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Roy Glashan's Library
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Fantastic Adventures, May 1947, with "Meet My Mummy"
She rested gracefully on the shell-boat, her
fingers tracing little patterns in the water....
She could be seen in the moonlight, lying in a shell-like boat on the pool's
serene surface, while swans floated among lilies around her. A dream?
THE Intellect had both his feet up on the desk top, a cigar clamped between his teeth, hands folded across his chest. He said:
"Well, don't stand there holding the door up! The hinges are strong enough. Come in."
The Intellect is a nice, friendly name for the boss, Larry Haynes. Haynes runs a two man agency that handles confidential investigations. I'm the number two man. He runs the agency and I run my feet into the ground, coming in sometimes with results, more often, with corns. I eased myself down on the edge of the desk; doffed my hat and rubbed a wet, irritated crease around my head where the sweat-band had cut in.
"I'm quitting the Vaney set-up." I said. "Old man Vaney will have to track down his own wife. I think the woman's on the square with him."
The Intellect scowled. "Forget all about, Vaney," he said. "Something new has come up."
I suppressed a moan. That's the way the Intellect works. We never make much money, but we have fun. We skip blithely from case to case, solving very little and eating less.
"Good," I said, and found a cigarette crumpled into the lower basement of my coat pocket. "Good, indeed. And what millionaire is going to remember us in his will for proving that his wife is giving him the runaround?"
The Intellect smiled blandly, tossed a half inch of very bad cigar into the waste basket and trimmed the end of a new one with his pen-knife.
"Calm yourself," he said. "No more divorce cases, not for a while. All you got to do is find a beautiful blond. We get paid a cool ten-grand."
I chuckled, even if my heart wasn't in it, I'm not the light-hearted type as a rule. Corns on the feet and a pocket-book without anything to pocket makes me a glum character. The smoothness of my boyish face has long since been erased by wrinkles that spring up in the damndest places.
"I bet on a horse once," I said. "He would have paid fifty to one, if he had won."
The Intellect came out of his chair slowly, and unfolded his six feet of handsome frame. He passed an envelope to me. He stood back, chewed on the new cigar and regarded me with the look of a parent who knows what is good for his son.
"Okay," he said. "Now laugh."
I don't believe in fairy tales. I opened the envelope and a five by five photograph fell out I looked over the girl printed on the glossy side.
"Nice," I said, and shook the envelope. "I don't see any hundred bills in here."
He groaned,
"Take, my word for it," he begged. "You find that girl, and we get ten thousand—cash."
I kept on staring into his honest gray eyes. I wondered how often they were really honest.
"We get ten thousand," I said. "Even split. I get something in advance."
The Intellect and I trusted each other like brothers—and no more.
His face turned red faster than a changing traffic light.
"There will be expenses, of course," he said.
I nodded.
"About a hundred bucks worth, to begin with."
"But I only got one-fifty this morning."
"You're a liar," I said, "but I'll still take a hundred. Do I work today or go home and soak my feet?"
He brought out folding money and slipped me two fifties off the top. I thanked him for it and put in into my vest pocket. No use fighting with the Intellect. He pays you what you bleed him for, and as far as cash is concerned, he's anemic.
I LOOKED down at the picture of the girl and kept on looking for some time. She looked right at home in a bathing suit, although there wasn't much room in it. Her picture was taken on a beach somewhere, with a lot of sand and water tossed in for local color. She was spread out in the sun, and what that babe didn't inventory wasn't worth putting on the books.
She had legs, a torso, all the proper curves and some that weren't quite proper. There was a lot of honey colored hair that flowed down her shoulders and acted as a back-drop for a very nice face and two wide, innocent looking eyes. I'd have bet a lead slug that those eyes were blue, though the picture didn't say so. Yes, she was all there, with some interest added to the principal.
After a while, the Intellect took the picture gently but firmly out of my hand.
"You're stout and not as young as you used to be," he said firmly. "Remember that blood-pressure. This kind of a dish is too rich for you."
I ignored his insults.
"Half of ten-thousand bucks is mine for finding that?"
He nodded, but it hurt to make the split even. His face took on that "we got business to discuss" expression.
"Her name is Miss Lion," he said. "Miss Neva Lion."
"Queen of the jungle? L-i-o-n, like in lion?"
"Right. It seems that she's got a father who—"
"That's funny," I said.
"You aren't," he went on. "Shut up and listen. Frank Lion, her father, makes a living digging up mummies."
"His own, or other men's?"
"Mummies from Egypt," he snapped. "Mummies for museums. Get some sense and stop being so damned clever."
"Okay," I said. "Mummies—like in Egypt."
He glared at me and went on talking.
"Lion and his daughter left California a year ago. They came here and bought a ritzy joint out in West Hills."
West Hills is the high-income spot of the city. Those subdivided heavens out there even cost money to look at. Nice, though, if you got lettuce.
"Right after they moved here, our client, Mrs. Ruth Ford, stopped getting letters from Neva, Frank's daughter."
"She's got nothing on me," I said. "I never have gotten a letter from the babe. Something will have to be done. On top of that, who the hell is Ruth Ford. Where does she come in?"
THE Intellect placed his cigar gently on the ash tray, leaned back in his chair and stared at me somberly.
"But go on," I suggested. "I love to see a cart drawn before the horse. Don't tell me anything in an intelligent manner. I couldn't understand you if you talked sanely."
"I'm trying," he croaked in despair.
"Try harder."
"Okay. From the beginning. Ruth Ford is bout forty. She arrived in town today, from California. She's Neva Lion's married sister."
"You're in focus now," I said. "Keep shooting."
"This Ford dame saw our ad in the Times. She came here to talk. It seems that she's tried to get into her father's house to see her sister. They won't let her past the gate. She tried half a dozen times, but there is a tough guy standing guard over the gate of Frank Lion's estate, and he isn't letting his guard down. Ruth Ford got sore and came to us."
