by Otto Penzler
“It was really very simple,” his former assistant boasted. “That is, once you know the ingredients and principle.” He warmed to his subject. “I went back to the early Egyptians, took—”
“If you please, Doctor Agnew,” the anesthetist protested. “Sit still. I want to be certain that this splint is supporting your fracture correctly.”
“It had better,” Satan warned. “Doctor Agnew is a very important member of our League of the Grateful Dead.” He chuckled. “He makes young men out of old men—sometimes.”
“That one tonight was too old,” Agnew shrugged. “He died on the table.” He looked over at Meredith in the corner. “But just you wait until I start on you. You’ll wish you died two years ago—” He stopped abruptly. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Satan asked.
“I thought I heard a woman’s voice,” the thin-lipped surgeon told him. “Probably one of our little coryphees down stairs that’s drunker than usual.”
“Probably,” Meredith agreed coldly. “And if I had one last dying wish,” he spoke distinctly, “it would be that the police could only know the type of place that you’re running in my old hospital.”
“Wistful thinking,” Agnew chortled.
“Perhaps,” Meredith agreed. “But I do wish that Commissioner Craig could be listening in on this little conversation here before you kill me.” He looked at the man who claimed he was Satan. “The Commissioner actually half believes you are the devil—after that shooting in his office this afternoon.”
“Merely a bullet proof vest and a lot of nerve,” Satan chuckled. He nudged Doctor Agnew. “You should have seen them when the fingerprint report came back from Washington. It was worth the pain I suffered when you grafted on those fingertips just to see the expression on their faces.”
Meredith sat up more erect.
“Who are you, really?”
“Mace Manders the magician,” Satan boasted. “Sure they electrocuted me. But Doc here brought me back to life with methylene blue, gave me a nice new devilish face, and nine dead men’s fingertips.”
“You figured out this racket?”
“He did not,” Agnew boasted. “I did.”
“No, Bill,” Meredith shook his head. “You’re not smart enough to figure out a thing as big as this is.”
“NO?” AGNEW JEERED. “I was smart enough to kill ten patients of yours by always managing to leave a sponge inside the wound and fishing it out before you found it when we did an exploratory or a post.”
“So,” the gaunt man on the floor breathed quietly. He closed his eyes, a wave of relief sweeping over him. “So that was how it was done.” He raised his voice. “And some of them died right here in my old operating room where we are now.”
Satan kicked him again.
“We can hear you. You don’t need to shout.”
Meredith sat doubled in pain for a moment, then managed to sit back erect, the wound in his side throbbing madly, the pain stabbing deep into him.
“I—I suppose,” he said, “you two have made millions.”
“Millions,” his former assistant boasted. “And I’ve had all the experimental material that I needed. It’s been a surgeon’s dream.”
“But how in hell, Bill,” Meredith demanded, “do you bring the dead to life?”
Both Doctor Agnew and Satan chuckled like school boys. Then Doctor Agnew grinned his twisted smile.
“You compliment me, Doctor. I don’t. They merely think they’ve been dead, that’s all.”
“It is simple,” Satan boasted. “When a patient worthy of our attention goes to Mercy Hospital, Doctor Agnew merely drugs them into a cataleptic state and signs their death certificate. Then before the undertaker goes to work, Yoshama calls on the dead man’s sweetheart or his wife, and tells her I can bring the dead to life—and I do.”
“But all your members of the League of the Grateful Dead aren’t rich,” the man on the floor protested.
“That,” Agnew told him, “is where we are smart. We take in an assortment of various types to staff our place and to entertain our paying guests. Some of them believe they have been dead—the others have sold their souls to Satan, here, to bring their loved ones back.” Doctor Agnew’s thin face was sharp with triumph. “And you are the man who said I was a fool, Jim—said I was money-mad. Well, I have it. And I’ll have more. I’ve got a perfect racket.”
Meredith shook his head.
