The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

by Paul Malmont

  He sure wished he had a killer idea like that Sweet Flower mystery. He had to admit that he wasn’t very good at tracking down stories like that and using them the way Gibson and Dent seemed to. That was one of the reasons the Street & Smith style suited him so well; here most of the ideas, sometimes even the outlines, for stories of the sort he wrote were provided by the eds. It was just the writer’s work to put the words to them. He relied much more on his imagination than his life to just make up the goods. So far the words kept bubbling up.

  “John Campbell?” He knocked on the door. On its window were stenciled the words ASTOUNDING AND AMAZING. He knocked again. The Flash’s palms were sweating. He needed to win Campbell over. He needed something big. Something bold. Something with great heroes, horrifying villains, and beautiful dames. Something astounding and amazing. He heard a rustle from behind the door, a smooth whisper of pages turning.

  “Yeah?” The door flew open and the young ed appeared. He was big man, nearly as tall as Lester Dent, and barrel-chested. The Flash caught a glimpse of paper everywhere, both the yellowish browns of cheap pulp and the richer whites of typewriter stock, as if both the newsstand and the men peddling their stories on the sidewalk below had exploded in a blizzard of scattered pages and spilled ink across every available surface in Campbell’s office including the floor.

  “Ron Hubbard.” He stuck out his hand. Campbell took hold of it and gave it a powerful shake. To Hubbard he appeared to be one of those types that advertisers liked to call a man-on-the-go.

  “Hubbard,” he said. He was either Hubbard’s age or younger. “I hear you’re a writer.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said The Flash, matching Campbell’s grip with vigor and confidence, “I am.”

  Episode Four

  “AND NOW,” the tall thin man with the thatch of white hair announced, his voice ringing out fiercely, “I will attempt to save this sinful woman from the eternal inferno of hell itself!”

  The woman held on to a velvet rope for dear life. Below her was a pool of roiling fire. A tendril of sputtering flame climbed busily up the rope, leaving charred strands behind. The woman recoiled in fear and tried to pull herself up but it was clear that her grip was slipping.

  “Of course, as every righteous soul knows, the path to salvation lies through the fire.” He threw his arms wildly toward the woman, and fireballs leapt from his fingertips. The rope snapped and the woman dropped into the roiling conflagration far faster than anyone could possibly have anticipated. Books and movies have convinced people that a rescuing hand can reach a falling person in the nick of time, but the truth is that the speed is breathtaking and that the moment of rescue is nearly impossible. Voices cried out in terror from onlookers male and female. The fire vanished in a cloud of smoke and heavenly birds flapping into the darkness, and great gasps were heard. The woman floated in the air in the very spot where the flames had been an instant before. She was dressed in a gown of shimmering light, which surrounded her in angelic radiance. The man gestured and slowly the woman descended, as if controlled by a mysterious energy emanating from his hands.

  As her feet touched the floor, the audience at the Majestic Theater erupted in rapturous applause. Elderly women fanned themselves excitedly with their programs. Couples turned to each other to express their astounded disbelief. Gibson applauded along. He had seen Blackstone perform the Salvation of Miss Molly illusion dozens of times, and it never failed to impress him with its artful deception and its ability to captivate and impress an audience.

  The fireballs from the fingertips were a dazzling new wrinkle, however, and an inspired flourish. He made a mental note to try to figure out how it was done as soon as possible. A flash powder effect was common enough, but he had never heard of one being detonated from what he assumed was some kind of handheld or wrist-attached apparatus. Flash powder was extremely volatile stuff. Anytime the size of a load of powder was doubled, its explosive force multiplied eightfold. Just four ounces, handled recklessly, could do more than remove a limb or an extremity; it could dismember a person. To keep quantities of the explosive somehow attached to reservoirs on his person in close proximity to an igniter was an invitation to disaster for a lesser magician than Blackstone and a reminder to Gibson why his old friend’s name was on the marquee.

