by Bob Leman
The other house, the Frank Evans place, was now the property of Gordon's aunt, Helena Slade, old Frank's granddaughter. Smithers parked in front of it and climbed a set of steps very like those he had just descended, He rang the bell. After a long wait, the door opened slightly. Smithers said, briskly, "Morning, Signe. Helena in?"
"You crazy?" the old woman said, "You know what time it is? Helena's in bed. So was I, until you come ringin'. Come back at a decent hour. This is no time to be ringin' people's doorbells."
A distant voice called out, "What is it, Signe?"
"It's Eddie Smithers," the old woman shouted. "Wants to come in. Don't know what time it is, I guess."
"Let him in, Signe," the voice said. "Give him some coffee. I'll be down in a little while."
"All right," the old woman said, and, to Smithers, "Well, come in, Eddie. She's as crazy as you are."
She left him in a morning room, to which she at length brought coffee. He had drunk two cups by the time Helena Slade entered, a trim, white-haired woman wearing twin sweaters and a tweed skirt. She said, "Good morning, Eddie. I'm sure Signe has already called your attention to the time."
"Morning, Helena. Yes, she did. I thought what I have couldn't wait."
"Yes. Well, tell me." She sat and took coffee.
"Gordon's planning to kill you," Smithers said.
The hand raising the cup may have paused for a fraction of a second; otherwise she did not visibly react. She drank and then said, in an ordinary voice, "I wondered when he'd think of it. It's that damned idiotic will."
"He's just about at the end of his rope," Smithers said. "He hasn't got anything left to sell, except his house."
"You ought to know, Eddie. You were broker for every acre he sold, weren't you?"
"I'm a businessman," Smithers said. "He wanted to sell, there were buyers, somebody was going to get the commissions. Anyhow, he's broke, now. And of course when you die he gets the money you hold as trustee for him. I think you made a big mistake, there, Helena. You've refused to let him have a nickel -and it was wholly at your discretion how much of the money he was to have as income- so that now he's totally certain that your death is the only way he'll get his hands on the money. And it is his, after all. He's serious about this, dead serious. Even if you give him the money now, I'm not sure you'll be safe. He really hates you. You turned him down once too often when he asked for some of his money. But you'd better hand it over right away. Today, say."
"But he could never get away with it. If he - if something happens to me, he's the only one with a motive. And now you know what he's planning."
"If he's caught after he does it, it won't help you a bit, will it? Give him his money."
"Eddie," she said, "I can't."
"Why not?"
"There isn't any."
"Ah," Smithers said. "I see. Slade cleaned you out entirely, then." Helena had married in her youth a charming, remorseless confidence man who was known to have enriched himself greatly out of the Evans fortune before he deserted Helena and fled to the Riviera. "And you've been using Gordon's money ever since. But how the hell could you have spent it all? There must have been anyhow a million"
"Closer to two. Slade got some, and I went into some unfortunate speculations in trying to make up deficits. It's all gone, Eddie, every cent of it, and nothing to show for it. I'll go to prison, I suppose. Or Gordon will kill me. I knew it would come eventually."
"Helena," Smithers said, "do you think I'm going to let anything like that happen to you? We've been friends for forty years and, for a while there, considerably more than just friends. Don't worry. I'll get you out of it."
"I don't see how," she said. "If Gordon finds out the money's gone, he'll
prosecute, and if he doesn't find out, he'll kill me to end the trust. And he's stubborn. I don't think anything will make him drop it. Not ever in his life.”
"Right!" Smithers said heartily.
She looked at him. "Oh," she said. "Yes. Yes, that would do it, if Gordon died, wouldn't it? But how could we - how would you do that?"
"Why, I think I can turn his own little scheme around so he'll be the victim, not you. I'm going to give it a shot, anyhow. It'll be tricky. He's fooling around with things he doesn't understand at all. I don't either, to tell the truth. But I know a lot more than he does."
"What is it, Eddie? What is it that he's doing?"
