Mr Splitfoot (Dr Basil Willing)

by Helen McCloy

  “Dr. Willing!”

  Basil turned. Francis Swayne was standing in the hall doorway. Now he came forward.

  “There’s been a change of plan. After what happened, my wife has decided to take Lucinda with her and she’s put Mrs. Willing in Lucinda’s room. It’s a single room, so both you and I will have to camp out in the living room tonight. I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. Is Lucinda better?”

  “Quieter. I suppose that’s the sedative you gave her.” Swayne hesitated. “Dr. Willing, what do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did someone play a trick on us?”

  “I’d have to know a lot more about all of you before I could answer that.”

  “What do you think about my daughter?”

  No beating around the bush. No mumbling: this-is-a-social-occasion-but-would-you-mind—? Just a plain question. Basil liked that.

  “Again I can’t give you a useful answer without knowing more about the situation. All adolescents have a tendency toward instability, especially if they are disturbed by some pressure in their environment.”

  “And Lucinda is?”

  “It’s obvious that she’s unhappy in her relation with her stepmother.”

  “Folly tries so hard.”

  “Perhaps that’s the trouble. She has to try. Living in an old house with a rather hair-raising legend hasn’t helped Lucinda. You’ve kept the legend alive by keeping that room locked. Wouldn’t it be healthier to throw it open and use it?”

  “I promised David I wouldn’t.”

  “He’ll release you. He’s here and knows what’s happening.”

  “Does he?” Swayne took a deep breath. “I don’t. You say you don’t. Why did Lucinda faint? She never did that before. Saying ‘shock’ doesn’t explain it. What shocked her? The three raps that seemed to answer her challenge to Mr. Splitfoot?”

  “No,” said Basil. “She didn’t faint when she heard the three raps. She fainted afterward when she got the telephone call from Vanya. Who is Mr. Splitfoot?”

  They were interrupted by a clatter of footfalls on the stair. David Crowe and Bradford Alcott came into the room together.

  “Who is Mr. Splitfoot?” Crowe laughed. “Who has a cloven hoof? The Devil, of course! He’s known as Mr. Splitfoot in parts of York state. The little Fox sisters came from this part of the world. It was December, 1847, when their father, John D. Fox, moved his family to a house in Hydesville, Wayne County, New York, near Rochester. It was in March of 1848 that the children, Margaret, aged seven, and Katie, aged six, first heard rapping noises that had been noticed by a previous tenant.

  “Katie did just what Lucinda did. She clapped her hands and cried out: ‘Do as I do, Mr. Splitfoot!’ He obliged just as he did with Lucinda tonight and modern spiritualism was born.”

  “So this was plagiarism?” Alcott was languidly amused.

  “Lucinda is obviously familiar with the curious history of Katie Fox. It has some odd features, like the skeleton found in that house long afterward.”

  Alcott suppressed a yawn. “All fraud, wasn’t it?”

  “Who knows?” Crowe laughed. “Poltergeist phenomena are becoming psychologically respectable since the neo-Freudians have found that they are associated with puberty. They seem to feel that there must be some truth in anything that can be related to sex. Even orthodox science is turning up so many oddities today that a man has to be very stubborn or very ignorant to say of anything: ‘That’s impossible!’ Did you know that during the Cuban crisis night photographs were taken from the air of cigarette ends burning in the dark twenty-four hours after those cigarettes had been extinguished? If you can photograph the past, you can do anything.”

  “All this is beside the point.” Swayne was impatient. “My daughter fainted tonight for the first time in her life. I don’t want that to happen again. Any suggestions, Dr. Willing?”

  “Only what I was just saying. This business of keeping a room locked up because of an old wives’ tale is unhealthy. The taboo should be broken as dramatically as possible. I suggest that you take the living-room couch tonight and let me sleep in the so-called haunted room.”

  Basil anticipated several possible reactions—relief that sleeping arrangements were made so easy, smiles at his mock-gravity when he used the word “haunted,” magnanimous protest: Oh, no, if anybody’s going to risk it, I’ll do it . . .

