Oddments

by Bill Pronzini

  Just as the sound of the thunder faded, Granger threw the lever and Hollowell released Teasdale and stepped back. The trap thudded open and the condemned man plummeted downward.

  In that same instant I thought I saw a faint silvery glimmer above the opening, but it was so brief that I took it for an optical illusion. My attention was focused on the rope: it danced for a moment under the weight of the body, then pulled taut and became motionless. I let out a soft tired sigh and sat forward while Granger and Hollowell, both of whom were looking away from the open trap, silently counted off the passage of sixty seconds.

  When the minute had elapsed, Granger turned and walked to the edge of the trap. If the body hung laxly, he would signal to me so that the prison doctor and I could enter the cubicle and officially pronounce Teasdale deceased; if the body was still thrashing, thus indicating the condemned man's neck had not been broken in the fall—grisly prospect, but I had seen it happen—more time would be allowed to pass. It sounds brutal, I know, but such was the law and it had to be obeyed without question.

  But Granger's reaction was so peculiar and so violent that I came immediately to my feet. He flinched as if he had been struck in the stomach and his face twisted into an expression of disbelief. He dropped to his hands and knees at the front of the trap as Hollowell came up beside him and leaned down to peer into the passageway.

  "What is it, Granger?" I called. "What's the matter?"

  He straightened after a few seconds and pivoted toward me. "You better get up here, Warden Parker," he said. His voice was shrill and tremulous and he clutched at his stomach. "Quick!"

  Rogers and I exchanged glances, then ran to the steps, mounted them, and hurried to the trap, the other guards and the prison doctor close behind us. As soon as I looked downward, it was my turn to stare with incredulity, to exclaim against what I saw—and what I did not see.

  The hangman's noose at the end of the rope was empty. Except for the black hood on the ground, the cubicle was empty.

  Impossibly, the body of Arthur Teasdale had vanished.

  I raced down the gallows steps and fumbled the platform door open with my key. I had the vague desperate hope that Teasdale had somehow slipped the noose and that I would see him lying within, against the door—that small section of the passageway was shrouded in darkness and not quite penetrable from above—but he wasn't there. The passageway, like the cubicle, was deserted.

  While I called for a lantern Rogers hoisted up the rope to examine it and the noose. A moment later he announced that it had not been tampered with in any way. When a guard brought the lantern I embarked on a careful search of the area, but there were no loose boards in the walls of the passage or the cubicle, and the floor was of solid concrete. On the floor I discovered a thin sliver of wood about an inch long, which may or may not have been there previously. Aside from that, there was not so much as a strand of hair or a loose thread to be found. And the black hood told me nothing at all.

  There simply did not seem to be any way Teasdale—or his remains—could have gotten, or been gotten, out of there.

  I stood for a moment, staring at the flickering light from the lantern, listening to the distant rumbling of thunder. Had Teasdale died at the end of the hangman's rope? Or had he somehow managed to cheat death? I had seen him fall through the trap with my own eyes, had seen the rope dance and then pull taut with the weight of his body. He must have expired, I told myself.

  A shiver moved along my back. I found myself remembering Teasdale's threats to wreak vengeance from the grave, and I had the irrational thought that perhaps something otherworldly had been responsible for the phenomenon we had witnessed. Teasdale had, after all, been a malignant individual. Could he have been so evil that he had managed to summon the Powers of Darkness to save him in the instant before death—or to claim him soul and body in the instant after it?

  I refused to believe it. I am a practical man, not prone to superstition, and it has always been my nature to seek a logical explanation for even the most uncommon occurrence. Arthur Teasdale had disappeared, yes; but it could not be other than an earthly force behind the deed. Which meant that, alive or dead, Teasdale was still somewhere inside the walls of Arrowmont Prison.

