by Gahan Wilson
We all know you can only push them just so far.
Maddy called me up and asked if we couldn't have tea at the Pierre, you know, in that funny room with the trompe l'oeil walls and ceiling? Because she wanted to talk about what was happening and of course I jumped at the chance because, like everybody else, I was dying to know all the gory details.
God, she was so pale, poor dear, so frightened. I hate to see a pretty woman so distraught, don't you? I mean she was actually chewing her lips and plucking at her fingers, for God's sake! And her eyes never stopped darting, looking up along the balcony and the staircase, shooting quick, searching looks at the floor and the doorways.
She was wearing a long-sleeved dress and it wasn't like Maddy to wear a long-sleeved dress. Not with her beautiful arms, certainly not during a heat wave. She must have noticed I'd noticed, because after she'd done all this peering around the room she rested one arm on the table and then pulled its long sleeve back and showed me a crisscrossing of white bandages and nasty red scratch marks stretching out from under them.
She glared down at her arm with this perfectly fierce frown on her face—something right out of Medea, I can assure you— and said in a perfect hiss: "Clara did this to me! There will always be scars!"
Then she positively jerked her sleeve back down over those bandages and things and went on and on about how unfair Clara had been and how she wasn't going to take it anymore and about how she was a grown-up woman and could do what she pleased if she wanted to and all the rest of that tiresome garbage.
I did what usually works in situations like this: I let her go on until she'd run down a little and then I tried talking sensibly to her. I told her how much she owed Clara, how much we all owed our darlings, and I was even unkind enough to ask her flat out in plain English how she thought she would manage if she did leave Clara for the man she'd met in Rio.
"I mean, is he rich, darling?" I asked her. "Is he that rich?'"
She turned and pouted at me.
"No," she said. "He thinks I'm rich.".
"Of course he does, darling," I told her. "All the men do. That's how come we get our choice of them, don't you see?"
But she didn't see, and all my advice did was to set her off again on a new tirade, which ended with her leaning close to me and whispering the most appalling thing! The most perfectly awful thing!
But here are our salads. Thank you, Jacques. Yes, the wine is excellent, Jacques.
Wait a second, darling, until he's out of earshot.
The silly bitch told me she planned to kill Clara!
Oh, I'm sorry, dear, I can see now I should have led up to it a bit more. Padded the approach. Please do excuse my thoughtlessness, but it's just that this has been the most awful business for me and it's got me thoroughly upset. Of course, that's really no excuse.
I shouldn't have been so abrupt.
Have some more wine.
Better?
Well, I tried again to talk sense to her, even after that, though it seemed perfectly hopeless. She had that crazy, glazed look people get when they're absolutely determined to do the stupidest, silliest thing possible, so in the end all I asked of her was not to do anything drastic for at least a little while and—after what seemed hours—I wore her down and she agreed she'd think things over once or twice again and call me in a few days and then we'd have another little talk about it all.
So I felt rather smug when we parted.
This wine isn't really all that good after the first few sips, is it? I do believe Jacques is losing his touch. I think I really might permanently cross this place off my list, don't you think?
Anyway, it was over a full week when a call came, but it wasn't the one I was hoping for, to say the least.
I was profoundly asleep as it's just possible I'd had a touch too much to drink, and the ringing of that pretty bedside phone Andre gave me—you do remember Andre, don't you? He was a count and I've never had anything to do with counts since—hauled me out of the depths of some god-awful dream so that I was really only half awake when I'd managed to put the receiver to my ear so at first I couldn't make any sense of what I was hearing and I suppose I kept saying "What is it?" in this slurry, muzzy voice a half-dozen times until it dawned on me at last that it wasn't a human voice at all on the other end of the line!
It was a mewing, darling, the saddest, sweetest little mewing you ever heard. Going on and on in the most pathetic way possible. It wasn't a few more seconds before I recognized it, and then the most ghastly chill ran through me from my toes to the crown of my head because, of course, it was Clara. Maddy's little Clara.
But after that I thought: My God, she's calling me for help!
and I knew I'd never been so touched. It was—I'm afraid I'm getting quite teary-eyed just talking about it—positively the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me in all my life.
The trust.
The idea that she thought of me first.
Excuse me but I've positively got to dab my eyes.
That's better.
"Don't worry, sweetness!" I said into the phone, gently as I could. "Don't worry, little dearest! I'll be right over!"
I was as good as my word, darling. I got up and dressed though it was the middle of the night and taxied right over to Maddy and Clara's building where I proceeded to bully the doorman and then the building manager in turn when the doorman woke him up—great sleepy hulks, both of them—and we finally all took the elevator to Maddy and Clara's apartment, after ringing it God knows how many times, and opened the door.
Well, you simply wouldn't believe the smell, dear. Totally extraordinary. The whole place reeked, simply reeked. It moved out at you like a wall.
The doorman took one choking gulp of it, then turned and puked his guts out on the floor of the hall. The manager just kept saying "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," over and over again until I ached to slap his silly fat face until he shut up.
