Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Fine—”

  “In exactly forty-eight hours from now!” I grabbed my cigarettes from the desk, shoved them into my pocket and stood up.

  “And don’t worry about your star reporter,” I said reaching for my hat, “because I’m just going to drop in on my girl so she’ll remember me when I meet her at the altar one of these days, and then I’m heading for the arms of Morpheus.”

  “Whose arms?” Joe asked suspiciously. “Morpheus,” I snapped. “The god of sleep, you wouldn’t know him.”

  I left then and I almost made it to the door. But half-way through the reception room the receptionist called me.

  “Jim,” she said, “there’s a gentleman to see you.” Her pretty blonde head nodded to the other side of the room where a small Chinese sat watching me expectantly. “Him?” I asked.

  The blonde head nodded again and I sighed. That’s one thing about the newspaper business. Every crackpot crank in the world runs to a newspaper when he things he’s got a story. I don’t know why they pick on me unless it’s because I try and be nice to them.

  THE little fellow had stood up when I looked at him and I got a better look at him. He was short and slight and wore a cutaway coat and striped trousers. In his hand he carried, very carefully, a black homburg hat. His face was bland and smooth and wreathed in a slightly silly smile and behind large spectacles, bright little almond eyes twinkled at me. He wore a cane too.

  I scratched my head and decided to make a very brief interview out of it.

  “Did you wish to see me?”

  “Are you Mr. James Burke?” This question was accompanied by a deferential little bow that seemed, somehow at odds with the clipped, painfully precise voice and inflection.

  “Yes.”

  He moved closer to me then and looked about carefully.

  “I should like very much to talk to you for a minute or maybe two but I should like also to find a somewhat more confidential place than this foyer.”

  “I’m pretty busy,” I said, “and—”

  “It is of the gravest importance, Mister Burke,” he said solemnly. “Trouble, serious trouble is near and I need your help.” They all do. To start revolutions or to finance a business or something screwy. I took my little chum by the arm and led him to the door that led to the men’s washroom.

  He smiled brightly at me.

  “My name is Wu,” he said. “Mister Wu.”

  “Wu, eh?” I repeated. “Gotta nice ring to it. Now you just wait here for a few minutes and I’ll be back.” I shoved him gently into the gleaming tile washroom and then tiptoed out of the door, and out of the building.

  I HAD forgotten all about it a half-hour later when I trotted up the steps of Professor Cartwright’s home. I rang the bell and then tried to recall, with the usual poor results, how beautiful Joan Cartwright really was. I was always knocked for a loop when I saw her, but it was fun trying to prepare myself for it.

  I rang the bell again and frowned. She might be up in her father’s second story laboratory. I didn’t particularly like her working with her father because he was just enough of an idealistic scientist to use her for his experiments. I didn’t know what he was working on and I didn’t care much. All I cared about was Joan.

  There was no answer to my second ring and I began to stew. I walked across the spring sod to the front of the house and peered through the window. From the light of floor lamps I could see reflections from leather-backed volumes in the Professor’s library. But the Professor’s big chair was empty and his pipes were all standing neatly in their racks.

  I didn’t wait any longer. Calm, thoughtful deliberation is not my strong suit. I wrapped my handkerchief about my fist and then knocked a pane of glass out and crawled into the library. The first floor was quiet and—I knew in a minute—deserted.

  “Hello,” I yelled, “anybody home?”

  I crossed the library, while my shout was still echoing through the house and started up the stairs. The second floor of the house was dark but at the end of the hall I saw a thin pencil of light, close to the floor. I knew the light came from the Professor’s laboratory.

  Unconsciously I felt my fingers tightening into fists. I started down the hall but before I had taken three steps, the door swung open. I blinked in the sudden light that streamed from the laboratory and then I saw that Joan was standing in the doorway, her face shadowed by the light behind her.

  I felt my knees almost sag with, relief. Then I grinned sheepishly.

  “Any relation to Jim Burke and a second story man is purely coincidental.”

  She didn’t answer, but I could see her lips curve in a smile.

  “You had me worried, honey,” I said. “Nobody answered the bell and I—” I stopped and stared at her. “Joan,” I heard my voice sharp and strained. “What’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t see her face clearly but her body, silhouetted in the light, was swaying slightly as if it were out of control. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly.

  “For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” I yelled.

  Her head rolled loosely, limply on her neck but she didn’t speak. I half carried and half dragged her into the laboratory and jerked her around to face the light. Her face was blank, expressionless, and her eyes stared into mine without a trace of recognition. I slapped her face hard.

  “If this is a joke,” I shouted, “it’s gone far enough.”

  One of her hands touched the angry, red spot on her cheek where my hand had struck and a puzzled, babyish expression of hurt and doubt appeared in her eyes.

  “Oh God,” I groaned. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  I led her to a chair and watched her slump back against the cushions, her body limp and unresisting. One of her hands trailed over the arm of the chair and played idly and unconsciously with a tassle that dangled from the arm of the chair.

  I jerked my eyes away from her and got a grip on myself again before I looked around the room. The chairs were overturned, the rug was twisted and wrinkled and there were four jagged holes in the floor, as if heavy bolts had been ripped from the planking. I crossed the room to the phone and snapped it to my lips. Then I saw that the wires had been ripped from the bell box.

