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

Then the door bursts inward and the police are in the room. The survivors, three of them dangerously wounded, are pushed and carried downstairs to join the crippled door-guard, who has been in custody for the past hour, and single-file, tied together with ropes, they make their way through the long tortuous alley out into Congo Square.

In the early hours of that same morning, just a little more than twenty-four hours after Eddie Bloch first staggered into Police Headquarters with his strange story, the whole thing is cooked, washed and bottled. The Commissioner sits in his office listening attentively to Desjardins.

And spread out on his desk as strange an array of amulets, wax images, bunches of feathers, balsam leaves, ouangas (charms of nail parings, hair clippings, dried blood, powdered roots), green mildewed coins dug up from coffins in graveyards, as that room has ever seen before. All this is state’s evidence now, to be carefully labelled and docketed for the use of the prosecuting attorney when the proper time comes. “And this,” explains Desjardins, indicating a small dusty bottle, “is methylene blue, the chemist tells me. It’s the only modern thing we got out of the place, found it lying forgotten with a lot of rubbish in a corner that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed for years.

What it was doing there or what they wanted with it I don’t—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupts the commissioner eagerly. “That fits in with something poor Bloch told me last night. He noticed a bluish color under his fingernails and a yellowness to his eyeballs, but only after he’d been initiated that first night.

“This stuff probably has something to do with it, an injection of it must have been given him that night in some way without his knowing it. Don’t you get the idea? It floored him just the way they wanted it to. He mistook the signs of it for a give-away that he had colored blood. It was the opening wedge. It broke down his disbelief, started his mental resistance to crumbling. That was all they needed, just to get a foothold in his mind. Mental suggestion did the rest, has been doing it ever since. If you ask me, they pulled the same stunt on Staats originally. I don’t believe he had colored blood any more than Bloch has. And as a matter of fact the theory that it shows up in that way generations later is all the bunk anyway, they tell me.”

“Well,” says Dij, looking at his own grimy nails, “if you’re just going to judge by appearances that way, I’m full-blooded Zulu.”

His overlord just looks at him, and if he didn’t have such a poker face, one might be tempted to read admiration or at least approval into the look. “Must have been a pretty tight spot for a minute with all of them around while you put on your act!”

“Nah, I didn’t mind,” answers Dij.

Eddie Bloch, the murder charge against him quashed two months ago, and the population of the State Penitentiary increased only this past week by the admission of twenty-three ex-voodoo worshippers for terms varying from two to ten years, steps up on the platform of the Bataclan for a return engagement. Eddie’s pale and washed-out looking, but climbing slowly back up through the hundred-and-twenties again to his former weight. The ovation he gets ought to do anyone’s heart good, the way they clap and stamp and stand up and cheer. And at that, his name was kept out of the recently-concluded trial. Desjardins and his mates did all the states-witnessing necessary.

The theme he comes in on now is something sweet and harmless. Then a waiter comes up and hands him a request. Eddie shakes his head. “No, not in our repertoire any more.” He goes on leading. Another request comes, and another. Suddenly someone shouts it out at him, and in a second the whole place has taken up the cry. “The Voodoo Chant! Give us the Voodoo Chant!”

His face gets whiter than it is already, but he turns and tries to smile at them and shake his head. They won’t quit, the music can’t be heard, and he has to tap a lay-off. From all over the place, like a cheering-section at a football game, “We want the Voodoo Chant! We want-!”

Judy’s at his side. “What’s the matter with ’em anyway?” he asks. “Don’t they know what that thing’s done to me?”

“Play it, Eddie, don’t be foolish,” she urges. “Now’s the time, break the spell once and for all, prove to yourself that it can’t hurt you. If you don’t do it now, you’ll never get over the idea. It’ll stay with you all your life. Go ahead. I’ll dance it just like I am.”

“Okay,” he says.

He taps. It’s been quite some time, but he can rely on his outfit. Slow and low like thunder far away, coming nearer. Boom-putta-putta-boom! Judy whirls out behind him, lets out the first preliminary screech, Eeyaeeya!

She hears a commotion in back of her, and stops as suddenly as she began. Eddie Bloch’s fallen flat on his face and doesn’t move again after that.

They all know somehow. There’s an inertness, a finality about it that tells them. The dancers wait a minute, mill about, then melt away in a hush. Judy Jarvis doesn’t scream, doesn’t cry, just stands there staring, wondering. That last thought — did it come from inside his own mind just now — or outside? Was it two months on its way, from the other side of the grave, looking for him, looking for him, until it found him tonight when he played the Chant once more and laid his mind open to Africa? No policeman, no detective, no doctor, no scientist, will ever be able to tell her. Did it come from inside or from outside? All she says is: “Stand close to me, boys — real close to me, I’m afraid of the dark.”

Katie must have been out of humor to say a thing like that, but it sure rankled. “And that’s why you’re no further than you are,” she went on. “Ten years from now you’ll still be a second-grade detective pinching pickpockets. Movies and beer — that’s all you ever think of whenever you have any time to yourself. Why don’t you improve your mind? Why don’t you read a book? Why don’t you go to a museum once in a while and look at the beautiful statues?”

I nearly fell over. “Look at statues!” I gasped. “What for?”

I seemed to have her there for a minute. “Why — why, to see how they’re made,” she said finally, looking bewildered.

There didn’t seem to be much sense to it, but anything to keep peace in the family. I reached for my hat and gave a deep sigh. “You win,” I said. “I’ll try anything once.”

Riding down in the sub I got a bright idea. Instead of wasting a lot of time looking at a flock of little statues I’d look at one big one instead and get the whole thing over with. So I got out at the Battery, forked over thirty-five cents for one round-trip ticket and got on the little ferry that takes you down the bay to the Statue of Liberty. It was the biggest statue around, and if there was any truth to what Katie said, it ought to improve me enough to last for the rest of the year.

There were about ten others making the trip with me, and as soon as everyone was on board, the tub gives a peep with its whistle and starts off, graceful as a hippopotamus. First the statue was about the size of your thumb. It came gliding over the water getting bigger all the time, until it was tall as an office building. It was pea-green, just like on the postcards. Finally the ferry tied up at a long pier built on piles that stuck out from the island, and everybody got off. There was another crowd there waiting to get on and go back. It seems the trip is only made once every hour.