  The one thing he had not anticipated was the reaction he got—utter dismay.

  Swayne spoke first. “We can’t do that. If anything did happen . . . No. I can’t risk it.”

  “You know there’s no risk,” insisted Basil. “We’re destroying a legend. With luck, we might trap a trickster. Mr. Splitfoot. But we’re not laying a ghost because there are no ghosts, except in the minds of the living.”

  “Has it occurred to you that the three deaths in that room may have been caused by some condition there that is perfectly natural?” suggested Alcott. “David, you said the house had the first central heating system in the county. Even today with the most modern systems gases can escape from faulty ducts, and so on. With an older system a thing like that is much more likely to happen.”

  “Perhaps, but we’re not going to risk a human life to find out,” said Swayne.

  Basil looked at him quizzically. “Funny how people shy away from the experimental method outside the laboratory. Perhaps because its answer is so final. That makes it a threat to any cherished theory. Don’t you see that there is only one way to destroy the evil legend of this room now? Someone must spend the night there and wake in perfect health. And the sooner the better. You owe it to your daughter. Even if there were a real danger, I should feel it worth the effort because of Lucinda. As it is . . . Good God! Do you sit there, grown men, and tell me that you are afraid to sleep in a room because it is haunted?”

  Alcott laughed, but it was the cold laughter of indifference.

  The others weren’t laughing.

  “You’re right,” said Swayne. “Dr. Willing, as far as I’m concerned, you may sleep in that room tonight and, as it’s almost midnight now, you’d better get started.”

  “Wait a minute!” said Crowe. “It’s still my house.”

  “But leased to me,” retorted Swayne. “And there is no clause in that lease that says I cannot let anyone sleep in that room.”

  “You promised—”

  “When I promised, I didn’t foresee that my daughter’s health might be involved. Neither did I foresee that I might be annoyed by a trickster faking poltergeist pranks. David, I want the key to that room now.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!” Crowe spoke to Swayne as if the others were not there. “I’ve lived with this story all my life. You haven’t. Suppose something did happen tonight. You couldn’t help feeling responsible. After all, three people have died in that room already for whatever reason. If there were a fourth death, there would be a dreadful feeling of inevitability about it.”

  “Nonsense,” said Alcott. “Nothing is inevitable. Merely irrevocable.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?” said Crowe. “If the past determines the future, and the past is inalterable, then so is the future.”

  “And we’re just threads in the dead hands of Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis?” Swayne was scornful. “Not even Flammarion’s fragment of free will?”

  Alcott smiled. “Oh, there’s a fragment, but, as you get older, you have to watch it dwindle. At twenty your choices are almost unlimited. At fifty you’re a prisoner of past decisions. At seventy you have no free will left at all. You have to surrender to the Three, whether you call them the Fates or the Norns or the Three Ladies of Britain.”

  Basil smiled. “If everything is inevitable, we can’t make a decision. It’s already been made for us.”

  There was an odd silence. Then Crowe spoke with resignation. “All right. I suppose everything has been leading up to this moment ever since I left the Thruway at Saug
erties this evening, or perhaps ever since I was born. Here you are.”

  He fished in a hip pocket, took out a key and tossed it to Swayne, whose reflexes were in good working order, for he caught it in mid-air.

  “Thanks.” Swayne turned to Basil. “Aren’t experiments supposed to be controlled? Perhaps if we have controls to eliminate certain possibilities, we can make David feel happier about the whole thing.”

  “What sort of controls?” Crowe’s voice was loaded with suspicion.

  “I don’t think Willing or anyone else should volunteer to spend the night in that room. I think the four of us should draw lots.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the fairest way to choose anybody if there’s going to be any discomfort involved, and there will be discomfort because I’m going to suggest that whoever spends the night in that room shouldn’t sleep at all. He should sit up all night. If anyone’s playing tricks, or if there’s anything wrong with the room physically, that’s the only way to find out.”

