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

“Then what’s holding you up?” I holler out excitedly. “Put it down in your report, that’s all I need! If you ain’t sure of the species, just say ‘poisonous snakebite.’ What are you waiting for? You want me to catch the thing and stuff it for you before you’ll go ahead? I’ll produce it for you all right!”

I remember those “chickens” of hers in that crate with the wire netting — upstairs in her room at this very minute. Chickens, me eye! And a couple of hours after I should have thought of it, I realize that chickens don’t drink milk, they peck com.

“And when I do produce it, the findings aren’t going to be ‘accidental death.’ The charge is going to be murder in the first degree — with a cobra for a weapon.”

Whereupon, he goes and throws cold water all over me. “You can produce dozens of ’em,” he tells me, shaking his head. “You can empty the whole zoo into this house, and I still can’t put anything like that into my report.”

I nearly have pups all over the carpet. “Why? For Pete’s sake, why?”

“Because, for anyone to die of snake bite, there has to be a bite — first of all. The fangs of any snake would leave a puncture, a livid mark, a zone of discoloration. What do you suppose my assistant and I were doing all night, sitting playing rummy? I tell you we went over every inch of body surface with the highest-powered microscopes available. There wasn’t a blemish. Absolutely no place anywhere into which the venom could have been injected.”

I throw all the possibilities that occur to me at him one after the other. I’m not a trained doc, remember. Anyway, he squelches them as fast as they come.

“When you examined the blood stream, or what was left of it, weren’t there heavier traces of this stuff in some parts than others? Couldn’t you track it down from there?”

“It’s very volatile. It diffuses itself all over the system, like lightning, once it’s in. Does away with itself as a specific. It’s not a blood poison, it’s a nerve poison. You can tell it’s there by the effects rather than by the cause.”

“How about a hypodermic needle?”

“That would have left a swelling — and a puncture too; even if smaller than the snake’s fangs, even if invisible to the naked eye.”

“How about internally?”

“It doesn’t kill internally. We analyzed the contents of his stomach. Nothing foreign there, nothing harmful.”

I move the position of one of the chairs in the room rather suddenly — with my foot. “What a temper,” he says reproachfully.

“Maybe I’ve stuck too close to the village green,” I let him know. “Maybe I should have had L. A. in on this.”

“Suit yourself. But, if you go over our heads like that, you better have a direct accusation ready — and be able to back it up. I can’t support you if it comes to a showdown. This report’ll have to stay the way it is — ‘paralysis of the nerve centers, of unknown origin’ — take it or leave it.”

“You take it,” I say violently, and I tell him a good place to keep it while I’m at it. “You get L. A. on the wire for me when you go back,” I order him as he prepares to leave in a huff, “and have ’em send a squad up here with butterfly nets and insect guns. We’re gonna play cops and robbers.” And when he takes his departure we don’t say goodbye to each other.

I lock the front door on the inside and ditto the back door and drop both keys into my pocket. Then I latch all the shutters and fasten down all the windows with a hammer and wedges of wood. She isn’t going to get away from here until I’ve cinched this thing one way or the other, and I’ve got to be having some sleep soon. I can’t hold out forever.

I go upstairs, and there’s not a sound around me. It’s been light out for a long time now, but the upstairs hallway is still dim, and at the end of it, where the kid’s room is, lamplight is shining through the crack of his door. I thought he was asleep by now, and I get a little worried for a minute, but when I tap on it and hear him say, “Come in,” I heave a long breath of relief, it’s sweet music to my ears.

He’s in bed, all right, but he’s propped up reading a book, with a cigarette in his mouth. He hasn’t noticed it got light and he’s forgotten to turn out the lamp. That’s all right — I used to do that too, when I was his age. “Didn’t mean to butt in,” I say. I figure it’s a good time to patch up that little set-to we had downstairs before.

He beats me to the rap. “I’m sorry about what happened before.”

“Forget it.” I haul up a chair and sit down alongside the bed, and we’re all set to bury the hatchet and smoke the pipe of peace. “You got me wrong, that was all.” I frisk myself, no results. “Let’s have one of your butts.”

“I’m out of them myself,” he grins.

“Then where’d you get that one?” I get a little uncomfortable for a minute. I give it a quick look. It’s just one of the regular-size ones though.

“One of Veda’s,” he admits. He keeps talking around it without taking it out of his mouth. “I been dragging on it for ages, they last a long time.” So that’s why it’s down to ordinary size! “Now don’t go getting all het up again,” he says as he sees me change color. “I didn’t ask her for it, she offered it to me.”

I try to remind myself those butts got a clean bill of health. I try to tell myself that if nothing’s happened so far, after he’s smoked it all this time—

I can hardly stay still on the chair. I lean forward and watch his face anxiously. He seems perfectly normal. “Feel all right, kid?”

“Never felt better.”

Then I see something that I haven’t noticed until now, and I go pins and needles all over. “Wait a minute, whatcha been doing? Where’d ya get all that red all over your mouth?”

He turns all colors of the rainbow and looks guilty. “Aw, there you go again! All right, she kissed me. So what? I couldn’t push her away, could I?”

My heart’s pounding in my ears and I can hardly talk. It’s too much like the set-up she gave the old man! She was rouging her lips, she was getting set to kiss him when I left them alone, and when I found him he had one of her butts. Still, there’s no use losing my head, nothing’s happened to the kid so far, and if I frighten him—

I haul out my handkerchief and try to talk slow and easy. “Here, get it off with this. Get it off easy, don’t rub.” My wrist is jerking like sixty as I pass it to him, though. “Just sort of smooth it off, keep your tongue away from it.”

That’s where the mistake happens. To do it he has to get the cigarette out of the way. He touches it, he parts his lips. It goes with the upper one! It’s adhered, just like the old man’s!

He flips it out, there isn’t time for me to stop him, he winces and he says “Ow!”

I’m on my feet like a shot. “What’d you do?”

“Caught my lip on it,” he says and tosses it down angrily. He’s out of bed before he knows what’s happened to him and I’ve flung him halfway across the room to the door. “Bathroom, quick!” I pant. “One of my razor blades — cut it wide open, split it to the gums if you have to, bleed like a pig, it’s your only chance!”

He does it, he must read death on my face, for once he doesn’t argue. I don’t go with him, can’t. I’m shaking so, I’d cut his throat. The water gives a roar into the washbasin, he lets out a yell of pain, and he’s done it.

Second mistake. Opening it up like that only gives all the red stuff a chance to get in. He’s young, maybe he could have fought off the smaller amount that would have penetrated through the original slit. Too late, the examiner’s words come back to me: “It isn’t a blood poison, it’s a nerve poison. Letting the blood out won’t help, it isn’t rattlesnake venom.” I’ve finished him!