The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  "An odd name, Thomas. And you sold the invention and began your rise?" Madigan asked.

  "No, I didn't sell it. I never did sell it, for it's priceless. It's made me quite rich. I installed it and let it work for me."

  "Just what did you do with your invention, Thomas?"

  "Oh, when my device seemed to be working all right, I went out and forged five large checks in the crudest possible manner. That was the first test of my invention, and it stood up well."

  "Thomas," smiled James Madigan, "I feel better already. There is something in your goblin humor that always sets me up."

  "With the funds acquired from the forged checks I took out twenty thousand dollars' insurance on my wife," Castlereagh said. "I waited three days for the papers to clear. Then I killed her."

  "You are the most amazing man, Castlereagh," Madigan said. "You are the cathartic I need. No man but you, even in the retrospect of forty years, could jest about such a matter without crudity. But coming from you, it is the all-saving humor."

  "I have no humor, Madigan."

  "I've studied that early case, Thomas. I'm as baffled by it as you are. There was no clue at all to the murder of your young wife, and no suspect. You and she were alone in the house, and nobody could have entered. It remains one of the classic puzzles to this day."

  "It puzzled me a little too, James, until I looked in the mirror again. My device was working remarkably. My face no longer resembled that of a fox-faced sneak. It was my same face, and yet how different! My luck had changed, had been changed by a fairly simple device. The tide has been running for me ever since."

  "But later, Thomas, you suffered great disasters that would have sank a lesser man."

  "All the disasters suffered were tricks of my own, and all turned me a profit. With the funds from my wife's death I started a business. It was a crackpot business and it should have failed, for I was and am incompetent. But I had my new contrived luck that made competence unnecessary."

  "Thomas, you pile drollery upon drollery. You're a bright patch in my life."

  "My invention was working well for me. No, James, the business was in no way concerned with its manufacture of sale. By a series of clumsy frauds I prospered. It was a proud milestone in my life when I caused my first suicide, one of many I was to cause."

  "Humor is the key, Thomas. Let our bleakest moods be bathed in its golden light and somehow we will find the strength to go on. The tale becomes richer and richer."

  "Then I embarked on arson, that most hare-brained and easily detected of frauds, on a large scale. I acquired a block-long warehouse, an ancient shanty of a building, and filled it with old crates and trash. I insured it heavily. I had twenty drums of kerosene openly hauled in one night and strategically placed. And after dark I upturned them all, gave them a quarter of an hour to soak the timber, and walked out the front door. James, that was the crudest piece of arson ever pulled, and it was not even suspected. My invention was working fine for me now. I collected. I had made my first million dollars; and the story went out that I had suffered the loss of five times that amount."

  "Castlereagh, you are better than this old brandy. You warm my cockles and give new life to my tired heart. Your 'invention' I know will be a wowser when you come to your punch line. No tongue but yours could twist out so delightful a rhapsody."

  "It is my invention again that makes you find the story delightful. When I look at my reflection, James, I am even able to hoodwink myself. The man behind such a face as mine cannot be other than a great and respected man."

  "Richer and richer," chuckled Madigan.

  "I married again," said Castlereagh. "Hers was not really a great fortune, but it was a comfortable seven-figure accumulation. I saw it comfortably settled on myself. I gave her half a year, for she was a pleasurable creature. Then I killed her."

  "Ah, you hide that old tragedy behind your mocking humor also, Thomas. I am familiar with the case. It was one of the most baffling—"

  "Sure. No clue at all, and no suspect. I was alone in the house with her, and nobody could have entered. There were no fingerprints but mine to be found anywhere, even in the powder on her throat. She was throttled by persons unknown. Quite an impossible murder.

  "Well, James, I stayed with proved methods, but always on an expanding scale. Who would suspect a man whose face mirrored the integrity of Lincoln, the clear fire of a young Jefferson, the humor of Lamb, the honest thoughtfulness of Browne, the scope of Plutarch, the urchin-humanness of Francis, the serenity-in-power of Octavius? My next arson concerned eighty acres of surplus government buildings acquired for a sour song and a sweet face. It took me thirteen days and three thousand drums of kerosene to set that one up properly. But I collected fifty million dollars worth of insurance on it. It was bruited about, however, that I had lost half a billion; and the nation almost went into mourning."

