by Gahan Wilson
"Evan Trowbridge," he said. "Pillar of the Establishment. Pride of the Empire."
He had turned deadly serious.
"Do you know where the strength of a Trowbridge lies, Charles? I'll tell you. It lies in his sublime conviction that he and his kind are superior to all other men. That anyone who is not both white and English is automatically not quite a human being."
He ground out his cigar forcefully, yet precisely, as if he were sticking it into a Trowbridge eye.
"It's different here in America," he said. "Do you know what it was like to be a poor Hungarian in London? Speaking with a foreign accent? Looking alien? Liking garlic and spicy foods?"
He looked down at his huge white hands and watched them curl into fists.
"I dressed like them. I even thought of changing my name. Then I realized I would only make myself more ridiculous in their eyes."
He looked at mef and then his expression softened and he chuckled.
"Wait until you read how the Mandarin kills him, Charles. It is a masterpiece, if I do say so myself. It takes an entire chapter."
I bunched up my napkin and tossed it on the table.
"So what happens to the series, Aladar? Have you thought about that? Who the hell is going to fight the Mandarin?
He brushed it away.
"Somebody will, Charles. The series will continue. We will continue. I have several possibilities in mind. I have thought, maybe, a Hungarian. Maybe someone rather like myself."
We finished our coffee and parted in widely divergent moods.
I took the manuscript to my office, informed my secretary that I was strictly incommunicado, and read The Mandarin Triumphant from its first neatly typed page to its last.
I discovered, thank God, that it was good. Really one of his best.
I had been afraid that the hatred for Trowbridge which Rakas had just confessed would show through, and that he might turn him into some kind of villain, or, much worse, a quivering coward, but none of this had happened. The brave Britisher fought the good fight to the end. The Mandarin, after having committed what really was a masterpiece of murder, even spoke a little tribute to his redoubtable foe just before boarding a mysterious boat and vanishing into the swirling fog of a Thames estuary:
"He was a worthy opponent," said the Mandarin in the sibilant whisper he adopted when in a thoughtful mood. "In his dogged fashion, I believe he understood me and my aspirations as no man has done."
Slipping carefully from the plastic coverall which had protected him from the deadly mold, the towering man bent respectfully to the nearly formless heap which lay at his feet, and with great solemnity, he made an ancient Oriental gesture of salutation to that which had once been Evan Trowbridge.
I closed the manuscript feeling much for the better.
After all, I figured, Rakas had managed to make the Mandarin series into a very successful enterprise with Trowbridge, and there was no reason to see why he couldn't go right ahead and carry on without him. It was the Mandarin who really counted, and if the heroic Englishman irritated the author all that much, I couldn't see why he shouldn't be allowed to go ahead and kill the bastard. There were a few bad moments with some of the other editors, but in the end, we all sat back with smug little smiles playing on our faces and waited to see how Rakas's new champion fared in the struggle against the vast criminal campaign of the diabolical Mandarin.
One very comforting development was the unexpectedly large popularity of Triumph. The critics who had rejected the previous books as being too much loved it. They liked the idea of the superhero getting horribly murdered. It moved the whole thing into a campy sort of area where they could relax and enjoy without being embarrassed.
We worked a series of TV and radio slots for Rakas, which was something we'd never done before, and he clicked. The public liked his sinister presence. They relished him in much the same way as they did Alfred Hitchcock. There is something very reassuring about a boogeyman who's willing to joke about his scareful personality. It eases all sorts of dim little fears and makes the dark unknown seem almost friendly. This sudden celebrity pleased Rakas.
"It is very nice," he told me. "I was walking down the street the other day and a beautiful woman came up to me. 'Are you Aladar Rakas?' she asked me. And I told her I was. A perfect stranger, and that very night we went to bed. I like this being famous."
I asked him how the new book was going.
"It's coming along nicely," he said. "My hero is a Hungarian, as I warned you he might be. I have not given him a name yet. I call him Rakas, after myself, for now. Later on I will figure out some name for him. I want it to be just right, of course.
