“And I’m fed up,” I said. “Myshkin’s crazy. He lost his mind from overwork.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“I’m too tired to go into it now,” I said, and left the kitchen. Going down the corridor to the living room, I found Harriet.
“There’s a man outside who wants Mr. Myshkin,” she said.
“A man? What does he want Myshkin for?”
“He won’t say,” Harriet whispered, significantly. “He said Mr. Myshkin would understand if I just mentioned he was from Bellevue.”
“Huh?”
“Bellevue. You know—the hospital.”
“Where did you say he was?”
“Out in the hall. He’s…”
“He’s what? What about him?”
“He’s rather a surprise. Not what you’d expect. You’ll see.”
I nodded and went down the corridor, opened the front door and looked around the hall. There was no one there, and I opened the door that led to the stairway.
A fat little man was sitting on the stairs at the landing. He turned around and looked at me as the door opened. His face was round and rosy-cheeked, his sparse hair was carefully combed and plastered on his head, and his eyes were watery and disappointed. He wore an old blue overcoat and a red wool scarf supported his small jowls. On one knee he balanced a derby. His other leg was extended and revealed checked trousers, brown shoes and tan spats.
I said: “You want to see Mr. Myshkin?”
“I mean to say I do.”
“I understand you’re from Bellevue?”
“Shhhhh!” He jumped up, a finger to his lips. “Easy, willya? Am I hollering everything I know about you? Where’s Mr. Myshkin?”
“Would you mind telling me what it’s about?”
“If I didn’t mind, I’da told the dame, wouldn’t I? I told her too much already, I can see that. What about it?”
I said: “You’ll have to tell me what you want.”
“Wrong, brother. I don’t have to tell you anything. What organization do you represent anyway?” He sounded as if he would stalk away as soon as he’d finished telling me off, but he didn’t go. “It’s important. He knows what it is.” I didn’t say anything and he looked at me with mounting irritation. Suddenly his brows went up, as if a new thought had occurred to him. “Say, who are you?” he asked.
“I’m his partner. I live with him.”
“Oh,” he said, nodding encouragingly. “Then you know?”
“I might.”
“Okay, I get it. I’m no cop, brother.”
“No?”
“Okay, okay,” he said patiently. “I don’t mind. You get nervous in this line of business, you don’t last long. Tell Mr. Myshkin what I look like. Tell him it’s Suddsy, and I finally got good news.”
“Sure,” I said.
I went back to the apartment. Harriet was waiting just inside the door. I shook my head for her not to talk, and after I’d waited two or three minutes I returned to the stairway.
Suddsy frowned at me.
“Mr. Myshkin wants me to take care of it,” I said.
“Then why can’t he come out and say so? I don’t like this, no sir, brother. What’s he so leery for? I had to get his address in the phone book, but every time I call his number the operator gives me a different one to call, and that never answers. And why ain’t his name downstairs or on the door? And why’d the elevator jockey say he don’t live here no more?” He’d been talking more to himself than to me, and he shook his head. “Brother, I’m the one don’t like it.”
I said, “Well, I’m no cop, either.”
He shot me a quick look and thought some more while he put on his derby and buttoned his coat, and then he turned to survey me with brimming, distressed eyes. “You got the money?”
“Yes.”
“All of it? Four yards?”
“Yes.”
He seemed unconvinced. “I don’t want no trouble with that, brother. This merchandise is strictly C.O.D.”
I took out my wallet and peeled four one-hundred dollar bills from the roll Army Finance had given me that morning. He looked at the money expectantly. “C.O.D.,” I said. “Let’s have it.”
“Where do you want it?”
“Right here,” I said.
“Are you kiddin’?” he said. “Here?”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” he repeated, looking at me dubiously. “How do you expect to get it up here? Just take it on the elevator or what? And how about somebody sees us in the street? I’m parked around the corner and that’s as close to this house as I come.”