  "I will remember my personal desolation at your great loss," said Madigan. "I doubt if any other man would have had the heart to surmount it, or the grace to joke about it later on."

  "One more grand trick, and then I'd have all the money that mattered. I built me a nationwide all-embracing fraud. I cleaned thirty million investors, small, medium, and large on that one. Then, as an experiment, I let my mask slip a trifle, muted my peculiar device a little. A few of the fish saw behind it then. They even took me through a series of courts."

  "I well remember those craven character assassins, Castlereagh," Madigan said, "No man but yourself would be able to find humor in it, even now."

  "Oh, they had me cold at every turn, James. The transparency of my fraudulent machinations was breathtaking. But I turned my device on to the full. My invention, ah, luck, working again at full efficiency. And once more I had my wonderful face. It had gone so far that it had to go all the way, and of course I won. There were tears in the eyes of the Chief Justice when he embraced me after it was all over. I had tears in my own eyes, but I would not want to have the salt in them publicly analyzed."

  "The entire nation wept in gratitude at your vindication; and now you are able to joke absurdly about it. Ah, deep humor and tears are very close together, are they not, Thomas?"

  "Jerked by the same pair of strings, James. Then I put the cap on it. I set up the Castlereagh Fund for the Study of Bott's Disease."

  "Kicked off by an anonymous contribution of thirty million dollars! Anonymous! But, of course, everyone knew that the contribution was yours."

  "Sure, everyone knew it was mine, even if it wasn't. It was my own publicity that pointed the big finger at me. But it wasn't mine. The man who gave that thirty million was rather a shy fish about giving. He gave in the dark through me. By an irony, his name has come to be a byword for miserliness. By a double irony it was myself who hung that tag on him. But I treat that fund with respect; I only milk it for the earned interest every year. I call it my toothpick fund. If anything named Bott's disease really comes around, maybe I'll be able to run the trick through again."

  "Thomas, what a fund of deep drollery you have! My fit of depression is all but gone. But seriously, Castlereagh, what is this business about Doctor Forester? He must be unbalanced. You mean he has actually threatened you?"

  "Forester has done a little work in emanations himself. I went to him for a skin rash, and he discovered parts of my device embedded under my hid. He caught on pretty fast. He learned that my projected personality was an artificial one. He learned a few other things as soon as he started thinking. Now he says he's going to kill me. I've been fooling around with his wife pretty seriously, you know."

  "You and Maisie? Oh, that is the joke of all jokes. For a moment I thought that you were serious."

  "I am. Madigan, if a man says he will kill me, then that man is already dead. If I have any talent at all it is for anticipating an event. The murder of Doctor Forester is this present month will be a curious one, and it will reach to the level of your own office; but you will not be there for it. It will be a crude one. I always kill
crudely. James, I talk and talk, but you have no ears for what I say."

  "No ears for your humor, Castlereagh? I haven't enjoyed anything so much in months. I am rejuvenated and recharged. Thomas, come to the high point of it! What is your 'Wonderful Invention'?"

  "Wait, James, I must make a phone call. And then I must mix for you a special brandy." And Thomas Castlereagh went to do so. He returned after a short interval. He gave Madigan the brandy.

  "And what did you add to my brandy to make it special, Thomas?" Madigan asked.

  "Oh, the oldest venom of all, conium maculatum. It goes well with all wines and brandies. Strikes direct to the heart. Taste it and thank me for it."

  "I taste it. I thank you for it," said Madigan.

  "Thank me that I have spared you the burned almond taste, at least. I hate such clichés in poisonings. Ah, the marvelous invention? It is simply the Aura Machine. I was fooling around with electronics which I luckily misunderstood. And I was studying bodily emanations and auras as the expression of personality. I stumbled on a way of modifying my own aura.

