James Chase - Miss Shumway Waves a Wand

I found a little trickle of sweat running down into my collar and I patted my neck with my handkerchief. “What happened the next day?” I asked.

“To-day, you mean? I’m telling you. I went to sleep and here I am.”

“I see. You don’t remember anything?”

She shook her head. “Nothing happened,” she repeated with a frown. “I just went to sleep.”

“You’ve been asleep for two days,” I said, watching her.

“Two days? Why, you’re crazy!”

Then seeing the way I looked at her she went on, “You wouldn’t kid me, would you?”

“No. I wouldn’t kid you,” I said.

She suddenly laughed. “Well, maybe I was tired. I feel kind of weak now. Will you leave me for a little while? I want to think and then I’d like something to eat.”

I got up. “Sure,” I said. “You take it easy.”

Ansell and Bogle looked at me anxiously when I got downstairs. “It’s no good,” I said.

“She doesn’t remember anything.”

“You don’t mean to say she just slept all the time?” Ansell demanded. “But what about the snake-bite remedy? What happened to that?”

“Aw, quit asking questions,” I said, suddenly sore, and I went into the kitchen to order her a meal.

When it was ready, Bogle met me in the passage as I came from the kitchen with a tray in my hands.

“Can I take that up to her?” he said, scowling at me fiercely.

“You?” I nearly dropped the tray.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Bogle demanded fiercely. “You and Dce’s been up, ain’t you? Why can’t I have a look?”

I grinned at him. “She’s not a bad kid, is she?” I said.

“Bad?” Bogle snatched the tray out of my hands. “That ain’t the word for it.” But he tiptoed up the stairs as if they were made of paper.

As I turned into the lounge, there was a sudden wild yell from upstairs and a crash of broken china.

Doc and I looked at each other in alarm and then we dashed for the stairs.

Bogle came blundering down the passage, his face white and his eyes bolting out of his head. He tried to pass us, but I grabbed him and spun him round.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I demanded, shaking him.

“Don’t go in there,” he quavered, sweat running down his fat face. “She’s floating round the room. Floating up to the ceiling,” and shoving me aside, he continued his mad flight.

“He’s gone crazy,” I said, staring after him. “What’s he mean, floating round the room?” Ansell didn’t say anything, but I could see by his eyes, he was scared.

“FLOATING in the air,” Myra said scornfully. “What kind of an imagination is that?” She was lying full length in a basket chair with her feet up. She still looked pale, but there was a sparkle in her eyes that l was glad to see.

The evening sun had sunk below the mountains and in the fading light, the verandah was quiet and restful. A cool wind rustled the scorched leaves of the overhead cypresses and the square was deserted. Ansell and I lolled in our chairs near Myra, while Bogle sat at the table, fondling a bottle half-filled with whisky.

“Drink’s going to be Samuel’s downfall,” Myra went on. “He can’t have his D.T.’s like an ordinary decent citizen. He has to be different. So he sees floating women instead of pink snakes.”

I looked across at Bogle. He worried me. Sitting in a heap, drinking whisky steadily, he looked like a man embarking on a long and serious illness. He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself and every now and then a muscle would flutter in his cheek and his eyes would twitch.

“Now, wait a minute,” I said. “He must have seen something to get him in that condition. A man doesn’t go to pieces like that for fun.”

“Phooey!” Myra snapped. “He’s trying to be temperamental. You came in two minutes after he’d rushed out. You didn’t see me floating in the air, did you?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here, if I had,” I said with a grin. “I’d be running somewhere in the desert.”

“Well, there you are,” Myra said. “He’s suffering from delusions.”

“Suppose you go over your story again, Sam?” Ansell said kindly.

Bogle gave a little shiver and poured himself out another drink “I’ll go screwy if I even think about it,” he said in husky voice.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Myra told him. “You’re as far gone as you ever will be. After all, there is a limit even to lunacy.”

Bogle screwed up his fists and faced us. “I don’t care what you punks say,” he snarled. “I believe my own peepers. I went into that room and there she was lying on the bed. I didn’t even have time to ask her how she was when she suddenly rose off the bed with the blanket over her and floated up to the ceiling, stiff, like she was held up by wires.”

We all exchanged glances.

“She just floated off the bed, eh?” I said. “You’ve never seen anyone else just float off a bed before, have you?”

Bogle shook his head. “No,” he said simply, “I ain’t and what’s more, I don’t ever want to see it again.”

Ansell said in a low voice to me: “Sun stroke.”

I nodded. “Now, look pal,” I said. “We’ve had a pretty hard day. Suppose you go to bed? You’ll be fine to-morrow.”

Bogle groaned. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to sleep again?” he said, pouring himself out another whisky.

Myra swung her feet to the ground and stood up. She was wearing a dark blue shirt and a pair of grey flannel trousers. The outfit certainly suited her neat little figure. She walked over to Bogle and took the whisky away from him.

“Go on,” she said. “Get off to bed or I’ll do more than float over you.”

Bogle shrank away from her. “Don’t come near me,” he said in horror.

“Leave him alone,” Ansell said. “It looks to me as if he were suffering from delayed shock.”

Myra hesitated, then keeping the whisky bottle she moved back to her chair.

I snapped the bottle out of her hand as she passed. “I’ll have what’s left,” I said and took a long pull from the bottle.

Myra sat down again. “Well, we’re right where we started, aren’t we?” she said. “We’ve spent the best part of an hour listening to Samuel’s drivel about floating women.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“What I want to know,” Ansell said, sitting up, “is what happened in that hut? Did you or did you not get anything out of Quintl?”

“Of course, I didn’t,” Myra said. “I’ve told you over and over again. He put me in a hut and I went to sleep. I don’t remember a thing.”

“Well, that’s that,” I said dismally. “You can kiss your snake-bite remedy good-bye. Now Quintl’s dead no one will have it.”

“It looks like it,” Ansell said. “And yet… why was he in the hut with her? She was alone when she went to sleep, yet we find Quintl with her when we break in. There’s something behind all this.” He scratched his chin, staring at Myra with questioning eyes. “You don’t feel any different, do you?” he asked cautiously.

“You mean do I want to start floating or something like that?” Myra asked tartly. “Are you going nuts, too?”

“Maybe there’s something in what Bogle said,” Ansell went on. “Maybe he wasn’t mistaken.”

“A pair of them,” Myra said to me. “Good Lord! Put them in strait jackets.”

I stared at Ansell in alarm. “What are you getting at?”

Before he could reply a party of horsemen rode into the Square, scattering dust and breaking the stillness of the evening.

“What’s this?” Myra asked, looking over her shoulder at the dark group of horsemen. “A rodeo?”