“Geez!” said Doughface, skidding to a halt. “It’s . . . it’s you, Doc.”
“Yes, Jack, it’s me. Listen, fellow, don’t you think this has gone far enough?”
Doughface looked downcast. “Yeah. Yeah, but how can I stop it? The cops is all chasin’ me and the Army come out tonight. Geez, Doc, them guys is goin’ to shoot me on sight. That’s what the papers say. This is a helluva put-together. I can’t do nothin’ but run.”
Rita came back, swiftly apprehensive, without a clue to the identity of this tall youth who had confronted the tramp.
Pellman saw her and knew that she was the woman about whom the Greek had spoken. His eyes widened and he was visibly impressed by her beauty.
“Gosh, Jack, you’re a picker.”
“Look, Rita, this gent is Doc Pellman. He’s the guy that put my conk together for me and done all this.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Rita, chilly.
Pellman’s hat was off. “Pleased to meet you, miss.” He turned to the tramp. “Listen, Jack, I think I can get a compromise for you. They’ll send you out into the county to some nice, quiet estate. . . .”
“Jack,” said Rita, sharply. “Don’t listen to him. It’s a trap.”
Doughface looked at her and felt the truth in what she said. “Look, Doc, geez, I’d like to help but I’ve bumped guys off. Don’t forget that, Doc. I couldn’t help it, but I did. You couldn’t get these coppers to believe I didn’t. Some of ’em seen me do it. If I turn myself in they’ll burn me for sure.”
“Now you leave that to me,” said Pellman, knowing that he was winning. “I’ll talk to the commissioner. . . .”
“No, you won’t!” said Rita, growing tall and arrogant with anger. “You leave Jack alone. He can’t help what he does.”
“No, of course not,” said Pellman. “But he can keep from doing it again.”
“If I was only sure. . . .” puzzled Doughface.
Rita was thinking fast. She felt a debt of gratitude to the little man and, more, she knew that her lot would be misery if she was cast adrift now, beauty or no beauty. She had no illusions about this world, had Rita.
She glanced around her but nobody of importance or menace was in sight.
“Sure, Jack,” Pellman was saying, “I’ll see that you get a break. You just come with me. . . .”
And Doughface Jack was weakening. “Y’got a promise from the cops?” he begged.
“Well,” hesitated Pellman, “not exactly, but I can be pretty certain. . . .”
She stopped listening to him, thinking rapidly. And then she did a most unexpected thing. She rushed forward, almost knocking Doughface down.
“LOOK OUT!” she screamed. “THEY'RE GOING TO SHOOT!”
And Doughface Jack’s excited state of mind caused him to guess at a hundred troopers behind every pillar. A guard rushed forward, attracted only by the scream and Doughface multiplied him to a thousand.
With understanding, Rita dodged behind a nearby pillar almost before Doughface recovered. The tramp wanted to run, he started to run and Pellman, so close to success, did a foolhardy thing. He touched Jack’s coat.
Doughface whipped around. Pellman staggered and began to sink down. The guard was coming faster and, seeing a man begin to fall, jerked out his gun and fired a wild shot at Doughface, high over his head.
Doughface glared in that direction, crouched to sprint away. The guard collapsed and skidded to a halt.
The milling crowd all faced toward the tramp and the two fallen men, and for an instant, Pennsylvania Station was hushed.
Another guard started forward from the press. He dropped. Behind him a patch of the crowd went down. The others stood for an instant and then an intelligent man in their midst knew and screamed, “IT'S HIM! IT'S THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE!!”
Doughface glared after them. Few reached the door. The great marble blocks of the floor were covered with baggage and limp humans.
From the doors above the floor level a torrent of drab uniforms began to spew, flowing down. Doughface was breathing hard as he watched them. He thought he was trapped.
Sudden fury shook him. Why couldn’t the fools let him be? Why did they have to keep leaping at him and hounding him and . . .
The OD flow turned into an avalanche. Weapons and hats and men cascaded down the steps, intermixed until there was no distinguishing anything.