  The bewitching showgirl, one of the bevy of show beauties, bowed and slipped quickly off the stage, no doubt to make another costume change. Blackstone theatrically dabbed some droplets of sweat from his brow with a silk and drank in the applause as he transformed the innocent piece of cloth into the dancing handkerchief, one of his signature pieces. The premiere so far had been brilliant and Gibson could see how much his old friend was enjoying himself.

  Gibson had been introduced to Blackstone soon after ghosting biographies for Houdini and Thurston about a decade before. The two had become friends and had collaborated on seven books and dozens of magazine articles about magic over the years.

  As Blackstone held the stage, alone in a single spotlight, Gibson could imagine the hullabaloo backstage. Blackstone’s team of technicians and performers numbered around fifty; the intense stillness of the man onstage belied the havoc that Gibson imagined was happening mere feet from his back. Blackstone adjusted his bow tie, drew a finger across his thin mustache, then held up his hands in a call for silence, his long fingers spread wide. “Ladies and gentleman,” he said in a strong stage voice. “We have a great treat for you tonight. The name of the Great Raymond is known to many of you, as it is throughout the world, as one of the legendary magicians of our time.” There was a smattering of applause as some audience members placed the name, although Gibson recognized that Blackstone was being gracious to a brother magician.

  Maurice Raymond had been an eclectic yet middling professional magician at his career’s apogee, which was more than a few years past now. Just one of that great number of mediocre but serviceable magicians who had sprung up out of nowhere in the previous decade during magic’s explosive boom in popularity, performers with no discernible original style—and more importantly, no signature tricks—of their own. Their survival seemed to depend upon presenting budget-conscious versions of the fantastic illusions created by the masters—Thurston, Houdini, Blackstone—to a populace who would never be able to afford to see them otherwise.

  “As you may know,” Blackstone continued, “this master showman has recently retired from the stage in order to pursue certain occult studies of the deepest and most profound nature.”

  Once again Harry Blackstone was being charitable. Raymond’s shows had declined in quality because of his unwillingness to develop new tricks, and he had quit touring because producers would no longer bankroll his moth-eaten productions. Even though magic shows were not as popular as they had been ten years ago, the public still expected to see new and fabulous extravaganzas, but the Great Raymond had emptied every trick he could from his dusty old bag. Blackstone had surmised to Gibson that with fewer magicians around to crib acts from, Raymond had been unable to sustain his show. Furthermore, Gibson knew, as Blackstone did and the audience surely did not, that the Great Raymond was ailing.

  Blackstone continued in the spotlight, his Michigan accent flattening some of the rounder sounds, “We are thrilled that he has been gracious enough to loan us a special pleasure for the duration of our American tour. She was trained in her mystic art by the greatest of all mentalists, El Cheiro, far from civilization, high in the Peruvian mountains. She has read the minds of kings and queens, emperors and shahs, viceroys and chancellors, presidents and prime ministers. And tonight, ladies and gentlemen, she just might read yours. For seven years she has been one of the star attractions of the Great Raymond’s show, as well as his partner in wedlock, and we are proud that she has deigned to join the Blackstone Spectacular for a limited engagement.”

  Gibson knew she was now part of the show because with Raymond’s show in mothballs, Blackstone had been able to sign her at a farm foreclosure price. And she w
as worth so much more.

  “Please give one of your legendary New York welcomes for the woman whose mentalist abilities are sure to convince you of the existence of higher planes of reality, of the existence of worlds unseen and unknown, of the existence of spirits who see all and know all.”

  A low, mysterious melody began wafting from the orchestra pit, summoning imagined memories of far-flung tropical islands floating on the black Pacific Ocean in the deep of night. “I bring you the astounding, the shocking, the mystifying, the enlightening, the terrifying, the Dragon Lady from the Tibetan Orient, Pearlitzka!”