"Some old Indian stuff," Smithers said. "Witchcraft, I guess you'd say, except that I never heard the word used for the Indian version. He was trying to call up a supernatural creature to kill you."
Helena laughed. "No, really."
"Oh, I'm perfectly serious. The fact is, he's already done it. Called up his creature, that is. He didn't get quite what he was after, of course."
She stopped laughing. "You are serious."
"I am indeed. It's my doing, really."
"What does that mean?"
"Helena, I'm a Sangimee Indian. Everybody know that, but nobody ever stops to think about it, because all they see is a one-hundred-percent-go-getter realtor and City Councilman and Rotarian. Sometimes I forget it myself. But I'm Sangimee, and my grandfather taught me Sangimee medicine when I was a boy. You remember his house way out on Donley Street?"
"Yes," Helena said.
"It was still all woods behind his house then, and starting when I was about five, he began to take me to a secret place he had in there, and he taught me the lore. That's how it works the medicine man always teaches it to his grandson, not his son. For better or worse, long before any of the other tribes, the Sangimee joined 'em when they saw they couldn't lick 'em, and for two hundred and fifty years now we've lived just like our neighbors. But during all that time the, medicine men passed on the lore to their grandsons, or to boys adopted as grandsons for that purpose. And it's not just superstition. Sangimee medicine has some very real powers, and the lore recounts a good many things that sound like fairy tales, but are hard, simple truth. I know.
"During the last ten years or so, I've seen quite a lot of Gordon, selling off his land for him. You know Gordon. He goes for anything trendy, especially young people's fads. Goes all out for a while, until something else takes his attention. Disco dancing, anti-draft, cocaine, anti-nuke - he has his little fling at whatever is 'in.' Most of 'em seem kind of nasty to me, but then I’m a bourgeois flag-waver."
"He calls me a fascist," Helena said.
"Oh, sure. He'd call me one too, except that I'm an Oppressed Minority. I bother him because I don't behave the way his stereotype says I should. When the Indian Rights thing was the big fad with the trendy people, he jumped in with both feet, of course; and while he was still enthusiastic about it, he pestered me a lot for information about what he called Tribal Customs of Native Americans. I let it slip that I was trained as a medicine man, and he zeroed in on that. It fascinated him. I ended up telling him about the Festamatis."
"Festamatis?"
"According to the legend, a malign spirit that lives in a dead tree. It can be invoked by an appropriate spell, and it will do your dirty work for you, at a price. The price is one human life. It's described as a bitterly cold black mist that surrounds its victim and then passes on, leaving a stone-cold corpse. But the life it contracts to take won't do for its fee; there has to be another. In most of the stories you can guess how it came out: the person who invoked the Festamatis was himself killed as the payment. Of course, in some of the tales the Festamatis was outsmarted.
"Gordon wouldn't give me any peace until I taught him the spell. I didn't see any harm in it. I'd tried it myself a few times, and I couldn't make it work. Oh, once I got a bunch of little blind flying balls of fur that were kind of scary, but harmless. These incantations are pretty complex: a mispronounced word, or one pitched wrong, can invalidate the whole thing, or maybe change it to another spell entirely. If I couldn't get the thing right, it was certain Gordon couldn't. So I gave him a set of rattles and taught him the spell and counterspell. I was tr
ying just then to get another point on my commission and wanted to do him a favor.
"He tried it out, he told me, and when nothing happened he wasn't surprised - I don't suppose he ever really believed it - and he put the rattles in a drawer and forgot about it. But recently, when he finally decided that the only way out of his difficulties was to do you in, Helena, he thought about the Festamatis and decided to give it another try.
"About two this morning I woke up suddenly, knowing that somewhere not too far off a spell had just been successful, and that it had to be Gordon's work. I was a little scared, to tell the truth; if there is such a thing as the Festamatis, and he'd managed to raise it, he might just be pointing it at me. We've had our share of quarrels, in the course of our deals. I got my rattles ready, just in case.
