Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

"Al," I said.

He wakened then, all right. He sat up in bed and stared at me. I said, "Put up your hands, Al," and held the gun in my left hand pointed at him, standing far enough back that he couldn't grab at me but near enough that he could see the gun clearly in the pale glow of the lamp I'd lighted.

He looked from my face to the gun and back again. He threw back the sheet to get out of bed. He said, "Don't be a fool, Doc. That gun isn't loaded and it wouldn't shoot if it was."

If I'd needed any more proof, I had it.

He was starting to move his feet toward the edge of the bed when I brought my right hand, holding the other gun, around into sight. I said, "This one is loaded, and works."

He stopped moving his feet. I dropped the rusty gun into my coat pocket. I said, "Turn around, Al."

He hesitated and I cocked the revolver. It was aimed at him from about five feet, too close to miss him if I pulled the trigger and just too far for him to risk grabbing at, especially from an awkward sitting-up-in-bed position. I could see him considering the odds, coldly, impartially.

He decided they weren't good. And he decided, probably, that if he let me take him, it wouldn't matter to his plans anyway. If I turned him over to the police along with my story, it wouldn't strengthen my story in the least.

"Turn around, Al," I repeated.

He still stared at me calculatingly. I could see what he was thinking; if he turned, I was probably going to slug him with the butt of the revolver and whatever my intentions, I might hit too hard. And if I killed him, even accidentally, it wouldn't help him any to know that they'd get me for one extra murder. I repeated, "Turn around, and put your hands out in back of you."

I could see some of the tenseness go out of him at that. If I was only going to tie him up—

He turned around. I quickly switched the revolver to my left hand and pulled out the improvised blackjack I'd made of a sock and a cake of soap. I made a silent prayer that I'd guessed right on the swing and not hit too hard or not hard enough, and I swung.

The thud scared me. I thought I'd killed him, and I knew that he wasn't shamming when he dropped back flat on the bed because his head hit the head of the bed with a second thud that was almost as loud as the first.

And if he had been shamming he could have taken me easily, because I was so scared that I put the revolver down. I couldn't even put it in my pocket because it was cocked and I didn't know how to uncock it without shooting it off. So I put it on the night stand beside the bed and bent over him to feel his heart. It was still beating.

I got the rolls of adhesive tape out of my pocket and started to work. I taped around his mouth so he couldn't yell, and I taped his legs together at the ankles and at the knees. I taped his left wrist to his left thigh, and I used a whole roll of adhesive to tape his right arm against his side above the elbow. His right hand had to be free.

I found some clothesline in the kitchen and tied him to the bed, managing as I did so to pull him up into an almost sitting position against the head of the bed.

I got a pad of paper, foolscap, from his desk and I put it and my ball-point pen within reach of his right hand.

There wasn't anything I could do but sit down and wait, then.

Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and it was getting pretty light outside. I began to get impatient. Probably there wasn't any hurry; Al Grainger always slept late so no one would miss him for a long time yet but the waiting was horrible.

I decided that I could take a drink again and that I needed one. I went out into his kitchen and hunted till I found a bottle. It was gin instead of whisky, but it would serve the purpose. It tasted horrible.

When I got back to the bedroom he was awake. So wide awake that I felt pretty sure that he'd been playing possum for a while, stalling for time. He was trying desperately with his free right hand to peel off the tape that held his left wrist to his thigh.

But with his right arm held tight against his side at the elbow he wasn't making much headway. When I picked up the gun off the night stand he stopped trying. He glared at me.

I said, "Hi, Al. We're in the seventh square."

I wasn't in any hurry now, none at all. I sat down comfortably before I went on.

"Listen, Al," I told him, "I left your right hand free so you can use that paper and the pin. I want you to do a little writing for me. I'll hold the pad for you so you can see what you're writing. Or don't you feel in the mood to write, Al?"

He merely lay back quietly and closed his eyes.

I said, "All I want you to write is that you killed Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison last night. That you took my car out and intercepted them on the way back from Neilsville, probably on foot with my car out of sight. They knew you and would stop for you and let you in the car. So you got in the back seat and before Miles, who'd be driving, could start the car again you slugged him over the head and then slugged Bonney. Then you put their bodies in my car and left theirs somewhere off the road. And then you drove to the Wentworth place and left my car instead of whatever car I'd been driven there in. Or am I wrong on any little details, Al?"

He didn't answer, not that I'd expected him to.

I said, "There'll be quite a bit of writing, because I, want you also to explain how you hired an actor to use the name Yehudi Smith and give me such an incredible story to tell that no one would ever believe me. I want you to tell how you had him entice me to the Wentworth place and about that bottle you left there and what was in it. And that you'd instructed him that he was to drink it. And what his right name was and what you did with his body."

I said, "I guess that'll be enough for you to write, Al. You needn't write what the motive was; that'll be obvious after your relationship to Ralph Bonney comes to light, as it will. And you needn't write all the little details about how or when you let the air out of my tires so I wouldn't be using my car nor how or when you used my shop to print that card with the name Yehudi Smith and my union label number. And you needn't write why you picked me to take the blame for the murders. In fact, I'm not proud of that part of it at all. It makes me a little ashamed of the thing I'm going to have to do in order to persuade you to do the writing I've been talking about."

I was a little ashamed, but not enough so to keep me from doing it.

I took the bottle of non-inflammable cleaning fluid that smelled like gasoline and opened it.

Al Grainger's eyes opened, too, as I began to sprinkle it over the sheets and his pajamas. I managed to hold the bottle so he could read the "Danger" warning and, if his eyes were good enough for the smaller type, the "Keep away from fire" part.

I emptied the whole bottle, ending up with quite a big wet spot of it at a point at one side of his knees where he could see it clearly. The room reeked with the gasoline-like odor.

I got out the candle and my knife and cut a piece an inch long off the top of the candle. I smoothed out the wet spot on the sheet and put the candle top down carefully.

"I'm going to light this, Al, and you'd better not move much or you'll knock it over. And I'm sure a pyrophobiac wouldn't like what would happen to him then. And you're a pyrophobiac, Al."

His eyes were wide with horror as I lighted the match. If his mouth hadn't been taped, he'd have screamed in terror. Every muscle of his body was rigid.

He tried to play possum on me again, probably figuring I wouldn't go through with it if he was unconscious, if I thought he'd fainted. He could do it with his eyes, but the muscles of the rest of his body gave him away. He couldn't relax them if it would have saved his life.