The Frankenstein Factory

by Edward D. Hoch

  “But …”

  “You still don’t see it? Emily Watson didn’t die because Emily Watson never existed at all! Emily Watson and Hilda, the cook, were the same person!”

  SIXTEEN

  THEIR OBJECTIONS WERE QUICK and loud. “That can’t be!” Vera insisted. “Hilda always served the meals!”

  “But did you ever see them together? I’ll admit that I only arrived on the island Sunday, but I didn’t ever see them together. The routine of the house, as it was explained to me, was as follows: Emily Watson and Dr. Hobbes took breakfast together, alone, each morning. For lunch and dinner, the rest of you dined with Hobbes, but Miss Emily never appeared. Sometimes she came down for cocktails, but she appeared only after Hilda had finished serving. That’s how it was Sunday morning when I breakfasted with Hobbes. Hilda had finished serving and vanished into the kitchen some minutes before Miss Emily appeared.”

  “But—but they looked nothing alike! Miss Emily was an old lady who walked with a cane. Hilda was a middle-aged Mexican woman!”

  “How different were they in truth? Their size was about the same. Their voices could not be compared because Hilda never spoke. It was their age and mannerisms that made them different—Emily’s wrinkled skin and white hair contrasted with Hilda’s tanned skin and dark hair. The cane and the limp were easily acquired as needed. And as for the wrinkled skin and tanned skin, it was a simple makeup job. You’ve been here for months, Armstrong, but how much did you ever notice either woman?”

  “I’ll admit that Miss Emily kept pretty much to her room. And one doesn’t look at servants all that closely.”

  “Of course, Miss Emily was a spectator during all of the operation on Sunday night—but Hilda was nowhere to be seen that night. One more indication that they were the same person.”

  “But what about the bloodstains in her room?” Vera asked.

  “We come now to an important point, because we believed until now that the killing of Emily Watson was the first in a series of murders. It now appears that she wasn’t killed at all, and that it was MacKenzie who was the first victim. Instead of seven killings on this island, only six people have died—MacKenzie, Freddy, Hilda, Whalen, Tony, and Hobbes.”

  “That’s enough!” Armstrong poured himself more coffee.

  “But what about the bloodstains?” Vera persisted.

  “I think it was Whalen who suggested the possibility of menstrual blood. Once we accept the fact that Emily Watson wasn’t the old woman she pretended, that possibility becomes the most likely one. It explains why the apparent killing didn’t upset Hobbes all that much. And it explains why Miss Emily couldn’t reappear. We found the blood on Miss Emily’s sheets while she was downstairs in her other identity fixing breakfast. We jumped to the obvious conclusion of a violent deed. Hobbes couldn’t tell us differently, and if Emily reappeared later she’d have to explain the blood. The truth was out of the question—to admit to menstruation would mean blowing the whole masquerade. The image of an elderly Miss Emily bestowing her gifts on ICI would vanish in smoke. So they both went along with the murder theory because they had no choice, and Emily remained as Hilda, the cook, until her death.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Vera marveled. “But I suppose it could have happened that way.”

  “If it did, though, who killed MacKenzie?”

  “It had to be Frank, I suppose,” Earl said. “With Emily removed as the first victim, we get down to MacKenzie and then Freddy. Both of them were killed in the operating room, and their bodies remained there. The problem of no one having seen Frank roaming the house is removed. He stayed right down there and killed those two. He didn’t leave the operating room until he killed number three—Hilda.”

  “Was she really Mexican?” Vera asked.

  “I doubt it. A clever actress, probably, and an expert with makeup. Your fancy room was probably hers. I don’t doubt that she was sleeping with Hobbes, and quite willing to do whatever he asked in furtherance of his plan.”

  Armstrong shook his head. “I won’t argue with your logic, but it’s an awfully intricate structure to erect on the basis of a kitchen buzzer.”