  I roused myself, left the passageway, and issued instructions for a thorough search of the prison grounds. I ordered word sent to the guards in the watchtowers to double their normal vigilance. I noticed that Hollowell wasn't present along with the assembled guards and asked where he had gone. One of the others said he had seen Hollowell hurry out of the shed several minutes earlier.

  Frowning, I pondered this information. Had Hollowell intuited something, or even seen something, and gone off unwisely to investigate on his own rather than confide in the rest of us? He had been employed at Arrowmont Prison less than two months, so I knew relatively little about him. I requested that he be found and brought to my office.

  When Rogers and Granger and the other guards had departed, I escorted the two civilian witnesses to the administration building, where I asked them to remain until the mystery was explained. As I settled grimly at my desk to await Hollowell and word on the search of the grounds, I expected such an explanation within the hour.

  I could not, however, have been more wrong.

  The first development came after thirty minutes, and it was nearly as alarming as the disappearance of Teasdale from the gallows cubicle. One of the guards brought the news that a body had been discovered behind a stack of lumber in a lean-to between the execution shed and the iron foundry. But it was not the body of Arthur Teasdale.

  It was that of Hollowell, stabbed to death with an awl.

  I went immediately. As I stood beneath the rain-swept lean-to, looking down at the bloody front of poor Hollowell's uniform, a fresh set of unsettling questions tumbled through my mind. Had he been killed because, as I had first thought, he had either seen or intuited something connected with Teasdale's disappearance? If that was the case, whatever it was had died with him.

  Or was it possible that he had himself been involved in the disappearance and been murdered to assure his silence? But how could he have been involved? He had been in my sight the entire time on the gallows platform. He had done nothing suspicious, could not in any way I could conceive have assisted in the deed.

  How could Teasdale have survived the hanging?

  How could he have escaped not only the gallows but the execution shed itself?

  The only explanation seemed to be that it was not a live Arthur Teasdale who was carrying out his warped revenge, but a dead one who had been embraced and given earthly powers by the Forces of Evil.

  In order to dispel the dark reflections from my mind, I personally supervised the balance of the search. Tines of lightning split the sky and thunder continued to hammer the roofs as we went from building to building. No corner of the prison compound escaped our scrutiny. No potential hiding place was overlooked. We went so far as to test for the presence of tunnels in the work areas and in the individual cells, although I had instructed just such a search only weeks before as part of my security program.

  We found nothing.

  Alive or dead, Arthur Teasdale was no longer within the walls of Arrowmont Prison.

  I left the prison at ten o'clock that night. There was nothing more to be done, and I was filled with such depression and anxiety that I could not bear to spend another minute there. I had debated contacting the governor, of course, and, wisely or not, had decided against it for the time being. He would think me a lunatic if I requested assistance in a county or statewide search for a man who had for all intents and purposes been hanged at five o'clock that afternoon. If there were no new developments within the next twenty-four hours, I knew I would have no choice but to explain the situation to him. And I had no doubt that such an explanation unaccompanied by Teasdale or Teasdale's remains would cost me my position.

  Before leaving, I swore everyone to secrecy, saying that I would have any man's job if he leake
d word of the day's events to the press or to the public-at-large. The last thing I wanted was rumor-mongering and a general panic as a result of it. I warned Granger and the other guards who had come in contact with Teasdale to be especially wary and left word that I was to be contacted immediately if there were any further developments before morning.

  I had up to that time given little thought to my own safety. But when I reached my cottage in the village I found myself imagining menace in every shadow and sound. Relaxation was impossible. After twenty minutes I felt impelled to leave, to seek out a friendly face. I told my housekeeper I would be at Hallahan's Irish Inn if anyone called for me and drove my Packard to the tavern.

  The first person I saw upon entering was Buckmaster Gilloon. He was seated alone in a corner booth, writing in one of his notebooks, a stein of draught Guinness at his elbow.

