“Oh?”
“She and her husband will be inside the house—”
“She and her husband?”
“And they’ll explain everything to you. They’ve both got something to show you.”
“I don’t know about this—”
“She didn’t explain what it was, Shell, but simply said something terrible had happened. And it’s connected with the case you’re on, the Halstead case.”
It rang a funny little bell. There was a kind of faint clanging in my head already, along with a kind of dull thrombling, but I could hear the funny little bell.
The last caller with a sexy voice had said the same thing. And soon after that Porter got it in the back.
“Nobody’s supposed to know I’m out there, huh?” I said suspiciously. “I’m supposed to sneak in, huh? Did this lovely girl give any specific directions, like making sure to sneak in by way of some ambushes—”
“She did say you should walk in from the street behind their house—wherever it is.”
“I know where it is. I was there this morning. There’s bushes back there. Can you think of anything better than bushes for ambushes?”
“You’re to go in the back way. And you aren’t to let anybody know you’re going out there.”
“Splendid. Anything else?”
“Just a minute. Let me check my notebook. No … that’s all, Shell. But she stressed it was important; it just couldn’t wait.”
“Yeah. They might be trying to trick me. Outwit me. Ha. That’ll be the day. I’ll fix them. Uhh.”
“What? Is something the matter?”
“No. Just a little ache in my headache. O.K., thanks again, Hazel.”
“You’re sure you’re all right, Shell?”
“Me? Ha-ha, of course I’m all right.”
13
I didn’t park one block away. I parked two blocks away.
Then I opened the Cad’s trunk and pawed through the junk I carry in it. There’s a lot of electronics equipment, microphones, bugs, infra-red gear and such, but that’s not what I was after at the moment. I lifted a scratched, stained crossbow and found the extension brace and bit I was after. Then I put the crossbow back and looked at it for a moment.
The crossbow, a medieval weapon, one type of which had once been used for shooting quarrels—square-headed bolts or arrows—at the enemy. But a friend of mine had given this one to me. He was a Marine recently back from overseas. Most high-level talk was about the unthinkable atomic and H-bombs, but at a lower level, in the heat and muck of jungles, ancient weaponry was being used for waging war. My friend had used this very crossbow for silent kills. Some of the arrows he’d given me were still stained with blood.
I rummaged a bit, picked up a light but strong collapsible bamboo ladder—the kind that can be slid out or back like a fishing rod—and a roll of tape; then slammed the trunk’s lid and headed for the Sporks’.
There was always a chance they were on the level, of course. But it didn’t seem likely. There were too many people around who impressed me as being definitely atilt. Besides, even if they were un-atilt there was nothing wrong with taking a few extra precautions. Nobody was going to shoot me in the backside if I could help it.
Fool me once, I was thinking sagely as I neared the Spork house, your fault; fool me twice, my fault. I couldn’t sagely remember what came after that, for fool me three times, four times, and so on.
I didn’t go in the Sporks’ back way, but through the back yard of the house next to theirs. Just in case people, expecting me at the back of the Sporks, were skulking there. To outwit me. To massacre me. There was lots of shrubbery—lots of bushes—and I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see anything suspicious. Probably I looked suspicious, darting from bush to bush, but that couldn’t be helped. Even though all this darting was beginning to tire my head.
Having safely reached the side of the Sporks’ two-story house, I ran up my extension ladder, placed it carefully, then climbed up it to a small veranda or deck outside one of the rear rooms on the second floor. There I tried the window, but it was locked. A few yards away, however, was a door. It also was locked; but using the brace and bit it was the work of only a minute to bore a four-inch hole in the wood below the doorknob, reach through and unlock the door and step inside.
I was in a wide, carpeted hallway. I walked quietly past closed doors to the end of the hall, reached the top of a wide stairway curving down to a small room, into which the front door opened. At the top of the stairs I stood quietly, listening, senses keen and alert.
