The Flesh of The Orchid

by James Hadley Chase

  “I once knew a girl who had a scar like this,” he mattered, his fat face tightening. “She was mad. Damn her! She blinded me.”

  “I know,” Carol said softly, and wretched her wrist away, “and now, I am going to kill you.”

  An icy chill ran through Frank’s body.

  “Who are you?” he quavered, groping for the door-handle.

  “Carol Blandish,” she said. “I’ve waited a long time for this moment. First you, and then Max,” and her fingers closed round his wrist in a grip of steel.

  Blind panic seized Frank. If he could have seen her, could have been sure she wasn’t pointing a gun at him, could be sure that in a second or so no bullet would smash into him, he wouldn’t have acted as he did, and as Carol had hoped he would act. But the suffocating darkness that pressed in on him, the knowledge that he was trapped in a car with a dangerous, revengeful, mad woman, paralysed his mind. His one thought was to get away from her and into the crowd so she could not reach him.

  He broke free from her grip, threw open the car door and stumbled blindly into the street. The moment his feet touched the ground he began to run.

  Carol slammed the car door, gripped the steering-wheel as she leaned forward to watch the dark figure run blindly into the headlights of the oncoming traffic.

  “Look, Steve,” she said with a sob in her voice, “there he goes. I hand him over to you.”

  Frank heard sudden shouts around him and the squealing of car brakes. He floundered forward in his blindness, thrusting out his hands into a darkness that was so thick he could almost feel it, and he heard himself screaming.

  The on-rushing traffic frantically tried to avoid him. Cars swerved, crashed into one another. Women screamed. A policeman blew his whistle.

  A cream and scarlet roadster suddenly shot out of the intersection and hurtled across the road. Eddie, a little drunk, his arm round Linda, had no chance of avoiding Frank. For a brief second he saw Frank facing him, the bright headlights of the car beat on his sweating, terrified face. He heard Linda scream, “It’s Frank!” and he swerved, crammed on his brakes. The fender of the car hit Frank a glancing blow, threw him across the road and under the wheels of a speeding truck.

  In the confusion that followed no one noticed the black Chrysler coupe pull away from the kerb and drive silently away into the darkness.

  * * *

  Max followed the nurse along the rubber-covered corridor of the Waltonville Hospital. His face was expressionless, but his thin nostrils were white and pinched.

  The nurse signed to him to wait and went into a room, closed the door after her.

  Max leaned against the wall, thrust his hands into his pockets. There was a bored look in his eyes: he wanted to smoke.

  The nurse came to the door after a few moments, beckoned to him.

  “No more than two minutes,” she said. “He is very ill.”

  “Dying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why not say so? Think I’ll cry?” Max said impatiently.

  He walked into the room, stood by the bed and looked down at Frank. The fat face was yellow, the lips were blue. He scarcely seemed to breathe.

  “Here I am,” Max said curtly, wanting to get it over.

  Frank struggled to speak, and Max had to bend over him to catch the halting words. He was reluctant to do this because Frank’s breath was bad.

  “It was Carol Blandish,” Frank gasped. “She said I was the first, then you. I knew her by the scar her wrist.”

  Max straightened.

  “You were always a sucker for women, you fat fool,” he said bitterly. “You asked for it.” Then he added, “She won’t get me.”

  Frank’s breath suddenly heaved up in a gasping rattle. Max looked at him, lifted his shoulders.

  “So long, sucker,” he said.

  The nurse came in, looked quickly at Frank, then drew the sheet over his face.

  Max was studying her. She was young and pretty, and lie tapped Frank’s dead shoulder.

  “That’s one of ‘em you won’t make a pass at,” he said, tilted his hat over his eyes and went out.

  CHAPTER VII

  THERE was a satisfied, almost cheerful expression on Max’s face as he walked down the broad steps that led from the hospital. It had suddenly dawned on him that he was now twice as rich as he had been before entering the hospital.

