The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  He stopped halfway and ran around in a tight half-circle, a very tight half-circle. “Bim!” he was yelling. “Look out, Bim, It's—I—think he put somepin inna cawfee!”

  “What got into Coney?” Bim said wonderingly.

  “That's a good question,” I said. “A very good question. Sure acted strange, didn't he?”

  Bim nodded, his big jaw hanging down like the scoop on a steam shovel.

  I edged away from Bim, watching the guy called Coney. He had spun around for only about two seconds, and then he did a really brave thing. He was still standing there facing us, still staying put while every normal impulse must have been shouting, “Go! Go!” and still throwing his features around as if he were trying to get them loose. He reached up with his right hand and slapped his chest, and then brought his hand back into sight.

  He was moving with no speed at all, in fact his every move seemed filmed in slow motion, but in his hand was something even uglier than his face. It was a big, blunt .45 automatic.

  His meaning was clear. He was going to shoot me.

  And from the look on his face, or rather the looks, for one succeeded another with startling rapidity, he meant to shoot me where it would hurt most and last longest. I could tell by his expressions that he wanted me to die, but to die slowly, in the most awful agony. I imagine that if he'd had time, he would have planned something truly fiendish, like tickling me to death or letting ants eat me up, but it was obvious that time was something he had all too little of. As a matter of fact, there could have been only split seconds left, but still he tried, still he fought that silent battle with himself.

  I didn't even reach for my gun. I was in the presence of something greater than I. This was something I had never seen before and surely would never see again, an example of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.

  He had the gun outside his coat now. But you do not carry .45 automatics cocked and ready to go, so he had to cock it. Coney grabbed the slide, and then froze a moment, but got the gun cocked and ready to fire. And then he fired. Ah, but not at me. He let go one of the slugs from the automatic, but the gun was pointing out and up, and the bullet clipped off a small limb from a pepper tree.

  And then Coney gave up. A man can only stand so much. He let out another hoarse shout. Then he ran right out past us and through the gate and down the street. He obviously didn't know where he was going, and didn't care where he was going; he was just going. Bim loomed on my right.

  “You done it!” he said.

  “Yeah. I done it.” I turned to face him.

  He didn't have a gun in his hand. He was just advancing toward me with his big paws opening and closing. I wanted into the house fast, now that there had been shouts and gunshots, but first there was Bim. After him, I'd have it made. I set my feet and let him come.

  I have enormous confidence. As long as there is only one man facing me, I don't much care how big he is. Much of that confidence is based on the fact that I have spent a staggering number of hours getting into and keeping in shape, and perfecting a number of judo holds and throws, as well as much unarmed defense. After an hour of that, anybody would be staggering. Besides which, I am an ex-Marine.

  I sized Bim up. When he reached for my throat I knew he was going to be easy. All I had to do was grip one of his arms at the wrist and above the elbow, pivot around and slam my hip into him and then bend sharply forward. His own momentum, plus my strength, would send him crashing to the ground like Hoover Dam.

  I timed it just right. His big face loomed behind his reaching hands and I got the grip easily on his right arm. I spun around, slammed my hip into him and bent forward, and sent him flying ... and sent him flying ... and I was up off the ground kicking my legs feebly, and then flying through the air. I hit with a crash.

  I just lay there. I was in horrible shape, and it was a good thing I hadn't had even a sip of that coffee. I was weak enough just from being tossed through the air. Then, reeling above me, spinning and going into and out of focus, was something that looked like a cross between Gargantua and a bull moose. It really did look cross. In what appeared likely to be my last lucid moment I noticed that it was Bim. Well, that's the way it goes. So he was tougher than I thought. But at least I had confidence. And I was confident as hell that he was going to kill me.

  He'd got his hands around my throat and was squeezing pretty good and lifting up my head and banging it down on the ground, and if you don't think this rattled me you can go to the foot of the class, I could even hear my brain rattling, going clickety-click like the ball dropping into the slot on a roulette wheel.

