The Mad Scientist Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  In two words, it consisted of Roscoe Cramwell.

  In a few more words, some of them not obscene, it became the story of Roscoe Cramwell’s searing passion for Gladys. They had been engaged five or six times. They were completely incompatible, she said, because Cramwell was an overwhelming egotist, a creature of moods and cataclysmic rage. He was also given to loathsome suspicions and vile fits of jealousy, which it turned out were now in vigorous exercise because of Al Siegman.

  “Who—me?” cried Siegman.

  “Darling, who else?” said Gladys.

  “How does he know?”

  “Darling, that’s just it—he doesn’t have to know anything! His mind’s like an explosion in a cesspool. Just because we sneaked away from the party—and he hasn’t the right! Who does he think he is to sit on my fire escape? Sweets, you have so many muscles, but you mustn’t. I wouldn’t blame you after what he said about you, but if you do it’ll be so unpleasant for everybody—”

  “Stop, stop!” Siegman cried, holding his head. He looked at her and ran his nervous hands through his hair. What are you trying to say, darling?” he asked gently. “I’m still out on the fire escape. Slowly now.”

  “But it’s so simple really, darling! Roscoe said you’re nothing but a contemptible—Oh, no, I shouldn’t. It’s so pointless. Forgive me, darling, it’s wretched of me. But you should have heard him, sitting out there on my fire escape this morning and delivering a lecture on my behavior at the top of his voice. There wasn’t a closed window in the neighborhood two minutes after he began. And the threats! Darling, I can’t help thinking you ought to know. He’s not that crazy, but if anything happened to you because I’d held back…”

  Siegman had closed his eyes. She hesitated a moment, smiled shyly and said, “Roscoe said if I don’t marry him, he’ll kill you.”

  Siegman opened his eyes.

  “It doesn’t seem logical, darling, but I understand his mind. He expects me to marry him to save you. It may have happened in a play he was in. His threats are just too ridiculous, but he does own a shotgun… and I seem to remember him mentioning bloodhounds or something.”

  She stood there, lips parted, red hair hanging in thick wild waves to her shoulders, wide eyes intent on Siegman, shooting him signals in universal code. The light that came in through the front windows to mold her figure did a great job. She looked the materialization of a mass subconscious idea—like the girl on the barber shop calendar come alive.

  Siegman turned to me and held out his hands. “I can’t cope with it. Maybe some other time, if my mind was free, but not now. Gladys, baby, I’m sorry.”

  “But darling what am I to do?”

  “Marry him,” said Siegman.

  “Darling…” she said, but it hurt.

  “What’s wrong with him? He’s got money and he’s considered a very fine actor in some circles. A great actor, madly in love with you. You don’t dismiss a wonderful proposal like that because he was a little awkward the way he went about it.”

  “Don’t you want me?” she asked softly.

  “Not with bloodhounds,” said Siegman. “I’ve been slowing up lately.”

  Gladys backed away from him. When the first tear fell she turned and quickly ran out of the room and down the stairs. I was right after her and Harriet was behind me. I caught Gladys before she could open the outer door and I talked to her. I tried to explain how tired Al was, what a strain the morning had been, how frustrated he felt not being able to tell her about it. Harriet did some talking too, and after while we’d comforted her enough for Harriet to go up and have a talk with Siegman.

  You know what was on my mind, don’t you? If Gladys left, so would Harriet. Somehow it seemed very important to me that Harriet stay. And when I saw Harriet working toward the same end, whatever her reason was, it made me conscious of my pulse.

  Gladys and I could hear the voices upstairs. What they said was too indistinct to catch, but soon Siegman wasn’t doing any of the talking. I told Gladys to powder her nose and wait for Al in the downstairs room, and then I went up to arrange it. I found Siegman trying to figure out what he was supposed to be ashamed of, but at least it was a beginning. I agreed with everything Harriet said and when she paused I took over.

  I was going pretty good when it happened.