There wasn’t a sound from anywhere up here on the second floor, but a soft flutter of voices rose from somewhere below. On my right at the foot of the stairs was an arched doorway, closed by blue velvet draperies or curtains. I started slowly and cautiously down the stairs, holding my brace and bit ready.
Then I stopped, cocked my head to one side.
I deliberated a moment, eyeing the brace and bit.
Then I nodded knowingly, put down the brace and bit and took my Colt Special from its holster. I started down again, gripping the .38 in my right hand.
I had been instructed to come in the back way. If there’d been evil aforethought, that meant people would be in the back of the house preparing to slaughter me. But those sounds seemed to be coming from the front of the house. What did it mean?
Halfway down the stairs I slipped off my shoes, continued in my stocking feet. Not only was my progress thus even more silent, but it appeared to soothe my head. Well, it almost had to, I thought. After all, my feet were connected to my head. It gave me a queer feeling to realize that not once before in my whole life had I thought of that—though it was now a perfectly obvious truism. Then I had another truism: Probably a lot of headaches were caused by feet.
Right then I realized something wonderful was happening to me. My reasoning powers were being elevated to the nth degree. My mind was clearer than it had ever been before. It was getting just like glass. I was standing there thinking that maybe thinking caused athlete’s foot, when those sounds below captured my attention again.
I cased the area carefully. The scene appeared a little different, now that I was seeing more clearly.
At the foot of the stairs on my right was a doored archway. In the arch hung thick blue velvet draperies. And it was from behind those draped velvetries that the sounds came, a buzzing, as of conversation. A buzzing, as of something, anyhow. I listened carefully. Buzz-buzz. It was a bit difficult to filter it out from the faint clanging and dull thrombling, but I filtered it. Somebody—something—was in there.
I cocked my .38 Colt Special.
My course was clear. It was either go in there—or leave.
But I couldn’t leave. Not after coming this far. And spending such a hell of a time getting here.
No, it was in I go, quick, while I’ve got the element of total surprise. I would tiptoe down the rest of the stairs in my stocking feet, which fortunately were connected to my head, and pause for only a moment before those draped velvets. Then I’d part the arches with a lightning movement and spring inside. And then …
Then …
Well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
When I was on the fourth step from the bottom a little reddish arrow of dizziness zipped silently, like a quarrel shot from a crossbow, from the left side of my skull to the right side. The little radish must have gone straight through my brain. Then it ricocheted, quarreling west, north, south—all over the place. What I think happened then is, I tripped. Or stumbled. That is to say, I appeared not to have everything under control.
But I continued to think very fast. Like lightning.
Well, I thought, I’m tripping, all right. But at least I’m tripping in the right direction. That’s where I wanted to go, isn’t it? Down there? Well, that’s where I’m going. Just going a little faster than I’d planned to. But, hell, you can’t expect everything to go precisely according to plan.
That draped
archway was only a few feet away. I knew if I fell down and hit the floor at the foot of the stairs it would make a hell of a noise, and thus alert anybody in there—where those buzzing buzzes were buzzing—and my element of surprise would be lessened. According to my position, however—I was way over at an angle in the air by this time, even though I was still thinking like lightning—it was going to be impossible for me to tiptoe down as I had planned and catch the assassins—or monster bumblebees—unaware.
It was clear to me that the only sensible course left was to give a great leap and burst through those velveted curtains into the room. It was either that, or keep considering alternatives until I fell flat on my face. So that’s what I did. Well …
I did the great leap, all right. But, unfortunately, it was in a direction very nearly parallel to the floor. In fact, I think my head was about an inch below my feet when I did the great leap. But, hell, things can’t always go as you plan them. I was aimed right at those curtained velvets, though. Sailing through the air at them. If anybody can burst through those veal cutlets, I thought, it has to be me right now.
I was wrong about that, too.
Perhaps it’s because I didn’t hit the things squarely in the middle, where they were supposed to open. Whatever the reason, they didn’t open. I could feel them wrapping around me like velvet octopuses, all over and around me; but there’s always a bright side and whatever it was softened the blow when I landed. I hit with a jarring thump, skidded, rolled, and then felt something crash against me. There was eerie plinking music. And there was a geat big bang. Like a gun going off.