Sudden fury shook him. Why couldn’t the fools let him be?
Why did they have to keep leaping at him and
hounding him and . . .
The supply at the top ceased. A mountain was stacked up on the marble. An olive drab mountain marked here and there with bayonets.
Rita reached around the pillar and beckoned to Doughface. “Come on!”
They started for the train platform. But the noise above had already been heard and the news had spread. Not a switch-engine, not a porter was there to tip his cap and present his palm. Not an engineer or brakeman or conductor remained in sight or at his post.
Doughface halted on the platform.
“Geez,” he almost wept, “we can’t drive no engines no more’n we can drive a car. We got to get out of here, but . . .”
Rita was thinking fast again. She pulled at Doughface and raced up the steps again. Nothing had changed in the devastated waiting room. They picked their way, baggage in hand, across the sprawled and groaning people.
“Where ya goin’?” begged Doughface.
She did not answer but kept walking.
They reached the taxi lane but no drivers were there. Rita’s flashing eye lighted upon a limousine which stood on the line, engine barely audible. She went swiftly toward it and looked into the front seat.
There, under the wheel, was a chauffeur. His eyes rolled white as he saw her and he tried to cower back.
“Get up,” said Rita commandingly. “Who owns this car?”
“Miz Morgan Depeister,” chattered the chauffeur. “Who . . . who you?”
“I want to help you,” said Rita. “Sit up. Everything is all right now.”
The man sat up. He saw Doughface but he didn’t understand—not yet.
“Do you know who this is?”
“No’m,” he replied, still too frightened to think.
“This,” said Rita calmly, “is the man with the Evil Eye.”
“Yassum. But I’se . . . huh?” he choked suddenly. His eyes rolled back into his head and he seemed about to keel over. Rita jerked him upright by the scruff of his neck.
“You aren’t dead—yet,” she said coldly. “But you’re going to be if you make one false move. Now listen. We are on our way to Washington, DC and you are going to drive us there.”
“B-B-B-But Miz Morgan Depeister . . .”
“Did you hear me? This is the man with the Evil Eye.”
The chauffeur gulped. Sweat stood out on his forehead.
“Now,” said Rita, “are you driving us to Washington or aren’t you?”
“Yes,” whispered the chauffeur limply.
“Doughface,” said Rita, “would you help a lady into her limousine?”
Doughface Jack grinned and took her arm. They settled back in the seat, pushing the luggage out of their way.
“James . . .”
“My name is Sam,” quavered the chauffeur.
“James,” said Rita, “the White House, please.”
Chapter Twelve
DOCTOR PELLMAN was not immediately cared for, as he appeared a shade more alive than the others who were being carried from Pennsylvania Station. All available crews of ambulance men in the city were hard at work striving to take care of the injured, dead and dying who were strewn throughout the station.
Doctor Pellman braced himself with his hands and through a fog of pain watched the harassed workers rushing in and out with stretchers and listened to the rising and falling chorus of sirens which rocked New York.
He must have been there an hour because an extra was already on the streets,
being hawked in the station itself by now. Half of it was devoted to the chaos here and the other half to the hope that Doughface Jack and his mysterious “Witch Girl” were gone from New York for good. There was a rumor, the story said, that they had taken a limousine outside the station and had been seen again on the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel. Destination was not definitely known.
It had happened that a news reporter with a candid camera had risked death in the station—and received it—by getting a shot of the pair and the edition promised that the next would carry that picture.
The picture had been published when they finally got to Doctor Pellman. The second extra was being cried on the walk and as though from a great distance he heard, “Witch Girl, Queen of Beauties, aiding madman with Evil Eye. Beauty and the Beast join hands in devastation in Pennsylvania Station.”
Pellman sank into a stupor through which the scream of the siren barely penetrated. He was not aware of being carried into a ward and laid, fully clothed because of the necessity for speed and the lack of helpers, on a white cot.
He did not know that this place would not long contain him and so he was very confused, two days later, to come more fully to life and discover himself in quite another place.