  Siegman and I were halfway down the stairs before we even knew why we were running. Boris had put us so on edge that we didn’t have to think about him—he was a reflex. The realization that what we’d heard was a rooster crowing didn’t catch up with us until we were pushing open the door to the downstairs room.

  It happened again just as we burst in.

  Right near us, a few feet inside the room, Gladys, was standing quite still, staring toward the forge with an enchanted smile. Halfway between her and the forge, at the summit of a mountain of litter, Boris stood transfixed. Fire shot out of his eyes as he returned Gladys’ gaze, and his balance seemed precarious enough for a breath to upset him. He seemed completely unaware of Siegman and me as he slowly raised his arms.

  They came up as if being levitated, with a rigid, mechanical sweep, and held a moment. Suddenly they dropped and began beating excitedly against his sides—as if he were flapping wings—and his jaw elevated and he crowed again.

  God, how he crowed! Such tremolo! This was no ordinary rooster crowing—this was the crow of a rooster who had just discovered he was a rooster and couldn’t get over it! Such legato!…

  When Harriet walked into the room and let out a gasp that was part scream, the magic moment ended. Boris’s head snapped around. He saw us, whirled, and took a tremendous flying leap to the floor. He landed lightly, sped across the short distance to the forge and vanished, leaving behind a tiny, rising cloud of yellow powder and several dainty toe-prints.

  “Boris!” Siegman shouted. “Boris, come back!”

  He charged forward, tripped over a cable and went down with a reverberating crash. By the time I reached him, Gladys was on her knees smothering his head in her arms while he thrashed about to sit up.

  “Darling,” Gladys cried, “Why didn’t you tell me that this great big secret of yours was about Mr. Myshkin’s little brother! Darling, he’s so sweet!”

  Siegman’s eyes bugged out at her. “Henry, I won’t be responsible if you don’t take her away!”

  I let him yell. I was trying to figure out what I had seen, and what it could possibly have meant—not that I didn’t have interesting ideas. Gladys kept cooing at Siegman until he ran out of breath and threats. I thought maybe he was going to cry.

  “He’s gone for good,” he moaned. “Our last chance…”

  “But darling, he’ll be back! I know he will!”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  She turned to me. “He promised.”

  “When?” I said.

  “He didn’t say specifically. He was talking about it, and then all at once, in that way he has—it happened once before that; didn’t you hear it?—he just stopped talking and began to wave his arms at me and started to sing in that funny way—”

  “Sing?” I said. “That was crowing!”

  “Henry, darling, I really don’t see what he had to crow about. I was only there a few minutes before you came in, and all we did was talk a little. If—”

  “What did you talk about?” I said. “How did it start?”

  “Well, he asked who I was, and I said my name was Gladys—”

  “Just like that? You walk in and he says who are you and you say I am Gladys and how would you like to come and see my grandma’s big green cat what lives with her? No reaction? No emotions?”

  “Darling, you mean how did I feel? I was quite frightened. I hadn’t seen him yet, and that bell-like voice of his—it’s too precious, really, but it was ghastly until I saw him. He’d been hiding in here—” she pointed to the forge “—but
he came out to let me see him. Naturally, I understood everything then, so—”

  “What do you mean everything?”

  “Darling, about his being Mr. Myshkin’s little Brother!”

  “Gladys, he isn’t Myshkin’s little brother!”

  “But he looks just like him! Isn’t he really? Henry, darling, then who is he?”

  “Never mind, dear. Just go on with what happened.”

  She smiled at me and winked. “Well, he’d heard us in the hall and he was going to run away. He had his little kerchief packed, and a roadmap in his hand—so very sweet, but so unhappy—”

  “Gladys,” I said gently, “We realize that colorful details make a better story, but he wasn’t actually carrying a packed kerchief and a roadmap—now was he, dear?”

  “Oh, I know you never dreamed he’d run away but what was he to do, with everyone so ashamed of him just because he happens to be smaller than average.”

