But we could have rented the phone to a cigar store bookie for the next hours, without interfering with anything.
* * * *
Darkness had come so abruptly that I was startled to see the phosphorescent glow of Siegman’s watch across the twenty feet that separated us. He was at the window, staring out at the thick, soft dusk. It was just past seven-fifteen.
“I think Harriet’s back!” Siegman called. “I saw—”
The telephone went off with an ear-splitting ring that broke off what Siegman was saying. I’d heard the front door opening just as he spoke, then footsteps swiftly bounding up the stairs before I remembered that Harriet had no key for the front door and I yanked the string for the light.
There was a blue-white explosion and there stood Myshkin.
“Turn that damned light off!” he shouted.
I yanked again and the darkness fell on us with tremendous weight. But I could still see Myshkin. His after-image blazed in red outline and I saw his tangled mane of hair, his upthrust arms shielding eyes that looked wilder than ever. He was leaning against the doorjamb, a robe wrapped around him, gasping for breath.
The telephone cut through everything and on the third ring I picked it up.
“Hello,” I said. “Yes, hold on. Al, it’s for you.”
I struck a match. It flared up to reveal Myshkin and Al looking at each other. They moved together, Siegman toward me. Myshkin toward the window. The match went out before they passed, but nothing happened and Siegman took the phone.
“Hello… Yes, who? Oh, hello… What?… When?… But… Oh… Oh, I see… Yes… Yes, of course, and thanks… All right. Goodbye.”
I took the phone from him. I could hear Myshkin moving at the window. He was controlling his breathing. There wasn’t a sound not made by Myshkin until I rattled the phone as I replaced it.
“Who was it, Al?” I asked.
“My friend at the hospital. The resident.”
“Well?”
Siegman said dryly: “He says Myshkin’s missing from the ward.”
“Oh…”
“He also says they think maybe he’s still in the hospital somewhere, but his clothes are gone and they’ve notified—”
“Shut up!” Myshkin snapped.
“Listen. Myshkin—”
“Including you. Henry! Turn on the light, dammit!”
“You just said to turn it off.”
“Turn it on! There’re liable to be cops here any minute. You want to have to explain why you had the lights off? Make a shade for it. Wrap a towel around it or something. My eyes are burning…”
I fumbled around for towels and got on a chair, and knotted two of them on the wire. It made quite an effect when I pulled the light-string again. The towels were stained a hundred different shades from Myshkin’s chemicals, and they hung down over the bulb and threw soft blobs of color everywhere.
“Thanks,” said Myshkin. He took a few steps closer to us and stopped and looked at Gladys. All he had on was a pair of loose pajamas that had once been blue, a brown wool bathrobe and a pair of cloth bedroom slippers. “Who’s this?” he asked.
“Gladys De Winter,” I said. “She’s a friend of Miss Hopper.”
“What is she doing here?”
“She’s with Siegman.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” Myshkin snapped. Then he looked at Siegman. “You can drop dead. No loss to medicine.”
“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Myshkin,” said Gladys.
Myshkin gave her a sneer that showed his teeth, and the light gave them a greenish glow. “You’ll have to be tied up and put in a closet,” he said. “Look around for some rope. Shut up, Henry. Don’t ask me any questions. Right now let’s figure out what happens if they send a cop here. I haven’t been here. You know I’m on the loose because the resident phoned, but that’s all. It’s got to be done right so they won’t think of searching the place. Nowhere to hide here. Right? Well?”
“You’re not tying me up and putting me in a closet, brother,” said Gladys. “I’ve got two octaves more than I need to be heard in Port Jervis.”
“Who is she?” said Myshkin. “A man can’t leave his house a few hours without coming back to find a convention?”