"He is not a bullhead, like that Trowbridge. He is a man who thinks. The Mandarin will have his hands full with him, you will see. I think the only real problem will be to make sure that this new hero of mine doesn't finish him off in the first three chapters."
Then he laughed, and I laughed with him.
It was just about two weeks later, about four in the morning, when the telephone rang. I knocked over the alarm clock and upset a full ashtray before I managed to bark a hello into the receiver's mouthpiece. I expected to hear some fool drunk blurting apologies, but I got Rakas, instead.
"Charles," he said, "could I come over? I'd like to talk to you. Now. Tonight. I'm worried."
I told him he could. I slipped on a bathrobe and groped my way into the kitchen. I'd just finished brewing a pot of coffee when the doorbell rang.
He looked bad. He was pale and I think he'd lost weight. I noticed his hand shook a little when he lifted his cup.
"What's wrong, Aladar?"
"It's the book. Here." He had a manuscript in a folder and he passed it over to me. "It's not going well."
I considered giving him a little lecture about office hours and then decided to hell with it. I turned through the pages. Everything looked fine. A man killed by a poison dart on a misty wharf. The new hero narrowly missing death by scorpion-stuffed glove. A brief meeting with the Mandarin himself in a dark Soho alley.
For an instant Rakas saw the huge forehead, the glittering eyes, the deep hollows of the cheeks, and then the light snuffed cut, leaving only a skeleton silhouette.
"You are confident, Rakas,” came the harsh, icy whisper, "you consider me a puppet, a marionette.”
Suddenly Rakas felt his shoulder grasped by a merciless talon which seemed hard as steel. He grunted in pain and tried to twist free.
"There are no strings on this hand, Rakas, ” continued the chill muttering of the Mandarin. "It kills when I want and releases when I wish.”
Then the talon wrenched away, and Rakas found himself alone.
I lit a cigarette and read on happily. It was around the end of chapter 8 when I saw the beginnings of the drift.
The awful spasms of his dying had twisted the face of Colonel Bentley-Smith's face into a grotesque grin, and this look of dead glee seemed to mock the perplexed frown of Aladar Rakas.
"I don’t understand, Inspector Snow," he snapped, "didn’t you deploy your men as I asked you to?”
"I did that, sir,” replied the puzzled policeman, "but they got through to him without one of us having the foggiest. ”
Rakas snarled and ground his teeth together.
"Then we have sprung our trap upon a corpse!”
I looked up at Rakas.
"How did they get through?" I asked.
"That's just it," he said. "I don't know!"
He pulled out a cigar, started to unwrap it, and then shoved it back into his pocket.
"You've read it," he said. "In chapter seven I show how I, or rather I show how Rakas, has made absolutely sure that the Colonels study is inaccessible. Every window, every door, all possible means of approach are under constant observation. There is no way, no conceivable method, for the Mandarin or his minions to have snuck in with the cobra."
He sat back and spread his hands helplessly.
"And yet they do get in, and out, and no one the wise
r."
I flipped an edge of the manuscript and looked at Rakas thoughtfully.
"Let me show you," he said, leaning forward and taking the folder from my hands. "Let me show you how it happens again." He thumbed through the pages. "Yes, here it is. Here is something just like it."
"Would you like some more coffee?"
"Yes. Sure. Here Rakas has rigged the mummy case in the museum so that there is no feasible way for anyone to open it and remove the body of the sorcerer. The slightest touch on the case's lid and an alarm goes off and cameras record the event. A fly couldn't land on the damned thing without setting off the apparatus. And yet the Mandarin does it. I don't know how, but he pulls it off."
I began, "Aladar—"
"No. Wait," he said, cutting me off. "That's not all. Here, in chapter fourteen, here's one that really gets me. I absolutely defy you to explain to me how he manages to poison the—"
This time I cut him off.