  I was flat on my back, and with him banging my head like that, I was pretty much at a disadvantage. But I managed to get my right hand up across my chest. Now, just a second more, and I'd have him. The bridge of the nose is paper-thin; a blow there will drive deadly bone splinters into the brain. Fire surged up in me. I was going to kill him! I lashed out with my hand. I smacked him on the nose. He snorted and whanged my head down.

  Die! I thought. Die! I was getting addled. A guy can only take so much of that banging his head on the ground. But then, when I had even forgotten that there was such a thing as hope, hope surged through me. Something surged through Bim, too, and he dropped my head as if it had come loose and begun screeching at him.

  Bun was hunkered over me, but the hands that had left my throat were now held out at his sides, fingers splayed wide. He snapped his head up—maybe there was something up there in the sky. Then he clenched his fists and stared down at me. But he wasn't seeing me. For perhaps five full seconds he was like that, frozen rigid.

  Then, on his fat face, grew a look of sheer horror, of curdled disbelief. His mouth sagged open and he let out a weird wailing sound, mostly bass, but with a few high squeaky notes, like a pig stuck in a foghorn. He leaped up then and literally twirled about, as if he were an elephant spinning on tiptoe, and then he lumbered off out of sight.

  I got to my feet and stood swaying. The landscape reeled. My brain kept rattling slightly.

  I was alone. I had won.

  I took a step and fell flat on my face. But I'm persistent. I crawled to the steps before the entrance, then got to my feet. I walked to the big door and tried to open it, but it was locked.

  I stood there for a moment as my head cleared. The craziness went out of my brain. I breathed deeply, managed to bring my thoughts back to what was inside this house. It seemed as if an hour had gone by since those first shouts, but I knew it could have been only a minute or so. And most likely less than half a minute had passed since that gunshot. Not too much time.

  But there'd been enough noise so that there was no longer any point in silence. I took out my .38, looked at the Colt in the palm of my hand for a moment, then fired two shots into the lock on the door, and a third so that I could kick the door open. Inside was a big hall. On my right a curving stairway led up to the second floor. Nobody was in sight. I went up the stairs three at a time.

  A hallway ran left and right at the top of the stairs. I could see the doors to half a dozen rooms. All were closed. I hadn't yet seen another person in the house, but I knew Todhunter and Toddy must be here somewhere. I ran to the first door, threw it open. The room was empty.

  I ran down the hall, turned the knob of the next door and threw it open. At a window across the room, his back to me, was Gordon Todhunter. He jerked his head around in surprise as I entered, and he partly turned toward me. A .45 automatic was in his hand. When he saw who it was, a smile cut a line across his craggy face.

  “Oh,” he said, “it's you—” and turned around.

  I shot him twice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Todhunter crumpled slowly, hands coming up toward his chest and his knees bending before they buckled. Even when he fell, he didn't go all the way down. He stayed in a sitting position, one hand pressed against the carpet. He hadn't let go of the gun but he couldn't quite get it up.

  I jumped across the room to hi
m and jerked the gun from his hand. He slid slowly back about a foot so that he could lean against the wall. He wouldn't be feeling much pain yet, if any. Shock would take care of that for a while. But he was badly hurt. I could see that, from his face and from the spot where my two bullets had entered. He was wearing white pajamas, and blood was beginning to stain them, over his chest.

  He shook his head slowly, then looked into my face as I squatted by him. He even managed to plaster on part of a smile. It was surprising, I thought, how much I'd come to like him in the little time I'd known him.

  I said, “I'm sorry, Gordon. I am, you bastard.”

  “It ... evens it up.”

  I knew he was referring to the fact that I'd saved his life by getting him out of Ravenswood. He went on, “It got pretty complicated, even for me. But where did I slip?”

