The fredric brown collec.., p.91
The Fredric Brown Collection, page 91
“Herman, you won’t get away with it. They’ll catch you and—”
“And what? Listen, I’m crazy; you said so and you swore to it, and other doctors, too. If they do catch me, what can they do but put me back, see? I’m going to tie you up now, Doc, so you won’t go running for help. Stand up and turn around.”
“I’m anxious to talk to you more about your father and about Kurt. Herman, you mustn’t—”
“I’ve talked enough, Doc. Get up. And before I tie you, I’m going to hit you on the head hard enough to knock you out, because I don’t want any trouble. But I won’t hit hard enough to kill you.”
Mac’s voice again, persuasively; the madman’s, sharper. He took a step nearer the desk, and that put him within a yard of where I lay. Those knots hadn’t budged a millimeter. But, standing where the guy was, and with Mac on hand to finish what I could start, I saw a chance.
If I swiveled around and doubled up my legs and lashed them out right at the back of his knees, he’d go down like a ton of bricks. And Mac is no mean scrapper; he should have been able to take over from there.
Maybe if I’d been cold sober, I wouldn’t have been ready to take a chance like that. But I wasn’t. And I wasn’t entirely convinced that there wasn’t something phony about the set-up. It seemed just a bit theatrical to be true, like a second act that needs patching.
Anyway, I braced my wrists and heels against the floor and swiveled myself around, and I made enough noise in doing it to make the guy with the scattergun take a quick look around behind him to see what was going on. And that was the end of my little scheme.
I suppose I was lucky he didn’t pot me with the gun, but my luck didn’t seem so hot at the moment, for he pulled back his foot and lashed out a kick at my head that would have killed me if it had landed squarely.
And it missed landing squarely by a narrow margin. I jerked under it and the toe of his shoe passed safely over, the heel catching my mouth a glancing but painful blow. There was a taste of blood in my mouth—and the realization that I’d come within less than an inch of losing my front teeth. Then and there I abandoned any doubt I’d had about whether that gun was loaded and whether the man holding it was playing for keeps.
I could hear, but not see, Mac starting across the desk, trying to close in during the diversion I’d caused. But he didn’t have time. The maniac swung back, raised the barrel of that scattergun and brought it down on Mac’s head with a sickening thump. Mac’s momentum carried him on across the desk and he fell unconscious, on the floor near me.
There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so I didn’t say it, and the silence was so thick you could spread it with a knife. The guy who had just slugged Mac grunted once, then he went out toward the kitchen and came back with some heavy twine, a ball of it. He kept an eye on me while he tied up Mac.
Then he said, “You going to lie still while I put some of this on you, or—” He hefted the gun significantly, a shadowy bludgeon in the gathering darkness.
“I’ll lie still,” I told him. “Is—Mac—all right?”
He came over and began to supplement the two neckties that held my wrists and ankles with wrappings of the twine. “Sure,” he said, “he’s breathing. I should have killed him and you, too, but—”
He was finishing my ankles now.
I’d been thinking. Maybe I was getting sober or maybe I was just beginning to feel the effect of what I’d drunk; I don’t know. Anyway, along with the taste of blood in my mouth was a taste of something strictly phony. I knew now, of course, that this wasn’t any idea of Mac’s, but it was still a bad second act.
Yes, that was it—call it a playwright’s instinct, but this was a second act; there’d been a first one that I didn’t know about. I’d walked in during the intermission.
“Listen,” I said, “why did you come here at all, really?”
The moment the words were out, I knew I shouldn’t have said it. He’d just stood up, and the gun was still in his pocket where he’d stuck it to tie me up. Slowly he took it out again, and, like he was thinking hard while he was doing it, he swung the muzzle around until it pointed at my head.
At times like that, you think crazy things. The first thought that popped into my head, while that gun was swinging around was—“This tears it. It’s going to be a hell of a second act curtain, with the hero getting killed!” Sure, I thought of myself as the hero. I don’t know why; but who doesn’t?