  “Well, that wasn’t exactly all of it,” Earl admitted. “Ever since Miss Emily vanished I’ve had the matter of the alarm system in the back of my mind. The wires weren’t cut till the second (apparent) death—that of MacKenzie. The system was still functioning perfectly on Sunday night, which made it impossible for anyone to approach Emily Watson’s room without sounding the alarm. We breezed over that fact at the time simply because we could accept no other explanation for the blood. What really happened was simplicity itself—Emily-Hilda arose at daybreak, when the alarm went off, and went downstairs to make breakfast. In the Hilda role she didn’t need her cane so she left it on the floor. And she didn’t worry about the bloody sheet because she was the one who changed the bedding. But, as it happened, you went looking for her, Vera, and spread the alarm before she could return to her Emily character.”

  “And Hobbes’s dying words?”

  “He didn’t see his killer, so he couldn’t name him. But he wanted us to know about Emily before he died. He was trying to tell the truth for once in his life.”

  Armstrong finished his coffee. “Quite a story. You should get a promotion if you ever make it back to New York.”

  “The promotion will come if I can chart a path through Hobbes’s complex schemes. He told so many lies he probably didn’t know the truth himself.”

  “Then Frank isn’t his son?”

  “Highly unlikely, I’d say. That was just a story to keep us from destroying him. You see, Hobbes needed this—he needed the publicity value of a reanimation, complete with brain transplant. It would help the faltering fortunes of ICI, and it would bring in enough money to expand his operations. It would even attract a whole new generation of clients eager to be frozen after death.”

  “And now it’s all for nothing,” Vera said.

  “All for nothing. Nobody’ll be bringing Lawrence Hobbes back to life.”

  Dr. Armstrong stood up. “Well, we can’t depend on anyone rescuing us. I guess those flares were so much wasted motion. But, now that it’s daylight, I’d suggest we try to reach those laser pistols down at the beach.”

  “With Frank outside?” Vera asked. “And armed?”

  “What choice do we have? We’ve got to defend ourselves. I’m as reluctant to kill him as you are—maybe more so! But, after what’s happened, our options are narrowing all the time.”

  “Do you think we could reach the beach?”

  “If we go now. He may be sleeping.”

  They scanned the outside from all windows, trying to spot any movement in the mist. But there was nothing. “All right,” Earl decided. “I’m game. But you’d better stay inside, Vera.”

  “If you two go I’m going. You can’t leave me alone!”

  “She’s right,” Armstrong pointed out. “Frank broke into the house once. He could do it again.”

  “All right,” Earl agreed. He had to admit that there was some measure of safety in numbers. “Let’s go.”

  He opened the front door carefully and peered outside. There was no movement in the mist, which seemed to be gradually dissipating under the rising sun. He led the way down the steps, with Vera close behind.

  Something bright caught his eye in the grass, and he bent to pick it up. “What is it?” she asked.

  “A coiled length of thin wire. Maybe ripped from the alarm system inside.”

  Armstrong appeared at the door behind them. “Here! I just remembered the sharksticks! They might help if we get close enough to use them.”

  Earl accepted the long pole with gratitude. He felt better having something in his hands. Armstrong kept the other one, and they started down the path, with Vera between them. From somewhere above the bird that had awakened him sounded again, perhaps calling to a mate in another tree.

  They passed the area where they’d cut the trees with the laser
pistols, and the beach came into view through the mist. They moved in silence, not daring to speak now, glancing left and right like children venturing across a dangerous and unfamiliar highway. Finally they reached the piled logs of the aborted bonfire and began searching the sand. Earl cursed himself for being driven off the previous day.

  “They’re gone!” Armstrong said. “He took the laser guns!”

  “Let’s spread out and keep searching,” Earl suggested. He sent Vera over by the pier to search, keeping themselves between her and the sheltering trees where Frank might be lurking.

  Vera had walked out onto the pier, and suddenly she gave a yell. “Here they are! He threw them in the water!”

  Earl and Armstrong ran out onto the dock to join her. They looked down to where she pointed and saw three weapons resting in the shallow water—the two laser pistols and the tiny automatic that had belonged to Phil Whalen.

