The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Then, finally, I was able to force my worry about Todhunter and Toddy almost completely out of my mind and concentrate on what had to be done. My thoughts cleared, and I went back over the days, searching for some idea that might tell me where Sebastian Wise could be now.

  I went back to the night George Stone had phoned me at the Civic Building. Paula had answered the phone, said aloud that a “George Stone” was phoning me. Wise—who it now seemed certain was the Mr. Big for whom Stone had been working—would have heard that. And he'd have known who Stone was and what Stone's call to me meant. Stone must have thought he was talking to me in my office; he'd spoken to Hazel at the Hamilton Building, and she had merely told him that she'd have me call him back. Otherwise he'd have been much more guarded in his conversation.

  Almost immediately, I recalled, Wise had left the building—even before I had taken off for the Melody Club. He must have phoned Stone's killer then, made arrangements for the kill at the Melody. But none of that told me where Wise might be now. I thought of everything he'd ever said to me; but there weren't any leads there. It seemed quite possible that a man in Wise's position might have a hideout or separate address other than his usual one, a place where he could relax, maybe meet with his other-than-senatorial friends.

  If only I knew some of those friends.

  If only, I thought, Stone were still alive. That was the man who could have told me everything. Well, his girl friend, Satin, was still around. It seemed strange that Stone could have been emotionally entwined with that gal without spilling anything of importance to her.

  I went right on by it.

  But somehow Satin's name kept cropping up in my thoughts. The more I considered it, the stranger it seemed that Satin would know nothing about Stone's work for Mr. Big. Even if Stone had never told her anything directly, she and her Martinis should have got a few items-of interest from him.

  And, thinking back, I remembered that up in her apartment that day she never had told me anything about George Stone. Whenever I'd brought his name up, that first night at the Melody or since then, the subject had soon been shifted. The lovely Satin, I began to realize, was not only the one possible lead I had right now, but perhaps the best one a man could hope for.

  I thought about it a moment longer. She had run around with Stone; it was possible that she knew everything that Stone had known when he was alive; if so, she'd kept it from me, avoiding my questions, even lied. She would lie again. It was theory, but the best I had. My problem was not only to ask her the right questions, but to be sure she was telling the complete truth when she answered.

  And that seemed impossible.

  I couldn't twist her arm, bang her around as I might have done to a man. And even if I were to get rough with her, that wouldn't assure her telling me the truth.

  And all of a sudden my problem didn't seem impossible. If Satin knew the answers, maybe there was a way to get straight answers from her.

  I phoned Madame Astra.

  By the time I reached Madame Astra's apartment, nearly twenty minutes had passed since I'd stood in the middle of the empty room at the Preston. For just a moment that thought was in my mind, then I pushed it away for good and rang the bell. From here on in I was a man with a purpose, and that's all I was going to think about.

  Madame Astra, her eyes still heavy with sleep, nodded at me and stepped aside. I walked in.

  “Did you talk to Satin—to Miss Waring?” I asked her.

  “Yes, did it like you said. Told her I'd had a visitation in my sleep, and it was something I felt she should know.” She yawned. “Too bad you wouldn't let me set up a seance—”

  “I told you there wasn't time. This has to be good enough.”

  “Oh, it will be, if I know that girl. Anyway, I told her I'd seen an image of this big, ugly blond man—those are your words, remember.”

  “Yeah. You didn't name me, though.”

  “No. Said the man was lying very still. He'd been shot in the forehead. I got the picture across that you were dead.”

  “Fine. How about her sins catching up, and so on?”

  “Oh, sure. I said it was revealed to me she'd been partly responsible for the murder of that poor man I'd seen lying there, and now her sins would catch up with her: Though her plans had borne fruit, now she must pay. Did it real good, I thought.”

  “Fine, Madame Astra. Exactly what I wanted—what is your name anyway?”

  “Mrs. O'Mahoney.”

  “My thanks, Mrs. O'Mahoney. You got the other stuff ready?”

  “Yeah. There was something said on the phone about a hundred dollars. Plus deposit on the stuff.”

  “Oh, yes.” I smiled at her and gave her the hundred and ninety dollars. “I'm ten short, but I kept a dollar for myself, and the bank is closed. I'll owe it to you. Okay?”

  “That's all right. It's just deposit. Come on.” She led me into the seance room and then to the room next to it and flicked on the overhead lights.

  On the walls hung about twenty masks that seemed oddly painted, plus strips of veiling, cotton, gauze, and colored cloth. On the floor and upon a couple tables were several items which could serve no imaginable purpose that I could guess, plus a variety of lamps.

  She waved a hand casually. “A little of everything, Mr. Scott. This'll give you an idea.” She turned out the overhead lights and then pressed another switch which, she told me in advance, would flood the room with ultraviolet light.

  I almost went blind. On purpose.

  I do not believe in any kind of ghosts to begin with, and I was prepared by Madame Astra's words, but never had I so suddenly seen a more ghastly and stomach-curdling vista of impossibilities. There were faces that were almost human except that they glowed wierdly in a variety of colors, seemed to move, to swell and fade; and there were masklike faces, chalky but insubstantial; and things like screaming horror silenced and frozen; there were wraithlike bodies, dismembered limbs, headless bodies and bodiless heads and apparently bodiless bodies. The place looked like Halloween in hell—and then Madame Astra turned on the regular lights.