“Let me worry about that,” I said.
“You don’t mind if I worry too, do you? There’s a house fulla people in there. What about that? Don’t bother givin’ me hard looks, brother. The way I understood, it was going to be some kind of side street where we could handle the deal fast.”
“That’s still the way it is,” I said.
“You mean you want to see it before you say where it goes?”
“That’s right.”
“Whyn’t you say so?” He blew out a breath and shook his head at me. “Brother, you got to trust somebody sometime. The world ain’t that crooked yet. No sir, brother.” He stuck his chin out forthrightly. “Okay, let’s go.”
We walked down the four flights to the lobby. The elevator boy was nowhere to be seen. In the street we walked east to the corner and turned south.
It was almost two and traffic was light and fast. Down on the next block there was an all night hamburger palace, but the other stores had long since closed and even the newsstand at the subway entrance was boarded up. There were two cars parked on our side of the street. One was a sedan, the other, closer to us, a small delivery truck. As we reached the truck, Suddsy stopped, then started walking again because a group of four people had come out of the hamburger joint and were walking toward us. We passed them at the corner and turned west, and when they crossed over and disappeared down the subway entrance, we turned around and went back to the truck.
Suddsy took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the cab door. He looked up and down the block casually and said, “Get in with me,” and slid along the seat to sit behind the wheel. I followed him in and closed the door at his motion. There was a partition between the cab and the body of the truck. It has a lock on it and Suddsy used his keys to turn the lock, then removed them to start the ignition. He put the car into gear and we started rolling south.
He turned to me. “Just push the door open. You can feel it from here. Then tell me where we’re going. Okay, brother?”
I nodded because I didn’t think I could make any sound, and I turned in my seat and pushed open the partition. I couldn’t see anything, and when I stuck an arm in I felt nothing but air. I lowered my hand, but in the instant it took to do it, I suddenly became aware of a hot, thick, sour odor and a faint sound of something bumping around on the truck floor.
I was holding a shoe. My hand went on to feel an ankle… a leg… a second leg, and came flying out of there so fast my elbow almost went through the windshield.
“Relax, brother, he can’t hurt you,” said Suddsy.
“Hurt me? That’s a stiff!”
“What’re you yellin’ for? Listen, brother, he’s in damn fine condition, considerin’—”
Just about then he took a look at me, and his eyes popped as round and white as golfballs. He shoved an arm past me, swung the door open and booted me out. It might have been a bad spill if he hadn’t taken his foot off the gas pedal to do it. As it was, the truck slowed a little while I flew out and landed on my can, then it picked up speed and was around the corner before I could think of anything like getting his number.
There were some people around who saw what had happened, but I didn’t stop to chat. I
got a cab and started downtown to 22 Force Tube Avenue.
* * * *
The door was locked and the black window-shades were down, so I knew Myshkin had been back since I’d left. But as I kept ringing and pounding the door, I wondered whether he hadn’t gone out again. Then I heard a high, distant shout come through the door, and the next moment the rather terrible sounds of someone rolling down a whole flight of stairs inside the house mingled with violent shouting and swearing.
The door flew open and Myshkin catapulted out of the hall in stocking-feet to whack me some good ones around the head before I swung him over my shoulder, kicked the door closed behind me and lugged him up the dark stairway to the lighted upper room.
As soon as I stood him on his feet he swung at me again, so I backed away and let him flop. He was still wearing the hooded green sweater Harriet had mentioned, and he lay on the floor panting like an old firehorse, his breath an essence of 86 proof, trying to get me in focus. I looked around and saw two quart-bottles of Scotch on the floor beside the deep chair. One was sealed, the other had an inch of whiskey left in it.
“I don’ li’ you,” Myshkin wailed. “I real-ly don’ li’ you an’ I’M gon’ beat YOU up. ’Sss too musshh…”
I went to the bathroom and got a small brown bottle I’d seen that afternoon. The label said Benzedrine Sulphate and it was half full of tablets. I took two, got a glass of water and returned to Myshkin. By then he was blubbering and threatening to dissolve in a sea of tears.
