Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Vuh—” he said, and tried again. “Vane!”

  “Hello,” the intruder smiled. “How are you, Chief?”

  Lankershim’s eyes flickered to Vane’s hands, empty at his sides. Then he looked again at the other’s face.

  “Give a dog a bad name,” Vane observed. “I’m not armed.”

  “How the devil did you get in here? I—” The chief of police abruptly shot out his arm toward the call-buzzer on his desk.

  “Stop,” Vane said.

  Lankershim’s forefinger touched the little button, but did not press it. The chief stood there, his left hand flat on the desk, his right arm extended.

  Slowly his gaze swiveled toward Vane.

  His mouth gaped for a shout to summon aid, but no sound emerged.

  “That’s it,” the lawyer nodded. “Remain perfectly quiet and don’t say a word.

  Just listen. I’ve got a prisoner for you. I left him outside—Stohm, one of Pasqual’s men. He’ll talk. All you have to do is ask him questions.”

  Vane glanced at his watch. “I’ve an appointment soon. See you later. You’re an honest cop, Lankershim, and I remember when you used to pound the pavements on the East Side. So I’m turning Stohm over to you. You won’t need to third-degree him. For myself—” He hesitated “—I’m not going back to prison. It’ll do you no good to throw out a dragnet for me.”

  Vane turned to the door. “You’ll be all right in three minutes. Adios, Chief.”

  He went out, leaving Lankershim an apoplectic statue. The hall wasn’t empty.

  Vane pulled the Homburg lower over his eyes and walked swiftly toward the door.

  Uniformed men eyed him and turned away.

  But one man didn’t turn. Vane saw his face light with recognition. He opened his mouth and thrust out a finger in a swift gesture.

  He stayed that way, briefly. He was paralyzed, immobile, with one foot in the air and his arm extended. Then, off balance, he flopped to the floor, while a nearby officer stared and came hurriedly forward to administer first-aid.

  No one else recognized Vane, and he left. Nobody expected to see him in police headquarters, so he had no difficulty in walking out and hailing a taxi. He was driven to Pasqual’s home.

  It was an old-fashioned mansion set alone amid wide grounds. Vane noticed a number of cars parked near by. He remembered that Big Mike was throwing a party that night.

  He was again conscious of an overwhelming hunger, and a strange, inexplicable lassitude that weakened him. He fought it down, staring at the frog-faced man who opened the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell Pasqual Steve Vane’s here,” the lawyer said.

  The other stepped back a pace. His hand dived into his pocket.

  Vane extended his arms slightly from his sides.

  Frog-face said, “Come in,” and closed the door as the lawyer entered. Then he deftly frisked his guest. After that he nodded to a chair set against the wall and vanished hurriedly.

  VANE sat and looked around. This had once been a palatial Georgian mansion, but Pasqual had redecorated it to suit himself. The bright hall was furnished in the height of garishly bad taste. Vane blinked sleepily. He felt very tired . . .

  Frog-face returned. “Come along, he grunted, and led the way upstairs. He paused before a door, thrust it open, and gestured. Vane stepped over the threshold.

  He heard the door shut behind him—and lock. He was in a bare room, empty save for curtains that covered one wall. There were no windows. Two men stepped out from behind the drapes. They held guns aimed unwaveringly at Vane.

  “Pasqual’s busy,” one of them said jeeringly. “He sent us to—”

  Briefly the odd lassitude left Vane as he realized the death that menaced him.

  He snapped, “Drop those guns! Quick!”

  “Like hell !”

  The automatics clanked on the bare floor. The killers stared down at them, at Vane, and simultaneously lunged forward. They halted in mid-course, paralyzed.

  Vane said, “Go tell Pasqual I want to see him.”

  The two turned Stimy and vanished behind the curtains. A door shut metallically.

  The lawyer rubbed his forehead with a shaking hand, wincing as he felt the chill surface of the jewel. He felt weak and sick. And tired. His thoughts spun chaotically. What—

  The room was moving. No, it was his dizziness. There was a choking, unfamilar odor in Vane’s nostrils. Reeling a little, he went to the drapes and drew them aside.

  There was a metal door in the wall. It was locked.

  Vane felt icy cold. His head was bursting.