That screwy notion, though, took just about as long to flash through my head as it took the gun to move an inch or two. The second thought, and I guess it was what saved me for the third act, was—“This man isn’t crazy; if he’s a real homicidal maniac, then I’m Bill Shakespeare.” And I’m not Bill Shakespeare, but I do have a strong sense of motivation, and that was the rub here. There was a motivation behind the visit of the chap with the scattergun who was about to use it to scatter my brains over Mac’s carpet. I’d called him on it, and that was how I’d asked for trouble.
And I saw that the reason I was going to die, if I was, concerned that very question of whether or not he was crazy. He suspected now that I suspected he wasn’t. My only chance was to convince him otherwise, and darned quick.
I started talking, and I didn’t start out by accusing him of being batty—that would have been a giveaway of what I was trying to do. I talked fast, but I made my voice soft and calm and soothing, like Mac’s had been when Mac was trying to talk him out of committing a couple of murders. I talked as though I were talking to a madman and was trying to calm him down.
“Listen,” I told him, “you don’t want to shoot me, Herman. I’ve never done anything to you, have I? Sure, I made a pass at you before, but that was because I thought you were going to kill Mac, and Mac’s a friend of mine, Herman. A good friend. You can’t blame me for that, can you?” Well, I went on from there, and I repeated myself with variations, and I guess I got it across. The gun stayed pointed at my head, but it didn’t explode and I began to think that it wasn’t going to.
Funny, come to think of it. Here was a guy who was either a homicidal maniac or he wasn’t, and I felt convinced that if he thought I thought he was crazy, I’d get by. If he thought I saw through his act, as that incautious question of mine had indicated, I was a dead duck. And the only way to convince him that I was being hoodwinked, was to pretend I thought he was mad and was humoring him. So I humored him; I talked, believe me, I talked.
And then, abruptly, he grunted and stuck that scattergun through his belt. He took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened a four-inch blade.
He reached down and grabbed a handful of my coatfront and dragged me across the carpet a couple of yards to where a square of bright moonlight came in the open window behind Mac’s desk, and he held me so my head was in that moonlight, and—
I gave an involuntary yowl and began to almost wish he’d decided to use that scattergun after all. He took a handful of my hair in his left hand, and—sitting on my chest so I couldn’t move—he turned my head around sidewise.
He put the knife down a moment and took hold of my left ear, bending down as though to examine it carefully. Then he let go and picked up the knife again. And I remembered what he’d been saying to Mac ten minutes or so ago—“The ears, Doc. Those damned ears—they—”
Was the guy crazy, or was he just trying to convince me that he was? I thought for a minute it was going to cost me an ear or two to find out. I howled, “Herman, don’t—” and never knew until then just how eloquent I was.
Whether it was my eloquence or not, he decided at last that he didn’t want my ears. He grunted and put the knife back in the pocket of that capacious overcoat. He said, “No good. They’re not Wunderly.”
He got up from my chest and started toward the door. He must have guessed that I was already wondering how soon it would be safe to yell for help. He turned back a minute and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. Then he said, “The hell with it. Yell all you want. Yell to the seagulls.”
I watched the big dark shadow of him go through the doorway and I didn’t say thanks or good-bye. I was going to let well enough alone. I heard his footsteps across the porch.
I didn’t yell to the seagulls; he was right about that. Mac’s place is a mile from its nearest neighbor, three miles from the coast guard station that has the only telephone on that part of the beach. And I didn’t worry about trying to loosen my bonds; I’d found them too tough to handle even before he’d added to them with the heavy twine.
Mac was my—our—only chance of getting out of there in time to make a third act curtain. I crawled across, or rather wriggled my way across, to where he lay. He was breathing heavily now, and once as I worked my way toward him he moved a bit.
Probably he’d have snapped out of it quickly if I’d been able to give his face a few healthy slaps, but that wasn’t possible. Fortunately he was lying on his side; I’d have had a devil of a job rolling him over if he’d been on his back where I couldn’t get at the knots at his wrists.