  Alcott looked at Swayne thoughtfully. “Then you weren’t entirely unimpressed by what I said?”

  “On the contrary, I was so impressed that I’m going to suggest we keep my wife’s parakeet, Tobermory, in the room all night. Birds are affected by bad air and poison gases more quickly than human beings. They’ve been used as air monitors in coal mines and trench warfare.”

  “Why don’t we all spend the night in that room together?” said Crowe.

  “I thought of that, but I don’t believe it would work. Suppose someone is trying to make us believe this house is haunted. To make it convincing, a faker would follow tradition. According to tradition, raps come first, then an apparition. The raps may occur when there are several people present, but the apparition is more likely to be seen when someone is alone.”

  “For the obvious reason, I suppose?” put in Alcott.

  “And that is?”

  “That it’s easier to fool one person than several people.”

  “Why would anyone want to fool you?” Basil asked Swayne. “To keep you from buying the house?”

  “I suppose that’s possible, if someone else is that anxious to buy the house.”

  “But damned improbable!” added Crowe.

  “If it’s just wanton mischief, whom would you suspect?” asked Basil.

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Swayne sighed. “I would have said Vanya, but he telephoned just after we heard the raps. That lets him out. Are we all agreed now? Only one of us is to spend the night in that room, and he is to be chosen by lot?”

  There was a murmur of assent. Out of it came Alcott’s weary voice. “Suppose the poor devil falls asleep, bored to death all alone there?”

  “He needn’t be completely alone,” said Swayne. “The rest of us can be within call here by the fire in the living room near the foot of the stairs with the hall door open. The haunted room is just at the head of the stair. If its door is left open, any sound up there could be heard down here. As for staying awake, he can have a thermos of strong, hot coffee and a good light and a book to read—preferably a controversial book that will keep his blood pressure up. And I think he should have a bell.”

  “Bell, book and candle!” cried Basil. “Why a bell?”

  “Suppose he does . . . well . . . see something. He can ring the bell once. If something speaks to him, he can ring the bell twice. If something attacks him, he can ring the bell three times.”

  Basil grinned. “You’re making my flesh creep with that ‘something.’ ”

  “What do you expect?” demanded Crowe. “The Nameless Horror from Outer Space?”

  “Just getting into the spirit of the thing,” returned Swayne. “I remember that bell business from an old folk tale of my childhood. It always did make my flesh creep. Imagine the feelings of the listeners hearing the bell ring twice and knowing that something was speaking at that very moment, yet not knowing what it was saying.”

  “Why the signals?” asked Crowe. “Ringing the bell once, twice and thrice. Why not just one ring three times?”

  “One ring three times would simply indicate that something was happening. It wouldn’t give you any idea what was happening. For that you need signals.”

  “And who would bother with all that?” Alcott was remotely amused. “If anybody attacked me, I’d just yell. When the others got upstairs, I could always tell them if I’d seen something and if it had spoken to me.”

  Crowe spoke quietly. “Providing you were still alive.”

  Basil turned to look at him incredulously. “I believe you really think that something is going to happen tonight.”

  Crowe answered in a voice tinged oddly with resignation. “I know that something is going to happen tonight.”

  Chapter Seven

  THE KITCHEN WAS aggressively modern. Each decade has its fashion foibles. The signature of this one is the disintegration of the stove into its component parts. Basil was hardly surprised to see two ovens and a broiler in separate niches in three different walls while the surface of the stove was in a fourth corner between a dishwasher and a double sink. So far as he could discern, nothing was achieved except the multiplication of the number of steps the cook must take.

  The woodwork and refrigerator which would have been white ten years ago were now jonquil yellow, and the linoleum and curtains which would have been yellow or some other cheerful color ten years ago were now an antiseptic white. At least the combination of yellow and white was still there to make the room seem sunny even at midnight.