But then I heard that little mew and Clara stepped timidly into the light coming from the hallway and trotted right over to my feet looking up at me in the most pathetic way, and I leaned down and picked her up and kissed her poor, sad little face right on its nose in spite of the terrible, terrible stench of her which she hadn't been able to lick away in spite, I'm sure, of the most heroic attempts to do so.
I barged right into the living room while the babbling manager staggered along behind me as there wasn't any doubt where the smell was coming from and there was Maddy sprawled out on the carpet like a swastika right in the middle of an impossibly huge splash of dried blood that they'll never, ever manage to scrub away.
What was left of Maddy was lying there, that is, because it was obvious that poor Clara had been forced to eat quite a bit of her over the last week or so.
I simply can't imagine why someone hasn't had the brains to come up with cat food packed in a container the poor dears could open themselves in case of an emergency, can you? Then so many of these distasteful things you hear about simply wouldn't have to happen.
Anyhow, Maddy had absolutely no face left and her lovely slip had been reduced to red ribbons all gone stiff. I suppose poor Clara had been forced to tear it apart so that she could get at the rest of her after she'd finished off all of the exposed soft parts.
Absolutely ghastly.
Of course, I knew perfectly well it wasn't just hunger that made Clara take away all those bits and pieces. Hunger wouldn't explain why the whole throat was completely missing, darling, even those tough, rubbery chunks that must be hideous to chew and swallow if you've only got tiny teeth and a little pink mouth to work with.
I'm sure it will never dawn on those stupid policemen that if there'd been a throat then there would have been its original wound for all to see and it might have given them a problem with their theory that Maddy had sliced her neck open with the chef's knife clutched in her hand because she'd been so sad about her friend from Rio.
It's not likely, but one of them might have even been smart
enough to take a good look at that wound and wonder if a certain little pussycat had been very angry at her mistress for trying to chop her up with that same knife.
But there was no original wound to look at because Clara had eaten it all up, clever little thing.
Ah, good—here's the fish at last. Yes, of course we want it boned.
Thank you, Jacques. We'll do our very best to enjoy it, never fear.
My God, the lazy bastards will -be asking us to cook our lunches the next thing you know!
Now, then—as to why I asked if you were free today, darling.
There's a girl I've spotted working in that small perfume counter at Bergdorf's. You know, the little discreet one they've tucked in a corner far away from that cabash they've got spread over all those other rooms?
I've chatted with her quite a bit and noticed her looking sidewise at my jewels and my furs. She loves the way I buy the most expensive stuff without a thought and I know she'd give anything to be able to do it herself.
Absolutely anything.
Of course you remember how that felt, don't you, dear? God knows / certainly do!
Why don't we go over there after lunch and you can look at her and we can sort of feel her out together?
She's very pretty.
She's like us.
I think she'd be absolutely perfect for Clara!
Campfire Story
There were four boys in all, gathered up close by the fire, their fronts curled toward the light and warmth of the flames, their backs crouched away from the growing nighttime cold which was seeping in from the forest all around them along with the drifting smells of leaves and earth and ancient, patient bark.
"You said you were going to tell us the scary story after we ate," said Bill, wiping marshmallow stickiness from his fingers on a rumpled paper towel and turning to look at Eddy with a challenge in his eyes. "The one that's so terrible awful to hear we might none of us live through listening to it! You still going to tell it?"
Ted snickered as he cuddled up to his knees, pulling them closer into his chest for the snugness of it, and Bill glanced angrily in his direction.
"What do you think you're laughing at?" he asked.
"Come on, Bill, don't be such a dummy," Ted said scornfully. "Don't you know Eddy was just putting you on? Don't you know there isn't any story that can kill you dead?"
"What's that?" said Arthur, his head suddenly popping up from a long, thoughtful study of how differently his shoelaces looked in the firelight. "Did you say Eddy was just kidding about that story? Hey, Eddy, were you just kidding?"
"No," said Eddy, after a pause, speaking in his soft, quiet way. "And I didn't say the story killed people. What I said Was it ended them. And it does."
"Baloney," Ted snorted, but then a stick in the fire snapped and he jumped and Arthur grinned.
"You're just as scared as any of us to hear it," Arthur said with a laugh, and then he turned to Eddy. "Tell the story, Eddy, and let's see if we all die or end or whatever!"
Eddy waited, as any good storyteller should, until his listeners had settled themselves down and gathered their attention. Then he placed his elbows on his knees, rested the point of his chin on his knuckles, and stared solemnly into the flames.
"There were four boys in the woods, sitting around a fire," Eddy began, speaking in a solemn, measured way, speaking in a gentle kind of chant. "They were all alone. There was nothing around them but a lot of tall old trees, and it was so dark between those trees you couldn't see a thing. But now and then, from way out there, you could hear an owl hoot."
At that moment, as if it came at Eddy's bidding, the soft hoot of an owl floated out from the surrounding blackness.
"Wow!" said Arthur, grinning with delight from ear to ear. "just like in the story! Wow—it's working!"
Eddy looked at him, a long, knowing, steady look, and then he gazed back at the fire.
"There were three boys sitting around a fire," he said, "And a cold wind blowing through the leaves made them shiver."
