The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  There was a marrow-freezing, spine-tingling quality to his voice. It was strangled, panicked. I'd heard the sound in the voices of dying men. He groaned again, “Oh, God, I'm hit—”

  I felt along the wall, found a light switch. Doe had sounded hurt, badly hurt and frightened. But it wouldn't be the first time a man had pretended.

  I aimed my .38 at the sound of him on the floor, flicked the light switch and at the same moment started to squeeze down on the trigger. But then I saw him and relaxed. The gun wasn't even in his grip. He'd got onto his hands and knees, his head hanging down between his shoulders. He had on dark pants and a white shirt, and on the right side of the shirt was a spreading red stain. As I watched him, blood dripped from the red stain to the floor.

  I jumped toward him as his arms collapsed, bent at the elbow. His head fell, his face striking the floor. Then he slumped forward, sprawled out, moving feebly. It was an ugly thing to see. He barely moved, like a crab scratching at the floor.

  I grabbed him, rolled him slowly over onto his back. “Doe!” I said sharply. “Listen to me. Who hired you? Why did you kill Rule—and try to kill me?”

  He coughed. His eyes were closed.

  “Doe. And what about Todhunter? The guy at Ravenswood? What—Doe!” He still had his eyes closed, his face pale. I slapped him hard across the cheek. “Listen to me, you sonofabitch. Don't die on me.”

  His lips moved and his eyes opened slowly. Then he spoke, and I guess he just said what he wanted to get off his chest first. And that was, logically enough I suppose, the thing that had happened last; the murder of Joe Rule. Doe spoke of him as the “kid,” but I knew he meant young Joe Rule. There were long pauses in his speech, but he got some of it out.

  “Somebody saw him—the kid—talking to that guy Todhunter ... in his room. They grabbed the kid ... got word to me.”

  He went on talking for a few seconds, and I heard the words all right, but my mind focused on the first part of what he'd said. It was true, then, that Rule had been murdered because of his visit to Ravenswood, because he had talked to Todhunter. I'd been right in just about everything I'd been telling Rawlins earlier—but I still didn't know why all this was happening.

  Doe went on, “I was ... just hired to do a job on him. Like I was supposed to do on you. And Todhunter.”

  “What about Todhunter? What do you mean, you were supposed to do a job on him?”

  He coughed again and bloody foam spilled over his lips. “Tonight,” he said feebly. “I was supposed to ... but this came up. The kid...”

  “Supposed to what, Doe? Tell me!”

  I was scared now, for fear he wouldn't be able to get the words out. I knew now that he wasn't just hurt; he was dying. When you've watched men die, it's not hard to recognize the signs. And Doe was almost gone.

  “Two o'clock,” he said. “Planned for about,then. Must be done by now. Too late...”

  “What, Doe? What's going to happen at two o'clock?”

  I could see my wristwatch, the hands pointing nearly to the hour. It was about five minutes till two a.m.

  “ ... quiet then. At hospital. Nobody'd be around to bother ... they're gonna...”

  He stopped. His head flopped to one side and his lips worked but no sound came out. I slapped him again. “What, Doe? Tell me!”

  “Got to get rid of him ... they're...” He paused for a long time then. His voice was so faint I could barely hear it. I leaned forward with my ear close to his lips as he forced the last words out, “...gonna hang him.”

  “Why, Doe?” I said. “And who wanted him dead? Who's behind all this? Who hired you?”

  He didn't move. His lips were slack.

  “Damn you, Doe. Who hired you? Who was it, Doe?”

  I slapped him again, shook him. It wasn't any use.

  I sat alongside his body for a few seconds. There were twenty other things I'd wanted to know, things he could never tell me now. But I guessed I was lucky to have learned as much as I had. My eyes fell on my watch again. Four minutes until two a.m.

  At about two a.m., Doe had said, they were going to hang Todhunter. Right there at the hospital. It sounded as if they were going to make it appear to be suicide, although Doe hadn't said so. Maybe he hadn't had time to say so. But he had said “Todhunter;” he'd used the man's name. Not “the guy that's supposed to be Todhunter.” Not “the fake one” or “the ringer” but the name, Todhunter.