“No, Bill. No racket is ever perfect. No matter how smart you are, there’s always someone who out-thinks you.” His battered lips formed the semblance of a grin. “You don’t know it, Bill, but you’re going to burn for murder. That’s a promise.”
“Kick him,” Agnew ordered.
Satan did. In the mouth.
Meredith spit out a mouthful of blood, continued calmly.
“For example. You think you’re so secure. What would you do if the police should raid this place and find two dozen men and women who they believe are dead?”
“They wouldn’t find them,” Agnew boasted. “Our doorman is a lookout. And at the first sign of the police, our ‘guests’ know what to do. They merely file into the cellar and from there into an unused portion of the little known merchandise tunnel that has honey-combed the ground beneath the streets of downtown Chicago for years.”
“But we won’t be raided,” Satan stated with assurance. “Our ‘guests’ are afraid to talk. They believe I can send them to hell—and I can.”
The anesthetist stepped back from the table.
“There. I think that will do it, Doctor Agnew.”
The thin-faced surgeon slid down from the operating table.
“Pour me a drink, a stiff one,” he ordered.
His younger assistant did so. The surgeon lifted the glass in a toast.
“To your long and lingering death, Doctor Meredith.” He gulped his drink and threw the glass on the floor. “All right, put him on the table,” he ordered. He smiled thinly. “I won’t bother to scrub. I don’t think that he’ll die of infection.”
THE OTHER TWO men laughed as they lifted the limp and unresisting figure of the bloody, once-great surgeon from his corner to the table.
“First”—Agnew probed none too gently with his dirty scalpel at the bleeding wound in Meredith’s ribs—“we’ll see how his reflexes are.”
He turned the scalpel in his hand.
“Next, we’ll see—”
The sharp bark of a service revolver spat at him from the swinging doors and the scalpel flew from his hand.
“What the hell!” he demanded, stopped short, his thin face blanching as the swinging doors swung open simultaneously with the frantic flashing of a red light on the wall—and a squad of grim-faced Chicago plainclothesmen walked into the room, guns in hand.
“Up with them. And up with them fast!” the lieutenant who had fired the first shot ordered. “The whole building is surrounded and you haven’t got a chance.”
Satan chose to disbelieve him. His arm jerked up and down, his gun spitting in his hand.
The big lieutenant staggered—then fired again.
Satan tried to raise his gun, but couldn’t. He was dead, shot through the heart. He toppled to the floor, a crumpled, motionless heap.
The anesthetist chose to run. The phone cord tangled in his feet and tripped him. He lay where he fell, whimpering for mercy.
Doctor Agnew stood staring at the corner where Doctor Meredith had been lying. The phone he had flung from him in anger was connected roughly to the outgoing end of the severed wire along the baseboard.
The big lieutenant grinned, felt of his shoulder where one of Satan’s wild bullets had burned a flesh wound. He nodded toward the phone on the floor.
“Clever, eh? The big Doc on the table there out-thought you. I don’t know how he got you to throw him the phone, but you did. So he connects it to the outgoing line and we’ve been on our way ever since.”
Doctor Agnew didn’t answer. And they saw the
n why he didn’t. One of Satan’s wild bullets was embedded in his temple. His nervous system was completely paralyzed, and Dr. Bill Agnew was dying on his feet.
Eager hands lifted Jim Meredith from the table.
“We come up the outside fire escape,” a red-faced detective explained. “And mighty glad to get here when we got here, Doctor.”
“The relief was mutual,” Meredith smiled. His eyes were on the face of his former assistant.
“He’s going to die, Doc?” the lieutenant asked, plugging a wad of cotton packing against the wound in his own shoulder.
“No. Not just yet,” Doctor Meredith told him. He seemed another man. Despite his bleeding wound, his unshaven, battered features, and his bloody, ragged clothes, he fully looked the great and famous surgeon that he was. They all looked at him with respect in their eyes.
