“If anything,” said Siegman, “that bad experience could have helped me understand things much sooner. I don’t deny it was funny the way it ended, but look at it objectively. I made no pretense of being a great practitioner of the art. This time I was up against someone who knew considerably more about it than I did. In some way he managed not only to reverse it, but quickly and with enormous skill—it was old stuff to Myshkin; I’d stumbled right into his private domain.”
“But what about the whole business with the rebellion?”
“All part of his great, grand scheme,” said Siegman. “I say I know how deep he is in this robbery because my first and only guess is that he’s the ringleader. Nothing else would do for Myshkin.”
I picked up the newspaper. “The ringleader of these three guys?” I said. “Nails Nixon, Cokey Harry and Little Maxie?” Among them they had spent sixty years in every jail in North America.
“Yes,” said Siegman. “It fits your idea perfectly.”
“My idea?”
“It was stupid,” said Siegman, “but brought down to Earth a little, its direction was fine. Weren’t you looking for some sort of weapon Boris might’ve been able to offer his theoretical henchmen? Why not Myshkin? Does it make more sense with Boris or with Myshkin?”
“The invisibility?” I said.
“Whatever it turns out to be,” said Siegman. “It’s all part of the same thing. If you can make people see something that really isn’t there, you can make them believe they aren’t seeing something that really is. I’ll go further—I’ll say the yellow powder is probably it. Maybe it releases a gas of some sort—a new hypnotic agent that makes all his trickery possible.”
“What about the machine?” I said.
“A wire store-window dummy for a fat men’s shop,” said Siegman acidly.
“And the colored lights on the wheel?” I said.
“Where can you find a more perfect description of the hypnotist’s method? You see, Henry, this way everything adds up.” He was adding it up for himself, too, as he spoke. “Somehow Myshkin discovered or compounded this powder. Being the avaricious Myshkin he is, instead of publishing his discovery, he dreamed up a more personal and profitable use. A few months ago, he moved down to the scene of his future operations, dropping silently into a self-imposed isolation that was broken only for an occasional trip here. Probably by then he had already made contact with the men he wanted. All he’d need would be Nails Nixon himself—at least two of the others are known members of his gang—and it wouldn’t be too difficult to interest someone like Nails in a proposition involving millions in gold. Not if Myshkin can do half of what we’ve apparently seen him do.” Siegman nodded somberly. “It was a sweet set-up, and what happened? You had to come barging in. You had to return on the very week-end he had chosen for his first excursion in crime. I say ‘first’ because Myshkin is criminally insane. This was just the beginning of a career as an amalgamated Jesse James, Raffles and Jack the Ripper. That makes our course clear, as I see it.”
“How do you see it?” I said.
“For reason or reasons unknown to us, Myshkin’s unable or unwilling to leave his place. We’ve caught him stalling again and again. That’s why he’s had to prolong the Boris phantasmagoria. I say it was somehow made necessary by your unexpected arrival, and further complicated when you dragged the rest of us into it—certainly he couldn’t have foreseen that he’d attract so much police notice Also, I say we’ll find him downtown. When we do, our one objective is to get the formula for Myshkin’s gas. If we accomplish that, maybe we’ll try capturing Myshkin, and deliver him safely to the police. Remember, however, the important thing is to make sure the secret of Myshkin’s immensely potent weapon does not remain in his hands alone.”
“I see.” I said.
“Are you coming with me?” said Siegman.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why do you hesitate? Don’t you agree with what I’ve been saying.”
“Not a word of it, but I’ll come.”
“Good enough,” said Siegman. He turned to Harriet. “Remember about keeping Gladys here.”
“I will,” she said. She reached out and took my hand in hers. “Henry, be careful.”
“Do I get to kiss you now?” I said.
“Not if you want me to let you go after you do,” she said.
When we left, Gladys was screaming again in the kitchen. Her voice followed us through the door, into the elevator, and down the shaft to the lobby.
Suddsy was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, gazing at his crushed derby and mumbling to himself.
“He still wants to know where is it,” said the elevator boy.
Suddsy looked at us without a sign of recognition in his blue eyes. The daze we’d seen him in upstairs seemed now to have enveloped him completely.
“Hello, Suddsy,” I said.
“Hello, brother,” he said. “Do you know where it is?”
“No,” I said.
“No.” Suddsy repeated mournfully. “I must have read about it, but I forgot. Now I don’t know where it is. Where is it?”
He was still mumbling busily when we went out and got a cab.
* * * *
It was past midnight by the time we reached Force Tube Avenue. Elsewhere in the city the streets were still alive with people and noise; here was darkness, and a silence crystallized by a chill in the air to a sharply defined boundary. Along the piers, moored freighters were gently riding the outgoing tide, their nightlights rocking lazily. The district was largely deserted, but still it seemed to me there were more people about than one would normally expect. Even at that late hour, the waterfront was drawing its quota of curious citizens. A liberal sprinkling of detectives was a safe assumption, but no overt signs of police attention were in evidence. A block from Myshkin’s house a squad car drew abreast of us. It kept up until we turned off, then went on without slowing—though Myshkin’s house was our only possible destination on that dead-end street.