  And I couldn't figure out why anybody would want to kill a crazy man.

  I turned and jumped to the front door, sprinted out of the house and down the road to my car. I knew it would take me close to ten minutes to reach Ravenswood from here. I started the Cad's engine and yanked the wheel around in a U-turm. I thought about phoning the police, but there wasn't time now. There wouldn't even have been time if I'd tried to call the moment Doe had told me. By the time I could get through to the proper individuals and explain it would have been too late.

  I jammed the accelerator down to the floorboards, trying to make my mind work, come up with something that would make a little sense about my going to Ravenswood. I knew that I had to try to save Todhunter; not just for his sake, but for what he might be able, sometime, to tell me; and for Toddy, too.

  I knew that the chances were I would find Todhunter dead. But even if that were the way I found him; I'd want to keep his killers from getting away—and keep from getting killed myself. But what could I do alone?

  A thought brushed my mind, but went away. I prodded my brain, pushed it. There was always at least a chance Todhunter would still be alive; as long as there was that chance I had to act on it. I kept the accelerator down, but it just didn't make sense for one man to barge out to Ravenswood. More likely I'd set up another killing—mine.

  I swung off Garden and hit Eucalyptus, yanked the steering wheel right and slid around the corner. Even at this hour, there was a lot of traffic on the highway. I felt a little shaky, weak, and I guessed it was reaction from the tension of this last half-hour. I felt depressed, tired—and then weaving through the other cars on Eucalyptus, I had an idea. It wasn't a big idea; but that last one, checking the area around the vacant lot on Garden Street, hadn't seemed like a very big one either. Maybe, I thought; maybe I can surround Ravenswood.

  I swung left at the next corner, trying to remember where ... then I recalled the route one of those cab drivers had taken. It was barely out of my way, and in half a minute I was at the detour I'd seen so recently. I stopped, got out and grabbed one of the wooden detour signs and tossed it into the back of the car, then climbed in and took off with a screech of tires again.

  On Eucalyptus once more, I slammed on the brakes at the turnoff leading to Ravenswood, jumped out of the car and planted the detour sign in the middle of the highway, the arrow pointing right. Then I got behind the wheel and swung right, shoved my foot down on the accelerator. It was two o'clock, on the button.

  As I drove I bent over and fished a small flashlight from the glove compartment. Then I held the steering wheel steady with one knee while I reloaded my .38. That was all I could do, and it wasn't much, but I had to hope it was enough. The depression and weariness that had been creeping over me shortly before were gone now. For a while, anyway. All I could think about was what might be happening ahead there, inside Ravenswood. The noose or sheet or cord around a man's neck, the lungs straining for breath, and then the blood becoming still, growing cold.

  Long before the hospital building was in sight, I switched off the car lights and slowed down a little. I couldn't be sure, but when I thought I was a hundred yards or so from the spot where the road split to loop around the building and rejoin itself, I slid to a stop and jockeyed the car back and forth until it was pointing back the way I'd come, on the same side of the road where I'd been traveling, but facing in the wrong direction. I parked my big Cadillac there so that it blocked that side of the road, but left barely room for other cars to go by—assuming other cars would be going by, and that's what I was ass
uming.

  I locked the car doors, then sprinted down the dirt road. In the dim light I almost missed the spot where the road curved left, but I caught it in time and veered that way. Then the mass of Ravenswood loomed ahead of me. From here it didn't look as if any lights were on within the building. I ran across the grass, a dull ache starting to grow in my side. I went on past the big front doors and on around the building, continuing on about halfway down along the wall. There didn't seem to be anybody around.

  From my previous visit to Todhunter's room I knew it was near the end of the hallway bisecting the main corridor. And I had noted, at the end of that hallway, a heavy wooden door. That's where I was headed now. The ring of keys was still in my coat pocket, and I pulled them out as I reached the door, flashed my light briefly on the lock and then started choosing keys. The second one turned the lock noiselessly. I pushed the door open easily, slipped inside and shut it. The hallway was pitch-black, no lights burning overhead, I didn't see a light burning anywhere.