"I am puzzled," I admitted, "There, are cops in this town, or there were when I broke the speed laws last. Why didn't she go to them?"
He hunched his shoulders,
"I don't know, and for ten grand, we'll do anything she wants us to. What's the sense of telling her there are cops. Maybe she don't know."
"It's crazy," I said. "It smells to high Heaven and none of it makes sense. I guess maybe ten-grand is pretty heavy lettuce."
He sneered at me.
"This Ford woman is worth a million, Nice clothes—nice build."
"To hell with her build," I said, "She's probably as crooked as a Scotchman's cane, I'll take a chance. How does she want me to work?"
The Intellect leaned on his elbows and issued the day's bulletin.
"Go out there and find Neva Lion. I don't care how you find her. Just don't try to make love to her or get yourself killed, I hate to waste that hundred bucks you're carrying on you. When you prove to me and this Ruth Ford that Neva Lion is alive, safe and in good health, we collect."
"Funny about this Ford chicken," I said. "She bothers me a lot. Just because her sister doesn't write letters, she comes all the way from the coast to see if she's okay. The more I worry it around in my mind, the more muddy the water gets."
The Intellect nodded.
"I didn't think about it when she was here," he admitted. "You may be right, though. Look out for dark alleys until we get this thing figured out."
"Sometimes," I said, "your intellect amazes me," I tossed my cigarette stub on the carpet, made a mental note to sponge another one as soon as I could, and put my hat on. \ It was still sweaty and uncomfortable.
"The address is 124 Foothill Boulevard," The Intellect said helpfully. "It hadn't ought to be much of a trick to get in."
I smiled at him pleasantly.
"Go back to sleep," I told him, "Rest while you can. Some day I may walk in front of a slug and you'll have to go to work."
I left him resting comfortably, thank you.
ONE Twenty-Four Foothill Boulevard was a high wall, made of rock, and stretching endlessly along the left hand side of the street. There was an iron gate with sharp spikes along the top of it. Beyond the gate, I saw a drive winding out of sight up a hill covered with evergreens. The spikes on the gate looks as though they'd tear the devil out of my pants. I thought it over for a while, and decided upon the direct or friendly approach.
I wandered across the street and pressed the bell button on the gate. There was a little rock house behind the wall. A guy came out of it and walked toward me.
I had fifteen feet and a few seconds to look him ever, He was about six-foot-three, his face had been run through a meat grinder, and his fists looked like small smoked hams. He didn't come close to the gate. His voice, I'm sure he didn't have any choice in picking it out, sounded like a fog-horn that was doing its worst.
"What you want?"
I didn't want anything—from him. I figured I'd try being a good pal.
"I have to see Miss Neva Lion," I told him. "Her sister asked me to deliver a message to her."
It was the truth, and so help me, I tell the truth until it hurts. When it hurts, I stop telling it.
"She ain't here," he said.
"Then I'd like to talk to Mr. Lion," I tried.
He stopped grinning. Anyhow, he wiped off the Frankenstein smile. He acted like he had just tasted blood.
"There ain't anyone coming in," he said. "Start burning shoe leather, Shorty."
There's a name I can't stand. Maybe because it hits so close to the truth. You can call me Shorty if you keep smiling. He wasn't smiling.
"Listen, you ugly imitation of a sewer cover," I said, "When you talk to a gentleman, act like you know it."
I thought he was coming right through the gate without opening it. About that time, someone screamed bloody murder somewhere up the drive. His face went white and he forgot I was there. He turned and started to run.
I heard a man's voice shout.
"Hurry, Lester. She's hiding in the woods."
So the battered guy who watched the gate was named Lester? I knew that, and I knew someone was chasing a female through the woods. That sure was an exciting and exclusive patch of evergreens. How I'd have liked to get over the wall.
For a while I thought about calling the cops. Then I remembered the noise they made, coming with their sirens and their big mouths wide open. I decided I didn't want them around, not right away. This was a one-man high wall job. I sauntered along the walk and found a spot where the shrubbery was grown up thick between the outside of the wall and the sidewalk. I slipped into the shrubbery. I heard the high-, pitched scream again, on the far side of the wall. I figured as long as a woman can keep on screaming, she's alive and probably in pretty good condition. It's when they're quiet that I get worried.
I tried to scale that wall, fell twice, and the third time, managed to hook my fingers over the top. My full weight hung on those fingers, and something was sure trying to make mince-meat of my hands. I let go, held down the urge to yelp like a wounded pup, and sat on the grass—hard.
Through blurred eyes, I examined two hands that looked like something the butcher throws out the back door. Some bright guy had planted a lot of broken glass along the top of the wall. Deep, bloody gashes were all over my fingers, A couple of them looked like they'd be dropping off before I could tie them together.
I had to get hold of a Doc and some bandages. Maybe I needed a splint. I wasn't sure, I went away from there. To hell with the screaming woman. I'd save her after I saved myself.
I was in a very ugly mood. If I had had a baseball bat, I'd have waited for Lester and played a little nine hit game with him. I didn't. I went looking for a doctor who had a pretty nurse.
WHEN the moon shines over West Hills, it isn't just an ordinary shine. It sort of glows and shimmers. That's what so much exclusive real estate does to a poor guy's mind. I never saw such a pretty place.
If I hadn't been carrying two handfuls of tape and gauze, I would have appreciated the scenery more. I stood in the shadows opposite the gate and wondered what had happened to the woman who screamed. I wondered if she was still able to scream now. I had done a lot of figuring before I went back to 124 Foothill Boulevard that night. I guessed that the scream probably belonged to Neva Lion, and that, maybe she wasn't so happy after all. Anyhow, Neva Lion or not, I had a score to settle with Lester. He made me very angry. He was probably the play-boy who stuck all that broken glass into cement on top of the wall.