"After a couple of hours I concluded that I was safe, and I thought I'd better investigate. I got dressed and went out to Gordon's. He'd raised something, all right, but not the Festamatis; what he has are two of the ugliest monsters you ever saw, and damned dangerous ones, in the bargain. But I don't think they're supernatural; probably the last of a species that's extinct, except for them. They'd been in some kind of suspended animation since God-knows-when. Gordon's screwed-up spell woke them, and by the greatest of damn-fool luck, the counterspell put them back under. I found Gordon and his little friend scared out of their wits - the things had eaten Gordon's big dog like a pretzel - and the monsters were laid out stiff on that white carpet he's so fond of.
"Gordon and I had a nice little chat. He wanted my help, and I wormed the whole story out of him while Dennis was off changing his jeans. His mind is absolutely made up that you've got to die; when he tried to invoke the Festamatis, it was a last desperate effort to get the job done cheap. (He was going to give Dennis to the Festamatis as the payment.) If that failed, then he'd go ahead with a professional contract on your life, but that was going to be extremely expensive, and to raise the money he'd have to sell his house, the last thing in the world he wanted to do.
"So he was looking for a way to use the critters on the carpet to take care of you, since they were conveniently at hand, and, he figured, would come cheaper than the Festamatis, and he'd get to keep Dennis. He wanted me to figure out how to sic the monsters on you. He dropped hints about all the dandy commissions that would fall to me once he came into his money.
"I told him I'd try to figure something out, and that meanwhile he was to do absolutely nothing about the sleeping beauties in his living room, and that he should let absolutely no one at all into his house. I told him I'd let him know what to do sometime today. Then I came over here to advise you to hand over the money without delay. Which you now tell me you can’t do."
Helena had sat quietly as he talked. Now she said. "That's pretty strange stuff, Eddie. Is it honest and truly the truth?"
He looked at her soberly. "It's the truth."
"Well," she said. "Well, then. I'll do whatever you say. Imagine, planning to hand poor little Dennis over to that Festis thing. Shameful. Now, how are we going to kill Gordon?"
"Not we," Smithers said. "The Ne- dake-ne-kevis. They'll kill him. And in front of witnesses, just to make sure no suspicion attaches to you - or me. I've got the place picked out, and the witnesses."
"Where, Eddie? Who?"
"Oh, I've worked up a slick little scheme. You see, Gordon will have to believe that the witnesses are for his benefit, to give him an alibi for the time your death is supposed to be taking place. And because there's simply no way to schedule matters with any kind of precise timing, it has to be at a place where the witnesses will be on hand at whatever time it takes place. On top of that, it has to be reasonably close to both Gordon's house and yours. It works out to just one area: somewhere close to that commune on Gore's Survey. It's located right, and there are always enough people around to make it certain that someone will see Gordon being killed by, uh, individuals that in no way resemble you or me. But just to be safe, you'd better have some guests in tonight. The descriptions of the killers are going to sound pretty strange to the police, and they might decide that what’s being described came out of something the witnesses smoked or dropped."
"Very clever," Helena said, "but what makes you think your 'individuals' will be in the right place at the right time?"
"Your local medicine man has a method. I've got grandpa’s freese. A sort of musical instrument, a very primitive recorder, I guess you'd call it. What comes out of it isn't exactly music - it only has three notes - but by blowing on it you can control all sorts of creatures. I imagine the Pied Piper legend grew out of something of the kind. I think I can use it to manipulate Gordon's ghouls, the way the Pied Piper led the rats and the children. Of course, up to now I've only used it for a game call. Works fine on geese and wild turkeys."
Helena rose from her chair, walked to the window, and stared out of it for a time. "Eddie," she said, "I can hardly believe this. Do you realize what we're doing? We're conspiring to murder.
"Well, I don’t know," Smithers said. "More like self-defense, really. Or maybe extermination. Gordon's a pretty nasty article, when you come right down to it. He really believes I'd help him kill you for the sake of a few commissions. But we don't have to do it."
"That's the trouble," she said. "I'm afraid we do."