  It was extremely difficult to move. He turned, staggered, and fell full length on the bare floor.

  His body was like ice. He could not move a muscle. He was paralyzed. . .

  Gas! Pasqual had pumped anaesthetic gas into the room. Vane recognized the strange odor now. But what manner of gas could have this effect? His brain was perfectly clear, yet he was immobile as a statue. He lay, waiting.

  TIME passed. A burly man in a gas mask pulled through the drapes, a gun in one hand. He paused to eye the figure on the floor. Then he pocketed the gun, bent, picked up Vane, and carried him into the next room, shutting the door carefully behind him.

  Vane’s vision was restricted. He could only stare up at the ceiling. Then a new face appeared, swart, thick-lipped, and brutal. It was Pasqual.

  The stocky gangster stood looking down at Vane. His hoarse voice asked, “Dead?”

  “Yeah.” The other man was removing his gas mask.

  Pasqual put his palm flat on Vane’s breast. He took a small mirror from his pocket and held it to the lawyer’s lips.

  “He’s stiff, all right,” the gangster nodded, rising. “Didn’t take much gas to knock him out, either. I dunno what he did to Jim and Oscar, but they said he hexed ‘em. Well—” Pasqual’s gold teeth flashed in a grin. “That settles one thing. It was Tony Apollo who fell into the gorge up in the mountains. This calls for a celebration, all right.”

  He pulled at his thick lip, pinching it between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t want Vane’s body found here. Get the boys to dump him in the river.”

  The Homburg was still jammed over Vane’s forehead. Pasqual bent, tugged at it, and changed his mind. He stood up again.

  “Okay,” he grunted. “Snap it up. When the boys get back, they can help celebrate. I spent a cool thousand on champagne.”

  He went out. Vane tried desperately to move, to speak. It was useless. Yet he wasn’t dead. He could hear and see. But he wasn’t breathing. His heart had stopped beating. Poison gas—that didn’t explain it.

  Quite suddenly Vane remembered a sentence Zaravin, the Mercutian, had emphasized.

  “The owner of the gem at times falls into a state of suspended animation, during which the jewel rests and revitalizes itself.”

  Suspended animation! Good God! How long would it last? Vane thought frantically, Will I come back to life at the bottom of the river, with rocks tied to my ankles? How long—

  Rough hands lifted him. He was wrapped in sacking and carried. Downstairs, by the feel of the jolting motion. Then he lay motionless, till he heard the sound of a car’s motor starting.

  “Head for the river,” a low voice commanded.

  Traffic sounds came to him. Someone muttered, “Hurry up. There’s a police car next to us—”

  And a siren began to scream ominously.

  What was happening? Vane cursed silently, furiously. If he could only move! But no, he could merely lie helpless as the roar of the motor mounted louder and louder and the car jolted more uncomfortably.

  “They’re catching up. . .”

  “Throw the stiff out,” somebody suggested. “Under their wheels. That’ll stop ‘em. If we don’t—”

  A door-latch clicked. Vane felt himself moving. He fell heavily, rolled over and over, and lay still.

  Brakes screeched. Footsteps pounded on the pavement. The gunny-sacking was stripped fr
om Vane’s face.

  Staring up glassily, he saw a uniformed officer bending over him, dim against a star-sprinkled night sky.

  “It’s Vane!” the man gasped. “The escaped con!”

  He turned, shouting. “Keep on after those mugs. Radio headquarters to send a car out. Tell ‘em I got Vane—and he’s dead!”

  CHAPTER IV

  The Road to Life

  VANE lay on an operating table, a sheet over his naked body, and stared blankly at a bare white ceiling. He could not move. He could not tell the coroner or the medical examiner that he was alive, that an autopsy would be murder, that he had agonizingly felt the cut of a scalpel into his arm, though no blood flowed from the pale-lipped wound.

  The coroner, his face partly hidden under a gauze mask, came forward, holding a probe. He bent over Vane and delicately felt around the edges of the jewel on the lawyer’s forehead.

  “Funny,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it. By rights it ought to have killed the man—it goes right through the bone. Maybe it did kill him. I can’t find any surface wounds on the body.”