I didn't ring for Lester this time. I went back to the spot where I had tried to climb the wall that afternoon. I took off my top-coat, which I had worn to hide the junk I was carrying with me. That coat was a sort of wardrobe trunk and packing case for a length of rope, heavy gloves, a small flashlight, a short length of lead pipe and some brass knuckles. Brother, I thought as I removed these lovable objects from the coat, this is war.
I hid the coat under the bushes and tried a toss over the wall. Twice the loop in the end of the rope missed and fell back in my face. The third time it caught. I tested it and it seemed strong enough to hold.
I looked up and down the street and it was deserted. I went over the top carefully, and the gloves protected my hands from the glass that had been cemented along the top of the wall. I was puffing by the time I got up there and pulled the rope behind me. The waist-line's beginning to sag just a little and can't take much of that stuff.
I hoped there wasn't a tiger trap on the other side, figured there wasn't and jumped. My knees came up under my chin and I damned near knocked myself out.
I was sitting in the middle of a pine thicket, and I couldn't see three feet in any direction. After a while I got my breath back, used it sparingly and started out to explore the place. I went uphill and came out on the drive. I felt as though I might need an Indian guide to help me find the house. Lester could wait until I came back. I was saving the best part of everything for Lester.
The road was a winding affair that took in a lot of scenery. I suppose it was nice if you went for that kind of stuff. I didn't. I was worried about my neck. The house was easy enough to find when I came out into the open. There was about ten acres of lawn so smooth you could play billiards on it. A big pile of bricks and windows stood in the center of this lawn, a square house with a lot of bulk and very little beauty. There were a few windows lighted on the first floor.
I STAYED in the shadows and moved around until I got to the rear of the house. It was in the shadows, because the moon hadn't climbed high enough to floor the whole scene. That was fine. I like shadows. I could see at least a half dozen lighted rooms, though, and I didn't want to move in while the place might be waiting for me. I found a little bench in a rose garden and sat down to wait a while. The roses smelled so nice that I got drowsy and in a very sentimental mood. I must have dozed off.
I dreamed about a rose-covered cutie who came along and spent a few dream minutes with me, running her fingers over my smooth cheeks and smoothing lipstick on my mouth. It was all very cozy until I made the mistake of opening my eyes.
Not three inches from my eyes was a very unromantic looking Great Dane. I jumped a couple of feet and wondered how big a chunk of my trousers he'd settle for. The pooch growled and moved back. The growl came up from down deep, like thunder on a quiet night. My hair stood on end but I didn't growl back at him. Finally I decided that I'd better learn to like dogs then and there. I would greet him on the friendliest basis possible.
"Nice pooch." I said. "You're all right, fella."
He seemed to appreciate my good-neighbor policy. He came back and licked my cheeks again. Not that I liked it. I just wasn't in a place where I could afford to be fussy.
He put his front paws on my shoulders and attempted to sit on my lap. There was too much dog for that kind of stuff. I said:
"How about getting down?"
He didn't get the idea so I had to force myself to my feet. The pooch walked around me a couple of times and sat down to wait. I mopped my forehead.
"I got errands to run," I said. "How about scramming?"
He couldn't have regarded me more tenderly if I had been ten pounds of horse meat. I glanced toward the house. AH the lights were out now. My wrist watch showed midnight. I had been sleeping for some time.
I could take a chance of going into the house now, if I didn't have to take this overgrown pooch along for company. Damned peoples' watch-dogs, anyhow, I thought. They're always lousing up things.
"Look, sport," I told the pooch. "This isn't for you. You're a nice guy and all that, and I appreciate your company, but you better go back to your bed. It's late and...."
I started to move away from him and he moved with me. I stopped and he stopped. He whined softly.
Instantly I was wide awake and looking for trouble. The pooch wasn't so dumb. He sensed trouble a split second before I did. It gave me time to drop flat on my stomach behind a low hedge. A light flashed on up near the house. It made the area for fifty yards brilliant as day. I lay still, the pooch at my side. The light went out again. Someone had been taking a look around the place.
I got to my knees slowly, then went down again. There was a stairway that led under the house to the basement. Somewhere down there a door opened. There was a brief flash of light, then two figures came up and across the lawn directly toward the hedge where I was hiding. I held my breath and wished the pooch would do the same thing. Away from the house, I could see the men quite clearly. Lester walked ahead of Frank Lion. Lion was carrying a girl, and it was a nice, heartwarming little scene. The girl had a wealth of dark hair that flowed all over her shoulders and Lion's. Her face was pressed against his chest and her arms were around his neck. It looked as though he had wrapped a blanket around her, and that was about all.
Once away from the house, and not ten feet from the pooch and me, they paused. I had a pretty good look at Lion. He was clad in a dark silky looking robe and leather slippers. He had some nice clean-cut features and well-combed, silvery blond hair.
Lester seemed to be taking a last look around, and I tried to dig a hole with my belly and crawl into it. If it hadn't been for that hedge, I'd have made an awful big bump on that lawn.
The pooch growled suddenly, and my heart did a double hand-spring and tried to crowd out my tonsils. Lester said:
"The dog is down there by the hedge. Shall I lock him in?"
Lion got a firmer grip on his load and started out in a direction that would take him safely by me, if he didn't look around again.
"Let him go," he said. "You better get back to the gate."
LESTER started back alone. I waked about ten minutes. Far away, down in the direction Lion and the girl had gone, I heard voices. I heard water splashing. There was a light that bobbed around down there, reflecting on water.
Fifteen minutes. I didn't like the idea of having Lion and Lester on both sides of me like this. I didn't have any choice. I started toward the light down among the trees. There was a little pool, surrounded by pine trees, and looking a lot as though it belonged right there, nestled between small hills.