  Martha, the cook, had long gone to her own quarters in the garage and the four men had the place to themselves. Crowe was peering into an electric coffee percolator. “Already loaded for breakfast. All we have to do is plug it in.”

  Swayne was sitting on a high stool by one of the work counters. He had found a little memorandum pad bound in yellow leather, each page solemnly engraved with the word Reminder—a reminder of a reminder. “Four slips of paper, each with A qwerty . . .” He was thinking out loud. “One underlined.”

  “Why not four slips with A qwerty on one?” suggested Alcott.

  “This paper’s thin. If only one slip were marked, we could all see which one it was from the other side.”

  “Afraid the man who draws will cheat?” Alcott was so haggard that his tired smile brought a flash of the death’s-head grin beneath the flesh to the surface. “By avoiding his own name? Or by grabbing it?”

  “If I were cheating, I’d grab,” said Basil. “Curiosity.”

  “Coffee first.” Crowe was taking cups and saucers down from a shelf, chaste white china with a thin rim of gold. “You know it’s lucky we didn’t have anything to drink after dinner. If we ever want to report this to some scientific journal, it will look awfully well if we can say we hadn’t had a thing to drink since a hearty meal.”

  “I doubt if any scientific journal would be interested,” said Basil. “And I for one have no intention of reporting this to any journal, scientific or otherwise. Probably ruin my reputation as a psychiatrist if it leaked out.”

  Alcott smiled again. “I see your point. Even if you reported that you’d only got involved in order to prove fraud, you’d still be in trouble with the extreme materialists for having got involved at all. Like saying: ‘I am not and never have been a member of the Communist party.’ ”

  Crowe poured coffee. Swayne took his cup and looked at the clock, a round, golden face without numerals, its brass hands shaped like two jet planes. No companionable ticking. In this kitchen it had to be electric, marking the flow of seconds with no sound to warn that your little lifetime was bleeding to death drop by drop.

  “Ten after twelve,” said Swayne.

  Other glances were drawn to the clock. Deliberately they set down their cups. No one wanted to hurry.

  Swayne himself took time to light a cigarette. At last he could think of no other excuse for postponing decision. He picked up the four slips of paper he had torn from the pad, then thre
w them down on the counter.

  “Too flimsy. You can see through all of them. We need a pack of playing cards.”

  “I saw a pack in the living room,” said Crowe. “I’ll get it.”

  He was back in a minute. “New cards. Still in virgin cellophane.” He broke the seal and began to shuffle them on the white porcelain top of the kitchen table. “Which is the fatal card?”

  “Lowest card drawn,” said Swayne. “And aces are high.”

  “Cut?” Crowe pushed the pack in front of Alcott.

  “Thanks.” Alcott cut the pack exactly in half and pushed it across the table to Basil. “We should all cut on a solemn occasion like this.”

  Basil’s cut split the pack in one third and two thirds.

  “I’ll deal.” Swayne scooped up the cards. Now there was silence as he put a card face down in front of each man at the table. “Well? Shall we turn them over?”

  “Ace of hearts.” Alcott sounded as indifferent to his fate as ever.

  “Deuce of spades,” said Crowe.

  Basil looked at his own card. “King of diamonds.”

  Three pairs of eyes turned toward Swayne. He held up his card. It was the three of clubs. “You’re it, David.”

  “I guess I am.”

  Crowe seemed aware of irony. He was the only one who had opposed unlocking the door to the haunted room, the only one who seemed to dislike the idea of the experiment. Basil had hoped to be chosen. Judging by externals, neither Alcott nor Swayne would have minded being chosen. But Crowe did mind, and so . . . one of the Three Spinners had chosen Crowe. There was always a touch of malice in their fun.

  “Rien ne va plus!” Crowe stood up. “I’m the only one related to Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis. Naturally they chose me.”

  Swayne was matter-of-fact. “We’ll take the rest of the coffee upstairs and plug it in for you there.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. There’s no place to plug it in. That room was locked up long before this house was wired for electricity.”