Dividend on Death ms-1

by Brett Halliday

  She didn’t hear the door open. She was leaning forward with her chin in the palm of her hand, looking out the window. Shayne stood there staring at her profile. It was a nice profile but that wasn’t why he stared. There was something strikingly familiar about her. He didn’t know where he had seen her before, but he knew it was important.

  She turned to face him as he stepped inside then sprang up briskly.

  Shayne recognized her as soon as he saw her full face. The severe white uniform made quite a difference, but it could not wholly disguise her. The absence of make-up also gave her a much younger, fresher appearance than when he had seen her before, but there wasn’t any doubt in his mind concerning her identity. She was the girl whose reflection he had seen in the mirror in suite 614 of The Everglades. The girl who was registered as Mr. Ray Gordon’s daughter.

  It was a little too much for Shayne to digest all at once. He stood and stared at her and wondered what the hell while she tilted her head and moved toward him.

  She said, “No visitors are allowed here. The patient is very ill,” in a controlled tone which managed, somehow, to be brisk and hard at the same time.

  Shayne leaned against the door, studying her eyes and trying to determine whether she recognized him or not. It was impossible to deduce anything from them; they were curiously light, hazel he supposed, of the type incapable of expressing any emotion. Her manner was grave, professional, and questioning. She was, Shayne mentally conceded, a hell of a good actress if she recognized him.

  He said, “Are you the new nurse-replacing Miss Hunt?”

  “Yes.” She kept her voice low, coming close to him and making a gesture of caution toward the screen behind which the sick man lay.

  “I’m Shayne,” he told her. “The detective who is supposed to keep people from getting killed around here.”

  She did not smile pleasantly at this. Her manner indicated that she was totally devoid of a sense of humor. She said, “Yes?” again and lifted her eyebrows. They were beautifully plucked and arched.

  Shayne asked, “How’d they come to get you on the job, sister? And why didn’t I get here sooner?”

  “I was called from the Nurses’ Registry.” She disregarded the implication in his second question.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. “And I could use your telephone number, too.”

  “Myrtle Godspeed.” She shook her head dubiously. “You wouldn’t have any use for my phone number.”

  “You don’t know me, sister. Of course”-he glanced deprecatorily toward his bandaged arm-“I’m in pretty bad shape right now.”

  He stared levelly into her eyes. She stared back, her gaze cold and remote. He pushed past her, and she got out of his way, watching him with low-lidded eyes as he leaned against the wall by the dresser.

  “This damned place is like a morgue. Where is everybody?”

  “They’re asleep, I think. I was called this morning early to relieve the other girl who had been on duty all night. I don’t believe anyone here got much sleep last night.”

  Shayne moved impatiently. His right elbow brushed against the dresser and knocked off a handbag lying near the edge. It fell to the floor with a dull thump. He bent over awkwardly and picked it up. The girl started forward impulsively to help him, but he straightened with a grimace.

  “I made it all right.” He offered her the bag. “Yours?”

  She took it from him and said, “Yes.”

  “That’s a mighty expensive bag for a trained nurse to be toting around,” he said softly.

  She compressed her lips and said icily, “I paid for it.”

  Shayne’s chuckle was throaty. “I’ll bet. And how! Give me your phone number and you can have another one just like it.”

  She gazed at him disdainfully. “What gave you the idea you were such hot stuff? If you haven’t anything else on your mind, I’ll ask you to go. I won’t weep any salty tears if I never see you again.”

  Shayne grinned and said, “I’m beginning to think it was too bad the other doll got bumped. She liked her men big and tough and redheaded.”

  The nurse turned away from him and said, “I don’t,” emphatically.

  “Okay, sister.” Shayne’s manner changed. He lounged toward the door and asked, “Where’s Pedique?”

  “In his room asleep, I presume.”

  “Which is his room, angel?” he asked patiently.

  “I thought you were a detective.”

  “No wisecracks.” He stood in the doorway. “Show me Pedique’s room before I start knocking on doors and wake up every damn soul in the house.”