The room was a surgical ward, vaguely familiar. And it was not New York because the only sound was a robin’s call. Pellman tried to raise himself and a gentle hand pushed him back. Bewildered, he saw that it was Miss Finch.
“Gladys,” he whispered, weakly.
“Shhhh,” she cautioned. “He’s coming around, Doctor Thorpe.”
Somebody else moved in the room and Pellman turned his head to his friend of long standing, Doctor Thorpe. The man was the greatest brain surgeon, according to repute, in the nation. His hands were those of an artist: sure and without a blemish to mar their smooth whiteness. His face was a very professional mask until he saw that Pellman had really come around. Then he relaxed a trifle.
“Well,” said Thorpe, “I thought you were a goner, Jim Pellman.”
“You would have been too,” said Miss Finch, “if Doctor Thorpe hadn’t read your name in the casualty list and sent his ambulance all the way into the city for you.”
“What did you do?” said Pellman, weakly.
“Series of transfusions, that’s all. What else could I do? You, along with all the rest, had the worst case of anemia I ever hope to see, Jim. You’ll take weeks to get well, even now.”
Pellman raised up a trifle. “Is there any further news?”
“News? Well, no. That fellow seems to be gone from New York. At least nobody has seen him.”
“I know where he is,” said Pellman bleakly.
“Then you had better tell the cops,” replied Thorpe.
“The police,” sniffed Pellman. “And what would they do? Run out the riot squad and lose it to a man. Turn out the Army and lose that to a man. You saw what he did. Hundreds and hundreds of people . . . How many lived, Doc?”
Thorpe looked grave. “Don’t excite yourself, Jim.”
But Pellman was not to be put off. He raised himself into a sitting posture and when the room stopped madly spinning he focused his eyes on Thorpe. “You heard me.”
“All right,” fidgeted the great surgeon, “you asked for it. It takes a victim about three weeks to die. You were lucky. You weren’t as badly hit as the rest and you had some care. But the others . . .” he shrugged. “Ten days to two weeks.”
“We’ve got to do something, Doc,” said Pellman. “We’ve got to do something! Don’t you realize that all this is on my head? Can’t you see it? I’m the man that gave him that! I’m the man that killed those people!”
“Please,” said Miss Finch.
“‘Please’ be damned,” said Pellman. “Don’t you know what is going to happen? That girl is using Doughface Jack. Yes, she’s using him. And she’s taking him higher than he would ever have dreamed of going. He was a menace before. He’s sudden death now. Doughface Jack is heading for Washington, DC.”
Thorpe got it.
“You mean . . .” said Miss Finch.
“I mean he knows he isn’t safe unless he’s at the top. The girl has told him that. The papers are right. She’s a witch. I don’t know where . . .” He frowned. “Do you suppose . . . but no!”
“What?” said Thorpe.
“Maybe she’s one of his victims. Maybe she’s an old woman and the same thing happened to her that happened to me. Maybe . . .” He sat up even straighter and when Miss Finch strove to keep him from doing so he cast her aside with a motion he did not even know he made, so deep was his mental concentration. “Thorpe, I think I’ve got it!”
There was something in his tone which made Thorpe signal Miss Finch to stand back and not interfere. He poured out three fingers of whiskey into a beaker and handed it to Pellman who downed it.
“Yes?” said Thorpe.
Pellman took a deep breath. “Doc, you’re the greatest brain surgeon in the world.”
“There’s some question about that since you fixed up that tramp,” smiled Thorpe.
“To hell with that. You can do it all the time and I can only do it some of the time. Listen, Doc, you’ve got to do something for me.”
“Anything within reason,” said Thorpe carefully. “You’re taking this tramp thing too much to heart.”
“Yeah,” said Pellman. “Yeah,” bitterly, “too much to heart. Only a few hundred have been affected so far. It’s the nation tomorrow.”
“The nation?”
“What do you think he went to Washington for? Play tiddlywinks with Grant’s Memorial? That woman is clever.”
“As for that woman, I can tell you something,” said Thorpe. “When I was in medical school I saw her.”
“What?”