I've been blowing my breath for a long time, so maybe you won't believe all of this. I was sober, though, and although this was strictly dream stuff that I was looking at, it wasn't phony. I swear it wasn't, because I'm sober when I write this, and it still seems kind of nuts.
Frank Lion, the man with the silvery hair, was sitting on a little white bench at the edge of this pool. He looked a little drunk, and a little as though he was in a trance. He was staring straight ahead of him, toward the water.
The pool itself had a lot of big, yellow water lilies blooming oh its surface. Long, climbing vines grew around the edge of the water, and snaked upward into the half-dozen willows that seemed out of place in the scene. There were a lot of huge, orchid-like blooms springing from those vines. They didn't fit the scenery either. They looked like something dragged out of a jungle dream and replanted in the wrong stage-set.
There was a little boat floating on the surface of the pool, and the boat was shaped like a half-moon. Inlaid gems glistened and radiated color from the outer shell of the craft. I remember in a kid's book, reading about a swan boat, propelled by a lot of ducks with a superiority complex. This was a swan boat, right out of the fairy books. Four snow-white birds were towing the shell-like boat slowly across the pool. They were all rigged up in silvery wires that kept them held fast to the thing.
The whole thing gave me a pleasant if slightly crazy feeling that I was staring at a dream. That dream stuff went to my head like a wine, because the girl who rode the swan boat was something to really weave dreams about. Her hair flowed like black silk about her shoulders and her waist. She was high-priority stuff from any angle, but posed as she was with nothing but the blanket of hair trailing about her milk white body, her fingers making little trails as they dipped into the water, she was enough to make the army start home from the South Pacific on water-wings.
She was a peaches and cream edition of something to keep young men from leaving home—if it was her home. She had all the usual eye-filling features-only more so. Her lips were brilliantly red and her eyes, when they lifted and sparkled in the moon-light, might have been glistening rain drops on a very black surface.
I started feeling very warm around the collar, and in the mood for a boat ride. Funny how the girl exercised an hypnotic effect on me. I forgot all about the man seated on the bench, and about Lester, the big stoop down at the gate. Then the pooch growled and I snapped back to my normal little world.
This wasn't any place for me to settle down permanently. Regardless of all the pretty poses the babe assumed, she was nothing but an unexploded atom bomb to me. She might blow up any time, right in my face.
I wasn't any closer to finding Neva than I had been hours ago. It was time to fold my tent and quietly steal away. I did. I might have made it too, but the pooch, still with me like a shadow, growled and got all excited. He made so much noise that Lion sprang to his feet, got a look at me and yelled for me to stop, A small flashlight pinned me down with it's spot and I decided that speed was a necessary factor. I started to run. Something exploded and I ducked, started to look for a tree to get behind, and another shot tore up the turf close to my feet. The last thing I remember was the warm, unpleasant feeling you have when a slug tears a hunk of flesh off the side of your hip, Man, how I had learned to love that dog.
I OPENED my eyes again somewhere on the seventh level of Hell. I could feel the Devil's first assistant, trying to cook me until tender, over a bed of coals. Before I opened my eyes, I made up my mind that someone had rolled me over, pushed a handful of liquid fire into a wound on my hip, and was stirring it in with a barbed hook. I could hear a lot of voices—and finally they all got together and became one voice.
"He's all right. I have the slug out." It was Frank Lion who spoke.
His voice was impersonal and professional. I had a vague idea that he was talking about me. I opened my eyes. I closed them again. I was on my stomach, my arms and legs strapped down, staring at a white, brilliantly lighted sheet.
I kept quiet, trying to figure out how I could get out of there and start moving in any direction that would take me away— 'way away. Without trying to struggle, I said:
"If I'm alive, and if I'm going to be allowed to stay that way, how about giving me back my hands?"
I heard Lester swearing, and Frank Lion cautioned him against any rough stuff.
"He's weak," Lion said. "I went to a lot of trouble to keep him alive, We can't afford murder now. It's messy and complicated."
I cussed Lion and said:
"Turn me loose, and I'll take care of myself."
He chuckled, and it was a mirthless sound.
"For a little punk, you've got courage."
"Never mind the petty compliments. Wait until my partner starts tearing this place apart looking for me."
I wasn't fooling anyone. Not even myself. T knew the Intellect was home pounding the pillow with every snore in him. They figured I was a lone wolf, and they weren't far wrong.
Lion untied me and I sat up. I layed down again, fast. My hip felt raw and hotter than live steam. My head spun around clockwise about fifty times before I cushioned it on the table again. I wasn't so hot as a hero.
"Pick him up," Lion said.
Lester picked me up with all the tenderness of a mother lion handling her cubs. The procession started to move. We went down a lot of dark halls and Lester dropped me on a bed and went out. They locked the door. I went out too—like a light.
WHEN I came around again, I felt a lot better, in a lousy sort of way. My mouth was full of dirty cotton and my hip felt as though it had been slept on by an elephant. I was in an eight by twelve room with a bed and a chair. There wasn't any window. I worked on the door for an hour, and gave up after trying to pound it down with my bare hands. All I got was some fresh cuts on my hands.
I tried to play smart. I dropped on the bed and played the waiting game. Three—four hours crawled past. Lion came in. He sat on the edge of the bed and offered me a cigarette. Even Lion couldn't make a cigarette taste bad. I sucked at it until the ash burned my fingers.
"Who hired you to come here?"
I grinned in a brotherly manner.
"I came over the wall to smell of your evergreens," I said. "I get lonesome for the woods. I'm part Indian."
He tossed his own cigarette on the rugless floor and pushed his heel down on it.
"I should have killed you last night," he said.
"I'd have died without pain," I said. "I don't feel very good alive."
He had an unpleasant sneer. On-him, it looked natural. I'll bet he spent hours in front of his mirror, curling that nice blond hair. I wanted to smash a few of those even, white teeth out of line.
"I'm puzzled," he said.