  “We do get some pretty good effects,” she said smiling.

  I was scrunched back against the wall like a man trying to push his way through it, because that is just what I had been trying to do. “Not bad,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

  While I recovered, Madame Astra explained that, by the use of fluorescent powders and paints which are either invisible or normally colored in ordinary light but brightly colored and glowing in ultraviolet light, some decidedly peculiar and interesting and even creepy effects could be produced. I agreed with her, and I began feeling sorry for Satin. And while I actually hated to think that Satin had been in as deeply as Stone, and was perhaps now allied with Sebastian Wise, I was beginning to hope it was true.

  Because to do to an innocent girl what I planned to do to Satin would be as large a tragedy as Samson's getting bald. But I reminded myself right then that I was a man with a purpose.

  “You'll probably have to give me a hand,” I said.

  “Oh, I meant to. What colors do you want?”

  I chose them while they were glowing under the ultraviolet light, because that was the only way I could be sure of the effect they would produce. Madame Astra did the job of make-up. I had my face done mostly in blue, but with touches of green and a bit of nauseous yellow. She used fluorescent theatrical make-up, artists’ oil paints, as well as some powders and poster paint, and as a final fillip, put a round black non-glowing spot in the middle of my forehead, just off center, with bright red “blood” streaming down from it between my silvery-glowing eyebrows.

  It was a fast job, and when it was all done we splashed various powders over my clothes, and then she led me to a mirror. I had not yet seen myself in the ultraviolet glow, so she told me to prepare myself. It was well that I did. She flashed on the light and my face seemed to catch fire and wave at me. It glowed, it wavered, it fluoresced, it did everything except snap, crackle,
and pop. Under the black light, that horrible face was still the face of Shell Scott, but it was a decomposed Shell Scott. It was definitely out of this world. Well, that was what I'd wanted.

  With the regular lights on again, I still looked horrible, but not glowingly and compoundedly horrible. Madame Astra said, “You'd better take this big lamp. Biggest portable I've got. But you'd better stay within six or eight feet of it if you can, for the best effect.”

  I was beginning to feel a few qualms. “You don't suppose the shock will kill her, do you?”

  She seemed to consider it, lips pursed and brows knit. “Don't think so,” she said. “She's seen lots of the departed returned. Nobody very close to her, of course. And nobody like you, that's certain.”

  “I'm pretty good, huh?”

  “Mister, you're the best I've seen, and I've been in this racket for twenty-two years.”

  That was good enough for me. I picked up the portable lamp and went out. There wasn't much time left. In less than half an hour the sun would be coming up. I had to finish this bit while there was darkness. Madame Astra had told Satin that she must rest on what remained of this night, and advised her to take a couple of sleeping pills. But whether Satin had gone along with the suggestion I couldn't know. The main thing was that she did not see me sneaking in or putting the lamp in place on the floor.

  I had been so engrossed in the preparations for this that I had forgotten I'd have to traverse several blocks between Madame Astra's and the Gentry, and get past the desk in the Gentry, made up as I was. But I figured I'd just plunge on ahead and trust to luck. I reached the Gentry without incident, parked the car and looked up and down the sidewalk. Nobody was in sight.

  I scuttled across the sidewalk to the Gentry's side door, bent over and holding the portable lamp in both hands. I knew I'd play hell explaining if the police caught up with me now. But I seemed to be having incredible luck, and it continued inside the apartment hotel. At the desk, a lone clerk dozed, head down on his chest. An open elevator was across the lobby. I reached it and pressed the button for Satin's floor.

  The door closed, the elevator started up. I breathed more easily. There was a dim light in the elevator, and I figured this would be a good spot to test the portable light, make sure all was in working order. The big bulb was aimed up toward my head and I found the switch and turned it on and off a couple of times. The black light itself wasn't in the visible range, but I could tell the light was working by the way the powders on my coat glowed. I turned the light off.

  The elevator reached my floor and I took a step forward as the door slid open. Then I stopped. As I raised my head I noticed that a middle-aged woman was just about to step into the elevator. She started to smile at me, in that meaningless way people will smile when they are looking at you in an elevator.

  It was a fiendish impulse. That's my only excuse for what I did. I could pretend that I wanted to be sure my getup and the light produced a good strong effect. I could say my finger slipped. But that wouldn't be true; it was just an impulse, some dirty bird whispering in my ear. But whatever it was, I did it.

  I pulled the portable lamp even higher so that I would really light up magnificently, and then I flicked on the light and grinned. I grinned widely; I waggled my eyebrows; through clenched teeth I said, “Oooo-oo-o-o-o.”

  In the first instant I knew I shouldn't have done it. But then it was too late. The lady who had started to smile so fatuously and emptily at me was still smiling, but this was not an empty smile. This smile was so full that possibly it could never be emptied. She was a woman smiling at Dracula during the involuntary transfusion.