  Gilloon had always been very secretive about his notebooks and never allowed anyone to glimpse so much as a word of what he put into them. But he was so engrossed when I walked up to the booth that he did not hear me, and I happened to glance down at the open page on which he was writing. There was but a single interrogative sentence on the page, clearly legible in his bold hand. The sentence read:

  Ifajimbuck stands alone by the sea, on a night when the dark moon sings, how many grains of sand in a single one of his footprints?

  That sentence has always haunted me, because I cannot begin to understand its significance. I have no idea what a jimbuck is, except perhaps as a fictional creation, and yet that passage was like none which ever appeared in such periodicals as Argosy or Munsey's.

  Gilloon sensed my presence after a second or two, and he slammed the notebook slut. A ferocious scowl crossed his normally placid features. He said irritably, "Reading over a man's shoulder is a nasty habit, Parker."

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry—"

  "I'll thank you to be more respectful of my privacy in the future."

  "Yes, of course." I sank wearily into the booth opposite him and called for a Guinness.

  Gilloon studied me across the table. "You look haggard, Parker," he said. "What's troubling you?"

  "It's . . . nothing."

  "Everything is something."

  "I'm not at liberty to discuss it."

  "Would it have anything to do with the execution at Arrowmont Prison this afternoon?"

  I blinked. "Why would you surmise that?"

  "Logical assumption," Gilloon said. "You are obviously upset, and yet you are a man who lives quietly and suffers no apparent personal problems. You are warden of Arrowmont Prison and the fact of the execution is public knowledge. You customarily come to the inn at eight o'clock, and yet you didn't make your appearance tonight until after eleven."

  I said, "I wish I had your mathematical mind, Gilloon."

  "Indeed? Why is that?"

  "Perhaps then I could find answers where none seem to exist."

  "Answers to what?"

  A waiter arrived with my Guinness and I took a swallow gratefully.

  Gilloon was looking at me with piercing interest. I avoided his one-eyed gaze, knowing I had already said too much. But there was something about Gilloon that demanded confidence. Perhaps he could shed some light on the riddle of Teasdale's disappearance.

  "Come now, Parker—answers to what?" he repeated. "Has something happened at the prison?"

  And of course I weakened—partly because of frustration and worry, partly because the possibility that I might never learn the secret loomed large and painful. "Yes," I said, "something has happened at the prison. Something incredible, and I mean that literally." I paused to draw a heavy breath. "If I tell you about it, do I have your word that you won't let it go beyond this table?"

  "Naturally." Gilloon leaned forward and his good eye glittered with anticipation. "Go on, Parker."

  More or less calmly at first, then with increasing agitation as I relived the events, I proceeded to tell Gilloon everything that had transpired at the prison. He listened with attention, not once interrupting. I had never seen him excited prior to that night, but when I had finished, he was fairly squirming. He took off his Scotch cap and ran a hand through his thin-fling brown hair.

  "Fascinating tale," he said.

  "Horrifying would be a more appropriate word."

  "That too, yes. No wonder you're upset."

  "It defies explanation," I said. "And yet there has to be one. I refuse to accept the supernatural implications."

  "I wouldn't be so skeptical of the supernatural if I were you, Parker. I've come across a number of things in my travels which could not be satisfactorily explained by man or science."

  I stared at him. "Does that mean you believe Teasdale's disappearance was arranged by forces beyond human ken?"

  "No, no. I was merely making a considered observation. Have you given me every detail of what happened?"

  "I believe so."

  "Think it through again—be sure."

  Frowning, I reviewed the events once more. And it came to me that I had neglected to mention the brief silvery glimmer which had appeared above the trap in the instant Teasdale plunged through; I had, in fact, forgotten all about it. This time I mentioned it to Gilloon.

  "Ah," he said.

  "Ah? Does it have significance?"

  "Perhaps. Can you be more specific about it?"

  "I'm afraid not. It was so brief I took it at the time for an optical illusion."

  "You saw no other such glimmers?"

  "None."

  "How far away from the gallows were you sitting?"

  "Approximately forty feet."