  A deeper voice growled, “Too damn bad the murderers got away. I know Pasqual did this, but I can’t pin a thing on him.”

  Vane realized that Chief of Police Lankershim was speaking.

  “And there’s something funny about this whole thing, Doc,” the official went on.

  “When Vane walked into my office an hour or two ago—well, I told you what happened, didn’t I?”

  The coroner’s gray eyebrows drew together. Level dark eyes scrutinized the jewel on Vane’s forehead as the medico nodded.

  “About Stohm? Yes. He confessed, didn’t he?”

  Lankershim expelled his breath with an angry sound. “He started to—answered every question I asked him. But he was so bruised up I sent him to the hospital for first and. And—now he’s dead.”

  “Dead ?”

  “Poisoned. I don’t know how. I’m checking up on the trustees and the internes.

  One of ‘em tied up with Pasqual, I know, and he managed to kill Stohm before the man could sign a confession. And now Vane—”

  Lankershim came into the lawyer’s range of vision. The hard, seamed face was very tired.

  “I feel sorry for the kid. Maybe he was framed, maybe he wasn’t. The cards were stacked against him, anyhow. And now he’s cooling on a slab—” The chief’s lips tightened. “Go ahead and find out what killed him, Doc. If I can pin this on Pasqual, so help me, I’ll send him to the chair.”

  A scalpel gleamed in the bright white glare. Vane felt a wave of hopeless sickness. His body tingled with expectation of the searing pain of sharp steel.

  His body . . . tingled . . .

  Yes. It felt like—like pins-and-needles, the prickling sensation in a limb when circulation is restored to it after a long time. A pulsating, faint stir, too brief to be called a movement, came . . .

  HIS heart! It was beginning to beat again! But already the coroner was placing the point of his scalpel below Vane’s sternum, preparing for the incision.

  Vane tried desperately to move. He managed to make one eyelid quiver. Neither the medico nor Lankershim noticed. The lawyer threw all his will into a silent, frantic command.

  The coroner hesitated, bent again to his task.

  Suddenly he threw his arm out in a convulsive gesture. The scalpel flew from his hand and rebounded off the wall, to clatter upon the floor.

  Lankershim said, “What the hell—”

  “I—funny! I couldn’t help it! Some reflex—”

  It was no reflex. As life returned to Vane, the power of the Stone from the Stars waxed strong. His heartbeat was distinctly detectable now.

  The coroner recovered the scalpel, stared at it, and thrust it into a sterilizer. He donned another pair of rubber gloves, and, with a different scalpel, advanced again upon the corpse.

  Then he stopped. His eyes and mouth expanded to their ultimate limits of flexibility. He gurgled inarticulately.

  Behind him, Lankershim gasped, “My God! Look at that!”> The corpse sat up.

  Vane winced, stretched out his arms, and yawned. He swung his feet from the table and sat eying [sic] the two astounded men.

  The coroner whispered, “You’re dead! You’re dead!”

  Lankershim came out of his trance. He sprang forward.

  Vane frowned and said, “Don’t move, either of you.” His voice was harsh, husky.

  His throat felt tight and dry.

  Water. He needed that, first. Clutching the sheet about him, he went to a cooler in the corner and drank nearly a quart of icy liquid. After that he felt better.

  He turned to stare at the two men, who were immobile statues.

  A warm stickiness on his arm drew his gaze. The incision to coroner had made was beginning to bleed as blood flowed again through Vane’s arteries. Luckily, the wound was not deep, and there was adhesive tape in a glass cabinet nearby.

  Gingerly he fingered the jewel on his forehead. It was still there, chill, glassy, alien.

  He thought swiftly. Pasqual was a shrewd, ruthless antagonist, and he himself was not as powerful as he had imagined. These trances might overtake him at any time. Again he felt the tug of painful hunger. Food was the immediate necessity.

  He was weak as a cat.

  Food—and clothing. Neither the coroner nor Lankershim wore garments large enough to fit Vane’s big-boned frame. The lawyer hesitated and finally said, “You’ll both wake up in half an hour. Lankershim, I’m going to have a show-down with Pasqual tomorrow morning. At six A. M. I’m going to his office on the East Side. I want you to be there, and I want you to see that Pasqual’s there, too. I don’t care how you do it, but that’s an order. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Lankershim said dully.