  "I found that the aura, and its great effect upon the ambient, were really very simple things that might be simply reproduced. Those who speak of personal magnetism are correct. There is a strong magnetic element; also a strong element of the electrical corona effect; and there is another emanation that works on the sublimal sense of smell. Quite simply, I could make my own aura! I could make it to project any personality and appearance that I wished for myself . . . I made it to project the personality and appearance of Respectability, Distinction, and Utter Rectitude. I fabricated such an artificial personality for myself that nobody, under any conditions but the most fantastic, would ever be able to believe any evil of me.

  "Could such a simple thing work, James? It could. A duck-call is a simple device, and a duck is a complex one. Yet a duck will be fooled by a duck-call sounded by a man. A duck will even come to the artificial call in preference to the real, if the artificial is made with sufficient care. I employed all the art I was capable of in making my own device; and mostly it has sufficed.

  "It didn't take much: a subcutaneous device which I inserted myself; a selenium plate set into my head by a quack butcher; an apparatus embedded in my throat to give my voice what I wanted; a power pack; a harmonic booster. I tried it on my lowest day, as I have told you, and it worked. At first I was a little afraid of overdoing it. Then I discovered that there is no way of overdoing the respectability bit. People saw my face, not as it was, but as a respectable one. I became the man who could do no wrong. It was a grand trick, and I worked it down to the nub."

  "Thomas, you slay me!"

  "True. You finally understand. No, you do not. We both forget that I have no humor. Madigan, my device was so good that it could even fool an ordinary camera. However, I devised a camera with an astatic filter that cuts the emanating aura. It's good for a man to remember sometimes what he really looks like. I still have the face of a fox-faced sneak."

  Madigan's chuckle had become like an earth-wave. "It's like something out of those odd little magazines with the surrealist covers, Thomas. Have you ensured that your—as—marvelous invention will not die with you?"

  "Sure. I've willed the secret to a small group of cutthroats sometimes in my employ. Their looks are against them. They remind me of me. They need it. And when I am gone, they will carry on the evil work that is so close to my heart."

  "What a wonderful man you are," said James Madigan. "From what deep well do you draw your flowing humor? Thomas, I feel giddy! I'm suddenly ill. Call my man for me. I'll not be able to get home alone."

  "I did call your man, James, just before I poisoned you. I told him that you were dying. He'll be here shortly. I had to tell my story to someone, and I could not let that someone live if he believed it. And after all, who will suspect me of poisoning you, just because we were drinking together with no one else present when you were given the needled brandy? My thing will hold. It will be another of those most baffling crimes ever."

  "Ah, your wonderful humor, Thomas! But I am quite sick."

  "Dying, I tell you. Dammit, man, can't you get it through your head that you're dying before you die? I want you to believe me! It's less fun when you don't believe me. James, I kill you! Act like a man being killed!"

  "You are such a wonderful man, Castlereagh. If I am somehow called away, and it seems that I am, I'll miss you woefully."

  "Believe me that I kill you, Madigan! It's no fun if you don't believe."

  But James Madigan died with a blissful smile, happy in the presence of his golden-hearted friend. It was enough in life to have known him.

  "I had better take the other one tonight also, and have it done," Thomas told himself. The fox-face flickered there for a brief instant, as it sometimes did when he was alone. "And then I'll turn it up as far as it will go, and damn the headaches. This one will take everything I've got."

  These were two of the most mysterious murders ever. The poisoning of Madigan was clearly murder; and the bloody bludgeoning of Doctor Forester could have been nothing else. And yet they seemed impossible of solution. There was no clue. No nothing.

  The drink of Madigan had been poisoned, that of Castlereagh had not been. And yet they had been together for the long evening, and no one had intruded. And the affair of Doctor Forester was truly weird. Thomas Castlereagh, taken by a strong premonition, had gone to the home of his close friend the doctor and been admitted. Something happened then, a thing so shocking that Castlereagh does not retain the memory of it. From his attempt to intervene, apparently, he was covered with the doctor's death blood, and he held the death weapon in his own august hands. Whatever fell intruder did the thing remains a mystery.