  “He got rid of them all,” Armstrong said. “At least he’s unarmed.”

  “But so are we.” Earl poked at the weapons with his sharkstick. “They’d need a good cleaning after hours in salt water, and the lasers will probably need recharging. They’re no good to us now.”

  “At least it shows he doesn’t plan to kill us,” Vera said.

  “The others were all killed close up,” Earl reminded her. “Stabbed or hit or strangled. He’s had plenty of time to steal all the knives he needs from the house, and there were scalpels in surgery for him to take. Maybe he even found another ax.” He remembered something Vera had mentioned. “You told me you’d searched a tool shed when you were looking for Emily, but we didn’t look there for Frank. Remember—we stopped searching when we came upon Tony’s body on the wood pile! Frank could have hidden in the tool shed and found another weapon there.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Armstrong admitted. “Let’s go look at it now. If Frank’s not hiding there, maybe we can find some weapons for ourselves.”

  They took the path back to the house, with Vera between them, as before. There was no sign of Frank in the mist, and Earl began to nourish the wild hope that he might have tried to swim for shore. Around the back of the house, on the side of the island where Whalen’s boat had been beached, they found the small tool shed Vera had described. There was obvious evidence that someone had been there before them—the door was standing open and most of the smaller tools seemed to be missing. There was little doubt that it had been Frank’s hiding place.

  “Think we can beat him off with a rotodigger or a sand vacuum?” Vera asked. “If not, we’re out of luck.”

  “We should have searched here sooner,” Earl said. They should have searched everywhere sooner. They should have gone down to those vaults right at the beginning and opened up every one of the capsules, even if there were a hundred of them. What had prevented them, he wondered, and then answered his own unspoken question. Hobbes had prevented them, just as he’d prevented so many other things.

  “Let’s go look at the speedboat,” Armstrong suggested.

  They cut through the trees, coming out on the beach a little way beyond the beached cabin cruiser. Its sleek lines were low in the water, and it wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. “Still there,” Earl said, “but that patch has sprung another leak.”

  Armstrong grunted. “We can make a circuit of the beach back to the house. I’m feeling a bit safer than I did earlier. I don’t think we’ll panic when we see him this time.” He was dragging his sharkstick in the sand, leaving in the sand the impression of a giant worm.

  “I think the sun is coming through,” Vera decided, glancing at the sky as they reluctantly followed along.

  Armstrong was walking about twenty feet ahead of them when Vera suddenly screamed. Frank had burst from the cover of the trees, his surgical jumpsuit a green blur in the morning mist. He was running straight at Dr. Armstrong, his good right arm upraised with a deadly machete ready to strike.

  “Look out!” Earl shouted, then hurled his sharkstick at the running figure.

  Armstrong half turned in time to dodge the full brunt of the attack, and the sharkstick tangled in Frank’s running feet. His machete grazed Armstrong’s shoulder and arm, ripping through his shirt to the skin.

  Earl ran across the sand, leaping the last few feet to land full force on Frank’s back, carrying him down before he could raise the weapon again.

  “God!” Armstrong gasped. “I’m bleeding!”

  Vera ran to help him while Earl tried to hold Frank down. But, as before, the reanimated man seemed to draw strength from his long years of sleep. He cast off Earl’s clinging arms and scurried across the sand to retrieve his weapon. Earl managed to grip his sharkstick and pull it toward him, waiting for the next attack.

  But Frank didn’t come at once. Instead he squatted in the sand about thirty feet away, out of range of their sharksticks, watching them. The machete was tight in his right hand, its curving blade red with specks of Armstrong’s blood.

  Vera had torn the sleeve from the doctor’s shirt and used it to bandage his wound. “It’s not deep,” he said. “I’m all right. Let’s take him!”

  “That’s a wicked weapon he’s got.”

  Armstrong picked up his own sharkstick and started forward. “There are three of us.”