  Neither of the Sullivans had kept his substantial savings in a bank. They knew it was easy for the police to tie up a banking account, and they kept their money where they could get at it quickly. Max’s father had charge of it; and now Frank was dead his share would automatically come to Max, for no one else knew about it: except, of course, Max’s father, but he didn’t count. It meant, then, that Max could retire, give up this murder racket and buy a bird store as he had always wished to do. The idea appealed to him.

  He paused beside the black Packard Clipper, lit a cigarette, tossed the match into the gutter. For a moment or so his mind dwelt on Carol. Frank had said, “First me, then you.” There could be no doubt that she had engineered Frank’s death. Max had talked with Linda, had heard about the mysterious Mary Prentiss and had put two and two together. Mary Prentiss had been Carol Blandish, and she was out for revenge. But Frank had always been a sucker for women. It would have been easy for any woman to have tripped him up. In Max’s case it was different. Women meant nothing to him. If Carol Blandish tried her tricks with him, she would be sorry. He would smash her ruthlessly as he had smashed others who had got in his way.

  He was so confident of his ability to look after himself that he dismissed Carol from his mind as not worth further thought. No, the death of Frank was the end of the episode; the end, too, of the Sullivan brothers. Max Geza was about to give up his professional status as a killer and become a bird fancier. It would be interesting to see how it worked out.

  He tossed the half-burned cigarette into the street, pulled his soft hat further over his eyes, opened the car door. Then he paused, his narrow eyebrows coining together in a puzzled frown.

  Lying on the front seat immediately under the driving-wheel was a single, but magnificent, scarlet orchid.

  Max stared at the flower, his face expressionless, his eyes a little startled. Then he picked it up, turned it between his fingers as he studied it. An expensive bloom for someone to have dropped through the car window for no reason at all; or was there a reason? Did it mean anything? he asked himself, his mind attuned always to danger. He glanced up and down the street, saw nothing to raise his suspicions, shrugged his shoulders.

  Then be dropped the orchid into the gutter, got into the car and trod on the starter. But lie did not engage the gear. He sat staring through the windshield, his eyes still thoughtful. He didn’t like mysteries: not that you could call this a mystery, but it was odd. At one time he and Frank used to hang two little black crows made of wool on the door-knockers of then intended victims. Once or twice it saved them trouble, as the recipient of the woollen crows had shot himself, but it was a cheap theatrical trick and Max soon put a stop to it. Warning symbols seemed to him to be undignified. Was the scarlet orchid a warning symbol ? he asked himself. If it was, then whoever had dropped it into the car had better watch out. Max didn’t appreciate such tricks. He pulled at his thin, pinched nose, got out of the car and picked up the bloom. After a moment’s hesitation he stuck it in his buttonhole. Then he engaged gear and drove away.

  * * *

  On a hill overlooking Santo Rio’s magnificent harbour and bay stood a two-storey pinewood house surrounded by a wilderness of palm and flowering shrubs. It was a forlorn-looking place, weather-beaten, shabby and lonely. On the wooden gate hung a name-plate which read: Kozikot. Max had never bothered to remove the plate, although each time he came to the house he sneered at it.

  This wooden structure was his home. He rarely visited it, but it was convenient to have some place where he could keep his few personal possessions and his money. It also afforded a home for his fat
her, Ismi Geza, who was getting to be an old man. Ismi had been a circus clown for thirty of his sixty-five years. He still looked like a clown as he moved slowly along the garden path towards the house. He was bent and bald and sad-looking. His skin was pitted and as rough as sandpaper from the constant application of cheap grease-paint: the uniform of his profession. His left leg dragged a little: the heritage of a stroke which had ended his circus career. There was no likeness to his son in his round, fleshy, sad face, and Ismi wouldn’t have wished it.

  He was frightened of Max: as he had been frightened of Max’s mother. Max had taken after his mother, in looks and in nature. It was not in Ismi to be cruel. He was a simple, peace-loving creature and only at ease when he was alone.

