The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  Dynamite stick. Blasting cap. Fuse.

  Milano realized he had wildly bellowed “Kirwan!” under the gag when he felt the strain of it in his throat. Then panic grabbed him, the kind that starts an instant cold sweat over the whole body, sends pearls of it trickling down the face, wetting chest and belly, rolling off the fingertips.

  Not arson. Dynamite. Somehow, Captain Kirwan, demolitions expert, had gotten himself a load of high explosive to play with.

  A busy gardener now, planting the stuff around the dusty corners of that basement fortress.

  And at seven o’clock tonight—

  Superimposed on this was the image of Christine Bailey impatiently looking at that wall clock in the Rammaert Gallery just as Captain Kirwan’s trussed-up, useless prisoner was now looking at this clock over the doorway. Ten minutes to five. In about ten minutes she’d be walking out of the gallery on her way over to the co-op’s garage for the Toyota. Heavy traffic and all, she could easily make it here to Witter Street by six. Then upstairs to the apartment. And down below, Kirwan was getting things ready for the fireworks at seven.

  Join the army. Learn a trade. Like Guy Fawkes.

  That was the reason for that little private joke about Guy Fawkes.

  And the laughter about Mr. Passarini’s fireworks. But not the Coney Island kind.

  So what was needed now, but fast, faster, fastest, was something sharp. Something with an edge to slice into this leather binding. That would be the advantage of leather over rope now. Once you just start slicing into leather it gave up easily, could be pulled apart.

  Theoretically sound, but, as Milano saw, the only glass in sight were windowpanes well out of range. Metal. That brass lampshade. But if it could be jolted off the desk and drawn within reach, there didn’t appear to be any edges to it. And bruising experiment had already demonstrated it couldn’t be jolted off the desk.

  Metal. The riser itself was iron, and maybe chafing the leather against it – given enough time – could serve the same purpose as cutting into it.

  Maybe. Given enough time.

  Milano leaned forward pulling the strap tight against the pipe behind his back and started drawing it up and down against the metal. With any luck, he thought, he could hit some imperfection on the pipe, some splinter of metal, which would start the cutting process. No luck at this level. He let himself down to his knees and again started that up and down motion of the bound wrists. No luck here either. Up there, down here, and probably wherever else you tested it, that pipe’s surface was damn near frictionless. It wouldn’t be a case of slicing into that leather or abrading it, it would be a case of eroding it.

  But you desperately worked with whatever you had to work with.

  Keeping your eyes on that clock naturally, so that you suddenly realized for the first time in your life that you could actually see the minute hand of a clock moving. It moved all right, while shoulder joints, drawn back unnaturally against the strain of those bound wrists against the pipe, felt more and more as if knifeblades had been shoved into them and were being slowly twisted into every nerve there. Stop to ease the agony, and the minute hand of the clock moved even faster. It was obvious now why tough old Guy Fawkes, after laughing off those fifty-six days of mustard and vinegar, gave up as soon as the rack got to work on his shoulder joints.

  One half hour of this up and down against the pipe – thirty minutes which had the pains crawl together from each shoulder to join at the base of the skull, and then to crawl down the arms to the fingertips – and Milano knew that erosion wasn’t going to work. He had suspected that well before the half hour was up but couldn’t bring himself to know it for a fact.

  At twenty after five he forced himself to accept the fact. And with the pains eased a little as he leaned back against the riser, forced himself to consider some bright possibilities.

  All right, a lunatic was arranging to set off a blast next door. And – try to face this thought without coming apart – Christine Bailey was arranging to be there for the event. But what was to say that Kirwan, with his scrambled brains, could pull it off? As long as it hadn’t happened yet, one might assume it wouldn’t happen. A dozen things could go wrong with any such operation. A hundred things. Seven o’clock would come and go, no bang.

  Oh yeah, thought Milano. Like those Friday morning arithmetic tests in good old P.S. 128. First you hoped Friday wouldn’t come, but it always came. Then you hoped the test wouldn’t come, but it always did.

  And if a beautifully executed ambush was the gauge, there was a shrewd capability under the craziness of Captain-Professor Charles Witter Kirwan, that perambulating atomic plant with all valves leaking.