  But before he was close enough to jolt Frank with an electric shock the squatting man came out of his crouch with another burst of fury. His machete hit the side of the sharkstick with a clang of metal on metal, and the weakened Armstrong lost his grip on it. Earl tried to run to his rescue, but Frank grabbed up the sharkstick and delivered a stunning jolt of electricity. Earl toppled backward onto the sand, gasping for breath, feeling as if the current still flowed through his body.

  It took him a minute or two to recover, and by that time Frank had retreated to the edge of the trees, carrying the machete and Armstrong’s sharkstick. “He knows how to use it,” Armstrong said, stating the obvious. “He’s no dummy!”

  Earl sat up slowly, holding his head. His own shark-stick was still at his side, but he had no desire at the moment to engage in a joust with Frank. Still standing at the edge of the trees, watching them for any movement, he’d plunged his machete into the soft earth by his bare foot, so he could use his one good arm to handle the sharkstick.

  “What’s he going to do?” Vera asked.

  Armstrong grunted. “He wants to fight. He wants to kill us all.”

  “Can’t we reason with him? He’s a human being just like us.”

  “Not exactly like us,” Earl reminded her, beginning to get back his wind. “He’s been dead for thirty years—remember?”

  Armstrong turned toward Frank. “Can you understand what we’re saying? Nod your head if you can,”

  But the head didn’t move. The eyes simply studied them, and it was impossible to determine to what extent the brain behind those eyes was functioning. “Let me try,” Vera said. “I don’t think he’ll attack me.”

  “Don’t be so sure!”

  “Keep back,” Earl warned her. “Don’t trust him. Remember Hilda. She got it in the back!”

  That made Vera hesitate. She was still some twenty feet away from Frank, and for a moment neither one moved. Earl got slowly to his feet.

  Behind him, far overhead, he heard the sudden rising of a familiar sound. They looked skyward, trying to penetrate the mists. “What is it?” Vera asked.

  “Sounds like a rocketcopter. We use them a lot in New York.”

  “Is it coming here?”

  “With any luck it is! They must have seen your flares, after all!”

  The sound of the rocketcopter swelled until it seemed to be directly overhead, though still unseen. Then it moved away and began to fade. “He’s leaving!” Vera cried.

  “He can’t see the island well enough to land!” Earl had an idea then. “Let’s get back to the other side and light that bonfire!”

  “Earl!” she said suddenly. “Frank is gone!”

  And indeed he was. While their eye
s had been turned skyward he’d taken his machete and sharkstick and faded back into the mist-shrouded trees.

  “We’ll worry about him later,” Earl decided. “Let’s get that bonfire started!”

  It took them a long five minutes to reach the pile of wood waiting on the opposite shore, and by that time the sounds of the rocketcopter had faded into silence. The mist, which had shown signs of burning off earlier, now seemed more impenetrable than ever.

  “We’ve lost our last chance,” Vera said, her voice sounding like she was close to tears.

  “Don’t be foolish! He’ll be back as soon as he can see anything!” But Earl wondered at the truth of his words. “Let’s get the fire started anyway.”

  Armstrong helped with the lighting of it but he seemed weak. Earl could see the blood soaking through the makeshift bandage Vera had applied. “We’d better get you back to the house. Hobbes has tons of medical supplies there.”

  Armstrong gave a disparaging wave but Vera joined in. “Earl’s right! We’ll get you back up there and take a look. There’s a suture tube in the operating room. I can wash the wound and zip it shut.”

  “Well—all right,” Armstrong agreed with a show of reluctance.

  The first flames were beginning to feed on the wood, and in a few minutes the fire was leaping high, sending a column of dark smoke up through the mist. But their initial elation was short-lived. “The smoke’s spreading out!” Vera said. “It’s not getting through!”

  “Some sort of temperature inversion,” Earl decided. “The kind that used to pollute cities. Just our luck!”

  “What can we do?”

  “Just hope that the heat of the fire is enough to break through. Hot air rises, and it might force its way above the fog layer.”

  Vera pointed at Armstrong’s shoulder, where the blood was beginning to run down his arm from beneath the bandage. “We’ve got to get you inside—right now!”