It hadn’t occurred to us how we were going to get into the house, but our first attempt to solve the problem worked. We merely tried the door knob. The door opened, and there was no way of knowing if that meant anything. Maybe I had left it unlocked; maybe Myshkin had come back and left it open; maybe he was inside.
There was nobody inside. Siegman went up while I covered the lower room, and after a moment he came down. “Well?” he said. “Anything new with the clothes?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “They’ve moved again.” Myshkin’s bundle of clothes was now lying close to the covered machine. “A big jump this time,” I said.
Siegman looked disgusted. “Well, what’s your conclusion? You think maybe Myshkin’s in here right now wearing his invisible hat?”
“All I say is that I consider it an unusual phenomenon for a pair of pants to patrol a room.”
“You have the makings of a good mystery there,” said Siegman. “Call it The Case of the Traveling Trousers, or The Case of the Peripatetic Pants.”
“Just the same,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind giving the air a few swishes with a long stick.”
Then we went upstairs and tried to figure out which of the many there was the test tube we wanted but since we couldn’t be certain that the green compound would be among them even if we took them all, we had a discussion on how long we’d wait for Myshkin. While we were discussing it, Myshkin came in. He must have opened and closed the front door soundlessly, but he made no attempt to conceal his presence when he mounted the stairs, and he spoke to us even before he had entered the room.
“Hello,” he said. “It certainly took you two long enough to get here.” He seemed quite serene and pleasant, but considerably more tired than when he had left us. “I was hanging around near the sea wall. When I saw light up here, I figured it was you. I’ll have to get new tar paper for the window,�
�� he concluded sadly. “The light shoots out through holes like a dozen airport beacons.”
“You expect to go on living here?” asked Siegman affably.
“Certainly,” said Myshkin. “Why not? You got a better place for the money?”
“You’re not worried about a little thing like money, are you?” said Siegman.
Myshkin looked at him; his expression turned sour. “So you opened my box,” he said. “I remembered it later, and I said to myself, ‘They won’t open it. A man has a right to expect a little privacy, if not in his home, possibly in his possessions.’ But no, not you people.”
“Lend me some money,” said Siegman. “I’ll buy a big book on etiquette. I could buy a lot of books with what you had in that box.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Myshkin. “That stuff will all have to go back.”
“Be sure to include an apology,” said Siegman. Myshkin sighed, shrugged, and sat down heavily on the bed.
“Well,” he said, “maybe I have delayed the police, but what was I to do? I had to take care of my own interests, didn’t I? I couldn’t expect them to send out a teletype alarm for my escaped chicken-men, could I?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t try,” said Siegman.
“Remember,” said Myshkin, “I didn’t want to interfere with them. They marched right in and bundled me off for observation. As it is, they’ll still have me to thank for solving it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Siegman. “I think it’s easier to bank gold than gratitude.”
“If I could only deposit you somewhere,” said Myshkin. “Listen, Henry, speaking of bundling reminds me—did you take a look at my clothes downstairs?”
“I’m going to write a book about them. Siegman gave me two good titles.”
“Moved again?”
“Moved again.”
Myshkin shook his head. “I’ll show what it is about those clothes later. They’re very important, but there’s no immediate danger—I don’t see how they can escape from the room.”
“And why not?” said Siegman. “I see no reason why those pants can’t walk right out the open door, if only the sweater will turn the doorknob. What’s to prevent it?”
“Nothing,” said Myshkin. “You’re right, but the truth probably is that the pants don’t want to escape, no matter how the sweater feels about it. Henry, you started out by doing all the talking for everybody, but I must say that you’re very quiet lately.”
“He’s experiencing change of life,” said Siegman.
“Myshkin, where’s Boris?” I said.
“But you notice, Doctor,” said Myshkin, “when he does speak, he really says something. Henry, I have an excellent idea where Boris is. If he doesn’t show up here soon, I’m going to find out whether or not I’m correct. I was about to try it when I saw the light here, and I was so pooped I decided I’d better take a short rest. Will someone please give me a cigarette?”
I gave him a cigarette and held the light for him.
“So again you’re expecting Boris?” said Siegman. “You seemed to have worked out pretty complicated visiting arrangements. Sometimes he chases you, sometimes you chase him. You’d think a social relationship of that kind would be confined to this house, but I notice when it’s time for you to get chased Boris cooperates even to going uptown to Harriet’s place.”
“Confusing, isn’t it?” said Myshkin. “Things move too fast. My dear doctor, we live in a changing world. Where I was once very much afraid of Boris, at this moment I feel almost as if I could have a most salubrious laugh at his expense.”
“Of course, at the rate you’re going,” said Siegman, “you can afford practically anything—or am I to understand this new attitude toward Boris derives from a fortress-like faith in your green compound? Or is it the yellow powder?”