"Me to. For instance, I'm wonder-ing where you've hidden Neva, after she had the screaming fit yesterday and tried to break out of this joint."
I rocked him back on his heels a little with that crack. His face turned white and he did a lot of searching for the right words to use on me next. After he found the words, he faltered a little getting them out.
"See here," he said, "you saw my daughter last night, down at the pool. Now make sense, will you? If you tell me who you are and who sent you here, maybe we can make a deal. I don't like to get bloody about this. You keep your mouth shut and maybe you'll live awhile."
I played coy.
"I'm the original mystery man," I said. "If my partner, the other man from nowhere, goes down to the office this morning and finds me missing, he's going to know where to look for me. He'll probably bring a flock of cops, along to keep him company. Lester is tough, but he ain't that tough."
Lion actually smiled;
"Lester is quite capable of taking care of himself. Right now, he's waiting to take care of you, if it becomes necessary."
He wasn't bluffing any more. Personally, I was getting damned sick of his talk.
"The corpse will be found in the garden wearing blue marks around his neck," I said. "Frank Lion will spend some pleasant days in jail, prior to his march down the last mile."
He sprang to his feet.
"Damn you," he snarled, "you won't talk sense. I've got no more time to waste. Are you going to tell me who sent you here, and why, or...?"
"Sure I'll talk," I said. "Tell me where Neva is, and I'll talk—to her. After that, if she's okay, I'll go pleasantly on my way. You can spend the rest of your life looking at that interesting little side-show you like to stage down there on the pool. Nice work you got, if I do say so myself."
HIS fists were clenched, but I had him worried. Lion wouldn't have hesitated to murder me, if he'd dared to. He wasn't soft. He was smart. He knew that without blood on his hands, he still had a way out. Once he murdered, time and the cops would catch up with him. With me alive, the problem was still his and mine.
"I don't know why you want to see Neva," he said. "You saw her last night. She's well and happy. I'll admit the girl has strange habits. It's—it's a little quirk in her brain. She isn't just right. As her father and as her doctor, I humor her and keep her protected here where others can't trouble her peace of mind. Don't you understand? Neva isn't balanced, mentally. What you saw last night was the portrayal of a part she plays. She imagines herself a Princess, I make the little act she puts on as real as possible, to keep her from growing violent. It works. She's happy and I'm doing what any father would do."
It was a nice story. I think he had it all worked out—except that the girl on the lagoon had black hair, and little Neva was a blond.
"Sorry," I said. "The babe on the lagoon is a cute customer. She isn't your daughter."
He hesitated, sorry to waste that nice playup on me, yet knowing that he had lost.
"My pal will come through that wall like a bulldozer," I said. "The cops play for keeps. You better let me in on this little game we're playing."
There was a battle going on in the man's mind. His fingers got all twisted up in his hair and he worried them down across a drawn face. He looked like a lion tamer with a new cat in the act. One that he wasn't ready to handle. He stood up and said:
"I think you're a madman, and I don't know why I humor you. However, if after seeing my daughter, you'll shut up and get out—and keep your mouth shut, maybe we can do business without a gun."
I gathered my wits up with as much speed as I could, because I didn't really think he was going to play my kind of ball at all. We left that room as friends, each wondering when the axe would fall.
THE house was all right. There was a lot of it, some of which I saw on the trip down three flights of open stairs into a huge lounge, I backed up to a fireplace big enough to roast a stuffed ox, and looked over the layout. Lion left me there and went away on a little trip of his own.
"I wouldn't try playing clever," he told me. "If you stay put and on your good behaviour, it may pay off. Otherwise, the finish will not be so pleasant."
I wasn't very scared of him now, but after all, I did want to see Neva Lion, and why should I toss the opportunity out the window. I wandered around among the davenports and richly comfortable chairs. Some collection of knick-knacks.
Five minutes passed, and me without a smoke. My nerves became edgy. Then Lion came back, and at his side, her arm about his waist, was Neva.
That photograph wasn't even a good advertisement for the real thing. Neva Lion smiled at me in a sleepy, disturbed manner. Lion said:
"This may puzzle you, Neva. I'm going to introduce you to a complete stranger, let him talk to you, and then hope that he'll go away and stop troubling us. Frankly, it makes very little sense even to me."
He had either done a lot of talking to the girl before he brought her in, or she was too damned dumb to care who I was or what I wanted. I felt prickly heat all over my body. This was a situation that troubled me all the way down to the foundation. If this part of Lion's little act was on the level—I was a damned fool at best. It was actually none of my business how he lived or who he chose for companions. If Neva was okay, I was a sneak thief, a prowler, a fool, and deserved to be shot.
I said:
"Miss Lion, a friend of yours asked me to call on you and ask if you were well, This friend had reason to think that you were in trouble."
I was watching her closely for some signal, if she wanted to give one. There was a lot of stuff written between the lines in this little show and I hoped to untangle some of it. The girl gave me a nice, if slightly impatient smile.
"I think you'll understand if I agree with father. This whole scene is a little insane, isn't it? Of course I'm all right. I'm quite happy, and will be, even if you are forced to cut your visit short. Do you understand that, or shall I write you a letter to express myself more clearly?"
My face was about the color of a boiled beet. I made funny noises in my throat and felt like a kid who's being kept after school for throwing spit-balls at the teacher. I looked around for a hole to crawl into.
Lion was grinning—quite happily. I kept on staring at the girl because she was wonderful material to stare at. Still, things weren't on the up and up. Something about her appearance?
THERE was enough sex appeal packed into that dress she wore, to take my mind off anything else. It didn't. I knew that she was all tied up inside and ready to bust. Her eyes were devoid of sparkle. She walked stiffly—as though two thirds tight. There was something wooden about her actions and her body.
I wanted to get out of there. I had more than I could handle, In two or three ways. Lester was still hanging, around down at the gate, ready to take me apart.