  The spotlight winked out on Blackstone, and another light, hung above the stage, blinked on. It shone into the eyes of the audience. A woman was silhouetted in its beam. Her arms were held high, her back was arched, and her legs were poised in a dancer’s position. Light fabric extended from her wrists to the sides of her body, giving her appearance some slight resemblance to a Chinese fan. Gibson could see the rise and fall of her breasts neatly outlined in the light.

  “Spirits from the nether regions speak to me of things seen and unseen, of the knowable and unknowable.” The girl’s husky voice seemed to float out of the air around her. Her arms drew to her side and she turned downstage, a sylph in the light, and bowed. As she stood upright, the house spotlight caught her in its clutches and revealed her to all. Gibson’s heart skipped a beat as the light drew out her features.

  The woman looked like an Asian of uncommon beauty. Her exquisite baby-doll face was painted white with greasepaint, great swooping teardrops of red Oriental makeup accenting her almond-shaped eyes. Her black hair was piled on her head and held in place with a number of long, thin metal spikes. Her long curved nails were lacquered red. The silk Chinese dress with open sleeves was slit up its side, occasionally revealing the breathtaking legs of a dancer. The silk clung to her skin in a smooth, coolly sensual way.

  A stagehand wheeled a rectangular object onto the stage. It was one of the ticket stub boxes from the lobby.

  “The spirits will select some of you this evening and tell of things past and present and future.” Her voice was light, strong, and clear. “For some of you the things they have to say may be enlightening; for others, terrifying. Only the spirits can know what they know and why they know it. It is for us, the living, to determine what we shall do with the knowledge they choose to share.” She unlocked the stub box and extended her arm into it. The audience tittered expectantly; few things enlivened an audience like allowing them to participate in a magic show. Whether being hypnotized, choosing cards, or inspecting chains, the civilians loved to be part of the act.

  If they thought about it for two seconds, Gibson thought, they could figure it all out. The box was obviously just a ruse. All the stubs would have the same seat number on them. She could call any number she wanted to, when it came down to it; whoever she called up would obviously be a plant. But the audience was here to be entertained, and surrendering the human desire (or was it an American desire?) to know how everything worked was key to the theater.

  “The spirits have spoken!” Pearlitzka called from the stage. Gibson watched everyone look around. “Will the person sitting in seat E2 be kind enough to join me onstage?”

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, buddy,” a voice whispered in his ear, “that’s you! You’re in E2!”

  “It’s only a letter and a number, E2. It shouldn’t be hard to find yourself. Of course I could just let the spirits come bring you to me.” Her voice had a ring that tickled the base of his spine. He stood up suddenly and waved.

  “There he is. There’s the one whom the spirits have chosen!” Gibson’s palms were sweating, and he swallowed, nervously. He looked back to the exit, which got a laugh. Then he shrugged and gamely marched up the aisle toward the orchestra pit, where an assistant was waiting to direct him up the stage steps.

  The beautiful young woman had his hand in an instant and gave it a surprisingly reassuring, and strong, squeeze. Her hand was small and soft. She smelled of sandalwood and jasmine. She looked younger onstage than she had from the auditorium. Her makeup was perfect. Completely in control of the stage, she turned both of them so their bodies faced the audience.

  “Do we know each other?” she asked.

  He shook his head. There were twitters and whispers from the audience before him. It was hard to see past the footlights and make out faces.

  “Do you have a name?” she asked.

  He nodded. This time there were guffaws.

  “Well, don’t keep it to yourself. How about sharing?”

  “Walter Gibson,” he said sheepishly, and the audience rewarded him with some light applause. He wondered whether if he had said the name Maxwell Grant, it would have garnered more applause than his own name did. Here he stood, the number one bestselling writer in America, creator of the most popular show on radio, and no one even knew who he was.

  “You don’t mind if I call you Walter, do you, Walter? All right, Walter. Let’s see why the spirits have chosen you this evening.” She took several steps back from him. He glanced down into the orchestra pit. Some of the musicians were sneaking looks up the slit of her dress. “You work with your hands, they tell me.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not in the least surprised.