  "Is the shed equipped with electric lights?"

  "No—lanterns."

  "I see," Gilloon said meditatively. He seized one of his notebooks, opened it, shielded it from my eyes with his left arm, and began to write with his pencil. He wrote without pause for a good three minutes, before I grew both irritated and anxious.

  "Gilloon," I said, "stop that infernal scribbling and tell me what's on your mind."

  He gave no indication of having heard me. His pencil continued to scratch against the paper, filling another page. Except for the movement of his right hand and one side of his mouth gnawing at the edge of his mustache, he was as rigid as a block of stone.

  "Damn it, Gilloon!"

  But it was another ten seconds before the pencil became motionless. He stared at what he had written and then looked up at me. "Parker," he said, "did Arthur Teasdale have a trade?"

  The question took me by surprise. "A trade?"

  "Yes. What did he do for a living, if anything?"

  "What bearing can that have on what's happened?"

  "Perhaps a great deal," Gilloon said.

  "He worked in a textile mill."

  "And there is a textile mill at the prison, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Does it stock quantities of silk?"

  "Silk? Yes, on occasion. What—?"

  I did not finish what I was about to say, for he had shut me out and resumed writing in his notebook. I repressed an oath of exasperation, took a long draught of Guinness to calm myself, and prepared to demand that he tell me what theory he had devised. Before I could do that, however, Gilloon abruptly closed the notebook, slid out of the booth, and loomed over me.

  "I'll need to see the execution shed," he said.

  "What for?"

  "Corroboration of certain facts."

  "But—" I stood up hastily. "You've suspicioned a possible answer, that's clear," I said, "though I can't for the life of me see how, on the basis of the information I've given you. What is it?"

  "I must see the execution shed," he said firmly. "I will not voice premature speculations."

  It touched my mind that the man was a bit mad. After all, I had only known him for a few weeks, and from the first he had been decidedly eccentric in most respects. Still, I had never had cause to question his mental faculties before this, and the aura of self-assurance and confidence he proje
cted was forceful. Because I was so desperate to solve the riddle, I couldn't afford not to indulge, at least for a while, the one man who might be able to provide it.

  "Very well," I said, "I'll take you to the prison."

  Rain still fell in black torrents—although without thunder and lightning—when I brought my Packard around the last climbing curve onto the promontory. Lantern light glowed fuzzily in the prison watchtowers, and the bare brick walls had an unpleasant oily sheen. At this hour of night, in the storm, the place seemed forbidding and shrouded in human despair—an atmosphere I had not previously apprehended during the two years I had been its warden. Strange how a brush with the unknown can alter one's perspective and stir the fears that lie at the bottom of one's soul.

  Beside me Gilloon did not speak; he sat erect, his hands resting on the notebooks on his lap. I parked in the small lot facing the main gates, and after Gilloon had carefully tucked the notebooks inside his slicker we ran through the downpour to the gates. I gestured to the guard, who nodded beneath the hood of his oilskin, allowed us to enter, and then quickly closed the iron halves behind us and returned to the warmth of the gatehouse. I led Gilloon directly across the compound to the execution shed.

  The guards I had posted inside seemed edgy and grateful for company. It was colder now, and despite the fact that all the lanterns were lit it also seemed darker and filled with more restless shadows. But the earlier aura of spiritual menace permeated the air, at least to my sensitivities. If Gilloon noticed it, he gave no indication.

  He wasted no time crossing to the gallows and climbing the steps to the platform. I followed him to the trap, which still hung open. Gilloon peered into the cubicle, got onto all fours to squint in the rectangular edges of the opening, and then hoisted the hangman's rope and studied the noose. Finally, with surprising agility, he dropped down inside the cubicle, requesting a lantern which I fetched for him, and spent minutes crawling about with his nose to the floor. He located the thin splinter of wood I had noticed earlier, studied it in the lantern glow, and dropped it into the pocket of his tweed coat.