“She’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“That’s what they kept saying at the hospital: don’t worry about anything! Hah! You realize what I’m up against? Get Paul Muni on the phone and ask him how he’d like to play a fugitive from an insane asylum! Listen, Henry, you won’t get rattled if they come?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“I’m dying for a cigarette,” said Myshkin. “Henry, maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe that’s just what Boris wants. Where could I go in these pajamas except home? That’s why he didn’t bring me my clothes, in time. He engineered the whole thing to get me back here, but why? What’s the answer?”
“Did you say Boris got you out?”
“Didn’t I?” He grabbed the cigarette I’d come over to give him. There was a red spot on his forehead and two blue-green lights on his sunken cheeks, and with the smoke pouring out of his mouth and nostrils he looked like someone who’d just signed a document for a party with horns. “It was Boris, all right,” he said. “There’s no evidence, but it’s the only answer.”
“What answer?”
“Listen, Henry, they got notes to me without being seen! They sent me a pair of special glasses! They opened doors, opened the wardrobe lock, took down clothes—all this with guards and doctors and nurses and patients and visitors around them and nobody saw them! I saw my pants being slid out of the wardrobe closet! I saw it and there was no one there!”
“No!” I said.
“It means they—”
“Who’s they?”
“Boris! There must have been others too. There was too much going on at once for even three of them. Doors opening, chalked arrows in the halls, lights going out, fire exits swinging open—that’s how it was. First a note saying they were going to get me out. Then a note with some instructions, where my clothes would be waiting and so forth, then one setting the time. It went off wonderfully, except my clothes weren’t in the office where I was supposed to find them, but everything else worked.”
“So what do you think?” I said.
“What can I think? I think they’ve found out how to become invisible!”
“You have any of these notes you received?” I asked.
“No, I tore them up. It didn’t—”
“What was the handwriting like?”
“Beautiful—nothing like Boris’ lousy scratches. But the references, the language, the directions were typically Boris’. Invisibly delivered!”
“You know something, Myshkin,” I said. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Part of it, anyway. In spite of you. You’d rather not have told it and you don’t want me to believe it, but you couldn’t think of anything else—”
“Henry, on my word—”
“What am I supposed to do now? Think you really did go nuts? You think you’ll stop me? Myshkin, after Boris sinks into one’s brain, it’s soft enough to take anything. I’m taking this because I know you got a note from Boris, whether or not it was invisibly delivered. See?”
“You know I got a note?”
“At least one.”
“May I ask how you know?”
“Myshkin, we got a note with that same beautiful penmanship—and ours was also dropped invisibly—but we know that note came from Boris. It’s signed. And we have ours.”
“Give it to me!”
I looked at him distastefully. “It’s invisible.”
“Henry, I swear to you it’s all true! Every syllable of every word! Where’s the note?”
; “How can you lie like that?”
Myshkin started to answer before he realized that I hadn’t said it, and before the impact of that high, thin fantastic voice of Boris’ got to him. He ducked his head as if he’d gotten a whack across the back of his neck, and then he spun around fast and saw what Gladys and Siegman and I had seen two seconds sooner.
Boris was leaning against the door, legs crossed, chewing a match. Hands thrust deep in the pockets of his jeans, wearing a small checkered cap with its long visor pulled down over his eyes, he offered a study of a relaxed apache-type. He stood bathed in bright orange, a shadowed indigo leer on his face, apparently unconcerned with Myshkin’s proximity. If he was aware of the sudden tension that had entered the room with him, he gave no sign of it.
“Understand me,” he went on, “I ask only with reverence. On my word, Myshkin, when I listen to one of your lies I feel as if I were in church. Your most casual fibs—even your fibicles—reveal the basic duality of genius: a flourishing art and the serenity that resides in faith. You leave the truth a drab, a drear, a drained thing. Let us hear more on this matter of invisibility. It—”
I grabbed Myshkin’s arm hard enough to let him know he wasn’t going to dive at Boris. I didn’t want to do anything that overt, but Myshkin didn’t know about our plan to hypnotize Boris and there was no way to tell him. Gladys had quickly and very smoothly slid out of Boris’s sight behind a section of the work-tables, and Siegman was carefully coming forward. I tried to signal Myshkin by tightening and relaxing my grip on his arm.