  “That letter to Toddy, mainly. The one that brought me in on your side. It was what started me on the right track, anyway. And that's all it took, of course, just something to get me after you. I had Sebastian Wise figured as Mr. Big, the top man. But it was you all along.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes, I put Wise in the senate.” He looked at me for a long time. “Grooming him for governor. I might have put him there, too, but he got big ideas. Too big for him. If he'd been content to go along with me ... But instead he tried to have me killed. He wanted my spot, my power.” Todhunter looked levelly at me. “In my vault in the basement I've got information on recording tape, movie film, in photographs and documents, that keeps twenty-seven fairly important men in line. Twenty-seven, including five legislators up at Sacramento. But twice that many do what I want them to do just because I've helped them up the ladder during these last twenty years. But finally one of them—Wise—decided he'd try to take over.”

  “I guessed he must have tried to get rid of you. Otherwise you'd never have written that letter to me. When did it happen?”

  “The same night he ordered Stone killed. You must have figured out that Stone was my man. Worked for me for seven years.” He paused. “I had another man before him, for twelve years. Knew what I wanted from the beginning.” He stopped again and a question grew in his eyes. “The letter to Barbara? How did that...”

  “It had this address on it,” I said. “It had to have this address so she'd receive it, of course. And just a little while ago I learned from a girl named Satin that she'd come with George Stone to a big place on Fern Road—a place big enough to have a gate with two armed guards. She sat outside in a car while Stone went on inside. He told her this was where the big boss lived. Mr. Big. When I remembered that you lived on the part of Fern Road where homes have stone and iron gate houses, all the rest started falling into place.”

  I hadn't heard footsteps, but an adjoining door between this room and the next was thrown open. I swung my head around to see Toddy standing in it. She must have been asleep, and roused by the noise. Her hair was tousled, and she wore a red Chinese robe.

  She stopped inside the door, then she saw Todhunter crumpled on the floor, with me beside him, and she screamed. She started to run toward him—or me, maybe—but I blasted one shot from the .45 past her legs. She stopped suddenly and stared at me.

  “Back up, baby. Just keep your distance,” I said.

  “Shell, you—”

  “Shut up. There's a phone somewhere in the house. Get on it and call a doctor. Then call the police. And don't call anybody else. Fast, baby.”

  Todhunter said to her, “You'd better do what he says, Jan. This man Scott isn't fooling.” She went out.

  “Jan, huh?” I asked him. “I've been wondering what her real name was.”

  “Janet. Janet Welles. I thought it better to address the letter to my ‘daughter.’ My real daughter, Barbara, is still traveling in Europe. After all, I wanted your co-operation. And Jan is intelligent enough so that I knew she would figure out what I wanted. Close enough, anyway. At any rate, she did a good Job.”

  I started to say, “You don't know how good,” but bit it off. After all, Todhunter was dying. Instead I said, “Funny. I guess I'll always think of her as Toddy.”

  He talked a little longer. From what he told me, and what I'd already figured out, the whole thing became clear. I had, for quite a while, thought of Gordon Todhunter as a man who'd accidentally got into the middle of Wise's plans and had to be taken care of because of that. But now, it turned out, the man in the middle had all along been Shell Scott.

  As Todhunter had said, Wise got too big for his britches, planned to kill Todhunter and take over, at least, eventually, in the position Todhunter enjoyed. Perhaps George Stone knew something of the struggle for power that was about to start; perhaps not. But when he decided to spill what he knew to me, that had started the ball rolling; and now I could understand why Stone had talked to me instead of somebody else on the committee, and why he'd thought he might get complete immunity. The information he'd had for us, not only about Todhunter's being Mr. Big, but Sebastian Wise, among others, being controlled by Todhunter, was almost enough that the committee would have absolved him of murder.

  Most of my previous deductions about Wise had been valid; my error was in not including Todhunter as the man opposing him. Wise had ordered Stone's murder that night after overhearing part of my phone conversation with him. He must have been worried that Stone might have spilled at least part of what he knew to me, until I'd phoned him at his home later that night to tell him I'd learned nothing. From that point on, it had been a battle between two big men, Wise and Todhunter, each one making a move only to have it countered by the other. And me in the middle.