  “Gladys,” I groaned, “did he tell you that?”

  “Darling,” she smiled, “I understood. One’s either sensitive to these things or one isn’t. Call it radar or television or something—I don’t know! Of course, it did come up when he said he’d have to leave before any you came in, and naturally I asked why, and he said if he was caught he’d be made a prisoner again until Mr. Myshkin got back, and then maybe he’d be done away with! Well, I said nothing more about it, though how anyone could be so cruel to one’s own brother—”

  “Gladys, I told you he is not Myshkin’s brother!”

  “Darling, why mustn’t I know?”

  “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know, Gladys. If there were, I’d say so even if I couldn’t tell you what the reason is. Now, there are a great many people around who are not related to Myshkin in any way, and it so happens that you met one of them.”

  “Really, Henry, you’re very convincing.”

  “I’m glad. Now what about his promise to come back?”

  “Oh, I asked him to promise he wouldn’t go far and that he’d come back soon, and he promised.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Darling, isn’t that enough?”

  “But you were together in here for three or four minutes before we came. Did you spend the time in silent communion?”

  “Darling, that’s all we talked about that concerns you. I regard the rest as something very personal and very dear to me.”

  “Romance…” I said, staring at her. “That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, darling. He made love to me.”

  “He what? WHAT? Gladys—”

  “But he did, darling—oh, I mean verbally! You’re a dear, but you’re such a brute. Really, it was innocent and lovely. He asked me who I was, and after I wasn’t frightened any more I told him my name, and he climbed up on those boxes and began to say all sorts of wonderful things—about my hair and my eyes, and how he would leave here to go to a wonderful country where he would be a prince, and I would be a princess if I went with him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Baby, I didn’t get a chance. As soon as he stopped talking, he started singing. As a matter of fact, the first time he began to sing while he was talking—as if the song just overpowered him, really. Darling, I know you think he was crowing. Well, he’d just promised to come back, and he was singing again when you arrived. That’s all.”

  “I don’t believe her,” said Siegman, blinking at me.

  “Now listen, darling—”

  “Gladys, dear, be quiet,” I said. “Why don’t you believe her?”

  “She’s either wrong or not telling the truth, or both. What about that cute little packed kerchief and the roadmap? How true was that? How true does it sound? Sure, I see—”

  He broke off abruptly to look at the forge. There was a very faint scraping sound that seemed to be coming from high up in the chimney. Then a tapping and a rustling.

  Siegman leaned over the hearth to look up the chimney under the hood, and immediately held an arm out to signal he had something. The scraping stopped.

  A pinch of soot powdered down from the chimney, and then something dropped out and hit Siegman between the eyes. His head sank halfway into his shoulders before he realized he wasn’t hurt. I got a quick look at what had hit him—it was a gaily figured ladies’ handkerchief, corners knotted to make a minute bundle—but as Siegman reached for it, more soot rained down, there was a rustle, and a folded square of paper fluttered out of the chimney and landed near the handkerchief.

  We waited an instant longer, until the subdued crowing that echoed down the chimney died away, and then Siegman looked under the hood again. “He’s gone!” he said, and grabbed for the handkerchief.

  I picked up the square of paper, unfolded it, and compared what we had.

  “You see?” Gladys cried. “It’s his wee kerchief and map!”

  She was wrong. What Siegman had untied was a wee kerchief, all right, but instead of being packed presumably with Boris’s belongings, it contained some twenty jewels—emeralds and blazing rubies and amethysts—unmistakably taken from Myshkin’s machine. What I had was not a map, but a small detailed blueprint with captions that indicated it had to do with an enlarger, and on its blank side there was a fresh handwritten note.

  I had seen the crude writing on the darkroom walls. The graceful letters of this note were the product of a practiced penman, but his evidently irrepressible delight in making a pen scratch—here as on the walls—established a generic link.