  These foul murders cry to Heaven for vengeance, but we of Earth are baffled when we try to answer that cry. All is riddle.

  A certain commentator best encapsuled the feelings of all of us:

  "The sympathy of the nation and the whole world goes out to Thomas Castlereagh. So great and good a man, and he has suffered such sorrows in the past! And now to be deprived of his two closest friends in a single right! The heart groans."

  WHITE WOLF CALLING by C. L. Grant

  There have been only a handful of C. L. Grant stories so far—though they are starting to come with welcome frequency—but the by-line has already become one to watch for. A Grant story is notable for good, likeable characters sympathetically portrayed; for well-delineated backgrounds; and for being so well told. The following story has a rural American setting and deals with a ghostly wolf that appears as a sign to those who are soon going to die. Sound familiar? Don't count on it. Not the way C. L. Grant tells a story.

  Snow: suspended white water humping over hidden rocks, slashed by a slick black road that edged around the stumped mountains and swept deserted between a pair of low, peaked houses that served as unassuming sentinels at the mouth of the valley; drifting, not diving to sheathe needled green arms that bent and held in multiples of thousands, spotting indifferently the tarmac walk that tongued from the half-moon porch of the house on the right. A snowman with stunted arms and holes for eyes squatted awkwardly beside a solitary spruce, watching nothing and making uneasy the brown-bundled man who stood by the mailbox. He leaned heavily against a broad-mouthed shovel, staring at the home opposite, turning his red-capped head to look beyond it to the forest that wavered through the sailing crystals up the slope to blend before the summit into the gray-white air.

  No wind. Breathing only as he listened to the sunset, strained to hear the summons of the wolf.

  "Mars?"

  The shovel skittered from his stiff hand, banged against the walk, and angered him with its rifle-volley clatter.

  "You think you have the power to move that house with just your eyes?"

  Turning, he bent to retrieve the shovel, waving his free hand to indicate he had heard and did not approve. Not so many decades before, he had begun calling his wife Venus because of her shorteni
ng of his own name to laughingly deify him; hers was Samantha, but his Venus she was. On the porch now, with crimson cheeks and her back reed-fragile, she folded her arms against the cold, waiting as he took a frustrated poke at the soiled snow the village plow had left to harass his cleaning. The mount was almost ice, and he glared at his gloves as if to blame them before hurrying to the house.

  "Get inside, you dope, before you catch your death."

  "I haven't seen the wolf, Venus. I'll probably live forever."

  "Quit your smiling, Mars. That isn't funny at all. Get inside."

  "You go on ahead. I'm almost done."

  "I'm stubborn, Mars Tanner. I like to watch you killing yourself while that shiny new snowblower I gave you for Christmas lies rotting in the garage."

  He pinched at her nose, tugged a lock of hair. "I may not be as young as I used to be, kid, but I can still handle anything that comes out of the sky."

  She made a face and thumped him on the back as he went through the door, then rushed down the darkened hallway into the sweet-smelling kitchen before the warm stinging yanked at his parchment face and dried his lips.

  "Tea?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Coffee?"

  He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Every time you ask, and every time I have to tell you, dummy, that coffee gives me gas. When are the boys coming back?"

  "If they're sober, they'll be back in time for supper, as always," she said, taking his cap and stiffly new coat to hang by the wood-fed stove. "Some boys. They're almost forty, you know."

  "In age, maybe, but their heads are at least two dozen years behind."

  Venus tugged at the strings of her apron, letting the blue and yellow cloth tighten around her waist before she wriggled to settle it into place. Her hair was bunned gray, narrowing her face, sharpening her nose to a pale robin's beak. Only her chin remained youthfully rounded, even when she was mad.

  "I don't like the way you make fun of them, Mars. They've come to hard times, in case you've forgotten the accident. It wasn't easy for them, losing both their wives as suddenly as that." She stared at him standing by the refrigerator. "Two daughters-in-law, and no grandchildren. It hasn't been easy for me, either."