“No. Not just yet,” he repeated. “There are several little items like the pretended resurrection of Max Boderman and the murder of his widow still to be explained. Besides, we’ll want him to go to trial, spread the whole story in the papers, so that the countless men and women upon whom he has imposed will know the truth. I’ll see to it that he’s able to take the stand.”
The lieutenant looked dubiously at the once great surgeon’s battered lips and trembling hands.
“But can you save him, Doc?” he asked.
“Why of course,” Doctor Meredith said simply. He held out a shaking hand and it ceased to tremble. “Of course I can save him. Tim would want me to. I’ll save him. Tim would want me to. I’ll save him for the chair. I promise you that, Lieutenant.”
And he did. Tim Murphy had been right. For Doctor James Meredith did come back.
GARRY KILWORTH (1941– ) was born in York, England, but traveled extensively in his early years, since his father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force, as he himself was for seventeen years. He attended King’s College in London, graduating with a degree in English with honors.
In 1974, he won a short-story competition sponsored by Gollancz and the Sunday Times with “Let’s Go to Golgotha”; he subsequently wrote more than a hundred fantasy, science fiction, historical, and general fiction stories, as well as seventy novels in the same categories; in 1980, he began to write children’s books, also on science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural themes, winning numerous awards for them.
His fiction has received four nominations for World Fantasy Awards. In 1985, he was nominated for Best Collection for The Songbirds of Pain; in 1988, his nomination was in the Best Short Story category for “Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands”; in 1992, The Ragthorn, written in collaboration with Robert Holdstock, was the winner for Best Novella; and in 1994 he was nominated for Best Collection again for Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands. In 2008, his novel Rogue Officer won the Charles Whiting Award for Literature.
“Love Child” was first published in the 15th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, edited by Mary Danby (London: Fontana, 1982).
THE STEAM TRAIN came to a halt with a great deal of respiratory noise. Burnett stepped from the first-class compartment on to the platform at Kuala Lumpur totally unprepared for architecture that was more suited to an Eastern temple than a railway station in the 1950s. Had there been a reclining Thai Buddha beneath one of the arabesque archways, or a jade eye in the centre of the main cupola, it would not have been out of place. That was what Burnett loved about the East: the cultural surprises it continually produced from its bulging pockets.
The third-class passengers from the open trucks were beginning to swarm over the platform, carrying trussed chickens and cardboard luggage fastened with string. He motioned for porters to retrieve his own luggage from the train, taking only one item himself: his Smithfield twelve-bore in its cowhide case.
Burnett took a tri-shaw to the Stamford Hotel, through street crowds that periodically closed in upon the transport until the clangour of bells and taxi horns cleaved the way for another few yards. In K.L. the pedestrians compose a single, large, amorphic lifeform that moves like an amoeba, pulsating under the hot sun. Wares were constantly thrust into Burnett’s face during the frequent pauses for clearance. He ignored the traders, staring steadfastly at a point in the sky just above the horizon, as if this were his destination and nothing must be allowed to turn his attention from it, not for one second. He knew that a single word, even a sharp “No,” was all the key they required to gain access to the pockets of his white suit. If he spoke or altered his gaze he would find himself with a pineapple or a carving he did not require. His problem was, he was weak. He pitied them their poverty, and they, being poor and desperate, could sense that lack of strength in his character. “Please,” they would say, once they had his eyes. “My children need food.” And guilt would guide his hand to his wallet. They knew him through his aspect and his demeanour. But there were too many of them. He could not feed them all. They would leave him as destitute as themselves. It was an impossible situation. So he avoided their faces, all of them, and fought a desperate battle within himself. In Singapore he was known as “Old Stoneface,” but the expatriates who thought they knew him were less aware of his real feelings than the Malayan strangers who whispered their entreaties to him now.