  She peered around the screen and then came toward him. Shayne smiled and went slowly into the hallway. She passed him at a sprightly pace with her head high. He followed her to a turn, and down it to another door.

  She stopped and pointed at it. “I was supposed to knock here if I needed the doctor.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks,” and knocked. The girl went down the hall and vanished around the corner.

  There was no response from within. Shayne knocked loudly. There was still no response. He tried the knob. The door was locked from the inside. He rattled the knob and cursed aloud.

  A door across the hall opened, and Mr. Montrose peered out. He wore an old-fashioned nightgown and clutched a shabby robe around his thin shoulders. “What do you want?” he croaked. Then: “Oh! It’s you, Mr. Shayne?” He padded across the hall in his bare feet.

  “I’m hunting the doc,” Shayne grunted.

  “This is his room. I’m positive he’s in. Perhaps he’s sleeping soundly. Poor fellow. He was very much upset over the events of last night.”

  “He must be sleeping damned soundly,” Shayne said. He banged on the door again and shouted, “Hey, doc!”

  Silence was the only response. He stopped banging and rubbed his chin.

  He said quietly to Mr. Montrose, “No man could sleep through that racket.” There was an open transom above the door. He stooped and put his left arm around Mr. Montrose’s thin shanks and said, “I’ll boost you up and you can have a look-see.”

  He hoisted the small man, and Mr. Montrose clutched at the transom, peering into the doctor’s room. He shuddered violently and said, “Oh-my God!”

  Shayne let him slide down and looked at his face. Then he set his teeth together, drew back, and lunged at the locked door with his left shoulder. He snarled with pain, as the impact shook his injured right shoulder, then drew back and threw himself at it again. The lock gave this time, and he crashed into the room as the door swung on its hinges. He staggered upright and moved to the side of the bed. Mr. Montrose followed him, making a curious whimpering noise as he stared at the doctor’s body.

  Dr. Joel Pedique looked exceedingly peaceful in death. Fully clothed, he lay outstretched upon the bed. His thin features were composed, and there was a lurking expression of triumph on his lips. His left hand dangled down by the side of the bed. An overturned glass lay on the rug just beneath where it had dropped when his fingers relaxed their hold. On a bedside table there was an open cardboard box containing a number of pinkish wafers. A pink residue clung to the bottom of the glass. The top of the box was marked with the familiar symbol of poison.

  Lying beside the box were a number of sheets of note-paper filled with evenly spaced script. Shayne picked them up and read the superscription aloud. “‘To Whom It May Concern.’”

  He said wearily to Montrose, “For Christ’s sake, stop whimpering. You ought to be used to this around here by this time. Go and call Painter and tell him to bring the coroner along.”

  Then he moved over to a window through which the sunlight streamed, slumped into a rocking chair, and began reading the strange document which Dr. Pedique had left behind.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I am guilty” (Dr. Joel Pedique had written) “of a crime so horrible that I cannot go on with the conviction of guilt burdening my soul. The death of two innocent women and the destruction of a beautiful girl’s
mind are an overwhelming weight upon my conscience. I shall expiate my crime in the only possible manner after setting down this true account so I may be assured the guilt will rest squarely upon my shoulders and mine alone after I am gone.

  “Since boyhood I have been cursed with an evil curiosity which has led me into many shameful practices, though I early lost my sense of shame. These finally culminated in the tragic denouement which the law will doubtless call matricide-unjustly, for I alone stand self-convicted as Mrs. Brighton’s murderer. Yes, and as the murderer of Charlotte Hunt, also.

  “A deranged intellect has been my tool-but I feel that I must go back into the past to make understandable the events of the last few days.

  “Scientific experimentation is good; it is only through experimentation that science has made its tremendous forward strides; yet an irrational zeal for charting the unknown can blacken the soul and lead to the most evil consequences if one be driven to carry such experimentation to its completely logical conclusion, as I have done.