Myshkin looked at me, a slight frown passed over his face, and he stopped trying to fight.
“Boris!” Siegman called vibrantly. “Boris… lisssennn…”
Boris raised his chin enough so that he no longer had to look up from under his hat. I was startled when I saw his eyes. They were like black molten glass.
“Borr-riss,” said Siegman, gently, sonorously. “Yourrr eyezzz hurrrtt, donnn’ theyyy? Yezzz, they dooo. They hurrt verr-rree mudge, sooo-oo verr-rrree mudge. Worrking too harrrd, worr-reeing too mudge. Ohhh for a rezzztt…”
Boris’ unblinking gaze was fixed on Siegman. It was remarkable to see the contrast between his limber, disjointed posture and the rigidity with which he kept his head erect. He began to nod a little as language oozed at him. Presently he was maintaining the rhythm of Siegman’s syrupy enunciation so perfectly that it became impossible to tell who was leading whom… unless Boris was anticipating a good deal of what Siegman said… or as if what was being said no longer mattered and only the rhythm was left…
“Clooozze yourrr eyezzz,” Siegman droned on. “Ohhh forrr a nizzze lonnngg rezzztt… clooozzze… cloozzzze… weee-rrreee eyezzzz… yezzzz…”
“Catch him before he falls over,” said Boris.
Well, I might have caught him if Myshkin hadn’t leaped for Boris. As it was I swung for Myshkin first, missed, and then it was too late. Siegman dropped and hit the floor with a thud. I whirled for Myshkin again, certain I’d find Boris lifeless in his hands—
I was mistaken. Boris not only hadn’t stirred, but he seemed completely unaware of what might have happened to him. The question remained an academic one, however, because Myshkin was confronted by a deadly black automatic. It took a few seconds for the muzzle to shrink enough to let me see who was holding the gun.
He was one of those long lean characters who wear form-fitting Chesterfields with padded shoulders. He had a face a dope peddler would have been proud to own; sallow, pinched, incisive—when the light hit his jutting cheekbones they glinted like unsheathed blades. He had on a pearl gray fedora, black patent-leather shoes as slim as destroyers, and gray suede gloves. The gloves blurred occasionally because his hands had a tendency to shake, but everything else about him seemed immovable; he might have been a life-size cut-out in a movie lobby. His eyeballs were yellow, with irises as huge and black and lusterless as licorice gumdrops. When I looked into them it was like looking through holes in a fence.
He stood in the doorway where he had first appeared, towering over Boris. He held the gun in his right hand, the elbow bent and kept close to him, and his left hand hung at his side. If there was any expression on his face, I missed it.
“See how it is?” Boris said quietly. “I promised a pay-off, didn’t I? That’s how it is.”
“Boris, you—”
“You take care of Svengali there,” Boris cut me off gently. “I have some business to transact with Mr. Myshkin—several rather urgent questions remain to be… ah… settled. Mr. Myshkin, would you mind… ah… climbing into a more decorous costume? It may be necessary for us to leave these premises.”
“Aaahhhh…” Myshkin let his breath out.
“Yerrs?” said Boris. He meant “yes” but he purred it.
“My clothes,” said Myshkin distantly. Sure enough, his clothes were lying in a bundle on the floor behind Boris—the torn, blood-stained, yellow-spotted pants and old shoes rolled up in his hooded green sweater.
“You didn’t forget… my clothes…” Myshkin murmured.
“That’s not all I didn’t forget,” said Boris. “Let’s go downstairs to the execution chamber. I’ve got a few questions I’d like to have answered.”
Myshkin nodded and took a long slow breath, like a man who had made a final decision and arrived at a final calm. The look in his eyes matched perfectly with the crazy, dreamy look the gunman wore, only Myshkin’s knees were shaking worse than the gunman’s hands.