STAMFORD HOTEL WAS situated at the top of a rise, and the tri-shaw man had to stand on the pedals in order to force the vehicle up the slope. Burnett fingered his pigskin luggage on the seat beside him, having transferred his guilt to concern over its weight and bulk. The Chinese grunted and heaved as he forced the pedals down, sweat trickling under the holes in his ragged vest. He looked emaciated; but then they all did, these morat Jim Crisp. He ponderedose little men of the Orient, with their stick-thin legs poking from khaki shorts three sizes too large for them.
At the hotel Burnett over-tipped the man and watched him touting for business as a middle-aged Japanese matron with the bearing of an empress came down the marble steps from the main entrance. Then a porter was there, reaching for the pigskin suitcases, and Burnett transferred his attention, and, once again, his sympathy.
His first-floor room was cool, having a high ceiling with two large fans whirling gently at half speed. After removing his jacket and placing it carefully on a hanger, Burnett made a local telephone call. Then he made a second call to room service, for a jug of ice-water. The porter had offered to unpack the suitcases but Burnett had declined; he did not like anyone touching the clothes he was going to wear. While he waited for the ice-water he removed a bottle of Scotch from his hand luggage. There followed a moment’s reflection. There was something about this whole business which was very disturbing. Not his adultery and the subsequent result—that was physical. No, there was something else: an unpleasant sensation of not being in control, of being drawn, as it were, to this place. Yes, he had made the decision to come himself, but were there other influences beyond the obvious . . . ? God, this is idiotic, he thought. I’m master of my own destiny.
• • •
KAM JALAN ARRIVED fractionally after the water but raised his hand at the offer of a drink.
“No thank you, sir,” he said in a respectful tone. “It is against my religion to touch alcohol.”
Burnett regarded the Indo-Malay steadily. What religion was he? Hindu? Buddhist?
“Fine,” he said, swilling the ice cubes around his glass. “I got your wire.”
Kam Jalan nodded deferentially. “Yes, sir, but there is a small problem. It seems she is no longer in Kuala Lumpur.”
Burnett was sitting on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward and pointed to a green wicker chair. Kam Jalan sat down, but stiffly, with his backbone as straight as a pole. The hairless skin was taut across his skull, and an over-active thyroid gland made his eyes protrude, revealing the whole of the iris. Until a year ago he had been the housing agent for the British Council, Burnett’s employers, but he had since retired and moved to Kuala Lumpur. It seemed to Burnett that the old man had lost some of his previous regard for him. Kam Jalan’s manner was distant—almost unfriendly.
Kam Jalan cleared his throat. His hands played nervously with a small cap that he wore to protect his baldness from the sun.
“I must respectfully ask you, sir, whether the girl will be well treated.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The girl, Siana Nath.”
Burnett was about to rebuke the old man, was on the point of correcting his manners, when something stopped him. He sat for a moment wondering whether a lie would be acceptable, even if it were an obvious untruth. Sometimes they just wanted to avoid the responsibility, these people. A flying beetle hit the overhead fan and ricocheted across the room like a bullet. It struck the wall and landed upside down by Burnett’s toe, kicking its legs and buzzing furiously. Burnett moved his feet. Kam Jalan reached out and turned the beetle right side up. He then looked up expectantly.
“I’m not in love with her,” said Burnett quickly. “That must be obvious. But she will be provided for . . . Is that acceptable?”
Kam Jalan nodded. “It is as I thought. In that case I will take you to the village.” He pointed to the beetle, now skittering across the tiles. “He will recover soon and before long fly into the blades again. How many times he does it will make no difference. There is no learning in a beetle.”
A silence descended between them now. Burnett took one or two sips of whisky but found he was not enjoying it under the placid gaze of his companion. Then he realized the man had something more to say. Something important. He waited attentively.
“Do you intend,” said Kam Jalan slowly, “to adopt the child?” His staring eyes were disconcerting, and Burnett looked away as he digested this unexpected question. Outwardly, he knew, he looked calm. Inside there was a maelstrom of emotions.
A shadow passed over Burnett’s soul. He dismissed it, almost instantly.