  I dropped the phone and then I noticed an object on the floor next to the Professor’s desk. It was a small, leather-bound black book. I picked it up and shuffled through it. It was crammed with formulae, equations and page after page of notes in the Professor’s neat, cramped writing. I shoved it into my overcoat pocket and then walked back to Joan and took her hand in mine.

  “Darling,” I said, trying to keep the frantic anxiety from my voice, “where’s your father? Look at me. You’ve got to try and remember. Think, darling, please. Tell me what’s happened.”

  She stared at me blankly. It was the most terrible sensation I’ve ever experienced to look at her. It was the girl I loved and yet—it wasn’t. The features were the same, but they were devoid of all identity, all character and expression. It was as if a perfectly blank mask had been placed over her delicate, sensitive face.

  I remembered the downstairs phone then and in a few seconds I was racing down the steps and into the alcove off the library. I picked up the receiver and in a second heard Central’s sweet music—“Number Please?”

  “Get an ambulance on its way,” I said, and gave the house address. “Then call the police.” I slammed the phone back into its cradle and hurried back up the steps. I don’t know why but at that moment I was thinking of a funny little Chinese named Mister Wu!

  CHAPTER II

  Joan Disappears

  I WATCHED the tall, white-haired A neuro-psychiatrist peer into Joan’s eyes and then feel her pulse and shake his head.

  “In forty years of clinical research,” I heard him mutter, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “You’ve been taking tests for an hour now.” I stared down at Joan’s slender figure stretched out on the hospital cot and
clenched my fists. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with her or can’t you?”

  “You must relax,” the old doctor said gently. “We don’t want to have another patient on our hands. Joan’s case is unique in the case literature of psychiatry. In some manner her brain has been completely drained. Memory, will, inhibitions, personality . . .” he paused and made a sweeping gesture with his hand, . . . “they’ve all been swept away.”

  “How the hell could that happen?” I asked. “Yesterday she was sane as you or me. Maybe more so.”

  “It isn’t the question of sanity,” the doctor returned wearily. “She’s perfectly sane and normal, just as a two week old baby is sane and normal. I don’t pretend to know what has happened, but something—God knows what—has blotted up her entire mentality. Her brain is like a sponge-squeezed dry.”

  I stood up then. “I’m going to find Professor Cartwright,” I said. “He’s tied up with this some way. When I find him I’ll be able to answer some questions that I can’t now.”

  I left the hospital room without looking again at Joan’s slim, pathetically limp form.

  In the hallway I bumped into a stretcher which four short, brown men were wheeling past.

  “Cinder in my eye,” I muttered, “sorry!” One of them answered me and I stopped. Something was bothering me. A number of unrelated, unimportant occurrences seemed to be standing out in my mind as if they were about to fall into some definite pattern. I pulled the lobe of my ear and walked on, frowning. Hunches are things I don’t ignore.

  When I reached the lobby of the hospital, I slumped into a chair and did a little thinking. The one thing that I wanted to find out was if there was any connection between the disappearance of Professor Cartwright and Professor Engles. And then I wanted to know what had happened to Joan.

  I noticed an Oriental bus boy crossing the lobby carrying a tray of dishes and something about him bothered me. I lighted a cigarette impatiently. And then one of the pieces of the jig-saw dropped suddenly into place.

  The four men wheeling the stretcher I had bumped into were all dark, swarthy—the bus boy had reminded me of them. What the hell were Chinese or Asiatic attendants doing wheeling a stretcher about this hospital?

  I didn’t wait to answer that question. I shot out of my chair and raced for the steps, a dozen vague and nameless fears spurring me. I took the steps two at a time as fast as I could run. But half way between the second and third floor I heard a shrill, desperate scream and I knew I was too late.

  A frantic nurse collided with me as I turned the comer from the stairs to the corridor and for a matter of ten seconds I had my hands full of hysterical femininity.

  “Snap out of it,” I shouted. “What happened?”

  “They took her,” she screamed, “took her with them. I couldn’t stop them.”

  I dropped her and pounded down the corridor to Joan’s room. One glance told me the story. A window open leading to the fire escape; the old doctor sprawled on the floor; a crimson blot staining the silver of his hair.

  And Joan’s bed rumpled and empty!

  I ACTED fast to keep myself from thinking. I got to the window just in time to see a black limousine pulling away from the front of the hospital.

  I made it back downstairs in half the time it took me to get up. There might be a chance of trailing that car if I just got a break. I was racing to the revolving door when the cops grabbed me from behind.

  They weren’t any too gentle about it. A big hand hooked into my shoulder and I was spun half way around into the arms of another huge, blue-coated figure.

  “What’s your hurry?” the big cop snapped. “We got a call over here and I guess you’re our man all right. You smart guys are all alike. In such a hurry to fade that you run right into our arms.”

  I whipped out my press card and shoved it at him.

  “Look at that,” I snapped, “and get your meat hooks off me. If you blundering morons would learn to use your brains instead of your mitts you’d get better results.”

