Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

by editor Leo Margules

  For a moment, Brown wondered whom she was quoting, but then he envisioned the vast scope of her co-operation and the disaster it spelled. He would not only have to sell those confounded gadgets, but close scrutiny of his accounts would disclose, and foredoom, any further operations of the whole Brown speculative system.

  Now she was off on some other subject altogether. It was strange, Marion never used to be much of a talker.

  “… so that’s what I told the men from the company. They should take back the fuel tank until you finally decided, and, in the meantime, leave things the way they are. Have you tasted your drink, Richard? Come on, try it.” She lifted her own glass, and exclaimed, with spirit, “Bottoms up.”

  Did he really have that dismal choice, between hopeless flight and his own basement?

  “No, thanks,” he said, desperately, making the choice.

  “Oh, don’t be silly! Here, try a sip of mine.” She leaned forward, as though to proffer a taste, and the next moment he found she had pressed her glass into his hand. “You keep it. I’ll take yours.”

  It was a most understanding gesture, a most reassuring gesture—temporarily. Marion drank with zest. Richard took a sip. Nothing happened to either of them.

  Minutes later, Marion was demanding his attention again.

  “… so, if you decide differently, Richard, any time you want, you can change your mind,” said Marion.

  “Decide?”

  “About that hole downstairs.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Whatever you want. It’s up to you.”

  SUNDAY’S SLAUGHTER

  by JONATHAN CRAIG

  There was a large knothole in one of the boards near the roof of Henry Ferris’s barn. It was in the north wall, just beneath the eaves, and it gave Henry an unobstructed view of his orchard, and of the oblong knoll just beyond. The knoll was not on Henry’s property—it was part of the Kimberly place—and it was where Colleen Kimberly came, every Sunday afternoon, to set up her easel and her canvas chair, and paint the things she saw around her.

  Colleen was old Sam Kimberly’s only daughter, and she was the prettiest girl Henry had ever seen. He had begun noticing her about a year ago, when she just turned seventeen, and he hadn’t really been able to think about much else ever since. Colleen had blond hair like rain-washed wheat, and blue eyes that looked almost black until you got close to her, and, lately, her figure had filled out until it made Henry hurt just to look at her.

  Henry was looking at her now, with the help of a ladder pushed against the wall of the hayloft and an old brass-cased spyglass. This was the hottest day they had had all summer, and Colleen had hiked up her skirt, to make herself a little cooler. Henry grinned slyly, wondering how fast she’d pull that skirt down again, if she knew he was watching her.

  “It’d come down damn fast, I’ll bet,” he said aloud. He often talked to himself, working alone so much. “And, oh!—wouldn’t she blush, though!” He shifted the spyglass to his other eye and adjusted the focus, so that he could see the play of the slanting sunlight across the almost imperceptible golden down on Colleen’s tapering thighs. If she only knew I was up here! he thought. Man, if she only even suspected!

  He had talked to Colleen twice. The first time had been five weeks ago, when he had driven himself so nearly crazy in the hayloft that he’d felt he simply had to be closer to her. He had crossed the orchard and ambled over to the knoll, and stood watching her paint for a long time, before she noticed him at all. When she did, she didn’t seem to mind his being there. She didn’t even seem surprised. She had just smiled at him and gone back to her painting of a plum tree.

  “That’s real pretty,” Henry had said. “It sure enough looks just like an old plum tree, all right.” It was hard for a man to know exactly what to say to her, Henry reflected. Folks hereabouts said Colleen wasn’t quite bright, and that that was the reason her pa didn’t send her to the high school in town, and wouldn’t let her go out with boys.

  But hell, folks hereabouts were always saying mean things like that, especially about girls as pretty as Colleen. Why, they had even said he wasn’t bright, too. He had heard it said more than once—just as if a man could run a farm like this one, year after year, and take care of a wife who was paralyzed from the waist down and all, unless he was pretty bright.

  Hell, he was brighter than any of them! They were just jealous of him, because he was such a damn good farmer, that was all. Just like they were jealous of Colleen, because she was so pretty.

