Dale Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134 & 135, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

All it had been was a case of the flu. People came down with this sickness all the time and they took something and got over it. But now there was a new drug — Cintillate. Dr. Farley prescribed it and Connie began the course of seven capsules taken over seven days.

She only got to day three. First there was the pain in the legs, the ankles, the feet. It was excruciating, unlike any pain she had ever experienced. Higgins did what he could after calling Dr. Farley, who said bed rest. And keep on with the capsules.

After day four, her eyes could not tolerate the light. Higgins would stand in the doorway of the darkened room listening to her gasp with every breath. She could still walk to the bathroom — only just.

“I can’t go on like this,” she whispered to him. “Do something.”

“I called Dr. Farley. He’s supposed to call back.”

“Shoot me. You’ve still got your gun?”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“This is not going away. I can tell. It’s getting worse.”

Higgins walked to Farley’s office. He encountered the doctor on his way out. He looked panicky, like a thief caught in the act. He spoke first. “You should be with Connie.”

“She’s talking about killing herself.”

“Then you should really be with her.”

“What are we giving her?”

“It’s a miracle drug, Cummerbund’s newest. Sometimes there are side effects.”

“Don’t they test these things? Doesn’t the government make them?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“No system is perfect.”

“That’s a sickening answer.”

Higgins hurried home and found the place empty. He heard and saw through a window some sort of commotion at the freeway a quarter-mile from the house. This is what had happened: In her robe and slippers, Connie had managed to limp to the overpass where she flung herself down into rush-hour traffic. She was struck by three vehicles, killed by the second.

After the funeral, alone in the house for the first time in twenty-six years, Higgins missed meals, watched television, slept in a chair. A lot of people were dying from the flu epidemic. A news program showed a gathering of surviving family members outside the Cummerbund head office on Baytown’s west hill. When the pharmaceutical giant moved its operations to Baytown six years ago it was seen as a huge economic boost for the community. Now it was being said that the company founder was in town. Like the climactic scene from a horror movie, here was the monster fleeing from the wrath of enraged villagers.

The camera caught a shot of the vulture face as Jason Cummer ducked into a waiting limousine. His lips were moving; Higgins read the words. “Cintillate is a miracle drug. Go home, go home!”

That had been the moment when the bereaved man saw something in his mind’s eye — the tumbril!

Building the tumbril was not a problem. There was an old wagon on Elmer’s farm. And Daisy was available for locomotion. Was it the dynamite that gave Higgins his idea for some sort of revenge? “What’s this?” he asked, peering into a wooden box of explosives.

“My old man used it for clearing stumps.”

That was when Higgins refused the wheels from Elmer’s old Buick and set about building wooden ones. He made them hollow and six inches thick. They were like drums.

“What’s this in aid of?” Elmer asked as they fitted the wheels to the axles.

“For the sound they’ll make as we go down the street. Hollow and spooky. The sound of a tumbril.”

The rumble of the wheels was disturbing enough that the Baytown Banner sent a reporter to interview Higgins and find out what the hell he thought he was doing. They met up late one afternoon when the tumbril was half full of bodies. Higgins was not eating much these days since Connie was no longer feeding him. As a result his voice was weak. It broke into a yodel as he uttered his invitation, “Bring out your dead!”

The reporter was on a bicycle. He pedaled slowly beside the wagon, teetering for balance as he put his questions. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I’m making a point,” Higgins said. “I want to get through to Jason Cummer. His new product is killing people.”

“Cintillate? They tell me it’s a wonder drug. I’m taking it myself. First capsule this morning.”

“Then hail and farewell.”

“If you get to see Cummer, what will you tell him?”

“I’ll think of something.”

The reporter snapped a picture of Higgins and then sped away on his bike. The photograph appeared next day alongside his story on the front page of the Banner.

As for the reporter himself, he continued with his course of the new drug which had certainly killed his flu symptoms. He got as far as the sixth capsule before he died in agony. The tumbril happened to be approaching that evening along the street where the journalist lived. His father brought the body out and placed it on the flat bed of the tumbril. Higgins recognized the face. “Still writing?” he asked. “Scribble scribble?”

His secretary had traveled to Baytown with her boss. When she drew the article in the Banner to his attention, Jason Cummer read it and then said, “I’ve had enough, Enid. Get hold of this Higgins person and bring him here.”

Told of the appointment, Higgins joined Elmer at the farm and expressed his satisfaction. “It’s working,” he said. “I’m to go and see Cummer tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.”

“Congratulations,” Elmer said. “I think.”

“Now where’s that dynamite?”

The sticks of explosive fitted neatly into the four wheels. Now the problem was detonation. Higgins showed his friend a length of fuse protruding from a hole drilled in one of the wheels. “I light this and up she goes,” he said.

“You figure if one wheel goes the others will too?”

“Why not?”

Elmer had an anxious look on his face. “What about Daisy?”

Higgins placed his hands on Elmer’s shoulders. “Next to you, Daisy is my best friend. When we roll the tumbril down into the underground parking at Cummerbund Pharmaceuticals, you’ll unhitch your horse and lead her outside while I go in to face the Devil.”

Jason Cummer’s inclination was to tell this wasted little man to go to hell. But he kept his temper. “Have you any idea how much money we spend on research and development? Miracle drugs don’t just fall off the tree.”

“How much on testing?”

“A fortune. We test them on mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters...”

“Any people?”

Cummer looked away. “Lots of people.”

“May I speak to them?”

“You may not. Try to understand. This organization provides work to thousands of wage-earners. We pay millions in taxes. Cintillate is not our only new product. We have many others in the pipeline.”

“Heaven help us,” Higgins said quietly. Then, “I read somewhere you have a contract with the army to develop chemical weapons.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“Is it possible that there’s some sort of unintended leakage between projects? Some element from a weapon of mass destruction has found its way into Cintillate?”

“Where did you read that?” Cummer’s cheeks began to inflate. “My lawyers are about to terminate that journalist’s career.” He got up from behind his desk, went to the office door, and held it open. “As for you, I want you to take that medieval meat wagon off the streets and keep it off. Now get out!”

As Higgins passed through the doorway he paused and said, “Don’t worry. The tumbril will never be seen again in Baytown.”

Elmer was waiting in the underground garage, having already unhitched Daisy from the cart. “What’s that bell I hear?”

Higgins was taking out a book of matches. “I touched off the fire alarm on the way out. I’m not sure how much damage the explosion will do to the building. But I don’t want to hurt any employees.”