“I stay here,” he said dreamily. “I refuse to go.”
“Myshkin,” Boris said gently, “don’t make my boy invite you. He’s a nervous boy.”
“You know what you look like?” said Myshkin. “Ask me. Like a sewer rat, on my word. Whoever dreamed up this scene should be put on Serutan for a month. And this guy with you—”
“Myshkin! Shut up!” I shouted.
“Go on!” said Boris. “Keep talking!”
Myshkin swallowed hard. “Why not? This guy with you—”
That was as far as he got. The gunman took two steps to Myshkin—he seemed to glide rather than step—and his right hand came up to put the gun a foot from Myshkin’s wildly bobbing Adam’s apple. The muzzle looked like a tunnel entrance. I saw the gray-gloved fingers tremble violently as they tightened on the gun, then my eyes squeezed shut.
But the only sound I heard was the door-pull downstairs. Then silence. When my eyes opened I was observing the fantastic effect the bell seemed to have had on Boris and the gunman.
Boris’ face was screwed up in ghastly pain. He had taken his hands out of his pockets and he was holding his fists up in front of his face. A tiny silver object gleamed in his right hand and his whole arm quivered as though the pain was flowing from this object down his arm into his stiff little body. The gunman was rocking on his heels. His gun hand had gone down to his side as if something had pulled it down, but it had fought its way up again and now it was slowly, inexorably, forcibly being pulled down again. Maybe five or six seconds had passed…
Then the bell went off again.
Boris cried out: “Next time, Myshkin! Next time!”
He and the gunman moved together. Boris spun around and ran out across the threshold. The gunman slid past Myshkin and me, raised his gun and smashed the covered electric bulb. There was a pop and a tinkle of broken glass.
In the darkness tiny footsteps leaped down the stairs. Almost simultaneously the downstairs door opened, there was a smothered cry from somewhere far off, and Myshkin sagged against me. I was moving at the time, and I shunted Myshkin off before I could help it. He fell away and from the demented roar that followed I concluded he had landed on Siegman. That was the first time in many minutes I’d remembered Siegman, and when Gladys’ howling was added to the uproar I remembered her too. But kept running down the stairs.
* * * *
It was Harriet. S
he was holding a big paper bag in her arms and there was another at her feet. There was a street light near the piers that didn’t give much light, but it would have shown anyone on either side of the street, and there was no one except Harriet.
“Where’d they go?” I shouted. “You must’ve—”
Then I noticed the way she looked—not just that she was dazed and frightened, but the yellow powder that was all over her short blue coat. I touched it and felt her whole body trembling.
“What happened?” I said. I sniffed the air. There was an odor like ozone, the kind of smell you get around trolley barns, and something less familiar I couldn’t quite place, and the dissipating remains of what seemed to have been a dust cloud still hung in the air. “Harriet, what’s the matter?” I begged. “Say something! Can’t you talk?”
“Yes.” she nodded slowly. “Take this bag, stupid.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s—”
“Henry!—What’s that?”
“That’s Siegman yelling because Myshkin fell on him.”
“Myshkin?”
“Shhh! He escaped. That’s who Boris and that gunman with him were after—”
“Boris?… and th-that… gunman?…”
“That was who you saw running out about a minute after—Huh? What’s the head-shaking for? You saw them, didn’t you? You must have seen them!”
“…I… no…”
“But you were down here—”
I ran into the house and down the hall into the downstairs room. I knew it was empty even before I’d turned on the light. Upstairs I could hear Siegman alternately shouting and groaning, and Myshkin talking in a subdued voice, and I had a cold shiver and went outside to Harriet.
She was sitting on the brick step, staring at the empty street with intense concentration. I took the bags and helped her into the house. A light had gone on upstairs and as we started up, Myshkin appeared at the top.
The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 10
