Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

But when he turned around and looked at me, I knew he would dare. He’d dare anything. Not because he didn’t know any better, but simply because he’d lost all caution. What the lamp and the metal instruments hadn’t been able to do, one look at his sleepy eyes did.

Then I knew fear. I was in the presence of full-fledged insanity. Maybe it had always been there and he’d kept it covered up. Maybe the fright I’d given him before had brought it out in him at last. But there it was, staring me in the face and horrible to look at. Vacant eyes and an absent-minded smile that never changed. So peaceful, so gentle, like a kind-hearted old family doctor pottering around.

I sat there helpless, like a spectator at a show. And what a show! What frightened me more than anything else was to watch the deliberate, cold-blooded professional way he was saturating a number of pads with disinfectant. I would have given anything now if he had only used the gun on me. It would have been better than what was coming. I heard and whipped myself around and fell over sideways with the chair, giving myself another knock on the head. But I was too frightened to pass out any more. He came over and lifted me up and stood me straight again, chair and all, gently, almost soothingly, as if I was a kid with the colic.

“Don’t be impatient,” he said softly. “It will be over soon. I’m almost ready for you now.”

If it’s going to be like what happened to Eddie, I prayed desperately, let his hand slip and make it the throat instead!

He brought out a newspaper and spread it on the floor all around me.

“That will catch any drops that fall,” he purred. “I used one with your brother too. It’s the best absorbent there is.”

The sweat was running down my face in streams by this time. The whole thing was like a bad dream. He had a number of sharp little scalpels laid out in a row on the table and they gleamed under the light. He selected one, breathed lovingly on it, and then turned around and came back to me, smiling dreamily.

“I suppose it’s wrong of me not to use chloroform,” he said, “but that’s what you get for coming to me after office hours!” And then he suddenly broke out into an insane hysterical laugh that just about finished me. “Now, my friend,” he said, “here’s how we do it.” He reached down and daintily plucked at the gag until he had drawn it all out of my mouth.

I had been waiting for that, it was the only chance I had. I let out the loudest yell that that hotel room or any other had ever heard. Tied up as I was, it actually lifted me an inch or two above the chair, I put such volume into it. What it would have sounded like in my own room, had anyone been there to hear it, I can only imagine.

He gripped me cruelly by the lower jaw and pulled it down until I thought it would fracture, so that I couldn’t yell any more. Then with his other elbow he pressed my forehead and the upper part of my face back flat. I couldn’t close my mouth and my head was held in a vise. One whole arm was still free from the elbow down, remember, even if it didn’t have much room to swing in. And that was the one that held the scalpel. I saw the shiny thing flash before my face as he turned it to get a better leverage. I was pretty far gone, but not far enough. I knew I was going to feel everything that was going to happen.

“What’s going on in here?” a voice asked somewhere in back of me. Not a very excited voice either. He let go of me and straightened up.

“How dare you come in here without knocking while I am treating one of my patients?” I heard him say. My luck was that I hadn’t passed out a minute ago, as frightened as I was. His voice carried so much conviction and dignity he might have gotten away with it, whether I was tied or not. I couldn’t yell any more, I couldn’t even talk, but I showed whoever it was in the only way I could. I tipped myself over and hit the floor once more, and threshed around there trying to free myself.

I stayed conscious but everything around me was a blur for several minutes. When it came back in focus again I was standing up and my bonds had been loosened. They were all standing around me, the manager, the hotel detective, the porter, and everyone else.

“Did you get that guy?” was the first thing I asked. They shook their heads. Someone motioned and I turned around and looked.

The window was wide open, and the curtains were hanging on the outside of the sill instead of on the inside, as though something heavy had dragged them across it. Down below on the street you could hear some woman screaming, and people were running up from all directions.

“Better so,” I said as I turned back to them. “It’s a good thing you came when you did,” I told the hotel dick. “How did it happen?”

He looked embarrassed.

“Well, you see,” he stammered, “we happened to be in your room at the time — er — investigating that hook-up of yours, which had been reported to us by the maid, and we heard something going on in here through the wall. But until you gave that loud yell we thought he was just treating a patient. Even then we weren’t sure, until I opened the door with a passkey and took a look.”

“Well,” I said, “outside of a sprained wrist, a stiff jaw and a bump on the head I feel a lot better than I would’ve if you hadn’t showed up.”

There was a commotion at the door and Kane’s partner came hustling in, by himself. “We got that guy at Regency 428, and he broke like a toothpick! He’s a hophead the doctor’s been supplying and he drove the car that night—”

As I was leaving I stuck my tongue out at him, to everyone’s surprise. “Just wanted to show you I’ve still got it,” I said. I never liked that guy.

I stopped in at the hospital to see Eddie. He saw the plaster on my scalp and the gauze around my wrist and we just looked at each other quietly.

“It’s all right, kid,” I said after awhile. “Everything’s all right — now.”

It will be, too. They have artificial fingers these days that are as good as the real ones. And a man can become a good electrician without — having to talk very much.

It was what somebody or other has called life’s darkest moment. My forehead was dripping perspiration and I stared miserably down at the floor. “But, Chief,” I said when he got all through thundering at me, “all I had was a couple of beers and besides I wasn’t on duty at the time. And how was I to know that that wasn’t the right way out of the place? I only found out it was a plate-glass window when I came through on the other side of it. And my gun didn’t go off, you can look for yourself. It was some car out in the street that back-fired just then and made everybody clear out in such a hurry. You’re not going to break me for that, are you?”

“No,” he said, “but I’m going to give you a nice quiet assignment that’ll keep you out of trouble for awhile. You’re going to look after Martha Meadows from now on, she’s been getting threatening letters and her studio just called and asked us to furnish her with protection. That’s you until further orders.”

“I resign,” I said when I heard that.

He switched his cigar from the left-hand comer to the right-hand comer without putting a finger to it, leaned half-way across his desk at me, and went into another electrical storm. A lot of fist-pounding on the mahogany went with it. You couldn’t hear yourself think, he was making that much noise. “Resign? You can’t resign! Over my dead body you’ll resign! What d’ya think this squad is, a game of in-again out-again Finnigan?”