“It’s not the powder, it’s the compound,” said Myshkin. “And it’s not my compound, it’s theirs. Without it I wouldn’t be anywhere in radius of an unexpected visit from Boris. Not unless Gladys was close by,” he added, smiling mysteriously. “How is that wonderful girl? Did you see what she did for me? Did you see how she saved my hash? I really must look her up when all this is over—what a girl!”
As Myshkin had remarked, I hadn’t been doing much talking, at least in his company. It gave me a chance to watch him, to observe the minute changes in his expressive face, and a way of judging the value of what he was saying when the words themselves seemed meaningless. The great change in him when he appeared at Harriet’s house—the attitude of tranquil waiting, and confidence in the waiting—had not varied. During his earlier conversation with Siegman, about the newspaper pictures, I’d felt Myshkin had been ready to tell us a great deal more on his own than we’d get with our antagonistic questioning. I knew he would never be decorated for telling the truth; nevertheless, if I added up what I knew and what I believed, the total was close to the sum of those things Myshkin wanted me to know and believe.
“Myshkin,” I said, “I gather you feel you’re at the end of it.”
“It? Or wit?” said Siegman.
“Anyone who doesn’t know which end is wit is in a bad way,” said Myshkin. “Yes, Henry, we’re at the end—the successful end.”
“I wonder why I say ‘you’ and you say ‘we’?” I said.
“It’s because you seem to feel pretty much left out,” said Myshkin. “On the other hand, I, who know how indebted I am for your intercession—your determination to stick your nose in my business—feel intimately connected, and grateful not only for past service rendered, but for an infinitely more valuable service I expect of you in the near future.”
“And that is?” I said.
“Backing me up when it becomes necessary. Being my witnesses and my collaborators.”
“Did you say collaborators or co-robbers?” said Siegman. “Let’s hear about the compound.”
“You have a compound fracture of the point of your head,” said Myshkin. “Instead of talking to Henry and me as equals, a man of your caliber should be taking notes.”
“When the time comes,” said Siegman.
I said: “You were saying we’re expected to be your witnesses?—you mean with the police?”
Myshkin half-closed his eyes and smiled dreamily. He waved a tired arm. “With the whole world,” he said. “With the newspapers, with scientists, investigators—through all the great confusion and turmoil that will follow the publication of my research and discoveries. Where this stage—which has been all secrecy—ends, the next one—which will be all publicity—begins. If I were to chart the precise point at which this change will occur, it would be that moment in which I dispose of Boris.”
“You still think you can do it?”
“I could have done it almost anytime,” said Myshkin. “Unfortunately, I didn’t know it until now Just a few drops of the compound, and in the language of the comic books—POW! BAM! and ZOWIE!—no more Boris.”
“What if you’re wrong?” I said.
“But I’m not,” Myshkin sighed. “I should have guessed it, Henry. The very creation of Boris was based on paradox. Paradox, the relation of opposites, is the key to everything.”
“It is?” I said.
“Yes.” said Myshkin “For instance, take the compound. What Boris and his confederates were after—”
“Which confederates?” I said. “The other chicken-men or the gangsters?”
“The chicken-men,” said Myshkin, “not that it makes any difference. They got this compound by reversing various formulas of mine based on analyses of the yellow powder. Now notice how the paradox, having begun with their creation, goes further. I created them—possibly they should have loved me—though I would have been gratified by a friendly neutrality, but what I got was an inherent, incurable hostility. I had analyzed the yellow powder hoping for a clue to something that might
stop them from exploding. They took the opposite view—to them the analyses were formulas I was using to destroy them. So they took my notes and began working to turn the formulas against me. From their viewpoint, which was one of pure opposition, anything bad for them contained the possibility—properly turned around—of being bad for me. But, as I told you, they worked under great difficulty, at first hampered by the color of the walls, and later after I’d realized what green did to them, because I specifically used the color against them.”
“And you still don’t know why green affected them as it did?” I said.
“Not completely, but I have an idea,” said Myshkin. “Our learned medical friend touched on it when he observed that the formula for the compound had chlorophyll as a base. I won’t enlarge on it at the moment except to remark that because of this circumstance the chicken-men evidently had a theory involving the opposition between plant and animal life. Not that they are opposed; actually, as we know they are complementary, mutually interdependent—but these creatures of paradox were fundamentally, intrinsically, unable to comprehend such a concept as balance in the universe.”
“No?” I said politely.
“No,” said Myshkin. “When they attempted to turn the formula against me—itself a horribly muddled idea—ironically enough, they wound up with the opposite effect. Instead of getting me, they had come up with something absolutely lethal to themselves. Instead of homicide, they ended up with suicide.”
“I’ll have mine fried,” said Siegman.
“Anyhow,” said Myshkin, “you saw their defense tonight in the green glasses Boris wore—though offhand, knowing very little about the laws of optics or the properties of Boris’ eyes, I cannot understand why a green lens should have a neutralizing effect. You see, another paradox.”
“I noticed you wouldn’t leave Harriet’s apartment without your own green glasses,” I said. “What do yours do for you?”
He took his glasses out of a pajama pocket and handed them to me. “Please look,” he said. “There’s plenty of yellow powder around.”
The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 18