Muffled in my curtain-clogged ears I could hear wild sounds. No more buzzing. There was a high-pitched scream, and a low-pitched scream. Sounded like a woman screaming, and a man screaming. “Eeeeeyorrk!” the woman screeched, and “BLLAAAHK!” the man bellowed. I was kicking, yanking, pulling, trying to get out from inside the curtains.
“Eeeeeyorrk!”
“BLLAAAHK!”
It occurred to me that if somebody was going to slaughter me they couldn’t ask a better time for it. In fact there wouldn’t be much left to do. But nobody had killed me yet. I thought about it. I thought like lightning.
Then I stopped struggling.
“Ah, shut up,” I said. “Shut up and get me out of here.”
I had to ask them a couple more times, but finally they pulled themselves together and got the job done. I sat silently on the floor for a few seconds, looking up at Mr. and Mrs. Spork.
Sybil put long red-nailed fingers over her lips and turned her head a bit, and looked at me with slanting eyes.
I looked up at Mr. Spork with crossed eyes. “Have you got any bees in here?”
“Bees?” he said. “Bees?”
“Well, if you don’t know what they are, you must not have any.” I paused. “Mr. Spork, I suppose you’re wondering …” I threw my hands up in the air.
“You’ve certainly ruined our blue velvet draperies,” Sybil said.
“Is that what they were? Yeah, I guess I have. Shot a hole in one, didn’t I? Hmm, didn’t do the carpet any good either, did it? Ah, there’s a door I’d better tell you about, too.”
I got to my feet, feeling myself over. Nothing seemed to be broken. Nothing new. In fact, it appeared that when something had crashed into me—actually, I had rolled up against a piano—it had stopped some of that quarreling inside my skull. For example, I now knew thinking wouldn’t cause athlete’s foot. At least, it didn’t seem likely.
I put my gun back in its holster—after I found it in the blue velvet draperies—took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Spork, no matter what any of us has done, let’s not criticize eath other, hey? Let’s … live and let live. Let’s not ask me why I came in here in this, ah, this, uh, this fashion. I had my reasons. Truly I did. But I should prefer not to go into them right now. Or ever. Each of us does things different ways, right? O.K.? Well, that’s settled, so what was it—”
“But why,” Sybil asked me wonderingly, “did you jump into the draperies?”
“Mrs. Spork,” I said, “how would you like to play Russian roulette? All by yourself.”
“I’m still all a-flutter,” she said. “All a-twang.”
“You’re all a-twang. Huh. You don’t know what all a-twang is.” I paused. “Matter of fact, neither do I.”
“Where are your shoes?” she asked me.
“You’re full of marvelous questions, aren’t you? I left them halfway up the stairway, if you’ve really got to know. After I bored a big hole in your door. Yeah. Bored a hole right through it. Why didn’t I use my set of picklocks? Why didn’t I use a five-cent key? It is possible none of us will ever know. I will say only this, boring a hole in your door seemed a keen idea at the time. I took my shoes off so my head, in which I recently got shot—see the bandage? See the big hole? Ah, maybe that explains the hole in your door—wouldn’t make so much noise. I didn’t want my head to make any noise because I was afraid the bumblebees would hear it and eat me. There, that should cover most of it. Any more questions?”
She didn’t have any more questions.
A couple of minutes later we were all seated in the room—the living room it was—and I told them I knew everything there was to know, so they could speak freely.
“You don’t know everything,” Sybil said. “I called you because we’re being blackmailed.”
“Oh? By whom?”
“We don’t know—I mean, a man came here this afternoon, but we’d never seen him before.”
“Blackmailed how?”
“He had a picture.”
“Ah. So? Chinese say, one picture—” I shook my head. “What kind of picture?” I asked her, suddenly recalling that Angelica Bersudian had asked me the same question—suspiciously—not long ago.
“A photograph of me and Hugh in bed. Hugh Pryer and me.”