  “It is with no thought of exculpation that I use the word ‘driven’ as above. Before God, I seek no exculpation. Yet, I use the word advisedly. Since youth a strange inward force has driven me to acts which I consciously realized were an affront to God and to humanity. I have been like one possessed of a demon which I recognized yet could not exorcize.

  “So much for motivation. It has not been a recent seizure nor can I plead ignorance of the evil inherent in such odious practices. As a child I recall wondering if chickens could survive without their protective feathering. There were chickens in the yard. I plucked one of them alive-and wept bitterly over its cold body after death.

  “Time and again has this selfsame tragic drama been repeated in my life, manifesting itself in a strange and unreasoning passion to thwart nature regardless of consequences, followed by bitter remorse over the inevitable consequences of each cruel experiment.

  “With this background I entered upon the study of medicine. It is needless to relate in detail how this cancerous growth upon my soul, nourished by ever-widening opportunities, spread its unwholesome tentacles to engulf every decent instinct within me” (Shayne’s lips twitched slightly as this paragraph passed under his eye) “blighting my life and destroying what might otherwise have been a brilliant career.

  “Early in my study of medicine I became aware that it was in the mental realm rather than that of the physical that the most fascinating opportunities for experimentation present themselves. Cunningly, then, I devoted myself to a comprehensive survey of the vast field of psychology, psychiatry, psychometry, eventually specializing in psycho-physics, which treats of the psychical and the physical in their conjoint operation.

  “Here, indeed, I was enthralled. Here, verging upon the metaphysical was my long-sought opportunity for experimentation in a practically untouched field.

  “I shall not catalogue my long list of failures with the dire results which followed upon the heels of each unsuccessful experiment. I plunged into my chosen work with a dreadful zest, reassuring myself with the stern credo that the individual must be sacrificed on the altar of scientific advancement.

  “I shudder tonight as I consider in retrospect the wrecks of normal intellects I have left behind me. With ingenuity which might better have been employed otherwise, I have contrived to achieve an almost perfect balance between sanity and insanity-an almost perfect balance. Perfection has eluded me, as the shattered intellects of my subjects will tragically attest.

  “These generalities will not suffice. I am strong now. I have achieved the perfect balance which I have unsuccessfully sought to educe in others. As I set down these words I feel myself straddling that void into which I have sent so many of my patients plunging. I question how long this delicate balance may be maintained and I hasten to get on with my lengthy avowal before I am overtaken by the same nemesis which has relentlessly pursued those who have trusted me.

  “In brief: I have for years been working upon the theory that certain drugs fed to the human body in conjunction with a form of mental suggestion which I shall term psychocatalysis — reverse psychoanalysis-might be employed to bring on certain forms of mental derangement. It has been, and is, my firm belief that if such a procedure could be successfully devised and completely charted, by reversing the exact process-substituting for the insanity-producing drugs and mental suggestions their exact opposites-it would be possible to effect a cure from insanity.

  “A fantastic theory? A grotesque chimera? Perhaps. Yet it is basically sound. A dream, however, which will be made into reality by others stronger than myself. I bequeath my charts and my findings to some fellow scientist who is utterly conscienceless. I find that I cannot continue.

  “The opportunity offered me by the Brighton case was a godsend to me. Not many months ago I was forced to close the door of my private asylum for mental patients in the city of New York. My almost perfect record of failures to effect cures had induced in people a hesitancy to entrust their dear deranged ones to my care. Without subjects for further experimentation I was lost, and I felt I was very near to final success.

  “The opportunity to accompany an aged sick man and two young people to Miami where I would be free to work with the young folks without interference was too admirable to reject.

  “I will here enter into no detailed analysis of the methods by which I proceeded to transform an intelligent and normal young girl into a maniacal matricide-a prowler in the night seeking victims to satisfy the blood-lust which I have aroused in her innocent breast. These details are fully set forth in my notes and observations of her case. They can be of interest only to science.