***
Gordon said much the same thing. He and Smithers were sitting in the dining room drinking tea. He said, "There's no use talking about it, Smithers. I'm going to do it. Are you going to help me or not? There's a lot of money at stake, you know. And you're already in pretty deep."
"Oh, sure, Gordon, I'll help you," Smithers said. "I just thought you might have changed your mind. The main thing is, it's got to be done as soon as possible. Those things can't be left in there a minute longer than absolutely necessary."
"Amen!" Gordon said.
"So we'll do it tonight. Okay?"
"Tonight? Well - well, sure. Sure. Uh... what are we going to do, exactly?"
"Why, you'll cast the spell to wake them, and I'll Pied-Piper them over to your aunt's house. After they've done the job. I'll pipe them back here again and then back into their tunnel, and you'll put them back to sleep - for the next thousand years, I hope. The important thing is your alibi. You'll need witnesses to your whereabouts for at least a couple of hours, to give you plenty of coverage both before and after the act. That means you'll have to do the wake-up incantation right in front of your witnesses. So here's what you're going to do. You'll go over somewhere close to that commune on Gore's Survey and put on a big Red-Indian act, Hollywood style. Put on some war paint. Build a fire and have Dennis beat a drum. Dance around and whoop and holler. When the communards ask what you're up to, say you're propitiating the Nature Gods, or something. When you cast the spell, it'll just seem to be part of the general carrying on. How does that sound?"
"It sounds okay. Like fun, even. Those people will dig it. Probably try and join in. It's their kind of thing."
"I wouldn't be surprised. Now, the timing. It’ll be getting dark by six thirty, and full dark a half hour after that. Have your fire built, and start your act at seven. Cast the spell at seven thirty. And be sure you time it right, because I'm going to be here with your sleeping friends, and I don't want to be caught by surprise when they wake up. Knock off the theatricals at nine sharp, say good-bye to the hippies (don't forget to mention the time) and get back here as fast as you can. And now I'm going home and get some sleep. You'd better do the same. I'll be back to see you off."
***
At a little after six Gordon and Dennis took their departure, Dennis fluttering apprehensively, and Gordon alternating between fits of elation and funk. After the station wagon had disappeared down the driveway, Smithers entered the living room. The two creatures lay as they had fallen. The blood on the carpet had turned black, and only a trace of the stench remained in the air. Smithers was carrying a canvas gymnasium bag. From it he took a pair of rattles like those he had given Gordon, and
a crude small wind instrument. He blew tentatively into the instrument a few times, eliciting a mournful honking, and then put it into his pocket. He took up the rattles, "Okay, pals," he said, "the beauty sleep's over. Time to wake up and go to work."
He moved into the doorway, where there was a clear line of flight behind him, and began to shake the rattles and chant. After a time the leg of one of the creatures jerked, and the other one made a movement of its head. Smithers dropped the rattles and pulled the freese from his pocket. As the pair rose ponderously to their feet, he began to pipe.
It was an unpleasant sound, monotonous in pitch and irritating in its lack of identifiable rhythm. For a time the creatures paid no heed, but snuffled and grunted to each other and peered about in slow bewilderment, until the effect of the freese at last penetrated the dim minds; then, as one creature they turned and looked at Smithers,
Sweat appeared on his face, and he held himself ready to bolt, but there was no hesitation in the flow of sound. He blew a long, irregularly interrupted note, a sound not unlike slow Morse code, and glared at the creatures with furious concentration. Suddenly, and in unison, they swung up their right arms in a Roman salute.
Smithers took the freese from his mouth and wiped his face. He said, "Well. Okay. Gotcha. Now we'll practice a little." They were standing without motion, frozen in the salute. He put the pipe to his mouth and again blew the note, concentrating his stare upon the creatures as before. They began to move, at first in absolute unison, and then, as Smithers' skill and confidence grew, as individuals. He marched them up and down the room, clumsily in the beginning, with a consequent breakage of a number of Gordon's possessions, but in the end with precision, so that they threaded their way among the furniture with scarcely a collision. Smithers said at last, "Right. We're ready, I guess. Forward, march!" He blew again.