by Hugh B. Cave
Confused by both the question and the tone of voice in which it was put, Karkin scowled, said nothing.
“I’ll show you,” Dennis said quietly.
He held his hands out, and Marie gently removed the gloves. Rising then, he took a step forward and showed the Chief of Police his hands. Karkin gaped at them, stupefied.
“They’ve been like that,” Dennis said wearily, “for three years. Once they were strong; I admit it. But a piece of apparatus exploded with my hands inside it—and now these fingers are not flexible enough, Mr. Karkin, to break a match, let alone a man’s neck.”
Chief of Police Karkin stared at the withered hands and shook his head, frowning. “Before Nickson died, he wrote on the floor—in blood—that you did it. Why would he do that if you’re not the man who killed him?”
“Perhaps he was mistaken.”
“Then what about this bloody handkerchief I picked up outside the house here?”
“That I can’t explain.”
“Well, neither can I,” Karkin mumbled. “Those hands of yours sure couldn’t break a man’s neck; I admit that. But still” He stood up, shaking his head.
“You’ll have to come along with me, Mr. Dennis. Even if you ain’t guilty you’ll have to come along, because if you didn’t do it—who did?”
“I’ll get dressed,” Mr. Dennis said wearily.
He went to the bedroom and Karkin followed him to the threshold, stood there and waited for him. Marie remained seated, her face still pale, her eyes wide and staring.
It took Mr. Dennis a long time to dress himself. Watching him, Karkin felt sorry for him. Certainly Mr. Dennis had not murdered Papa Nickson with those pitifully weak hands.
“I don’t like to be doin’ this,” Karkin said, “but if I didn’t, it would go hard with me. You won’t have no trouble proving you ain’t guilty, Mr. Dennis.”
Mr. Dennis came out of the bedroom and said: “I’m ready, Karkin.”
Marie closed her eyes to hide the tears in them.
It was Karkin who opened the door. He did it because Mr. Dennis was slowly and painfully pulling on those long black gloves. And when he opened it, he drew a quick, sharp breath and stood stiff.
A face stared at him. A bearded, gaunt face with abnormally wide eyes hung there in the gray of the morning, atop a muscular body as big as Karkin’s own.
The face snarled, and Karkin reached quickly for his gun. That was a mistake. Flame spurted from a weapon in the visitor’s left hand, and the Chief of Police bent double with a guttural exhalation of breath. Bent double in agony, and stumbled back, dropping his gun. And crumpled to the floor.
The report ran back and forth across the room in small, weird echoes. Karkin clawed at the floor, groaning. Marie clung rigidly to the arms of her chair. Mr. Dennis stood quite still, staring from Karkin to Karkin’s assailant.
“John Brandon,” the radio had said, “is five feet eleven inches tall, weighs about one hundred sixty pounds. He has brown hair, brown eyes, dark skin. He is wearing a heavy brown overcoat over white cotton pajamas and is without shoes or stockings.”
This man wore shoes and trousers, but otherwise the description was accurate. This man was John Brandon.
Mr. Dennis backed slowly away from him as the madman entered and pushed the door shut. The radio reports, Dennis decided, had not been exaggerated; this man was both mad and dangerous. Color ebbed from Dennis’s face and a queer numbness crept through him. Then abruptly he regained control of himself and said calmly: “You’ve hurt him. You shouldn’t have done that.” And went to his knees beside Karkin.
It was not serious. The bullet had shattered Karkin’s collarbone and deflected out through his shoulder muscles. It was a nasty wound. He would suffer, but he would live.
Brandon snarled, “Leave him alone.”
“But he’s hurt.”
“I said leave him alone! Go sit down.”
Mr. Dennis retreated slowly to a chair and sat down. The madman glared at him. A moment later Karkin groaned and the madman stepped forward, reached down with one hand and yanked the Chief of Police to a sitting position. When he did that, something at Karkin’s belt, under his coat, clinked.
Brandon reached under the coat and pulled loose a pair of handcuffs.