Then, sure enough, the trees did rustle with a chiller new stirring as Arthur and Bill both moved in closer to Eddy, and all three of them stared across the fire at some leaves scuttling across the empty space opposite them.
"Something's wrong," said Arthur in a whisper. "I don't know just what it is, but something's wrong!"
"There were two boys sitting around a fire," said Eddy.
Suddenly Arthur stood, almost springing to his feet, and stared all around with his eyes as wide open as he could get them, but he knew somehow, deep, deep down inside of himself, that he wasn't seeing whatever it was he was trying to see.
"How come none of the others came with us?" he cried out, looking down at Eddy. "Ted and Bill said they'd come, didn't they? How come we're out here in these darn woods all alone?"
Eddy looked at him thoughtfully with his big, dark eyes.
"We aren't alone, Arthur," he said. "I'm alone. Just me."
It was true. Then there was a pause and a moment of great stillness passed through all the forest as if every living thing in it down to its softest chick and smallest mouse had frozen in their tracks for fear.
"And pretty soon even I won't be," said Eddy, going on with his story. "Pretty soon there'll only be this fire, burning lower and lower because there'll be nobody around to add any wood, and it'll burn down to ash and fall in on itself and die, and in the morning Mr. Knudson will wonder who lit it and never know."
Eddy curled his toes inside his running shoes and smiled a secret smile as the owl hooted again, and when Eddy hooted softly in return the owl hooted a third time.
But Eddy never hooted back because he wasn't there, and after a moment or two of cocking his big, round head this way and that to listen the owl grew discouraged and flew away soundlessly on his thick, soft wings, and pretty soon he found a mouse and killed it and ate it.
The Power of the Mandarin
Aladar Rakas gave a wicked grin and raised his brandy glass.
"To the King Plotter of Evil. To the Prophet of our Doom. To the Mandarin."
I joined the toast willingly.
"May he never be totally defeated. May he and his vile minions ever threaten the civilized world."
We drank contentedly. Rakas leaned back, struck a luxurious pose, and wafted forth a cloud of Havana's very best.
"How many have been killed this time?"
Rakas tapped an ash from his cigar and gazed thoughtfully upward. I could see his lips moving as he made the count.
"Five," he said, and then, after a pause, "No. Six."
I looked at him with some surprise. "That's hardly up to the usual slaughter."
Rakas chuckled and signaled the waiter for more brandy.
"True enough," he said. "However, one particular murder of those six is enough to make up for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ordinary ones."
His dark eyes glinted. He arched his thick, sable brows and leaned slowly forward.
"I have given the Mandarin a real treat this time, Charles," he said.
"You have, have you?"
I took a quick, unsatisfying puff at my cigarette and wondered what the old devil had been up to. I tossed out a guess.
"You haven't let him kill Mork?"
The brutish Mork. The only vaguely human emissary of the insidious Mandarin. He was, in his apish way, ambitious. Perhaps he had gone too far. It would be a shame to lose Mork.
Rakas waved the idea aside with an airy gesture.
"No, Charles. I have always liked Mork. Besides, he is far too useful as a harbinger of horrors to come. No, I would never dream of killing the dreadful creature."
Belatedly, a grim suspicion began to grow in me. Rakas was making quite a production out of this revelation. It would be something very much out of the ordinary.
"As a matter of fact," he continued blandly, covertly watching me from the corners of his eyes, "the only one of the Mandarin's henchmen to die in this particular adventure is a Lasca
r. A low underling hardly worth mentioning."
The suspicion hardened into a near certainty, but I tried a parry.
"How about the Inspector? Have you let him kill Snow?"
"Why bother? Inspector Snow. The poor blunderer. No, Charles, this murder is one of the first magnitude. This murder is the one which the Mandarin has burned to do since book one."
He looked at the expression on my face and grinned hugely.
"Of course you've guessed.''
I gaped at him unbelievingly.
"You're joking, Aladar,'' I said.
He continued to grin.
He'd let the Mandarin kill Evan Trowbridge. I knew he'd let him kill Evan Trowbridge. I swallowed and decided to say it out loud and hear how it sounded.
"He's killed Evan Trowbridge.''
It sounded like a kind of croak. Rakas gave a confirming nod and continued to grin.
I won't say that the room swam before my eyes, but I did wonder, just for a moment, if I was going to faint. I sat in my chair building up a nervous tic and thinking about Evan Trowbridge.
Who was it who stood between the malevolent Mandarin and his conquest of the world? I'll tell you who. Evan Trowbridge. Who was it who foiled, again and again, in book after book, the heartless fiend who plotted the base enslavement of us all? None other than Evan Trowbridge.
And now he was dead.
I wiped the palms of my hands carefully with my napkin and cleared my throat. I could think of nothing else to do, short of leaping over the table and crushing in the top of Aladar Rakas' skull.
He looked at me with some concern. I suppose I looked like a man trembling on the verge of a fit. I may have been.
He sighed.
"You must understand, Charles," he said. "If only you knew how often I have ached to let him do it."
"But why?"
His eyes shown dreamily.