"I get a very clear picture that I'm as welcome as a snow storm in June," I said, and tried to smile. "Sorry I caused all this trouble, both for you and your father. I've been taken in for a sucker, and all I can do is say I'm darned sorry about it—and get out."
I pretended to work up righteous indignation toward my client.
"I'm telling you, Mr. Lion, some people give me a pain in the neck. If I'd been you last night, and you sneaked into my property, I'd have shot to kill. This client of mine is either nuts or making a fool of me—and that isn't hard. You're a good sport for giving me a break I don't deserve. If the cops took me in, I'd sit in the cooler for a long time for trespassing."
He took all of it. He was eating out of my hand. All the time I was keeping an eye on Neva, She wasn't even listening to me.
I said goodbye in a nice humble way and got out of there.
If I had fooled Lion, I didn't even make an impression on Lester. He was waiting for me at the gate.
"Come back again some time, you bum," he said. "It will be a pleasure to scatter you around the scenery."
I didn't even answer him. I had a lot of important things on my mind. I caught a cab at the corner of Hillside Avenue and Foothill Boulevard. There was a coupe following us when we entered the village of West Hills. Lester was driving it. I got a couple of good looks at his ugly pan. Lester didn't like to see me go away without finding out where I was headed for. I didn't blame him much.
"There's a coupe behind us," I told the driver. "That coupe thinks it's smart enough to trail you. I think ten bucks worth that you can leave him in the dust. What do you think?"
The driver didn't even look around. I saw his head tip up as he took a look through the rear-view mirror. Then we went away from there. He must have learned to drive by following a rattlesnake, track. It was wonderful.
I STOPPED at a drug store in West Hills and called the Intellect.
"Look, my traveling friend," he greeted me, "I'd like to see you once a week or more. I get lonely when you go away and don't pay an occasional visit to the office. We still do business at the same address."
"How's Mrs. Ruth Ford, our rich client?" I asked.
"She's been here this morning," he said. "She's got to have results."
"Then she's talking to the wrong man when she looks at you," I told him. "I got ten bruised and broken fingers, a kiss on the puss from a Great Dane, saw an angel riding in a swan boat and got a slug buried in my hip."
"You're drunk," he snapped. "You get the Hell down . ."
"Shut up. I saw Miss Neva Lion. She said she was fine, and would I please go away because I bothered her. She's nicer than the picture. Aren't you jealous she didn't insult you personally like she did me?"
The Intellect was raving by now. I'll bet he was chewing on the telephone-cord.
"If you don't grab a cab and get down here . ."
"Again—shut up," I said. "You're going to work for half an hour. It will be a strain. Save your strength. Tell Mrs. Ford that she should stay out of sight until I contact her.
"Call police headquarters and get a line on a big, toothy gorilla named Lester, who is employed by Frank Lion as personal watch-dog. Find out where Lion got all his knowledge of surgery. These answers should prove very interesting and maybe, puzzling. Don't try to figure them out. I can't."
I hung up. I went out of the booth and sat down at a little table near the back of the store. I called the kid over from the fountain.
"You got any coffee?" I asked.
He nodded.
"You take cream and sugar, mister?"
"And spoil the coffee?" I asked.
He went back of the counter and started to pour a cup from a glass coffee-maker.
"Don't put it back on the fire," I called to him. "Bring all you got over here."
He came back, a steaming cup in one hand, the coffee-maker in the other. He looked a little worried, but he put the stuff down in front of me. I gave him a buck.
"Keep the change and treat your girl friend," I said.
I stayed with that pot of coffee until there was just a brown stain in the bottom of the glass.
THE Intellect was all flushed and excited when I went in. He had spent a busy half-hour and was ready to retire for the day. For the first time, however, he seemed' more interested in what was going on than in his own problems. I told him the whole story, and peeled down to show him where Lion had taken the slug out of my hip.
"Probably it would have been better if he had aimed at your head," was his interesting comment. "This might give you trouble in your old age."
Then his eyes narrowed with thought.
"You think Neva Lion is okay?"
"She says she is," I told him. "Did you find out what I told you to?"
He looked unhappy because I was talking some and telling him very little.
"You didn't give me much information to go on," he complained.
I laughed.
"With the brain you've got, you don't need to know much."
He didn't know if I was insulting him or giving him a pat on the shoulder blades.
"I called Foggerty at headquarters," he said.
Foggerty was a good flat-foot with several promotions behind him. He wore some shining stuff on his uniform, but he was still just a cop. He was a good Joe.
"Go on," I said.
"Foggerty did some work in the files," he said. "He checked up on the employment agency through which Lion employed this guy, Lester. Lester has a long record. All small theft jobs. He used to work at the Museum when Lion was there. He stole a mummy v and they got sore and made him bring it back. I think he could have stolen a lot of stuff that would be-more interesting and valuable than a mummy."
"You're not payed to think," I said. "That takes care of Lester. We can have him hauled into the lock-up any time for assault and battery. Maybe we can get him on a murder charge, if he meets me in the dark again."
The Intellect looked disgusted.
"Lion went through medical college some time ago," he said. "I found that out in checking back through the registry. He took four years and left there ready to practice surgery. Never hung out his shingle."
"He's a millionaire," I reminded him. "Lion doesn't have to work."
He had nothing to add to that, so I asked:
"Where's this client of ours, Mrs. Ford, staying?"
He followed me to the door and talked while we went down the hall toward the elevators.
"She arrived from California and went directly to the Arms Rest Hotel. She's stayed there ever since. I called her after I talked to you. She's going to stay put until we contact her."
I RESERVED my own opinions until we reached the small but very swanky lounge of the Arms Rest Hotel. It wasn't a well advertised spot. Not the type of place that you went to unless you had a heavy roll of the green stuff, and heard about the Arms Rest from a friend.
