m Happy’s best friend, and he tells me everything.”

  “I’m Happy’s friend, too, Danny,” Jane said, smiling pleasantly.

  The stubborn little fellow drew back defensively. “No girls are friends to men.”

  Jane turned to her companion, shaking her head slowly.

  “Don’t mind him,” Eudora consoled her. “The boy doesn’t mean any harm. It just goes to prove what I was saying. The Empress is poisoning every mind on the island, from the oldest to the youngest. I could be hanged for saying that, but it’s true.”

  Jane turned back to the little neighbor boy and tried to pat him on the shoulder, but he writhed at her touch. “Goodbye, Danny,” she said. “When you see Happy, just tell him that I brought a visitor from the factory. We wanted to tell him about something very unusual that happened today.” Dave’s heart leaped. He was the unusual thing that had happened at the factory. Did he dare step out of hiding and try to explain? No, he had fouled his luck once today by acting on rash impulse. He froze to his hiding place and waited until the two girls had gone on their way.

  A minute later, then, he and little Danny Downs were getting acquainted like long lost brothers. Danny ran into the Maddox house and got some salve and dressing for Dave’s back. The bright-eyed little fellow talked as big as any doctor.

  “I didn’t dare tell those females where Happy went, because I don’t tell females nothing. But Happy said I could tell you anything. Come here.” Danny led the way to the south end of the porch and pointed across to the southeast where a white cliff arose against the blue ocean half a mile away.

  “If you round that cliff,” Danny said, “you’ll find him. But you’d better watch your step. There’s trouble over there. Say, where’d you come from anyhow?”

  “From the United States.”

  “My folks came from there. What are you doing here, anyhow?”

  The sea tossed me ashore, Danny. But we’ll discuss that later. If Happy Maddox is in trouble, I’m heading for that cliff.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but I figure it’s something gosh-awful important.”

  “See you later, Danny.”

  The sirens sounded before Dave reached his destination. He dropped to the sand. Through a line of vegetation he could see the motorcycle brigade approaching the white cliff. Five of the female police rode straight for the crest of the hill. Three swung to the southwest, out of sight. The remaining three branched off to the east, about a hundred yards ahead of him. Their black and gold uniforms flashed through the rays of the lowering sun.

  Dave had not been seen. He had been left out of their net. He might have run the other way. But if there was any chance at all to warn Happy Maddox—

  He sprinted along the flat sand. Far ahead, from around the curve of the cliff, the angry sirens whined.

  Now he ducked for cover. The first outcropping of rocks at the foot of the cliff offered him a place to catch his breath. The shady stone touched cool against his painful back.

  Someone was sliding through the narrow crevice a few yards ahead. He could see the figure moving stealthily among the blue shadows. He heard the quiet shuffling of stones under the man’s careful tread. Then Dave saw that it was Happy Maddox!

  “H-ss-t! Maddox! It’s me—Dave Silbert.”

  Happy turned his frightened face to Dave. Slowly the lines of terrorism eased. “Oh, it’s you. Come over. We’re safer here. Listen!”

  Three gunshots echoed along the rocky walls.

  “I knew it was coming. I knew it!” Happy muttered. His round, jovial face was anything but happy now.

  His icy tension reflected to Dave. Whatever this daring scheme was, it had run smack into tragedy. Now the guns were sounding again.

  “It’s the devil to pay. They’ll never get away. The whole escape plan went off half-cocked. The sculptor—he’s temperamental—he was determined to escape this island. I tried to warn them.”

  By edging their way through the rocks they caught a few glimpses of the fight in its final stages. Dave saw the figures of two men floating face down in the water. He saw two police women conducting a hand-cuffed figure—a tall, slightly stooped man in white—back toward a black-and-gold police car on the crest of the hill.

  “They’ve captured the sculptor,” Happy growled
.

  But there was still gunplay that neither Dave nor Happy could see—until—

  “There it goes, Dave. The speedboat. Someone’s making a dash for it. But what’s the use, now that they’ve got the sculptor! Still, if they can save the boat—”

  But the little homemade speedboat didn’t get away. The bold gunman at the wheel lost the game when his bullets ran out. One woman cop raced ahead of the others and hurled some sort of grenade. The gunman dived.