  As he was about to enter the house he heard a car coming up the by-road, and he paused, looked over his shoulder, his eyes uneasy. No car had been up this lonely road for three months or more, and the sound startled him.

  The black Packard Clipper pulled up outside the gate and Max climbed out. He stood with his hands in his overcoat pockets, his hat tilted over his nose and the scarlet orchid in his buttonhole. There was an air of purpose and menace about him, and Ismi watched him intently. He lived in dread of these visits, when Max appeared without warning; not knowing what was going to happen, how Max would treat him.

  Max stared at the nameplate on the gate for a moment or so, then with a slight shrug pushed the gate open and walked up the garden path.

  Ismi immediately noticed the orchid, and he stared at it, feeling that something was wrong, that something unpleasant was about to happen to upset the quiet and uneventful flow of his life. Max had never before worn a flower in his buttonhole. Surely, the old man thought, something had happened to make his son wear a flower.

  Father and son eyed each other as Max arrived at the bottom of the steps leading to the house.

  “Frank’s dead,” Max said briefly. “He was run over by a truck.”

  Although Ismi had hated Frank, he was shocked. He was too close to death himself to hear it spoken of without a twinge of apprehension.

  “I hope he didn’t suffer,” was all he could think of to say.

  “The truck smashed his chest and it took him two hours to croak,” Max returned, sniffed at the orchid. “You can draw your own conclusions.”

  It then dawned on the old man what Frank’s death could mean.

  “Will this be the end of it all?” he asked eagerly. He knew Max and Frank were the Sullivan brothers. It had amused Max to tell him, to describe the various murders they had committed, to watch the old man’s politely controlled horror.

  “Yes,” Max said. “I have his money now as well as my own. It was agreed that if one of us died, the one left should take over the other’s money. I’m rich.”

  Ismi rubbed his bald head nervously.

  “Will it make any difference to me?”

  “I don’t know,” Max returned indifferently. “I have had no time to think of you. I’ll come to your little problems later.” He came up the steps, stood opposite the old man. They were the same height, even though Ismi was bent. “I’m going into business,” he went on. “If I can find anything for you to do, you can have the job. If not, you can stay here. Do you want to stay here?”

  “I like it here,” Ismi said, nodding, “bat, of course, if I can be useful to you . . .”

  Max leaned against the wooden post of the verandah.

  “You’re getting senile,” he said softly. “Your brain’s dull. Doesn’t it surprise you that Frank of all people should get himself run over by a truck?”

  Ismi considered this, saw at once that he should have been surprised; was dismayed to realize that what Max had said was true. He was getting senile; his brain was dull.

  “I hadn’t thought,” he said, looking at Max furtively. “Yes, something must have happened.”

  Max told him about Roy Larson, how they had had to kill Steve to silence him; how Carol had blinded Frank, had tracked him to Santo Rio and had engineered his death.

  Ismi stood silent and still in the hot sunshine, his eyes on the ground, his veined hands folded, and listened.

  Max spoke briefly and softly.

  “Frank’s last words were to warn me that I should be next,” he concluded. “She is here: in town. What do you think of it?”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me,” Ismi said, and walked into the house.

  Max pursed his thin lips, shrugged, returned to the car. He collected his two suitcases and entered the house, went up the dusty carpeted stairs to his room, kicked open the door and set down the bags.

  It was a big room, sparsely furnished, and with a view of the distant harbour. There was an unlived-in, bleak atmosphere in the room that might have affected anyone but Max: such things meant nothing to him.

  He stood for a moment listening at the door, then he shut and locked it. He crossed the room to a big old-fashioned wardrobe, opened it and slid back a panel in the floor. From this cunningly concealed locker he pulled out two leather brief-cases. For the next half-hour he was busily counting stacks of five-and ten-dollar bills: each stack tied and labelled, each containing a hundred notes. When he was through, he returned the money to its hiding-place and shut the wardrobe. He was rich, he told himself; he was free to do what he liked, and although his face remained expressionless, his eyes lit up with suppressed excitement.