“Ah. In bed.”
“Well … Not in it, on it.”
“I presume you were not having a pillow fight.”
“Not exactly.” She reached into a handbag on the couch between her and her husband, took out a small snapshot and handed it to me. “This is what I wanted to show you,” she said. “The man left this copy with us. Now do you understand?” I examined the photo—and told her, yes, I understood.
They’d been warned not to contact the police or anybody else—which was why she hadn’t given Hazel her full name, and also why she’d asked me to sneak in the back way, so nobody would see me and deduce that the Sporks had called me.
“Hum,” I said, handing the photo back. “Erum. I see. So, on one of the recent evenings of, ah … someone, without your knowledge, snapped a—”
“Oh, we knew about it. All of us did. But we thought the whole album had been burned up. The picture this greasy man had today was burned. But only around the edges. Not … in the middle.”
“Slow down a shake.” I was starting to ger the picture. The picture. “You all knew about this?” I went on. “That there was an album? And it was supposed to have been burned? In a fire, you mean, of course.”
“Yes, of course.”
“In this album who—that is, the photographs of what individuals were included?”
Mr. Spork joined in for the first time. “All of us.”
I nodded. “You mean not merely you and Mrs. Spork, but the Halsteads, Whists, Rileys, Kents, Nelsons, Bersudians, Smiths, Warrens, and Pryers.”
“That’s right.” He thought a minute. “In fact, you’ve named every one.”
“Uh-huh. Why this album? Just for fun?”
“No, for our protection. That is, the protection of the group,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“Not completely.”
“We aren’t the first group to utilize this method of insuring the—well, the discretion of each individual member. It’s been done many times before. You might be surprised to know how many times.”
“I suppose I would. You mean that if somebody felt like b
labbing—say to a newspaperman, the law—knowledge of the existence of his, or her, compromising photograph would insure silence?”
“Not merely silence, but also very conscious discretion. Should someone feel remorse, or become angry with one or another in the group, estranged—a divorce, for example, or a couple leaving the group—the photographs would very likely prevent … retaliation.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mr. Spork pursed his lips. “Understand,” he went on seriously, “we—none of us—feel we’re doing anything heinous or even reprehensible. Certainly Sybil and I don’t. We feel that sex, the act of sex, is much more than merely some kind of carnal acrobatics intrinsically cursed and degrading—”
“It’s about the friendliest thing you can do,” Sybil broke in.
“Well,” I said, “you certainly have some kind of point there—”
“—though it is undeniably true,” Mr Spork was continuing lyrically, “that sex, or rather the false aura of evil and shame and guilt which has been imposed upon the word and act, is the foundation on which has been erected uncountable neuroses—”
“That’s certainly true,” Sybil said, “there’s certainly truth in that—”
“—and psychoses. This monumental hypocrisy has led millions, perhaps billions, to hospitals, mental wards, the psychiatrist’s couch, and to the divorce court. Yet once stripped of illusion and hypocrisy, if we can ignore the vocal victims of sexual starvation denying their own hungers—”
“There certainly aren’t many things that are more fun—”
“—sex stands revealed in a newer and purer light—”
“I could tell you a thing or two—”
“Sybil, shut up, please.”
Wonder of wonders, she smiled at him and shut up.
Mr. Spork continued, “As I was saying—”
“Hey,” I said. “What about this blackmailer?”
“Yes, I was getting to that. The point I’m making is this, Mr. Scott. We members of the group feel neither shame nor guilt, but we are excruciatingly aware that our mores and attitudes, our conception of morality, is greatly at variance with that of many other members of our society—others who have it in their power to cause us, individually and collectively, great harm, frustration, and loss. Exposure of the group’s—ours or any other group’s—activities could bring upon us censure. Contempt. Financial and social retribution. And more, much more. There is no wrath more horrible than the wrath of the righteous—even when they’re wrong.” He smiled. “They conducted the Inquisition, made Galileo kneel. They crucified Christ. They burned Bruno.”
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