  Colleen hadn’t answered him when he complimented her painting of the plum tree. He stepped closer and squinted at the canvas, and nodded slowly. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It sure looks like that old plum tree’ll be popping out with fruit any minute now. It’s a right nice piece of work, miss.”

  The girl had smiled up at him and made another dab with her brush. “Thank you,” she said. “I—I’ve been working on it for a long time.” It was then Henry saw that her eyes were really blue, instead of black, the way they had looked through the spyglass.

  “Must get mighty lonesome for you sometimes,” he said. “I mean, the way your pa keeps you penned up here, so tight and all.” Colleen had stopped smiling, and her eyes seemed a little cloudy.

  “Me, I get pretty lonesome too,” Henry said. “I don’t get off the place more’n two, three times a month.” He paused. “What with my wife being an invalid and all, I have to stick pretty close.”

  Colleen had nodded solemnly and lowered her brush. She sat very still, and a sudden fragment of breeze brought Henry the sweet, slightly dizzying girl-scent of her.

  “If it wasn’t for your pa and my wife,” Henry went on, “you and me might…” He broke off, his mouth suddenly dry. “I mean, we might—well, go to a church supper or something. Maybe even to a movie in town.”

  The girl tilted her head to look up at him. “But you have a wife,” she said.

  “Maybe not for long, though,” Henry said, trying to sound casual. “The doc says she hasn’t got much of her row left to hoe.”

  Colleen nodded, her face almost expressionless.

  Henry swallowed hard, trying to get the dryness out of his throat. “If—if something happened to her, and if I could make it right with your pa… I mean, would you…?”

  The girl frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then raised her brush again and concentrated intently on the addition of some foliage to her plum tree. “If things were different,” she said. “If they really were, I might.”

  Henry had wanted to say more, much more, but he had been physically unable to talk. He had stood beside the girl a full minute before he realized he’d have to get away from her, before he lost control of himself and did something he’d be sorry for. This should have been one of the happiest moments of his life, he thought bitterly as he trudged back to his own farm. But it wasn’t—it was one of the worst.

  Things wouldn’t get any different, he knew—not for months and months, maybe even years. Martha might linger for God knew how long. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a thing he could do. The property was all in Martha’s name, even down to the rakes and hoes. He could leave Martha, sure—but what then?

  All he knew how to do was farm. If he went somewhere else, all he’d be was a hired man. This way, at least, he didn’t have to take orders from anybody except Martha—and he had his spyglass and his knothole in the barn wall.

  The second time Henry talked to Colleen he had seen her father approaching before he’d been on the knoll more than a minute or two. But he had satisfied himself that he could have her, if it weren’t for Martha. With Martha dead, and Colleen and he safely married, there wasn’t anything Colleen’s pa could do.

  Today, Henry had spent almost two hours watching Colleen through the spyglass, and now the longing for her had become too strong to bear. He took one last look at the firm, sunbathed thighs beneath the hiked-up skirt, then climbed back down the ladder and hid the spyglass in the hay…

  The pickup truck
pulled into the yard, just as Henry came through the barn door. There were two bloodhounds in a cage on the back of the truck, and the white lettering on the door of the cab read, Sheriff’s Office—Miller County. Riding in the seat beside the driver was Constable Jim Weber, from town. Weber and the other man got out and walked over to Henry. Weber carried a double-barreled shotgun crooked in his arm. The other man carried a rifle.

  “Afternoon, Henry,” the constable said. “This here is Deputy-Sheriff Bob Ellert. Bob, this is Henry Ferris. That was his field you was admiring so, up the road a ways.”

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” Henry said.

  The deputy nodded and crossed his arms. He was a big man, even bigger than Constable Weber, and he looked hot and uncomfortable in his khaki uniform with the leather leggings and heavy Sam Browne belt. “Hotter’n the hinges themselves, Mr. Ferris,” he said.

  “That’s for sure,” Henry said. “I been looking for it to rain. A good rain’d cool things off a bit.”

  “There’s another one loose, Henry,” the constable said.

  “What?” Henry said. “Oh—you mean from the asylum?”