  As he was going downstairs he heard the telephone ring, and he paused, listening to his father’s voice as he answered.

  Ismi came into the passage after a moment or so, looked up at Max as he stood on the stairs.

  “They’re calling about Frank’s funeral,” he said, an odd look in his eyes. “Perhaps you’d better speak to them.”

  “They? Who?” Max snapped impatiently.

  “The mortician. It’s something to do with flowers.”

  “I’m not interested,” Max returned, and came down the stairs. “Tell them to shove him away as they think best. I don’t want to be bothered. I gave them money. What else do they want?”

  “They say a lot of flowers have been delivered, and do you want them put on the grave?” Ismi said without looking at his son.

  Max’s eyes grew thoughtful.

  “What kind of flowers?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “Orchids . . . scarlet orchids. They say they didn’t think they were very suitable for a funeral.”

  Max took his cigarette from his lips, regarded the glowing end for a moment. He knew his father had something else to say; and he could tell by his face that he was scared to say it.

  “Go on,” he said sharply.

  “They said there was a card with the flowers,” Ismi muttered, and again stopped dead.

  “And what was on the card?” Max asked.

  “ ‘From Carol Blandish and Steve Larson’,” Ismi returned.

  Max pitched his cigarette into the garden, moved to the front door. There was a far-away look in his eyes. At the door he turned.

  “Tell them I’m not interested,” he said briefly, and walked out of the house, down the steps to the Packard.

  Without appearing to do so, he looked searchingly around the garden, down into the Bay. There was a cat-like stillness and watchfulness in his attitude and his eyes glittered.

  Nothing moved, and yet he had a feeling that he was being watched. He was not uneasy, but he was viciously angry, and he took the orchid from his buttonhole and slowly tore the bloom into small pieces, which he scattered on the sandy path. Then he climbed into the Packard and drove it round to the garage at the back of the house.

  * * *

  “I shall be leaving tomorrow,” Max said as Ismi cleared the supper things. “I think I’ll settle in Chicago. There’s a guy there who wants to sell out, and if his price is right I’ll buy. Last time I was there he had a hundred different kinds of birds, and there’s good living accommodation over the shop. You could come out there and run the house if you want to.”

  Ismi stacked th
e plates and dishes on a tray.

  “I wouldn’t like to live in a town again,” he said, after hesitation. “Would it be all right if I stayed here?”

  Max yawned, stretched his legs to the log fire.

  “Please yourself,” he said, thinking maybe it was as well to shake the old man off now. He was getting old: before long he’d be a nuisance.

  “Then I guess I’ll stay here,” Ismi said, picked up the tray, and as he turned to the door a dog began to howl mournfully somewhere in the garden. The wind was rising and it caught the sound, carried it past the house towards the Bay.

  Max glanced over his shoulder towards the door, listened too.

  “What’s he howling about?” he demanded irritably.

  Ismi shook his head, carried the tray into the kitchen. While he washed the dishes he listened to the continual howling. It got on his nerves. He had never heard the dog howl like this before, and after he had put away the dishes he went out into the garden.

  The moon floated high above the pine trees, its yellow face partly obscured by light clouds. The wind rustled the shrubs, and the garden was alive with whispered sounds.

  Ismi walked down the path to the kennel. At the sound of his approach the dog stopped howling and whined.

  “What is it?” Ismi asked, bending to look into the dark kennel. He could just make out the dog as it crouched on the floor, and he struck a match. The tiny flame showed him the dog, its hair in ridges all along its back, its eyes blank with fright.

  Ismi suddenly felt uneasy and he straightened, looked over his shoulder into the half-darkness. He fancied he saw a movement near the house, and he peered forward as the dog whined again. A mass of black shadows confronted him and he told himself uneasily that he had imagined the movement, but he waited, wondering if he would see it again. After a few minutes he gave up and returned to the house. He was relieved to shut and bolt the door.