  It was very quiet, then I heard a thin cry, a kind of wail. Muscles in my body tensed. I moved quickly to the door of the room where I'd seen Todhunter—but then I heard the wailing sound once more. It came from far down the hall and was repeated over and over again. From another direction I heard a different sound, a lower sobbing, the human sound of sadness and maybe pain.

  I got a skeleton key into the lock, just as Joe Rule must have done. In moments I had the door to 109 open, stepped inside and shut the door behind me, flicking on the small flashlight. The beam fell on the legs of a man. They dangled before me, feet only inches off the floor.

  I raised the light and it fell on the tight-wound noose of a twisted sheet wrapped around the man's neck. He hung from it, head bent awkwardly to one side. The light splashed on Gordon Todhunter's craggy, angular face.

  I jumped forward and grabbed him, lifted his body higher.

  It took me only seconds, holding him up with one arm and shoulder and jerking at the noose with the other hand, to get him free, then I eased his body down to the floor. I'd dropped my flashlight, but it still burned, and I grabbed it, sent its beam quickly around the room. There was no window, and I jumped to the wall, turned on the switch there and flooded the room with light from the ceiling fixture.

  The room appeared light-tight, but I grabbed bedclothes from the cot and threw them at the door's base, just in case there was room at that spot for light to seep into the hall, then dropped to my knees alongside Todhunter. He was still warm, but there was no heartbeat, no pulse.

  He's dead, I thought. But even while the words repeated themselves in my mind, I'd put him into position on his face and was leaning forward to press air from his lungs, lean back lifting his arms, and then pressing forward and down again. He had stopped breathing, but so do men who drown, and often they can be revived. I kept working on him, losing track of time. I knew that he could have been unconscious only briefly; the breath couldn't have been kept from his lungs and body and brain for very long. But still he lay motionless.

  I kept on—and finally I knew that a breath had been his own. I continued the artificial respiration briefly, and then he was breathing unaided. His hands moved, and then he stirred. In a moment his eyelids fluttered. Soon his eyes opened and he tried to sit erect. I started to help him—and he let out a yell and swung a hard fist at my face.

  I ducked aside, his knuckles grazing my cheek, then grabbed his arms, tried to hold them—He was surprisingly strong for a man just brought back from unconsciousness—from death, for that matter. He was shouting and straining against my arms, trying to slug me, and I thought: I've got my hands full of madman.

  And suddenly he stopped moving, swung his head toward me. He was breathing heavily, but for a moment his breath caught in his throat and then he said, “Well, I'll be damned—you're Shell Scott!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Todhunter looked beat, pretty well roughed up—which was natural under the circumstances—but he didn't look mad. There wasn't anything about him that looked insane. His eyes had a sharp, intelligent, piercing look instead of the wild and suspicious look I'd seen in them before.

  But it was the same man.

  There wasn't any doubt about that. It was the same craggy face, made of angles and planes and flat surfaces, an almost geometric face. He had the look of an old-time sailing man, or plainsman, or Indian scout, and was even handsomer, more virile and striking in appearance than he'd been before, because he didn't have the beaten, shrinking appearance and attitude he'd had the last time I'd seen him.

  But that had been only sixteen hours ago. And I knew this man had been crazy then.

  He was still looking at me and finally I said, “Yeah. I'm Shell Scott. Now tell me one thing: What's your name?”

  “I am Gordon Todhunter.”

  He put one hand on his neck, rubbed it, turned his head from side to side. “What happened?” he asked me. “How did you get here? I don't understand.” His voice was very weak, almost a whisper.

  “I just busted in here—and you were hanging by the neck when I opened the door. I barely got here in time.”

  He rubbed his neck some more. “Hanging? A couple of them came in and slugged me—”

  I interrupted him. “Look, just a minute ago you let out some pretty good yells. If anybody heard you—”

  This time he interrupted me. “This room isn't completely soundproof, but it's close ... probably it's the one used for the really violent and loud cases. When the door's closed you can hardly hear anything from outside.”