  “Well, gee, I thought—”

  “With what?” I asked icily. Then I turned and raced through the revolving door to the street. But I was too late again. The street was completely deserted.

  I cursed bitterly and fluently then and I didn’t stop until I was out of breath. Joan gone—her father missing—nothing made any sense.

  I was standing next to the intersection of an alley and a dim street lamp illuminated the street and part of the alley with a murky radiance. The thing was getting too much for me. There was no rhyme or reason to anything that had happened. Nothing I could sink my teeth into, to start swinging at. I turned wearily and started for the hospital. I hadn’t taken ten steps before I heard the slight noise behind me.

  I turned and my eyes blinked in the light and then opened wide as they focused on the small familiar figure that was facing me.

  In the light of the street lamp I could see spectacles gleaming and I could see a

  Homburg hat outlined and I knew that the trousers the little man was wearing were gray with a pin stripe and I also knew that beady, bright almond eyes were watching me behind a deceptively vacant smile.

  I recognized Mr. Wu, the beaming little Chinese who had visited me earlier in the day.

  He stepped closer to me, bowing with his shy deferential gesture.

  “I am so very, very sorry,” he said, and I noticed again his crisp English, “that you did not think it sufficiently important to return this morning.” I could see him smiling. “That was most unfortunate, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “supposing you just do a little more talking.”

  “This is a very serious matter, my young friend,” he said with his polite, silly smile, “and if you will allow a suggestion from one much older than yourself, it is a matter that you would do better to leave alone.”

  I MOVED a little closer to him, my right arm ready to swing. At last it looked like I had something definite to work on.

  “Go on,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

  “Thank you,” he said, with another bow, “but I must warn you not to give way to the impulsiveness of youth and allow yourself to act rashly and,” he lingered only a second on the word, “dangerously.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “My plans have been considerably frustrated,” he went on, “and perhaps part of that might be interesting to you. You see I was only a few minutes late at Professor Cartwright’s this morning.”

  I nodded and inched closer to him. “Then,” he continued suavely, “I am late here now. The girl is gone and that is a great disappointment. I had such hopes of finding her here. But she is gone; that I see in your face. Mr. Burke,” there was a metallic edge to the smooth voice, “please be so good as to relax.”

  I looked down and saw that a small thirty-two revolver was pointing at about the middle button of my vest. I relaxed and my respect for Mr. Wu went up a point. I hadn’t seen him draw that gun.

  “So,” he went on blandly, “we come to the important matter. The black book. Will you please be so good as to hand it to me, Mr. Burke?”

  “What book?” I asked blankly.

  Mr. Wu smiled.

  “So droll of you,” he said in his liquid tones, “to feign ignorance. Perhaps I can refresh your memory. Look in your outside coat pocket, Mr. Burke. The top of the book is visible to me.”

  I jammed my hand into my pocket and felt the leather bound book. I pulled it out, remembering it for the first time. It was the book I had picked up in the Professor’s laboratory. There was nothing I could do. I handed him the book.

  “What’s that got to do with everything?” I asked.

  Mr. Wu looked distressed. “I am sorry that you do heed my so excellent advise. This matter is very involved and very treacherous and I wish you would not concern. yourself with it. It grieves me extremely when my advice is disregarded. Do you understand, Mr. Burke?”

  “Yeah,” I said drily. “You’re mixed up in t
he disappearance of Joan and Professor Cartwright and probably Professor Engles. I’m going to make it a sort of lifetime hobby to see that you swing for abduction and maybe murder. That’s what I understand.”

  “The younger generation,” Mr. Wu’s smile beamed broadly, “add garrulousness to brainlessness and call the mixture bravery. Very peculiar, but very common. A last entreaty, Mr. Burke. You are dealing with things of which you have no knowledge. Things which are black and dangerous—for everyone. So I beg of you—before you are too deeply involved—stay clear.”

  Suddenly his eyes flashed over my shoulder and the smile wiped itself from his face.

  “Fools,” I heard him mutter. “They will never learn.”

  He flung himself into the shadow of a small shrubbery and I saw twin streaks of orange belch from the tip of his gun. I wheeled and saw a black car sliding to the curb. I started to run but before I could move three feet, I was thrown to the earth violently by an assailant from behind. I struggled furiously until something pounded into the top of my skull.

  CHAPTER III

  Morea Khan

  THE next thing I remembered was pain. Pain that traveled up and down in my body in engulfing waves that seemed to smash into my head and roar and fizzle there for hours at a time.

  Then I opened my eyes and the effort was almost too much for me. I closed them again and tried not to retch.

  “No serious after effects I trust?” the voice sibilant and smooth cut through my befogged senses like a whistling lash. I winced and opened my eyes again.

  A thin, grotesque figure stood before me, a cold smile playing over his dark features. He was a toweringly tall man, gaunt to the point of emaciation. His plain sack clothes hung on him as if they were draped on planks. His face was wide and flat but no one would ever notice his face as long as they could see his eyes. They were black and fathomless wells that reflected now, sadistic, humorless mirth.

  I stared at him for an instant, and then as the events of the last few hours came surging back into my memory I straightened up in my chair and felt the top of my head gingerly.