“Yes, I saw her. She was an actress of some renown and an accident with hydrogen gas put out her eyes. I watched an operation which sought to restore that sight. That was thirty-eight years ago and I was eighteen. But I’ll still remember her and I saw her again in that picture in the paper, bad as it was.”
“That proves it!” said Pellman. “That proves it, don’t you see? He made her young. He gave her back her sight. And she’s got brains. She’s had thirty-eight years of misery and she’ll try to even up the score and with Doughface Jack at her side she can do it! ‘Witch Girl’ is right! But look, Thorpe, that isn’t the point either. According to what I heard about a Greek he knocked out, Doughface Jack can undo his own work.”
“Yes, somebody has been saying that in the papers too,” said Thorpe.
“But he won’t undo his own work because he thinks he’ll be shot down on sight,” said Pellman. “That leaves only one thing, Doc.”
“What?” said Thorpe, unsuspecting.
“Thorpe, I know how I did that operation. Get me a stiff out of the morgue this afternoon and I’ll perform it on that stiff while you watch. And then . . . Well,” he said quietly, “then you perform that operation on me.”
Miss Finch screamed and flung herself at the operating table.
Thorpe yelled, “no! You damned fool! I might kill you with the smallest slip.”
“That’s my chance,” said Pellman, an ecstatic light in his eyes. “That’s my chance, Thorpe. I could heal those hundreds before they die. I could track Doughface Jack and meet him face to face without any fear. . . .”
“And maybe be burned to a crisp, both of you!” cried Thorpe.
“That’s my chance. You’ve got to let me take it. You’ve got to! I did this thing. It’s up to me to undo it. Get that stiff, Thorpe; we’re wasting time.”
Thorpe looked at him steadily for a long while and then, abruptly, about-faced and walked quickly to the door, determination in his every move. Outside Pellman heard him tell a nurse, “Miss Dawson, get a man from the morgue and have it sent in here.”
Chapter Thirteen
THEY were parked on East Executive and they could see through the shady oaks in the park, past the statue of Rochambeau
to the White House.
“I don’ wanna,” protested Doughface in a monotone. “I don’t see no reason for doin’ it.”
Rita squared back in exasperation. “Jack, sometimes you can be very trying. Sometimes I think you’re—well—dumb!”
He sat up belligerently but she smiled and patted his hand and he lost track of the conversation for the moment. He remembered shortly. “I still don’ wanna. This put-together don’t look right to me.”
“Jack, do you want to spend the rest of your days in hiding?”
“Yeah, if nobody can find me.”
“But that’s impossible. If you got mad at somebody, the Army would be on the move again. You’d never be safe. You don’t know this world like I do. You weren’t blind for all the years I was. And blind, I saw much. People are rotten things, Jack. Rotten! Once everybody was my friend. Oh, yes they were. Everybody that was anybody knew me. Flowers and cards and invitations. And no dinner was complete unless I was there. And then it happened. Then I couldn’t see any more. I was awful to look at. And what did they do?”
Her lip curled with bitterness as she thought about it. Her voice was like flowing acid.
“They forgot me. They left me to shift for myself. The men that I had befriended left me alone because I wasn’t pretty any more. That was all they wanted from me. Beauty. And when it went, that was the end. You don’t know what it means to be kicked into the gutter when the roughest fabric you had known was silk. You don’t know what it means to try to fill a stomach used to scented wines with moldy bread crusts. Charity. I didn’t want charity. I didn’t want anything but the friendship which they had sworn they had for me. And everybody is like that, Jack. You know they are.
“Take this pal of yours, the doctor that made you that way. Did he stand up for you?”
“Well . . .” hesitated Jack. “No.”
“Sure he didn’t. He laid a trap and stopped you. He was trying to get you into the hands of the police. He was trying to stop you so that a man with a gun could shoot you before you saw him. You know that that’s true. Pellman gave you the double cross. Those soldiers were waiting all the time. You couldn’t trust Pellman and Pellman, from what you say, was the best friend you ever had. All right, add that up and what do you get?”
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 63