  All. Valves. Leaking.

  So at twenty minutes after five, Milano realized that he had a piece of sharp-edged metal within hand’s reach. Incredible that he had missed it before. Proof, he saw, that he might have gone mental, but sure as hell not mental enough. And there was no point now banging his head against the riser as a payoff for such stupidity. That pleasure he would reserve for a more promising time.

  A short length of pipe coupled riser to radiator. Extending from the near coil of the radiator was its valve. Smooth-surfaced, bright and shiny – every damn piece of visible metal in the building looked like it had been installed yesterday – but what had to attach it to the radiator would be a threaded stem, and those threads offered sharp edges. A spiral of them capable of chewing right through leather.

  Given time.

  Better not to think what it would be like if heat had been needed in these pipes. Just be grateful it wasn’t.

  When Milano went down to his knees again he had the feeling they had been skinned down to the nerve ends. Pushing his back hard against the riser he blindly fumbled behind him for the valve, loosened it with a shove of the fist, got a grip on it and started to carefully turn it. One turn too much, and it could land on the floor out of reach. And then talk about Tantalus and his troubles.

  Slow turn by slow turn, the valve finally came off into his hand. He pushed himself upright and found with a probing thumb that he had about an inch of sharp, hard-edged thread to work with, and that the valve itself, serving as handle, offered the grip needed. He maneuvered it in his hand until the stem was forced between the top two layers of strap and started a thrust and pull motion, back and forth within the scant inch the stem provided. Almost lightheaded with the sense of being on the way at last, he felt the scrape of brass against leather.

  The pain in hand and fingers now set in. It was an unnatural position to start with, the grip on the valve had to be unrelentingly, consciously tight because any slackening of it meant a chance he would drop it, and there was no changing hands without losing that one small spot being worked on and having to start all over again. So this was it. Back and forth, with an electric shock up to the elbow with every small thrust.

  Patience. Concentration. A rhythmical sawing away at the exact mark. An uninhibited grunt – he sounded to himself like a happily rooting hog – whenever one of those jolts of electricity hit harder than expected. Plenty of punishment taken, plenty more to take. Because getting down to the bottom line, he told himself, he had no intention of settling for bloody goddam fragments of his woman now that he had finally met up with her. It was as simple as that.

  Between grunts he became acutely aware of street noises. The kids. The traffic. The buses. Those buses especially. Everybody in town griped about its bus service, but it seemed that every couple of minutes another one of the damn things was squealing to a stop nearby, marking time briefly, and then racketing on its way. Only when he checked this on the clock it wasn’t every couple of minutes, it was closer to every five minutes. Bad news. Even nightmarishly worse was the way those two hands of Naval Observatory up there moved to that vertical line marking six o’clock.

  The kid noises faded away. Supper time. The traffic noises intensified. Coming-home time. And one of those cars could be the Toyota with Chris at the wheel. Or was there
any chance that the car had been deliberately fouled up by Maxie Rovinsky in the garage? Gracie, that prime bitch – his worst case of mistaken judgment had to be Gracie MacFadden – had passed the word along about Milano’s melanzana, and Maxie had sabotaged the car to save his old bachelor poker partner from a fate worse than death. Right now the car was busted down in the middle of the bridge. It would take hours before the trafic there was untangled.

  And that, Milano warned himself, was the kind of thinking which meant that the Milano brain was now heading in the same direction as Kirwan’s. Spinning off-center right into fantasyland.

  Patience, concentration, and at twenty minutes after six Milano felt the threads of the valve stem meet resistance. Stick, scrape, stick, Stick again. Scrape deep. The feeling you got from a knife hitting the apple core.

  Braced for disappointment, he pulled his wrists forward against the riser and there was a perceptible loosening of the binding around them. He pulled harder and the severed strap, suddenly released from pressure, flipped around and around, but came up short at its initial loop. Still with a grip on the valve – you never knew – Milano worked the wrists against each other, twisting and pulling. The strap gave way completely. Only when it hit the floor did he let go of the valve.