“Take it before I knock your crazy head off,” I said.
“’Ssss poison… gon’ steal th’ mssshh… the’ MACHINE!”
“The incubator?” I said.
“Ssss’ not ’nncubbrr!” he wailed. “Go dow’ ’n’ see whashoodid. Lef fron’ door open ’n’ ’ney came in ’n’ stole brueprinss. Unnerstan’? Stole summa th’ brueprinsss…”
“They shoulda stole the brew,” I said, “whoever the hell they are. I left the door open because you haven’t got a spring lock on it and you had the key. Take these bennies before I rap you.”
“Bu’ they came ’n’ stole my brueprinzzz!”
I clamped a hand on his nose until his mouth opened, then I dropped in the tablets and poured water down his throat. He wriggled and gurgled like a broken suction-pump but he swallowed the stuff. When I let go of him, his head bounced off the floor with a heartwarming thud and then he lay on his back with his arms and legs stretched out, making whistling noises.
I gave the room a more careful onceover. The large wooden box I’d heard described was standing under part of the work table. It could have been there before without my noticing it among the other boxes and crates, but now the holes in its sides meant something to me. I took it out and examined it. It was an unpainted carrier with a leather handle on one long side, large enough to hold an English setter, but the inside was upholstered with quilted green velvet.
Nothing else in the room seemed changed, but Myshkin’s paraphernalia was so scattered that every small object in the room could have been re-arranged without my being aware of it.
On my way downstairs I turned on a light, then I locked the door and went to the room with the machine in it. I turned on another light and saw that the green silk covering I’d put on the machine was lying on the floor in the yellow dust, still strangely clean. The egg was gone from the floor inside the cage, and the box on which I’d stood was outside. The machine itself had been moved up its rails halfway to the top of the cage. That was all I could put my finger on.
When I got back upstairs, Myshkin was sitting up, with his back propped against the deep chair. He shook his head at me.
“As soon as you can talk,” I said, “I’m going to find out if there’s any rational excuse for what’s going on here. As soon I decide there isn’t, I’m telephoning Bellevue to send a wagon down here for you. No more experiments. Do you a world of good.”
Myshkin stuck his tongue out and said, “Nnnyyahhh…”
“Still, you might like Bellevue,” I said. “Got an old friend there, haven’t you? Gentleman named Suddsy?”
“Ppipprriffizzz,” said Myshkin lackadaisically.
“Think hard. Even you can’t know many body-snatchers.”
Myshkin squinted at me. “Him? Pfff! Some frien’…”
“Am I presuming? Excuse me,” I said. “Naturally, when I discovered he was bringing you a corpse, I thought… absurd, wasn’t it? I should have realized no friend would expect money for a little favor. Or does one have to kill the guy for you before you’ll consider him a friend?”
“Nnnyyahhh,” said Myshkin.
There wasn’t much use talking to him yet, so I waited for the Benzedrine to hit him. Twenty minutes later he got up and walked uncertainly to the bathroom. When he came out he gathered the coffee things and put water up to boil. “Feel better?” I asked.
“Gettin’ cold sweat.” He took the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around himself. “Where dijou come ’cross Suddsy, huh?” he asked.
“I went up to our old apartment tonight, after you’d left. He came there looking for you—got the address in the phone book—and downstairs he had a truck with a stiff in it.”
“Pffff!” said Myshkin disgustedly. “Now he comes. Now.”
“Who is he?”
“Nobody. Works inna morgue. Bellevue morgue.”
“Is that where he got the stiff?”
“S’pose. Said he’d steal one. Where else?”
“Then it wasn’t anyone in particular?”
“Nyahh, jus’ a body. Dijou see what condition it was in?”
“A dead condition. Why did you want it?”