  “Yeah. And this is a mean one, Henry. He’s one of these maniacs. He got him a meat-cleaver out of the kitchen somehow, and killed a guard with it and got loose. Next thing we hear, he’s taken the cleaver to old Mrs. Kurtz, over Lordville way. Cut her up like side-meat.”

  “I swear,” Henry said. “You think he’s somewhere around here?”

  “He just might be,” the deputy sheriff said. “We’re beating the whole county for him. The Sheriff’s Office and the State Police, and all the local peace officers, like Jim here.”

  “We’re warning everybody,” the constable said. “We’re phoning some of them, and calling on the ones that ain’t got phones. How’s your wife, Henry?”

  Henry sighed. “She’s just the same, Jim, just the same.”

  “That’s sure a pity,” the constable said.

  “You see this maniac, Mr. Ferris, you call the constable,” the deputy sheriff said. “And don’t lose no time about it, either. That man chopped up two women before they put him away, and he’s chopped up two more people since. God knows where he’ll stop, unless’n we get him fast.”

  “He killed them with a hatchet,” the constable said. “The ones he killed before they put him away, I mean. I don’t know why they didn’t just up and hang him, the way they should of done. Hell, putting a maniac like that in an asylum is just plain stupid!”

  “That’s a fact,” the deputy sheriff said. “You won’t have any trouble recognizing him, Mr. Ferris. He’s a big, tall old boy, with a face would scare hell out of almost anybody. He’s got him a face like a shovel.”

  “That’s right,” the constable said. “I seen his picture.”

  “He’s almost all jaw, that old boy is,” the deputy sheriff said. “Little scrunched-up forehead and crazy eyes, and this great big jaw jutting out there, just like a goddamn shovel.”

  “Yeah,” the constable said. “It hangs out there like a cowcatcher on a train.” He patted the stock of his shotgun. “I got this old lady loaded up just right for him, too. I got me bird shot in one barrel, and buckshot in the other. If I holler halt, and he don’t do it, that birdshot ought to slow him down mighty fast. And if the birdshot don’t, the buckshot sure’r’n hell will. It’ll slow him down permanent!”

  “I got my gun loaded the same way,” Henry said. “I been laying for some chicken thieves.”

  The constable nodded. “Just don’t go shooting him, without you give him a chance to surrender, though.” He turned slightly to wink at the deputy sheriff. “Ain’t that right, Bob?”

  The deputy grinned. “Sure,” he said. “We got to give him his just rights, like they say in the book.”

  Henry grinned back, knowingly. “I’ll give him everything that’s coming to him, don’t worry.”

  The constable patted the stock of his shotgun again and turned toward the pickup truck. “Well, we got to be rolling, Henry. There’s a lot of folks down the line, haven’t got phones. We got to warn them.”

  Henry was reluctant to give up his company so soon. He rarely had callers at all, much less for interesting reasons like this one. “I sure wish you could stay and pass the time of day,” he said hopefully.

  “Some other time, Henry,” the constable said, climbing into the truck. He opened the door on the other side for the deputy and leaned back against the cushion. “Give my best to the missus,” he said. The deputy waved to Henry and started the motor.

  Henry watched the truck circle around toward the rutted road that led up to the blacktop, and then he walked slowly toward the house and went inside.

  Martha was sitting in her wheelchair near the front door. She was pouring herself another tablespoonful of the patent medicine the doctor had told her was completely worthless. She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth and scowled at Henry accusingly.

  “Where’ve you been all this time?” she demanded, in her thin, whining voice. “A body could die ten times over, for all you’d care.”

  Henry said nothing. He watched Martha swallow the medicine and pour another spoonful. She was only twenty-seven, but she looked at least twenty years older than that. Since the stroke that had paralyzed her legs, she had seemed to wither away slowly, day by day, until Henry could scarcely remember exactly what she had looked like when he married her.

  Martha had been no raving beauty even then, Henry often reflected, and only God knew how he had had enough stomach to marry her, even to get his hands on her farm. That was just the trouble—he’d never got his hands on it at all. Martha had let him work it for her, but she had kept it in her own name. He’d never own so much as a square inch of it, until she died. The best he had been able to do was hold out a little of the egg money.