  I read the writing at the top of the sheet out loud:

  “Darling, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Darling, meanwhile you can lose them characters for me. Darling, the ice is yours. Wait for me, sweets. Boris.”

  Siegman scowled. “Ice, huh?”

  “He means the jewels,” I said.

  “Oh, what a darling!” said Gladys.

  “I know he means the jewels,” Siegman said irritably. “What I’d like to know is what makes him use a word like ice. And where did he learn to call us characters?”

  “To call us characters what, darling?” said Gladys.

  “Just characters, Gladys,” I said. “Characters, period.”

  “What period, darling?”

  “The post-war period, darling.”

  “Thank you, Henry, darling. I’m glad to see that someone around here can explain things.”

  I read the rest of the note:

  “My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming;

  I love not less, though less the show appear;

  The love is merchandiz’d whose rich esteeming

  The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.”

  “Magnificent!” Gladys breathed.

  “Shakespeare,” said Siegman. “From one of his sonnets, number one hundred something.”

  “Darling, you’re jealous!”

  “Of that little chicken boy?”

  “Chicken boy, darling?”

  “You didn’t think he was human, did you? He was hatched!”

  “Hatched… darling? Hatched?”

  “From an egg. By Myshkin. That’s what’s behind all this.”

  Harriet, who hadn’t uttered a word since she’d come in, was already quickly moving toward Gladys, but Gladys stood there swaying and staring dreamily into Siegman’s eyes, and she went on staring and swaying until Harriet keeled over in a dead faint. I was glad to catch her, but it was confusing.

  * * * *

  When we told the girls the truth I knew the Myshkin Affaire was getting very big, but I wasn’t sure that was altogether bad. I’d begun to see where the more people we had in it, the better it might be for Myshkin when the end came.

  For Harriet, who’d seemed to follow most of it, the whole thing became unreal. The one time she spoke, she said
she understood how such a thing could happen, but not that it had happened. The reaction Gladys had was less metaphysical: she decided we were trying to cover up Myshkin’s disgraceful behavior toward his small brother. Whatever chance we’d had with her was gone when she recalled that Siegman had shouted, “Boris!”

  “Darling, how many Russians do you know?” she smiled.

  “His name is Boris, Borisovitch Simeonof-Pishtchik.” I said.

  “Darling, you’re so much cleverer I than I am.” she said, and let out a merry little laugh. “Of course, I won’t say a word to the SPCC until I’ve seen little Boris again.”

  “What’s SPCC?” I asked.

  “Society Prevention Cruelty Children,” Siegman said hollowly.

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. “Gladys, darling, please—”

  “Henry, baby, I’m staying. Really.”

  I’d let that end it. There wasn’t the slightest sense trying to make her understand, and the one thing I’d realized was that Gladys had to stay with us. Inexplicable as it was, she was not only our link to Boris, but in some utterly strange fashion she fascinated him. I remember the way Boris had looked at her when he crowed. Whatever Gladys had, I was grateful for her decision to keep it on the premises, where it was needed.

  Then we’d settled down to wait.

  The afternoon had worn on and worn on us. Siegman and I had grabbed a few fitful winks and the girls played gin with an old deck of cards they found. The streets around us had gradually settled to a summery stillness that was unmarred by the sounds of river traffic. In this somewhat other-worldly peace I’d found myself wondering, by six o’clock, which of us would drop from hunger first. Myshkin’s cupboard was a Mother Hubbard and neither Siegman nor I had been willing to chance missing Boris by chasing out for a few edibles—and Gladys’ going was unwise. Finally Harriet had volunteered to scout for supplies.

  She hadn’t been gone very long when a cop came upstairs to say that the rules were off. Then Harriet had phoned. She’d remembered, after finding all the local groceries closed, that this was a Sunday, and she’d decided to bring some stuff from her place uptown. She would phone again when she started back so that I could meet her at the police line. I told her the police had gone, and not to use the telephone because it might conceivably ring at an unpropitious moment.