  I couldn't get over the change in Todhunter. It was almost beyond belief. I said to him, “How did you recognize me just now?”

  “I know your face well. Been in the newspapers many times—and you're an investigator for the lobbying committee, too. Why, I put your name under the flap of an envelope, in a letter ... you must have got it.” He stopped suddenly, then he tapped his head. He smiled slightly. “I see. You mean how does it happen I'm not out of my head now?” His voice was getting stronger.

  “Frankly, yes. Do you remember seeing or talking to me before?”

  He squinted his eyes and nodded. “Very vaguely. Was it yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was crazy then. I thought you were going to hurt me.” He paused only long enough to note the somewhat exasperated expression on my face, then continued. “Let me explain once and for all. I am sane. I am Gordon Todhunter, and I am of sound mind and body. The men responsible for my being in here, in this—this hospital, did a perfectly fantastic thing. Twice now they have forced me to submit while they injected something into my arm. Once yesterday, and once several days ago, before I was committed to this place. I was here when I became myself again.”

  “That must have been at the time of your commitment.” I paused. “You mean they doped you? Before the sanity hearing?”

  “More than that, Mr. Scott. They actually made me a mentally ill person. After a few minutes, perhaps half an hour, I began feeling strange. A bit shaky ... crazy. It was hard to talk normally. And then, I don't know how much later, within an hour or two I suppose, I really went all the way.” He shook his head. “Everybody looked flat. Like pieces of paper.” Todhunter looked at me and went on with a trace of wonder in his voice, “I remember thinking that if they turned sideways they would disappear. It was the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to me.”

  Listening to him, I had for a moment forgotten where I was. I was extremely anxious to hear the rest of his story, but we had to get the hell out of here. I said, “Look, we've got to put some distance between here and us. How do you feel?”

  “I'm all right.” He was still on the floor, but he unfolded long arms and legs and got to his feet. But then he staggered and threw out an arm. I had to grab his hand to steady him.

  “We'd better wait a couple of minutes,” I said. “There's a hundred and fifty yards or so that we may have to run. But a few minutes is all we can spare.”


  He nodded. “Mr. Scott, I've been pulling myself together. But apparently I owe you my life. How did you happen to get here just in—in the neck of time, as it were?” He smiled slightly.

  “A guy named Doe spilled the beans to me just before he died—of a gunshot wound. It's a long story. He killed a friend of mine. Did you talk to anybody else yesterday, during the afternoon?”

  “Yes, I did.” He frowned. “I was in much better shape than when I saw you, Mr. Scott. More normal, I mean. This chap—young fellow with black hair, nice-looking boy—popped in the door. I was trying to tell him who I was, why I was in this place, when the director came in. He's in on all this, you know.”

  “I believe it.”

  “He carries a gun. Well, he pointed the gun at us and there wasn't much we could do. He took the young chap out and locked the door again. I don't know what happened to the boy.”

  “They murdered him.”

  Shock spread over his face. “Good God!” He paused. “I knew they were murderers, but...” Then he straightened up. “Mr. Scott, it's possible they may come in to ‘discover’ my body, don't you think?”

  “Yeah. You ready to make a run for it?”

  “Quite ready now.”

  “Okay, I'll—” I stopped. I could hear a funny sound. It was a faint, but very strange noise, like muffled harmonicas, or a far-off herd of elephants with upset stomachs.

  “Do you hear something?” I asked Todhunter.

  He cocked his head on one side and nodded. “Yes. Odd. Don't believe I've heard anything like that before. Must be making a devil of a racket to come in here like that.”

  “Well,” I said, “let's—” and then I actually recoiled a couple feet.

  There was a great crash of sound, like hell exploding. By the time I noticed that the sound had come simultaneously with the opening of the door I also noticed a guy coming through the doorway with a look on his face that must have been at least twice as surprised as the look on mine.