  Blang! The hand bomb exploded over the prow. The boat blew up like a firecracker.

  When the splinters showered down on the water, the gunman was there, too. He wasn’t swimming. He was a part of the wreckage that would never be salvaged.

  Dave turned to Happy Maddox. “I suppose you’re next on their list.”

  “I don’t know,” said Happy. “I wasn’t in on the plot, really. All I did was come out to warn them, a few minutes ago, that the cops had been tipped off. I was too late.”

  “Who is this sculptor? What’ll they do with him?”

  Happy blew a painful breath through his pursed lips. “The Empress will probably hang him. There’s a session of court coming up tonight. All the women voters will be there. They’ll pass judgment—”

  “I’ll be there, too,” Dave said. “I want to see how a girl named Eudora votes.”

  “You can’t go. It’s only for the women. Men don’t have any voice in the government.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Dave.

  CHAPTER III

  Trial by Empress

  The last glint of sunset was on the gold statues, and they should have been at the height of their day’s beauty—if they possessed any beauty whatsoever.

  Their weirdness fascinated David Silbert as he moved warily along the curved street toward the government pavilion.

  “It would have been a beautiful street without the statues,” he thought. “I wonder what the sculptor is like, to design these affairs and then try to escape the island.”

  He sauntered to the center of the boulevard to inspect one of the objects. Its base was formed of figures of a number of workmen crouching upon their knees, their heads bowed down. Upon their backs rested the table of stone upon which the central figure was mounted. In every case that central figure was a woman. Central figures came in a variety of poses, but the most popular represented an attitude of command. Standing in the presence of one of these, David could fairly hear the stern orders issue from her frozen lips. It was difficult to tell of what material the statues were made. Outwardly, however, they were all golden. Vast quantities of gaudy paint seemed to have found a place on every object of civic pride, from the police wagons to the dome that crowned the Empress’ own palace.

  Two men were polishing the gold paint around the base of the statue just beyond, and Dave took his curiosity to them.

  “Who is this statue?”

  “That’s the Empress. Gee, buddy, where you been all these years? Don’t you know every one of these twelve figures along this boulevard is the Empress?”

  Dave wondered if she was really six feet tall, or if that was simply the sculptor’s exaggeration. All of the figures were nearly life size, though the gilt paint and the ornate bases gave them the appearance of being larger.

  “We’ll have to repaint these next week,” one of the men was saying. “It don’t take much weather until the clay starts showing through. I believe in giving the government what it wants.”

  As Dave hurried on, he observed a similarity in the hawklike features of the whole line of figures.

  The face reminded him of a vulture—the eyes, the curved beak of a nose, the savage mouth. Within an hour he was seeing her in person, the one and only Sophia Regalope, Empress of Woman’s Island.

  He had schemed his way into the pavilion by the rear entrance, and had earned a disguising cap and jacket by assisting a stage hand. Now the pavilion stage was in order, the crowd of women gathered, and he and the stage hand sat back in the wings to watch the proceedings.

  High excitement was in the air. From the anxious whispers among the women voters, Dave knew that the news of the afternoon’s killings bad already gone the rounds.

  Ten pretty teen-age girls in gold and white uniforms marched down the aisle like drum majorettes and stood at attention in front of the stage. This was the sign that the Empress was entering, and every woman in the audience stood.

  They were an ardent bunch of patriots, Dave thought. Most of them were wearing _some bright gold and black ornaments on their white dresses, doubtless badges of their special offices. Were they all completely loyal to this ideal of woman’s supremacy? He wondered. And at that moment as he glanced to the end seat in the front row, his eyes caught Eudora’s.

  She was standing at attention, like the rest, for now the Empress, in all her gaudy finery, was coming slowly toward the stage. But what was Eudora thinking?

  Her keen dark eyes gazed straight to the wings where he was sitting in the shadows. Her pretty head nodded ever so slightly. She recognized him! His pulse leaped.

  So she knew that he was the one who had been whipped that afternoon. What did that mean to her? She must have guessed that he was no. regular factory worker, that he was an impostor.