  He found then that he had no hands. No arms. Trying to raise them to get at the necktie between his jaws, he found they weren’t attached to him any more. He had to will them into motion, raise them like lead weights, fumble at the knot in the gag with fingers that didn’t belong to him. He finally got the knot open, pulled away the sodden tie.

  He lurched at the desk, grabbed the phone from its stand and then, his hand failing him, dropped it. He scrabbled for it, holding it with the dead hand, the valve-wielding hand whose fingers couldn’t seem to uncurl, and dialed with the other hand. For emergencies, you dialed 911. Like every other service in Magic City it had a bad name, it didn’t work right, but, as ever, you used what was offered and did a lot of heavy praying while at it.

  The praying didn’t work this time. Milano listened incredulously to the busy signal, then slammed the phone down on the stand. Some screwed-up son of a bitch had a hangnail and wanted an ambulance. Or somebody’s roast was burning in the oven, and fire engines were being called for. He counted one two three slowly, picked up the phone and dialed again. Now the praying worked.

  The official voice was casually inquiring, female, Spanish-flavored. Milano cut through it furiously. “Listen. There is a bomb set to go off at seven o’clock in Four-oh-nine Witter Street, Brooklyn.” The Spanish-flavored voice was still trying to do the official bit. “Shut up!” Milano shouted, and it shut up. “Listen to me, that’s all. There is a bomb going off at seven o’clock in Four-oh-nine Witter Street, Brooklyn. An apartment house with a lot of people in it. At seven o’clock, do you hear? Now get moving, God damn it!”

  He slammed down the phone again and on wobbly legs got moving himself, almost headlong down the staircase and out of there.

  When he hit the street the sun was down, the street lights already on, but there was still plenty of daylight without them. And no Toyota parked anywhere in sight.

  He covered the distance to 409 in a stiff-legged painful sprint, some people in its doorway giving him plenty of room as he went by. He kept his thumb on the doorbell of the apartment, meanwhile savagely kicking the door, until the door was suddenly flung open and a stranger stood there glaring at him. It had to be the older brother. Odell. Not as tall as beanpole Vern but a lot wider. And looking mean. “Man, what the hell you—”

  Chris was right behind her brother shoving him aside. “Johnny, where’ve you been? I was going to phone next door, but I wasn’t sure you’d want—”

  Milano waved a hand back and forth. “Never mind that. Kirwan’s gone out of his skull. He’s in the cellar here right now setting up a load of dynamite to go off at seven o’clock. A big blast right downstairs, do you understand?”

  Odell looked like Kirwan wasn’t the only one in the area out of his skull. Christine said to Milano in bewilderment, “What are you talking about?” But behind her in the kitchen somebody took serious notice, because Mrs. Bailey’s voice rose in passionate appeal. “Oh, Lord Jesus!”

  Bad manners maybe, but Milano pushed his way inside. They had all been at supper in the kitchen. Mrs. Bailey was now out of her chair looking terrified. Vern sat there gaping. No Lorena.

  “Where’s Lorena?” Milano demanded.

  Chris motioned. “In bed. But Johnny—”

  “No, just get her out of here fast. All of you get out. Don’t take anything. Just hit the street.”

  Odell was frozen there. “Man, you sure you know what you’re talking about? Kirwan? Him? And dynamite?”

  “Kirwan,” Milano said. “I got it straight from him.” Too bad the truth had to be stretched like this, but, with luck, there’d be time for apologies at a later date. “He pulled a gun on me next door, tied me up, told me all about it before he headed here.” He held up his crossed wrists to illustrate, and saw as they did that the wrists were grotesquely swollen, the swelling streaked with purple welts. “I couldn’t get away until now. I already called the cops.”

  That was almost the convincer. The convincer itself came by way of a siren whooping louder and louder, the whoop descending to a groan and finally cutting out completely close by. Never knock 911, Milano thought, because sometimes it does work, doesn’t it?

  Vern moved from the kitchen table in haste. “I’ll get Lorena.”

  “Hold it,” Christine ordered. She said to Milano, “How much time is there?”