"Aladar, it's not my job to explain how he does it. I'm merely the reader. You, Aladar, are the one to explain it."
"But, how?" he asked me, flinging his hands wide. "I would like you to explain to me how?"
"Because it's a goddam story, Aladar, and because you're the goddam author. That's how."
It took him by absolute surprise. It seemed to stun him. He sat back in his chair and blinked at me.
"You are the one who's making this up," I said, waving at the manuscript which lay, all innocence, on the kitchen table. "You made up the Colonel and the Mandarin and the whole thing. It's you who decides who does what to who and how they do it. Nobody else but you."
He reached up and squeezed his forehead. He shut his eyes and sat perfectly still for at least a minute. Then he let his hand fall to his lap.
"You are right, aren't you?" he said. He sighed heavily and reached out to touch the manuscript gingerly with his fingertips. "It's only a story, isn't it?"
He looked up at the clock on the wall.
"My God," he said. "It's the middle of the night."
He took the manuscript in his hands and stood.
"I'm sorry, Charles. I'm a fool. I can't understand how I let myself be carried away like this."
"It's all right, Aladar," I said. "You just let yourself get too wrapped up. It happens."
We said a few more things, and then I walked him to the door. He opened it and stood there, looking dejected and foolish. I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Remember," I told him, "you're the boss."
He looked at me a little while.
"Sure. That's right," he said. "I'm the boss."
Then the preparation for that year's Christmas rush got underway, and I found myself up to my hips in non-books to lure the prospective festive shoppers. It is a busy season, this pre—
Yule observance, and Aladar Rakas got crowded out of my mind along with everything else except the confused and frantic matters at hand. At least that is my excuse for not getting in touch with him for a good month and a half.
In the end it was he who got in touch with me. I was plowing through a manuscript we'd bought on the archaeology of ancient Egypt, wondering what the copy editor was going to say about the authors ancient use of commas, when my secretary came in to tell me that Rakas was in the outer office. I went out, covered my shock at the way he looked, and walked him back to my sanctuary. He was so thin he had become gaunt.
"It has proven more difficult than you thought," he said. "I believed you, that night, but now I am not so sure."
He had an attache case with him. He opened it and took out an enormous manuscript. He hefted it and then laid it on my desk.
"Is that the new book?" I asked.
"It is."
I squeezed its bulk, estimating the probable wordage.
"But, Aladar," I said, "the things easily three times as long as any of the others."
He smiled ironically.
"You are right, Charles," he said. "And it is not yet finished. If I go on like this I will end with a Gone with the Wind of thrillers."
I pulled the thing to me and went through the opening pages. It was obvious he had done a lot of work on them; the changes were considerable, but the story line remained exactly the same.
"You remember the scene where the Mandarin, or Mork, or whoever it is gets in and kills the Colonel?” he asked. "Well, it keeps on happening, Charles. No matter how I rearrange the constabulary of the good Inspector Snow, no matter if I, myself, remain on the premises, even in the room itself, it keeps on happening. The Colonel always ends up being killed by that damned cobra."
"But that's mad, Aladar."
"Yes. Possibly it is because I am going mad. I sincerely hope that is the case. I was sure of it in the beginning. But now I am not so sure. The terrible possibility is that I may be sane and the thing may actually be happening."
I looked at him with, I think, understandable confusion. Rakas lit a cigar and I began to go through the manuscript quickly, skimming, turning several pages at a time when I felt I had the direction of the action.
"It goes that way all through the book," he said. "I increase the protection. I double and redouble the guards. It is all to no avail. The Mandarin wins. Again and again, he wins."
He had a weird kind of calm this time. He even seemed to be amused at his plight. He leaned forward and pointed at the manuscript with his cigar.
"At least a dozen times in there he could have killed me, Charles. Always he lets me go. Just in the nick of time, as we say in the trade." He paused. "But this last time, I am not so sure, I think he is getting tired of the game. I think he almost decided to do me in."
I turned quickly to the end of the manuscript. I found the scene easily.