  Martha swallowed the second spoonful of the medicine, grimaced and screwed the cap back on the bottle very carefully.

  “Folks are talking about your never going to church, Henry,” she whined. “And about your working so much in the barn on Sundays. It isn’t right.”

  “That barn ain’t no affair of theirs,” Henry said. “And how am I supposed to go to church? I’d be gone three hours or more. Then you’d really holler, for sure.”

  “Not about your going to church, I wouldn’t.”

  “Then, why do you nag me so about being out to the barn?”

  “That ain’t the same thing at all, Henry, and you know it.”

  “It sure looks like the same thing to me, by God! It’s me not peeking in on you every five minutes that gets you riled up so much, not where I am.”

  “That’s another thing,” Martha said. “What in the world do you do out in that barn, every blessed Sunday? It appears to me you spend more time out there on Sundays than you do all week put together.”

  Henry stared at her, wondering whether he should tell her about the maniac being loose, just to change the subject. No—it would only set Martha off on a lot of damnfool questions, and he didn’t feel like talking to her any more than he had to. He didn’t even want to look at her.

  He turned, left the house again and climbed back up in the hayloft. The visit by the constable and the deputy sheriff had almost made him forget about Colleen Kimberly, out there on the knoll beyond the orchard, but now he had an urgent need to look at her again. It would be painful, but it was something he had to do. He hoped she’d still be there—that sun was getting plumb brutal, especially if you were one of these real fair-skinned people, like Colleen.

  She was still there, Henry found. She had shifted around on her canvas chair, so that she was facing the barn. The unconscious display of bare legs was more provocative than anything Henry could remember.

  “Oh, Lord!” he said to himself in the stifling heat of the hayloft. “What makes me torment myself so?”

  He lowered the spyglass a moment, to wipe the sweat from his face—and it was then that he saw the man in the orchard. The man was traveli
ng at a fast lope, and, in his right hand, he carried a large meat-cleaver.

  Henry stared at the cleaver, and then at the man’s huge, undershot jaw. “It’s that crazy shovel-face maniac,” he said aloud. “It’s him, surer’n all hell! He’s running through the orchard that way, so’s he can cut around the house and come in the front door.”

  Henry came down the ladder fast, smiling broadly. There was no fear in him, no hesitancy. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and the thought pleased him.

  You talk about your warm welcomes, he thought. I’ll give you one, mister. I’ll give, you one you ain’t never going to forget. ’Course, you won’t have long to remember it, but you sure’n hell ain’t going to forget it.

  He ran to the shelf where he kept his shotgun, jerked the gun from its leather case, and crept to the barn door.

  The man with the cleaver was at the far end of the orchard now, crouching down, watching the house from behind an apple tree. Even from this distance, and without the spyglass, Henry could see the crazed look in the big man’s eyes.

  He’s a mean one, all right, he reflected. He should of been hung to begin with, like the constable said. Just look at him standing out there, thinking about how he’s going to chop somebody up with that cleaver…

  The thought echoed and re-echoed in Henry’s mind. Suddenly he began to sweat even worse than he had in the hayloft. He put the thought into words. “Chop somebody up…” he whispered to himself.

  Well, why not?

  Martha was there in the house, wasn’t she? And helpless in her wheelchair, wasn’t she? The maniac would kill her with that cleaver—that was sure. And all Martha could do was scream.

  Suppose he waited till she screamed, Henry reasoned, and then ran into the house with his shotgun? He’d be too late to save her, wouldn’t he? She’d be dead, and he could blow the maniac’s head off. Then he would have the farm all to himself.

  The farm—and Colleen Kimberly.

  He could have the girl too, by God! Her pa would be glad to get her off his hands, if he could marry her to a widower with all the land Henry was going to have. It was all so clear, so easy, so sure. Nobody would think a thing about it. He could hear them now—“Old Henry is out in his barn, see, and he hears Martha scream out, and he grabs up his shotgun and comes running, but he’s too late—that maniac has already killed her.”