I wriggled up behind him, and began work on those knots with my teeth. It was slow tough work, about the hardest thing I ever tackled. But I plugged along at it, and in between tries, I yelled at him and nudged him in the back with my head. Finally he said, “What happened, Bryce?”
“He’s gone,” I told him. “We’re tied up. That’s all. Listen, Mac, I’ll keep on with these knots. If you can talk okay, tell me who the guy is and what’s what, while I get you loose if I can.”
His voice gradually got stronger as he talked. “Herman Wunderly,” he told me. “Homicidal maniac killed his sister several years ago. Gruesome business; cut off her ears. He’s got some mania about ears.
“I was up here for the summer when it happened, and I helped handle him, and had to testify. The Wunderly place is a mile down the beach; nearest house here, in fact. They’re year-rounders, residents, a bit eccentric. There’s old man Wunderly now, and Herman’s brother Kurt. He’s going back to kill them unless we can—”
I’d got the knot loosened a bit now; it wouldn’t be much longer. But my bruised and cut lip hurt so badly I had to stop for a second or two. I said, “Are they all as batty as Herman? Good Lord—sorricide, patricide—”
Then I went back to work on the knots. Mac said, “Neither. Herman and Kurt are brothers, but they were adopted. So Ethel wasn’t their sister, and Old Man Wunderly isn’t—”
Then the knot gave way, and Mac sat up, got his hands braced on the edge of the desk, stood up and worked his way around it. I said, “Hey, how about me? Untie—”
“Scissors,” he told me. “Quicker.” He found them in a drawer, cut the cord from his ankles, and then cut me loose. “One of those neckties,” I said, “was mine. And a new silk one at that. You owe me—”
“Shut up, you dope. Listen, you take the coast guard station, three miles northwest. Have ‘em send men quick. I’ll go to the Wunderlys’, and maybe I’ll be in time to—”
“Got another gun, Mac, besides the one he took?”
He shook his head. “Tell the coast guard boys to come armed. Don’t worry about me; handling nuts is my business. I can take care of—”
I’d switched the light back on while he was talking, and I grinned at him. “So I noticed,” I cut in. “Come on, if you’re going.”
He was going, all right. He was running so fast I had to yell the last of that remark after him. I ran after, using the forethought to grab up a fairly hefty cane that was in the umbrella rack in the corner of the hallway. I wasn’t leaning on Mac’s persuasive abilities with a homicidal maniac—nor counting on my own to work a second time.
I caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “You can’t run a mile through sand,” I yelled. “You’ll fall down before you get half way—”
He saw the point in that and slowed down, and I panted alongside. “Our ears,” I said. “We should have taken them off and left them back where they’re safe.”
“You’re still drunk. Listen, be sensible and go back to the coast guard station and let me handle this. It isn’t any of your business.”
“They wouldn’t get there in time and you know it and I’m not still drunk, dammit. And that second act stank, Mac. It needs doctoring, and I’m the guy who can—”
“Shut up, you sap. If you’re going to come, save your breath for getting there.”
It was good advice, and I took it.
He pushed on, sometimes running, sometimes walking—mostly according to the footing—and we were both fairly winded when we rounded the dune that hid the Wunderly house.
Mac said, “Shhh,” and grabbed my arm. We were pretty close now, and he pointed to a window that was open about ten inches. We tiptoed to it, and got it open wider without making as much noise as I thought it would make.
The window was low enough that we could see in, and as far as we could tell looking into the darkened room, it was empty. Mac went in first, and I followed him. The room was just sufficiently illumined that we could make out where the furniture was, when our eyes had got accustomed to it.
Mac pointed toward one of the two closed doors and said, “Hallway. Stairs.” And we crossed over and opened it. It didn’t squeak, but the latch clicked when I let go the knob, and Mac grabbed my arm again, so hard and unexpectedly that I almost let out a yawp.
The hall was darker. I reached in my pocket for a box of matches, but Mac pulled me over to him and whispered in my ear, “I’ve been here. I know where the stairs are.” He started off, feeling along the wall with one hand. I held on to the sleeve of his coat and followed.