  He returned her slight nod, he touched his fingers to his lips, as if to say, “Yes, I’m a stranger here, but please don’t give me away.”

  All he got in return was a hint of a puzzled expression. After all, she had no reason to think him worthy of any confidence. But if she had known that he had overheard her remarks about the Empress—

  The one and only Sophia Regalope now ascended the stage steps. She was puffing slightly under the weight of all manner of gilt ornaments. Somehow she reminded Dave of a steam calliope at the circus, all painted and polished in black and gold. The gold-painted wooden beads that hung as huge epaulets from her shoulders clattered like clothespins when she turned to face her audience.

  “Women of the Government,” she began in a large, tremulous voice, “the first matter, of business for tonight concerns.”

  Dave was far more interested in the Empress herself than in the routine business. She was the vulture of the statues, all right, but the sculptor had been merciful to her. For example, the statue faces had omitted the conspicuous wart on the right side of her nose. They had softened the avarice of her lips. They could never have portrayed the lust for power that burned in her eyes.

  The wart on the nose, Dave decided, was the least offensive of her features. And yet she had formed a habit—long ago, no doubt—to protect that wart from critical eyes. As she stood there talking, gesturing with her right hand, she would reach across with her left and cover the wart with her finger.

  But her audience of loyal females was polite enough to ignore this gesture. She was the Empress.

  The stage hand whispered to Dave, “Have you seen her husband?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She keeps him on a leash like an onery dog. Have you seen her palace?”

  “From a distance,” said Dave. He recalled the wide, facade with all the brummagem carvings, and the high gold dome which rose above every other edifice in the city.

  The stage hand said, “That little bullet-headed man that spends his days shining the dome—that’s her husband. She keeps him chained up there. It’s her little joke that he has the ‘highest’ job in the city. It’s a joke because everybody knows he’s the lowest worm.”

  From these low whisperings Dave learned that the Empress herself had been the original genius back of this island colony. When the citizens came, many years before, to set up their community, her poor deluded husband had given his full support to what he considered a noble experiment in women’s rights.

  “So he’s the prize sap,” the cynical stage hand concluded. “It gives every woman a feeling of power to see him chained up there on the dome. It proves that a man’s good will can be turned into slavery.”

  The meeting hurried through several items
of routine business, most of which the Empress dispatched in the manner of a dictator.

  Now she called for a reception of any new voters—women who had turned twenty-one since the last meeting. Eudora and four others arose.

  “Young ladies, it’s a sacred privilege to vote in a women’s government,” the Empress said. “Let me emphasize to you the importance of keeping our traditions . . .”

  For a moment Eudora’s sharp eyes glanced past the Empress to catch Dave’s gaze. This advice from the high and mighty Sophia Regalope was poison to Eudora!

  She was virtually being ordered to do no thinking for herself, to vote as other women voted. She and the other four bowed submissively and sat down.

  A few minutes later, then the breathtaking final event of the evening began.

  “Bring in the accused!” the Empress’ ordered.

  She sat back in the high-backed gilt chair, folded her jeweled arms, and waited, for the women police to arrange the court and set the trial in motion.

  Reginald Keith was a broken man. He was fifty, according to the reading of the court records, but he looked older. A few hours earlier, Dave had seen him, a stooped silhouette against the sky, as the policewoman had led him away from the cliffs in handcuffs.

  Now he sat with head bowed, his thin sensitive fingers pressed against his gray cheeks. So he was the artist who had molded all these statues, Dave thought. From the maniacal light in his deep-set eyes it would seem that he was a wild, untamed spirit, fighting to escape some unseen trap.

  The Empress rose and pointed an accusing finger. “So you don’t like your own statues. You of all people. You were brought here to portray our ideals. And now you say you hate everything you’ve done. That’s the foulest treason anyone has ever uttered on this island.” The stage hand nudged Dave and whispered, “She should hear her husband when he gets started.”

  The Empress turned to the audience. “Does any woman here have anything to say for the accused before we come to a decision?”

  Eudora rose. “I think the accused should have a chance to speak for himself.”