  “You’re not a laborer. You’re some kind of skilled craftsman, a sculptor or carpenter. Something that combines the mind and the hands, right?

  “I suppose.”

  “Wait, it’s coming to me. It’s not about making something physical; you’re more in the nature of an artist or a writer.”

  He nodded. “I’m a writer.”

  The audience applauded. She peered at him closely, scrutinizing him. He knew what she was doing. Shotgunning. The technique, adapted by magicians from an old spiritualist routine popular at the end of the last century, required throwing a large amount of random information at the mark and letting them pick out what seemed personally relevant. In their astonishment they would tend to forget about all the other questions and choices that were presented to them and focus on the ones that seemed to concern them. For example, stating that a dead relative was trying to contact a mark was usually a safe place to start because everyone always has a dead relative. Then it was a matter of calling out relatives until a match was found. If one rattled off enough relatives, sooner or later the right one would be hit upon. Shotgunning was occasionally referred to as the Barnum Effect, because it played off people’s vanity and desire to believe that someone would actually want to have meaningful contact with them from beyond the grave. People tended to believe a lie told to them about themselves if it was a flattering lie. And to tell a person that someone they had loved was trying to break the boundaries between heaven and earth just to tell them where the fried chicken recipe was hidden was quite flattering indeed.

  Her green eyes were lively but critical. Her approach, which had started off in typical fashion, had become fairly specific. She was an expert shotgunner. Maybe the best he had ever seen. “The spirits tell me you carry one picture in your wallet at all times. Do they tell me truly?”

  “Yes.” How had she known that? He was beginning to feel vaguely uneasy.

  “And that picture is…I see…There is someone far away. Someone who loves you. The spirits are showing me a little boy. He wears shorts and is holding a baseball.”

  Reluctantly Gibson slipped his fingers into his wallet and pulled out a photo. The audience broke into applause.

  “A little boy, ladies and gentleman. Walter, the spirits want you to know that he…Robert…thinks of you often and sends his love.”

  The audience applauded with great enthusiasm. He tucked the picture back into his wallet without saying a word or even glancing at it. Pearlitzka tried to take his hand. He wriggled his fingers free. She seized it and led him in a bow. He turned to leave but she held on to his hand. She looked at him and a puzzled expression crossed her face. She held up her free hand. “It appears the spirits have
more for Walter from the world beyond,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “They’ve said quite enough.”

  She was silent for a moment. A long moment. Long enough for the audience to begin to grow uneasy. The orchestra vamped. She studied him closely. “Someone you know is dying,” she said at last. Her voice had dropped into a much lower register. “He’s dying.” She closed her eyes; the spectral voice made his flesh shiver. “He’s dying right now and he’s so afraid. It’s so cold.”

  The audience began to murmur. Someone coughed, nervously.

  “No,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think anyone I know is dying.”

  “The spirits are afraid,” she said, and her voice was hollow and cold. “The spirits want you to know that…he refuses to cross over. His soul is trapped between our plane and theirs. They are trying to help him but he won’t go. He won’t admit he’s dead. He says he was murdered! You have to help him! There are lives to save. You have to help.”

  He could feel the audience slip away from her. He looked at her face and realized she had lost the thread of her patter; she seemed distracted. “Help who?” he said, loudly. “The only one dying here is me!” The drummer rapped out a rim shot for him; the sound of it plucked at her stage instincts.

  She recovered in an instant and looked at the audience. “Obviously a comedy writer!” she told her audience with a wink, and they applauded. But her hand had turned cold and damp with sweat. She released him and he retreated to the safety of his seat as quickly as he could, while she summoned the next willing mark to the stage.

  His heart was pounding. He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was the man sitting behind again who had alerted him to his fate a little while ago. “Hey, pal,” the man said, “too bad she’s married, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, angry at the man and angrier at Pearlitzka. “Tough.”