We came to a turn, and he whispered, “This is the back of the staircase. Feel your way around it and you’ll come to the bannister on the other side. We’re going up.”
“And then what?”
He answered, “Kurt and the old man sleep upstairs, and it looks like they’ve turned in early—unless we’re too late. We’ll see if they’re all right first.”
That sounded sensible. If they were all right, we’d have allies, and we could use them. And maybe there’d be a gun around. I still didn’t feel very happy about chasing an armed maniac with only a walking stick for defense.
I whispered, “Listen—” and reached out for Mac.
But he’d moved on. I found the wall with my left hand and started to follow it around the staircase. Just around the corner, there was a door. A door there under the stairs meant a closet. I don’t know why I opened that door. I heard a faint rustling sound, or thought I did, inside the closet, as my hand went along the outside of the door. But I should have caught up with Mac and told him, and we should have done the thing cautiously. But I didn’t wait. Like a fool, I jerked the door open.
For just a second there was so much light that I couldn’t see a thing. Some closet doors are rigged like that—particularly closets off darkish hallways. When you open the door the light inside the closet goes on, and when you close it the light goes off again.
It’s a handy arrangement, but I didn’t appreciate it just then. That light seemed to flash right in my eyes, and it utterly blinded me. I heard an exclamation from Mac, who’d reached the foot of the stairs, and I heard another rustle in the closet and a noise that sounded like the growl of an animal.
For what was probably two seconds, but seemed two hours, I stood there blinking, and then I could see again.
I saw, back among the coats and things hanging in the closet, a tall figure in an outsize overcoat. Terrifyingly expressionless eyes stared at me out of a twisted face. And a familiar-looking scattergun pointed squarely at the pit of my stomach from a range of two feet or less.
It was one of those awful instants that seem to hang poised upon the brink of time’s abyss interminably. There wasn’t time for me to grab for that gun or jump sidewise from in front of its muzzle. But, as though in slow motion, I could see the knuckles of his hand whiten as his finger tightened on the trigger. I could see the hammer go back, hear the click as it slipped the pawl and see it start down toward the single chamber of the gun.
It clicked down—empty—and I was still standing there alive and without a hole blown through me and my liver splattered over the wall behind me. For another fraction of a second, I was too terrified to move. If that gun hadn’t been loaded back at Mac’s house, then this whole thing didn’t make sense at all. But the guy who’d just pulled the trigger must have thought it was loaded or he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. Until he’d done that he had me buffaloed; I’d have put up my hands like a lamb with that thing looking at me. Add it up, and—
But the guy in the overcoat didn’t wait to add it up. He came out of the closet after me in a flying leap like the charge of a tiger. The empty gun was raised now to be used as a bludgeon and just in the nick of time I got my cane up to block a blow that would have crushed my skull.
His wrist hit against the edge of the cane and the gun flew out of his hand, over my shoulder, and knocked a square foot of plaster out of the wall behind, before it hit the floor.
He kept on coming, though, and the momentum of his charge knocked me off my feet, and he was right there on top of me, his hands reached for my throat.
All this had happened before Mac could get back down the two or three steps of the staircase he’d started up, but I heard him yell, “Herman, stop!” and the thud of his feet as he vaulted over the bannister and came running.
One of Herman’s hands had found my throat and I was having to use both my hands to keep the other one off when Mac got there. He joined the fray with a nifty full nelson that pulled the maniac’s arms away from my throat and yanked him up to his knees. Then Mac let the full nelson slide to a half, and got one of Herman’s arms pinned behind him in a hammerlock. It was neat work.
But all of this hadn’t been accomplished in silence. Another light flashed on at the top of the stairs, and we heard slippered feet in the upper hallway.
“The old man?” I asked Mac.
“No, he’s deaf; this wouldn’t have waked him. That’ll be Kurt Wunderly.” He called out, “Hey, Wunderly. This is MacCready. Everything’s under control, but come on down.”