  “Swell. Now—I’ll need some decent clothes. . .”

  GRAY dawn broke over the East Side. Smoke rose greasily from the chimneys.

  People rose early in the slums; they had to. Garbage trucks, milk wagons rattled past. Pushcarts were loaded for the day’s trade.

  In the back of Uncle Tobe’s grocery, Steve Vane stood up from the table. Mickey was watching him with awed eyes. The lawyer smiled at the boy.

  “Gosh, you can sure stow it away! I never seen a guy eat so much.”

  Vane pulled the hat lower over his eyes. “I was hungry. Don’t wake Uncle Tobe.

  I’ll be seeing you.”

  He pushed through the curtains, went through the shop, unlocked the front door.

  He stepped out in the street, and, with a quick glance around, began to walk swiftly southward. It was nearly six A.M. Time for the rendezvous.

  Pasqual’s office was a dingy, mean little place squeezed in between tenements.

  Through the glass window Vane could see the squat gangster seated uncomfortably at his desk, shooting occasional glances behind him, where, no doubt, Lankershim was hidden. Vane wondered what means of coercion the chief had used on Pasqual to induce the gangster to keep this appointment. Well, that didn’t matter. The lawyer’s lips tightened grimly.

  He walked into the store. Pasqual shot up from his chair. His hand was hidden in his coat. Vane smiled.

  “I’m unarmed,” he said.

  The gangster’s thick lips twisted. He called, “Larkershim! Quick!”

  From the back of the office came the sound of hurrying feet. The chief, flanked by four uniformed patrolmen, stepped into view. He walked toward Vane.

  “I don’t know why I did this,” he said. “But I had to, somehow. Vane, you’re under arrest. Put up your hands.”

  Vane said, “All right,” and obeyed. He was thinking fast. At a word from him he could force Pasqual to commit suicide. Certainly the gangster deserved death . . .

  No. There was another way. But—

  Lankershim was walking forward, handcuffs clinking as he held them. “Come on, Vane.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  The chief sto
pped.

  Vane looked at Pasqual. The squat gangster still kept his right hand out of sight under his flashy sport coat. His little eyes were fixed on the lawyer. He snarled. “For God’s sake, put those cuffs on him!”

  “I just wanted to tell you something, Pasqual,” Vane said, very softly.

  “Remember Tony Apollo? Remember how he used to lick the tar out of you when we were kids? Remember how much you hated and feared him? Tony swore to get you, Pasqual, and he never broke his word.”

  “Apollo’s dead,” the gang chief lashed out.

  “He told me nothing could kill him till he’d kept his last promise.”

  Pasqual started to reply, but no sound came from the thick lips. The tiny eyes turned toward the door. It was opening, very slowly.

  Tony Apollo stood on the threshold.

  PASQUAL sucked in his breath sharply. A sound came from his throat. It wasn’t intelligible.

  Lankershim whispered, “Apollo!” He reached for his gun.

  Vane said, “Don’t move, Chief.” His glance took in the four patrolmen. “Or you either. This is between Pasqual and Tony Apollo.”

  Pasqual glanced around frantically. His face was a sickly butter-color.

  Tony Apollo walked forward.

  Pasqual screamed and clawed out his gun. He fired point-blank at the other.

  Blood gushed from Apollo’s chest. He didn’t stop. He ignored the wounds. He kept on walking toward Big Mike Pasqual.

  And Big Mike Pasqual wasn’t big any more. He was just a terrified little rat, yelling and picking up the telephone from the desk and hurling it at Apollo. The latter’s nose was crushed by the impact. The fixed, unchanging smile did not fade.

  Tony Apollo kept on walking forward.

  Pasqual seized a chair, lifted it, and smashed it down on Apollo’s head.

  “Keep away from me!” he mouthed. “Damn you, leave me alone! I never framed you!

  For God’s sake, Tony—”

  Pasqual picked up a heavy lamp from the desk and used it like a club. He kept hitting again and again at his opponent’s face. Apollo didn’t try to resist or protect himself. He just stood there, while his features slowly vanished in a mangle of red, pulped flesh.