He looked at them and grunted. Kneeling, he placed his gun on the floor for an instant, jerked Karkin’s wrists together and snapped the cuffs into place. Then he rose, gun in hand, and stared at the girl. And licked his lips.
Mr. Dennis said quietly, with a calm he did not feel: “You mustn’t stay here, Brandon. The police are looking for you.”
“Are they? Let ’em look.”
“They’ll come here after you.”
“Let ’em come,” Brandon snarled.
You couldn’t reason with the man, Dennis realized. A soft voice, gentle persuasion, an outward appearance of calm—all the artful devices supposed to be effective when dealing with a deranged mind—were useless here, because Brandon’s gaze was on the girl, and that gaze was hungry.
Frightened by it, Marie shrank back in her chair and turned a white, pleading face to Dennis. The madman saw and was amused.
He paced behind the girl’s chair and lifted an ornamental coil of rope from its place on the wall. Strong rope, new rope. Testing it, Brandon approached Mr. Dennis from the rear.
“Put your hands behind you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why? So I can tie you up the way they tied me!”
“But I don’t wish to be tied up, Brandon.”
“Shut up and do like I say!”
He made a thorough job of it. Marie, watching with fear-widened eyes, shuddered at his diabolical cleverness. Evidently at the asylum he himself had been bound many times, and had learned the secrets of twisting a rope.
Mr. Dennis did not resist.With his eyes closed and a queer, detached expression on his face, Dennis patiently endured the torture. His thin frame was almost limp.
The madman bound his arms and elbows to the chair and tugged on the rope until the detached expression on Dennis’s white face changed to a look of intense pain. While he worked, his gun lay on the floor beside him and he raised his head continually to look at Marie, who sat facing him.
Finished, he said grimly, “You won’t ever get loose from that, mister,” and then pushed a chair close to the girl and sat down, staring at her.
Just sat there, staring, as if her beauty troubled him.
A strange silence crept through the room. The girl, cringing, tried to look away from the bearded face so close to her own, and was unable to. Behind Brandon, Mr. Dennis sat motionless. On the floor behind Dennis lay the Chief of Police, conscious now but too weak from loss of blood and too sick with pain to inch himself across the few feet of floor that would have brought him close enough to Mr. Dennis to reach the twisted ropes with his teeth.
“You’re pretty,” the madman said. “What’s your name?”
“M-Marie.”
“Marie. They didn’t have girls like you in the place I escaped from. No, they didn’t.” He scowled at her. “But you don’t like me, do you?”
“I—I don’t know you,” she whispered.
“You’d like me if you knew me?”
“I—might.”
“It don’t make any difference,” he said. “I’d have to kill you anyway, after a while, same as I got to kill those two.” His head jerked in the general direction of Mr. Dennis and the Chief of Police, but he did not turn to look at them.
“Why?” Marie whispered.
“They sent me to that asylum.”
“But they didn’t! They never saw you before today!”
“All the same I was sent there, and I got to kill people for it. I got to get even. Only first I’m gonna look at you for a while. You’re pretty.”
He inched his chair closer and his breath was hot on the girl’s face. Grinning at her, he put out a hand and touched her arm.
“It’s a long time since I was this close
to a woman,” he said.
Dennis sat in his chair and stared at the madman’s back. He breathed hard and his face was white, strained, his eyes glittered with a strange kind of desperation. Swelling his chest with a prodigious breath, he tested the strength of the rope that held his wrists. Agony crawled down his arms to the tips of his withered fingers.
He turned his head and tried to see how the rope was tied, but though the cords of his neck stood out in hard white lines, he could not move his head far enough. But his gaze did meet that of the Chief of Police.
The madman had leaned closer and was stroking Marie’s hair. And saying: “You’re pretty. It’s too bad I got to kill you, ain’t it?”
Mr. Dennis rolled his wrists, his emaciated useless wrists, in a desperate attempt to create slack in the rope. The agony came again, this time bringing beads of perspiration to his face. Only two men in the world could have escaped from a rope so cunningly knotted—Houdini, the great Houdini, and a magician named Malkar.
Both were—dead.