  “Suffice to say that upon arriving in Miami I immediately turned my attention to the two young people. With little time for an old man who was obviously near death I called in a local physician who has largely taken his care off my hands.

  “In past experiments I have discovered that every individual possesses some latent phobia or complex, more or less well-defined, which presents a certain path toward insanity if such phobia be developed and encouraged by mental suggestion.

  “Selecting Clarence first, I soon discovered in the boy an unnatural leaning toward homosexuality. Proceeding to encourage this trait and develop it, I was discouraged when he did not respond to mental stimulus as I had hoped. Naturally dull and unintelligent, his reflexes were slow and uncertain, and it soon became evident that Phyllis was the better subject for my experiment.

  “By patient delving into her mental processes I soon discovered an ill-defined but positive bent toward Lesbianism plus even less developed symptoms of an Electra complex. The foundation was slight, but the subject was so perfectly normal and so sensitively attuned mentally that the desired progress was rapid.

  “By careful mental suggestions, in strict accord with Freudian principles, I fast instilled in the reservoir of her subconscious the unrealized desire to do bodily harm to her mother in order to frustrate that unfortunate lady’s love for her husband. At the same time, under pretext of treating an imaginary ailment, I was able to produce periods of hypnotic influence, hypnagogic states during which the subjective mind held full sway over her actions, and from which she emerged to normal with only hazy memories of what had occurred during those drug-induced periods. These could be regulated as to duration and severity by changing the dosage.

  “It was at this crucial point in my experimentation that Mrs. Brighton announced her intention of joining her family. I could not draw back. I was possessed of a frenzy to conclude my final experiment by determining whether I could wholly control the girl’s reaction to her mother’s presence.

  “It was on the very eve of Mrs. Brighton’s arrival when I began to doubt myself. My treatments had been so successful that I found the girl responding strongly to the slightest stimulus of either drug or mental suggestion. She wavered, in fact, upon the very shadow-line of mania.

  “Fearing that I might have miscalculated the effect which would be pr
oduced by her mother’s arrival, I went to a Mr. Shayne in Miami. He had been recommended to me as a discreet and able private detective. I cautiously explained as much of the situation to him as seemed wise, and he agreed to protect the mother from any possible tragic consequences.

  “I returned much relieved after the interview. Mr. Shayne had been not unduly curious and he impressed me as being an exceedingly capable man. Mrs. Brighton arrived, and the girl greeted her with a queer admixture of loathing and love, while I observed her, closely, taking notes for making out a behavior pattern.

  “The situation became intensified during the course of dinner. Phyllis was cross and unruly. I experienced a strangely creative joy as I looked on. I felt impersonal, Godlike. I felt as a master musician must feel as he draws forth beautiful harmonies or crashing discords from a delicately attuned instrument. Phyllis Brighton was my instrument. My will was her master. Yet, everything might have gone well had I not yielded to the temptation to make the supreme test.

  “I had to know whether I could force the girl to murder her mother, and whether I could then bring her mind back to rational functioning.

  “I do not expect to be understood or forgiven. It was madness. Deliberate, coldly conceived murder. I had to know. What mattered the life of one foolish woman against the exquisite joy of knowing complete success? I drew Phyllis aside after dinner and whispered in her ear. I prepared a carefully calculated dosage of the drug and instructed her to take it half an hour later. She walked from me somnolently, climbing the stairs to her room. I went into the library to await Mr. Shayne and to know the outcome of my dread experiment.

  “The world knows the outcome. The girl escaped from me before I had an opportunity to determine whether I could restore her sanity after the dreadful deed. Tonight she is roaming the streets with a small automatic pistol in her hand-hopelessly deranged-responding to the murderous impulses for which I alone am responsible-so help me God.

  “The thing that was once Phyllis Brighton has struck again tonight. She will kill again and again until she is destroyed. Like Frankenstein, I have created a monster beyond my power to control. When the lifeless body of Charlotte Hunt was carried into the house tonight I realized to the fullest extent what a horrible menace I have loosed upon this community.