The desk clerk was a small faced, slim figured punk who examined us for bed bugs as he listened to the Intellect make talk. After he had given us the once over, he called Mrs. Ford, and seemed surprised that she thought it would be nice if we came right up.
The Intellect handled all the little details, like giving the floor number to the elevator girl, telling her what a pretty little thing he thought she was, and leading me gently down the hall to room 324.
Ruth Ford had approached middle age, and was trying to stay on the right side of it. She still had a nice figure, not hidden very well under the black lounging pajamas she wore to the door. Her voice was soft, but with an edge on it. She said:
"I'm glad you've come. I'm frightened. Something terrible is happening. I detected it in your voice."
She talked to the Intellect and included me in with an occasional glance.
"This is my partner," the Intellect pointed me out like, something he usually kept in the closet and brought out to show his guests. "He has some questions to ask concerning your sister."
We all sat down in a cozy circle around a cocktail table. Ruth Ford poured some drinks and made, sure that her pajama neckline was loose enough to give us a sneak preview of coming attractions. We passed around some words on the weather, and I tossed a mild bomb-shell into the witty conversation:
"Too bad you had to leave that fine climate for all this," I said, indicating that I didn't like our own weather too well. "I imagine, that even those past weeks of rain on the coast, would have been preferable to our fog."
Her face turned a trifle red, but she was fast on the draw.
"California," she said, "offers variety, regardless of the weather."
Nothing to pin on her at this point. I asked her about Neva and the date on which the girl stopped writing letters to her. I killed ten minutes checking up on facts that I didn't need or already had. It gave her a chance to be kittenish, and throw her charm around some more where it could be gazed upon and approved. Nice enough, but I hate coy women. We found ourselves at the door, going out. I said:
"Well, thanks a lot, Mrs. Lion."
I caught her with her rough nerve edges exposed. She was badly flustered.
The Intellect said:
"Mrs. Ford," and then to her, "My partner has a way of mixing his names in a hat and drawing out the wrong one."
I said I was sorry, and we got out. She was shaking a little. It was wonderful, the speed she used in getting that door bolted behind us.
"You're the clumsiest fool in the business," the Intellect stormed when we were once away from the hotel.
WE hailed a cab and I settled back and closed my eyes. My hip hurt, my fingers were like raw beefsteak and my head ached.
"I didn't make a mistake, calling her Mrs. Lion."
The Intellect sucked in his breath sharply and I could feel him stiffen at my side.
"Okay, Sherlock," he sighed, "suppose you tell me all about this little game of guessing."
I tried to push my headache out of the way by pressing my fingers against my forehead. It didn't work.
"It is a guessing game," I admitted. "But here's what I'm guessing. Mrs. Ford and Neva Lion aren't sisters. Mrs. Lion, alias Ford, is Neva's mother."
"And how did you reach this marvelous decision?"
"It's easy," I said. "Compare their ages and their appearance."
"The Ford dame isn't bad," the Intellect sighed.
"That's because in old age, your tastes are dulled. Now listen.. I'll talk. Then you tell me what you think. Mrs. Ford rushes to us and wants to learn why her sister hasn't written to her for a month or three. She comes all the way from California on that one lead. Does it make sense?"
"It might. Women are funny."
My temper was getting bad.
"It didn't happen," I snapped. "It didn't, because Mrs. Lion wasn't in California. She was scared to death when she suspected that I knew her secret. When I called her Mrs. Lion, she went to pieces. It showed through the veneer of sex she was parading around. Now, how did I guess? It's evident. She's registered in a small, exclusive hotel which doesn't even advertise. How would a stranger, fresh from the railroad station, find the Arms Rest Hotel? The answer is, they wouldn't. She's about Frank Lion's age. She has the same general appearance as Neva, but she's old enough to be the girl's mother, and she is. Something pretty bad is happening out there at 124 Foothill Boulevard. Something that frightened her out of the house."
"But listen," the Intellect protested. "Why did she come to us? She knew we would find this out. She knew we'd label her a phony."
"Did she? I'm not sure. You didn't suspect it. No, I think Mrs. Lion picked out a small, unimportant outfit. We sure fit that classification. She doesn't dare to set the cops on her husband. She doesn't want any part of it. Why should she worry if we find out who she is, after she has done the thing she wanted to do all along?"
The Intellect looked dazed.
"And just what was she trying to do?"
"Quite simple," I told him, but I didn't think it was simple at all. It was a complicated mess, and I wasn't even sure that I knew much about it—yet. "She knows that all is not sweet and sane in her home. She wants to start trouble and get out herself without hurting her neck or her reputation. She doesn't care who gets killed, as long as it isn't her. She picks out a small agency and sets us oh the track. Now, all she has to do is wait for us to uncover trouble and get a good taste of it. Then the cops will step in and clean up everything so that she can have the whole thing settled without involving herself."
WE had reached the office. The Intellect paid our cab fare and we raced for the only comfortable chair in the office. He won. His legs are longer. He chewed on a cigar butt which he had hidden in an empty file drawer. He thought for about ten minutes, and then said bitterly:
"Okay, suppose you're right? What do we do now?"
"I'd drop the whole thing if I did what my better sense tells me to."
He moaned about that for a while. I had been paid. I had certain obligations. I like to hear him worry out these things in a pathetic voice. I found a cigarette that had crept through a hole in my coat pocket and folded itself into the lining. It wasn't in bad shape. I lighted it.
"I might drop it," I said. "I might make you go to work and make an honest living. I didn't say I was going to."
He looked as hopeful as a bird dog on a day old scent.
"I got some pet hates for Lester and Frank Lion," I said. "They're running things about their way, out there in that' little private world. I think some day I'll hit Lester with something. Something heavy with rough edges."
I stood up.
He looked happy again. I was afraid he would try to give me a pep talk.
"I'm leaving," I said.
"Where can I get in touch with you?"