Mr. Dennis exerted all his strength, defying the agony. It was not enough. Despair darkened his eyes and again a slow, creeping numbness moved through him. It was ironical, this. The dead could not return to life, even to save the living. And if by some monstrous miracle the dead did return to life—if by some amazing power of mind over matter those withered hands of his could be endowed with a strength and dexterity lost three years ago—those same crooked fingers would sign their master’s death warrant. For Karkin was watching. Karkin would know then that the puny hands of Mr. Dennis were not too puny to twist a man’s neck until it snapped.
The madman caressed Marie’s face and said softly: “It’s a shame I got to kill you. I ought to make love to you a while first. But I can’t do that. I got to get out of here.”
Ghastly pale, she looked past him and her gaze met that of Mr. Dennis.
The soul of Mr. Dennis groaned. He clenched his teeth. For three years he had tried in vain to make those withered hands work. Now he tried again, knowing the fate that lay in wait for him if he failed—and if he succeeded.
Perspiration poured from his face. Agony filled it. But he closed his eyes, sunk his teeth into his lower lip and reached back through three years of shadow to a flickering light which still glowed. A strand of rope snapped.
“I got to get out of here and I got to kill you first,” the madman said.
Mr. Dennis’s contorted face was black with agony, but he refused to give up. A second strand snapped, and a third. The madman didn’t seem to hear. He was encompassed with furious passion. He got out of his chair and gripped the girl’s white neck with both his hands.
She tried to scream, but his hands held the scream back. She clawed at him, raked his face with her nails. Her feet beat a tattoo on his legs. Angry, he cursed her and dragged her from the chair to the floor.
Mr. Dennis broke the rope. He jerked his hands around in front of him and stared at them, and his eyes were afire with a kind of madness. Then he hurled himself out of his chair and gained possession of the gun which had fallen from the hands of Chief of Police Karkin a long while ago.
“Stop it!” Mr. Dennis hoarsely shouted. “Stop it, Brandon! By God, I’ll kill you!”
The madman turned, releasing Marie. In a half crouch he blinked his eyes at Dennis, who stood wide-legged, holding the gun.
A snarl curled Brandon’s lips. He reached out with both hands and lurched forward to drag Mr. Dennis down.
Dennis shot him twice and stepped aside as the man fell sprawling.
The silence came back.
For some time Mr. Dennis looked down at the gun in his hands; then he placed it on the table and lifted Marie into a chair. He looked tired. His face wore an expression of misery.
The girl stared at him and her eyes were wide. “You did it, Andre!” she whispered. “You did it! Your hands—”
“Yes,” he said, “I did it.”
He turned then and said to the Chief of Police: “Have you a key to these cuffs?”
“No,” Karkin said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Mr. Dennis removed his gloves and quietly stripped a lace from one of his shoes. On his knees, he formed a loop with the lace and deftly worked the loop over the end of the screw. A quick tug snapped the bolt back and the cuffs were open.
Karkin rose to his knees. “You told me,” he said slowly, “those hands of yours were weak.”
“Yes.”
“After what I just saw, I know you lied. You’ll have to come with me, Dennis.”
“Yes, I know. For murdering Papa Nickson.”
Karkin nodded. Sliding his gun from the table, he holstered it but kept his hand over it. “I hate to do this,” he muttered, “after you saved our lives, but the law is the law. Maybe you had a good reason for killin’ Papa Nickson, but it ain’t up to me to ask you.”
Mr. Dennis lifted Karkin to his feet. Lurchingly, the officer put a hand on Mr. Dennis’s arm. “You gotta come with me.”
Mr. Dennis said, as if to himself: “The dead live—and the dead die again.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Dennis, and stopped. “Wait a minute, Karkin. This madman isn’t dead.”
Karkin scowled and looked down at John Brandon, and Brandon reached out to clutch at his leg. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth, but the mouth was grinning.
“You’re makin’ a mistake,” Brandon laughed.“You’re crazy like they said I was. He didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?”