Despite the almost unendurable pain, Rakas could not move any part of his body, save his eyes. In particular, he could not move his hand. He stared at it, watching it become ever more discolored under the flickering ray from the Mandarin's machine. It felt as though a thousand burning needles were twisting in his flesh.
The cadaverous form of the Mandarin arched over him, lit by the infernal rainbow of color emanating from the device. Rakas had the momentary illusion that the creature was not flesh and blood at all, but a kind of carved architectural device, like a gargoyle buttress in some unholy cathedral.
"Your thoughts of rock images are most appropriate, Rakas,” hissed the Mandarin, casually employing his ability to read men's minds. "Perhaps your unconscious is attempting to inform you that you, or at least your right hand, is undergoing a process unique in the history of living human flesh. It is turning into stone."
Rakas stared in horror at the graying, roughening skin of his hand. When his bulging eyes traveled back to the Mandarin he saw that the face of the evil genius was now inches from his own. He could feel fetid breath coming from the cruel slash of a mouth.
”Shall I turn you into a garden ornament now, Rakas? Or should I spare you for a time? What do you think?"
Rakas was smiling at me.
"Shall I show you my right hand, Charles?"
It had been hidden behind his attache case. He pulled it out and held it before me. It was bluish pale, and stiff.
"It is flesh, not stone," he said. "But it cannot move."
He touched the back of it with the lighted tip of his cigar.
"It cannot feel."
He removed the cigar and I saw that the flesh was still smooth and unbroken.
"It cannot burn."
He chuckled and slid his hand back behind the case.
"You see it is not as bad as in the story. Not yet. But it is getting close, is it not?"
I closed the manuscript without looking at it. Then I threw a part of my professional life out the window.
"Kill the son of a bitch," I said.
"What?"
"Kill the Mandarin. Get rid of him. End the series."
I took a deep breath.
"Look, Aladar, I'll admit the books make a nice bundle of money for us all, but t
o hell with them. They just aren't worth the damage they're doing to you. This hand business is awful but it's explainable. You can do things like that under hypnosis. But it's a goddamned frightening symptom."
I pushed the manuscript away from me. I didn't want to touch it anymore.
"I'm telling you as your editor, Aladar, that you have absolute carte blanche to slaughter the Mandarin and wrap up the whole business. As a friend, I suggest you do it quickly."
He chuckled again. It was a fair imitation of his usual one, but it didn't have the depth.
"You don't understand, do you, Charles?"
He took the manuscript back and put it into his case. He closed the case and brooded over it for a while.
"Don't you see? I am trying to kill him. Desperately."
He looked at me and his gaze made me uncomfortable.
"With Trowbridge it was altogether different. It was a sort of chess game. Check and counter check. It was safe. Contained. But now I have removed Trowbridge, and the Mandarin is getting out. The only thing that kept that fiend in the books, I realize this now, was that blasted Englishman. Now I have killed him, and now there is nothing to stop the evil from slithering off the pages I have written,"
"All right," I said. "Resurrect Evan Trowbridge. Bring him back from the dead. Conan Doyle did it with Holmes."
This time Rakas actually laughed.
"You have cited the perfect example why I cannot, Charles. Was Holmes ever really the same after Doyle killed him? No. Not except in the adventures Watson remembered from before the event. Even the most convinced Sherlockian must admit in his heart that Holmes never truly survived the tumble into the Falls."
He rapped his knuckles on the case and frowned.
"You see, Charles, that is the thing. These creatures are real. They exist. I did not create the Mandarin. I came across him. Do we ever make anything up? I doubt it. I think we only make little openings and peer through them. And openings work both ways."
He stood.
"Doyle was infinitely wiser than I. He respected what he created. He respected the vile Moriarity. He made bloody damned sure that Holmes took the devil with him when he died. He knew that no one else, least of all himself, would have been able to stop him. And so we are presently safe from the baneful doctor. But I have loosed the Mandarin."