  “Damn little. Kirwan said seven o’clock, and it’s six-thirty now. Look, I have to go down and see those cops. All you do—”

  She shook her head at him impatiently. “Odell, you get over to those back stairs. Start on top and get those folks moving. Vern, you take the front stairs. Don’t waste time with talk. Just bang hard and yell them out.”

  “Yell what?” said Odell. “We yell dynamite, they’ll know we have to be jiving ’em. We yell fire, they’ll wait to make sure. You saw it happen.”

  “All right,” said Chris, “then yell gas leak, hear? Gas leak. And loud. Bang and yell, that’s all. And then get out fast yourselves. I’ll take care of Lorena.”

  Going down the stairs, Milano could hear the banging and yelling start high above. The patrol car was parked at the front door. Two cops standing by it were looking up at the building. The street lights were needed now in gathering dusk. In the buildings across the way, tenantry leaned out of windows taking in the show.

  Milano went over to the cops. “I’m the one who put in that 911 call,” he informed them.

  Both were cut to the same youthful rangy pattern, but the one with the Madman’s style of luxuriant Viking mustache seemed to be senior. “About some kind of bomb threat?” he said doubtfully.

  This is a bad dream, Milano knew. The kind where you’re running from an unholy menace swinging an axe at you, and suddenly you’re stuck knee-deep in ooze where you can’t move.

  He said between clenched teeth, “Look, the guy who owns this building went psycho. He’s locked in that cellar right now setting up dynamite for a blow-up at seven o’clock. He told me that himself.”

  “He told you that himself?”

  “He even showed me the stuff, for chrissake. But he got away before I could stop him. And it’ll be seven o’clock goddam soon.”

  Upstairs, the convincer for the customers had been the appearance of the cops on the scene. Here, it seemed the convincer for the cops was the appearance of some customers. They came streaming out of the building, kids in the lead noisily making a ball of it, the older generation right behind – that elderly white couple among them, Milano saw, were the ones who had put the curse on Kirwan for their broken refrigerator – and never mind the dire need to get moving at once, a few had household goods in their arms, one had a fair-sized TV set, and there were also some dogs and cats being lugged along.


  The sight of them spilling onto the sidewalk goosed Mustache into action. “That the way to the cellar there?” he asked Milano, pointing at the stone steps.

  “That’s it. But you won’t get the cellar door open that easy. And he’s got a shotgun ready if you do.”

  “We’ll take a look,” said Mustache. Hand on the butt of his pistol, he led his partner down the steps, Milano following close behind. Slipping the gun from its holster, Mustache banged the door with his other fist and shouted “Police! Open up there.” A couple of tries in that direction with some added kicking at the door, and he turned to his partner. “Shit. Steel-jacketed. And probably a slide-bolt too.”

  “They’ll have to burn through it,” said the partner.

  “He said seven o’clock,” Milano pleaded. “That leaves only ten minutes. Just get the place cleared out, that’s all.”

  “Yeah?” said Mustache with sarcasm, letting it be known who the expert was, but he moved with notable speed leading the way back to the street.

  It presented a wild scene now. The one gratifying sight from Milano’s angle was that of the Baileys en masse near the entrance of the building. Lorena, he saw, was in a bathrobe, and from the wrestling grip Chris had on her – one arm around her throat from behind, the other shoving up Lorena’s arm in a half-nelson, it was evident that little sister had come along unwillingly and was still registering fierce protest.

  For the rest, there were now more patrol cars parked near the original one, and down the street came yet another. Motor traffic was being bottled up, not only by drivers slowing down as they passed 409 to see what was going on, but by what looked to be the entire population of the block – those who weren’t at their windows – crowding around to get a look at the action, whatever it was.

  A sedan, unmarked but with a flasher on its roof, and with siren snarling, gave up trying to work its way through the thickening mass of foot and motor traffic, found an opening to the sidewalk beside a hydrant, and pulled right up on the sidewalk. Several men emerged from it – no uniforms there – and their leader was conspicuously the shortest and leanest of them, a pinch-faced, slit-eyed, thin-lipped character who moved up to Mustache by ruthlessly shoving aside anyone, man woman, or child, who stood in his way.