“Tha’ was weeks ago,” he said with infinite weariness. “Weeks ago… too late now… ’s much too late…”
“Why did you want it weeks ago?”
“…’Speriments,” Myshkin said faintly. He was trying to pour coffee but his hands trembled badly and the coffee spilled on the range and the floor.
Finally he got a cupful to his lips. He sipped it, staring at the floor and talking half to himself. “Shouldn’t be drink’ coffee now. C’n feel my skin ’spanding an’ c’ntracting. Too much Benzedrine.” He looked at me over the rim of the cup with bloodshot, dilated eyes, and shook his head. “Too much…”
“You had too much Scotch. Stolen Scotch, isn’t it?”
“I’ll pay her. Needed it. Need ’nother little one now.”
“No,” I said. “Tell me about the stiff and the experiments. Begin at the beginning and include everything—what happened downstairs tonight, the business with the eggs, why you went the apartment and—” I waited until I had his eyes again, “—what those chicken noises meant. Start talking.”
He closed his eyes and remained silent.
I picked up the telephone, got Information and asked for the number of the nearest precinct headquarters. When I began to dial once more, Myshkin spoke up softly.
“…You miserable fool… d’ you know wha’ you’re asking?”
I hung up. “No. Myshkin. That’s why I’m asking.”
He came shuffling toward me and picked up the bottle he’d almost finished. “I give you fair warning,” he said very quietly, making each word distinct. “Stay out of this. I don’t know how far it’s gone…” His body was moving with little jerks and starts, and I made no protest when he raised the bottle and drained it.
He put it down and took the full bottle to hold in his lap as he sank into the deep chair. After awhile he leaned far back, lit a new cigarette and talked.
He talked for perhaps twenty minutes, but he could have told me what he did in five. There were pauses and breaks in his continuity, and as he went on his speech kept deteriorating, until toward the end he was barely intelligible He didn’t really drink much, but after what he’d already had, and with his accumulated exhaustion,
the whiskey pounded him with sledgehammers. Eventually it knocked him out—that and the terrible effort it took for him to go on.
Fear stared at me through his eyes when he turned his head toward me. It became almost audible itself, and the room seemed to vibrate with the stillness. It was during such a silence—coming after Myshkin’s first stupefying reference to his experiments with live tissue—that I began to drink with him.
Because that was what Myshkin talked about—experiments with live tissue. Everything else, apparently, had happened as a result of those experiments. The idea—the really big one—had hit him just as he seemed to have reached the end of his inventive labors. Not that it was much of an idea when it first short-circuited Myshkin’s conscious deliberations. But something kept bringing it back. It certainly was a hell of a thought, but in a way it was playful and simple enough to have occurred to a bright adolescent…
Here he was, said Myshkin, with a completely successful model of his Photosculpt. He’d resolved a million problems getting there. He’d come up with new compression methods during the sawdust phase, learned to speed up the solidification of plaster of Paris, to melt and cool metals swiftly within the machine and they were just incidental.
He kept playing with the commercial possibilities, and they seemed endless. With a larger Photosculpt he could provide a milk company with huge statues of cows made of cheese. For medical students he could make perfect reproductions of the human skeleton in transparent plastic. Cheaper, he said. Sanitary. Decorative instead of gruesome. For a political campaign he could produce bas-relief heads of the candidates in lightweight metals, small enough to be worn on one’s lapel instead of old-fashioned buttons. Or entire little figures. Or big ones. Or maybe a full-size statue of an opposition candidate—made of salami! Things like that…
“Why not?” Myshkin had asked Myshkin.
“Elementary logic,” Myshkin had responded. “Feed wood to the Photosculpt and you get a little wooden figure of a man. Use clay, you get a clay man. Lead; a man made of lead—”
“And if you tried living flesh and blood?”
“—A little, living MAN!”
I said it was a hell of a thought, didn’t I?
The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 5