  I did what I could. I turned the light off. But it seemed that I was doing everything too late. By that time she was on her way down. Her eyes rolled up and went blank, and around, and then out of sight, and if I hadn't been so remorseful I might have been perplexed that so many things could happen, to only two eyes. But then she went down with a clunk and sprawled out ungracefully.

  I felt for the pulse in her throat and it was still kicking along pretty well, so I just left her there. What could I do? And I had to hurry along anyway. The next one might scream before fainting and that could bring people popping out of doors and the screams would bring others running and there would be bodies strewn all around.

  So I hurried to Satin's apartment, let myself in with one of the skeleton keys, which seemed rather a nice touch, and walked through the darkness of her living room. I used my flashlight, the ordinary one, as little as possible but found Satin's bedroom with no trouble. It was the room where she had changed that afternoon when she had set the alarm clock.

  And suddenly I didn't feel so bad about what was going to happen to Satin. Guilty or innocent, I could still hear that alarm clock ringing.

  I flicked the flashlight over the bed and Satin was lying in it, half-covered by a sheet. I turned the living-room lights on then, and the glow coming through the bedroom door was just enough so I could see her fairly well. The light would be behind me, and if anything, would help, rather than detract from my appearance.

  She was on her side, facing away from me, and it took me only seconds to walk easily across the room and place the big ultraviolet lamp on the floor beside her bed, then flick it on and step back. I was glowing good, I could tell. A phosphorescent glow flowed from my cheekbones and all around my eyes.

  In a flat, dull, hollow voice I said, “Satin. Oh, Satin.”

  She moved slightly, rolled over onto her back.

  “Satin ... I have come.”

  She sort of smacked her lips together, then slowly opened her eyes. She looked at me, blinked a couple times at this ghostly, ghastly apparition beside her bed, and shook her head. Naturally there couldn't be anything like this in her bedroom. She closed her eyes and started to roll back on her side. But suddenly she got rigid. Her body straightened out under the sheet with a snap. For perhaps fifteen long seconds she was like that, only her head moving, going back and forth while she said over and over again, “No-no-no-no.”

  “Satin,” I cooed softly. “It is I. I have returned. I, Shell Scott.”

  It seemed very strange to watch her do it, but her head continued to go back and forth while she turned it toward me and said, “No-no-no.” But then she got both eyes on me squarely at the same time. She got a good look at me, and that did it.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs and leaped about nine feet into the air.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Satin landed and bounced and grabbed the sheet and pulled it up in front of her, and it appeared she was going to scream again. So I held one hand toward her and said in sepulchral tones, “Silence.”

  She froze again. In the faint light I could see her eyes opened wide, but her mouth was not open like that other woman's had been. Satin's was pressed tight shut, teeth jammed together, and the corners of her mouth pulled down.

  “Satin,” I said, speaking in my lowest tone and drawing out each word, “I will not harm you. But you must speak the truth.”

  Softly she got some noise out, “Ah, yes. Yes. I ... will.”

  “But,” I went on, “if you do not speak the truth, then you must.... come ... with ... me!”

  That got her. “No,” she cried. “I won't go! I won't. You wouldn't—”

  “Then speak,” I said. “Confess. Tell me all. Tell the truth, confess your sins.”

  Well, I had her convinced, all right, but I had asked the wrong question. She got almost the same color as me and started telling me all sorts of things, some sins, some not so sinful, but they were not at all what I wanted. Finally I had to break in, “No. No, not that. Satin, not that.”

  The babbling slowed and stopped.

  “Mr. Big,” I said. “Tell me about Mr. Big.” The incongruity of my asking her this question apparently didn't strike her.

  “Mr. who?” she said.

  “Big. The big guy. The boss.”

  “Huh?”

  I began feeling not so good.
But I wouldn't let myself believe that Satin had nothing for me. I knew that somewhere in that skull of hers must be information that would help me. I tried again.

  “Tell me about George Stone.”

  “George?”

  “Yeah. Yes. Whom did he work for? Whom—who was his boss?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You'll have to come with me—”

  “No. No, you—”

  I had to silence her again. Growing more and more worried, I asked the question in a couple of other ways, then I said, “Think, Satin. Be calm. Think. George had to see his boss, the man he worked for, often. Didn't he ever visit him with you along?”

  She had lost some of her fright by now. She sat up and dangled one foot over the side of her bed. “Yes,” she said. “Now I remember. Twice.”

  It gave me a charge like four fast shots of bourbon. Now we were getting there.

  She went on, “It was a big place on Fern Road and I remember two armed guards—What happened?”

  She looked really scared, staring at me, and I couldn't figure for a minute what it was that had frightened her. “You ... disappeared,” she said. “Part of you went away.”

  Then I got it. I hadn't paid much attention at the time, but when Satin had stuck her foot over the side of the bed, she'd swung it out a little way a couple of times. And it had gone in front of the ultraviolet lamp on the floor, cutting off part of its beam. I couldn't see what it did to me, but I could imagine. That part of me not in the beam would have changed appearance drastically, even if it didn't appear to crumble and fall off.