  When Todhunter had learned of Stone's murder, and the circumstances surrounding it, he knew what must have happened, and who had killed Stone, and why. The real payoff came that night, Todhunter went on to say, when one of his own bodyguards made an abortive attempt to kill him. Todhunter, forewarned by his knowledge of Stone's death, had been prepared for something like that, and the man was easily overpowered by trusted members of Todhunter's little army, and Todhunter himself.

  He said, “Name was Sam Beenis. I made him admit that Wise had given him five thousand to kill me. Then I shot him in the head. I knew that Wise would just keep on trying to kill me, after once making his move, unless I managed to stop him. And I didn't want to kill Wise unless I had to. He's a valuable man, swings a lot of weight in the legislature.” Todhunter paused. A red stain had oozed through his fingers and trickled down the front of his pajamas.

  “That's when I sat down and wrote the letter to you. I tried to put enough into it so that once Wise read it he'd realize it was impossible for him to kill me without ruining himself—and so that, with my death, you'd have acted on the information in that letter. While I remained alive it was very doubtful that you'd check up on any of the senators.”

  “That's right enough,” I said. “And it almost worked.”

  “Yes. I was taking a little risk by signing my own name, but it was no good without my name on it. My name had to be signed, if that letter was to save my life. Which it was supposed to do—and did.” That thought amused him, and he chuckled softly, then went on.

  “The devil of it was that neither of us could afford to let the other be exposed; In that case. Wise would drag me down with him, and vice versa. It was a ticklish business—either kill, or co-operate. Well, that was an important letter. I mailed it myself. You may recall it was special delivery and so on. I wanted it delivered to you, so I'd be sure Wise didn't see it first and destroy it before anybody else got a look at it.”

  He sighed. “Wise had men watching me. A lot of them, in two cars. They picked me up. I think they were going to kill me, but I told them I'd written a letter which would ruin Wise; that they'd better take me to him. They did, and when I told Wise about the letter; it stopped him for a little while. But he didn't let me go. And, in fact, he told me that perhaps he couldn't kill me—not yet—but it might be enough if he killed Shell Scott. And no matter what happened, that I w
as through. He was quite repulsive. At any rate, he was even more clever than I thought, and I wound up in Ravenswood.”

  I knew what had happened then. The first forged letter that Wise had put into the files, ready for me; the second forgery that he'd mailed a day or two later; the injections of drugs into Todhunter's veins.

  In this whole case, the two most confusing factors had been, first, the fact that Sebastian Wise, a sort of first lieutenant to Todhunter, bad cleverly made it appear that Todhunter was mentally ill; and second, the fact that Todhunter, after I had rescued him from Ravenswood, had lied, and lied, and lied. He had lied about overhearing the two men in the restroom, about his reason for writing me, about his daughter, about practically everything except his name.

  I said, “You really had me fooled with that baloney about overhearing Doe and some unidentified man in a restroom. I thought it really happened.”

  “I'm a practiced liar. Besides, I had several days in Ravenswood to figure out a story to tell you, if I should ever get a chance to tell it. But you told me something that helped.”

  “I did?”

  “While we were still in Ravenswood you said that you had come there because of what a man named Doe had told you before he died. Doe was a member of my organization; he'd done various jobs for both Wise and me. Naturally I knew what he looked like, so I merely described him. Since he was dead, it was perfectly safe, and I knew it would make my story more convincing.”

  I nodded and said, “About that scribbled note under the flap of the envelope you sent Toddy. How did you happen to write to me, of all people? And if you knew enough to mention that somebody was trying to kill me—which they were—how could you know I would still be alive?”

  “I wasn't sure, but the whole thing was a gamble anyway. Wise had, of course, told me that he might have to kill you. I've already told you about that part. But, thinking about it at Ravenswood, I decided you were the best man I could possibly contact, if I got a chance to contact anybody.”