“Kill that old man. A man he called Andy done it. I was right there, lookin’ in a window. That’s how smart I am! I heard them talkin’ and I seen it happen, I did.” He laughed insanely and blood came. “If you think this man done it, you belong where I come from. Andy done it. But I won’t tell. I won’t tell and they’ll put you away!”
“Andy Slade?” Karkin breathed.
“That’s right. Andy Slade.” The blood came faster. “I was right there and I seen it, and I followed him here through the woods, and—” Brandon howled horribly in glee. “Hell, are you dumb! I seen it from the window, I heard it all. But I ain’t telling you that I seen that kid kill the old fellow.”
Karkin looked at Mr. Dennis. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m real glad, Mr. Dennis.” He put out his hand and Dennis gripped it. Gripped it hard. “I’ll go get Slade,” Karkin said. “Get me help—from town.”
Mr. Dennis started out to go to the village, and in a moment Marie joined him.
“The great Malkar is alive again,” she said softly.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
This is a long yarn with a rather complicated plot on several levels. The longest, in fact, that i had written for Black Mask up to that time, December 1938. when I began selling to the pulps I didn’t have an agent, but after a while Rogers Terrill of Popular Publications put me in touch with Agent Lurton Blassingame (whom everyone called ‘Count’), after which I mailed every story to Lurton instead of to editors of magazines, so I didn’t deal directly with either Cap Shaw or Fanny Ellsworth. Eventually, by the way, Lurton became a close friend. For years we went fishing every spring and fall together, often with Ednor Ken White of Dime Detective (and later of Black Mask). One summer we explored the Canadian wilderness between Lake Huron and Hudson Bay by Canoe—a grand adventure which, if you like, you can read about in my first novel, Fishermen Four, or my 39th book, The Dawning, published in July 2000 by Leisure Books.
HBC
The girl in a red cape pursues trouble andstumbles onto a plot where life means little.
John Smith gazed with exaggerated tolerance at his fair companion. Of course it was not difficult to exercise patience with a young lady so scandalously lovely.
He was, in fact, used to it. “Ever so many men, Angel,” he declared, “smoke long black cigarettes. Even I do at times.”
“The heat, Mr. Edgerson, has made you lazy. Otherwise you’d jump at a thing like this.”
<
br /> Smith’s other name was Philip Edgerson. He hated it because it brought to mind too many memories of birthdays, Christmases and people sick in bed. He was head of a greeting card company. Now he put down his cocktail and leaned back.
They were dining in Polinoff’s, and it had not been a good idea. Polinoff’s on an August afternoon was far too hot, too stuffy, for the enjoyment of pig knuckles and spiced red cabbage.
“I’m thinking of abandoning Trouble, Incorporated, Angel.”
“Said he, lying,” she retorted.
“No, I mean it. Look. I’ve paid rent on that ninth floor cell for eleven months now, and not a customer. Not a single client. A man’s hobby, as I see it, should be more productive than that.”
“It has been,” Angelina said simply.
“Not financially.”
“Mr. Philip Edgerson,” she said, “makes quite enough money to support the hobby of John Smith. It’s the heat, that’s all.”
“I suppose it is.”
He reached out then and picked up the letter she had read to him. It was a neat little thing, written delicately in green ink on ten-cent-store paper which bore the gilt initials,
M.A.B. It read:
Dear Miss Kaye,
This is the third time I have tried to write to you, but on each previous occasion my courage has left me before I could finish. This time, however, I am determined to go through with it. You see, I am really desperate.
Please do not be angry with me if this is a long letter. I know that you urge those who write to you to be brief, but I have so much to tell.
I am nineteen years old, Miss Kaye, and was married just a little over a year ago to the dearest boy in all the world. Teddy was so loving then and so considerate. We saved money and planned for the future and were just as happy as two birds in a nest. And now all that is changed.
I am not really sure when the trouble began. Now that I look back on it, I realize that Teddy acted queerly for days, even weeks, before he actually began staying out nights and leaving me alone. During that period he was awfully quiet and seemed always to be wrapped up in his thoughts. I thought he was worried about his job, and I tried to be tender with him, but he refused to confide in me. He even told me once that it was none of my business.