The telephone broke into the script at that point, and the Intellect always on the trail of easy money, made a dash for it. He carried on an intelligent conversation for some time. He used one word. It was, "No," used over and over in various octaves.
When he hung up, he had a hurt, bewildered look on his face. I didn't have to guess. Someone had yanked a bank account out from under his eyes.
"She's dead," he said. It didn't tell me much.
"Sure, she is," I said. "She deserved it. She's been dead for years, from the neck down. Who is she?"
"Mrs. Ford—I mean—Mrs. Lion. Oh, what the hell. Everything is turned upside down. She was strangled right, after we left. The manager called her about a new lamp. He tried to get her five times. The desk clerk hadn't seen her go out. They went up."
He gulped.
"Foggerty's over there now. The desk clerk said we were up to see her this afternoon. He knew who I was. Foggerty says get the hell over there right away."
The whole thing didn't shock me much. The dame had been playing with the atom. It busted over her head. I don't like murder very well, but I no longer scream at the mention of the word. I said:
"You see, Foggerty. I got other troubles."
He grabbed his hat and tried to push me out the door.
"You're in this as deep as I am," he said.
I played coy.
"Not me, boss. I got a date with a little blonde out at West Hills. It's urgent. If the murders are started, that little chicken might be next in line."
We parted, not exactly on the best of terms. I'll bet he cussed me all the way to the hotel. I wouldn't know. I acquired another pair of brass knuckles, an automatic and some ideas.
The ideas weren't so clever. Mine aren't.
I WALKED right across the street as though I belonged there. I started ringing the bell on the spike-topped gate. I had it all figured out. If I couldn't sneak into the house, I'd go in the front door.
I waited until Lester came tripping lightly down the drive from the gatehouse. Then I put my thumb on the bell again and left it there. It was a loud bell. It got on his nerves. He came toward me with a haze of sulphur smoke around his head. He knew a lot of naughty words.
"You little dried up, pot-bellied—"
"Whoa," I said, flashing my nicest smile. "Lester, sometimes I don't think you like me."
He stood on the other side of the gate and the Great Dane galloped down the drive and took his place at Lester's side. The pooch growled. It sounded like he meant it. He was a great bluffer.
Lester uttered a few more remarks on the condition my neck would be in if I didn't leave that spot.
"I'll set the dog on you," he shouted.
That sounded like a great idea. It might work.
"I dare you to," I said.
It had developed into one of those arguments kids get into over their pet bag of marbles. Lester unlocked the gate and the pooch came pouncing toward me. I held out my arms as if I was greeting my best friend's wife.
"Hello, you big horse," I said.
The pooch growled and put his front paws on my shoulders. I braced myself and submitted to some wet kisses. I didn't like them, but I did like the way Lester's eyes popped out at the little scene. He started yelling at the dog, trying to bully it back behind, the gate.
"Don't bother," I said. "We'll both come in. He likes me. He won't be any trouble. I got to see Mr. Lion anyhow."
It almost worked. I got in all right, and fast. About that time, Lester gathered his wits together and rushed me.
I was as ready as I'll ever be to meet a tank coming at full speed with the gun turret working. I double up my right hand under the glove, felt that nice pair of knuckles underneath, and let it fly from way down.
I put everything I had into it. It was a nice effort. Lester stopped coming, rocked back and forth a couple of times and grabbed his jaw. My fist felt as though it had just gone through a brick wall. Lester's eyes opened wider and wider and he just stood there. I tried again, straight arm, right into that spot below the ribs. It was low and dirty. Lester grunted and sat down. Then he rolled over, doubled his legs up against his stomach and howled. I didn't pity him a damned bit. I walked past him and on up toward the house. It would be an hour or so before he got his stomach lining straightened out so he could fight again.
I GOT twenty yards before I saw Lion running toward me. I jumped into the evergreen grove that grew close to the road. He hadn't seen me. He ran toward the gate without stopping.
Opportunity evidently was waiting—at least for a while, I ran in the opposite direction. My footsteps were damned far apart. I was in a hurry. I didn't ring the bell. I went into the hall at the front of the house and stopped because there was something there I hadn't seen before, and I was very much interested.
Both sides of the hall were lined with mummy cases. I never could warm up much toward mummies. They've been dead too long to be very attractive. These fancy boxes in the hall had a lot of ugly faces painted on them. They gave me the willies. There was % one, though, that looked interesting. It was open, and it was empty. There was a mummy loose in the house.
I wondered if anyone else was around. I wasn't worried about meeting the mummy. I was wondering a lot about it. I listened intently, but could hear no sound. I walked the length of the hall that divided the house in two parts. An open door invited me to take a peek. I did, and went down the broad staircase into a brilliantly lighted room below. It was square, decorated with white, very clean enamel, and there was a table in the center under a bright spotlight.
Frank Lion had been plenty worried when he left the house. I suppose he had beard the bell and wondered if Lester had things under control. He left the doors open behind him, and it made a pretty broad trail far me to follow. So I had followed it; I was here—but what now? I moved across the room, giving an imitation of a man who's scared and wants to run away. I lifted the sheet, took a quick look, and found out where that damned mummy had gone.
I kept on staring at the thing under the sheet, but my eye sockets were begging my eyes to come back in where they belonged. The mummy was a hideous collection of bones, held together by brown, parchment-like skin. You could count every bone and joint. You could look at the wrinkled mouth, grinning and open, to reveal brown teeth. Hair, like black horse hair, was matted and twisted around the neck and shoulders.
I covered the thing up and waited for my blood pressure to go down to normal. A corpse isn't bad when it's fresh; I didn't like this Egyptian importation. It had been dead long enough to take on a personality all its own, and I didn't like it.
Then Frank Lion's footsteps sounded in the hall upstairs. It was a guess, of course, but I figured he was on his way down here, I had about thirty seconds to find a place to hide. I could fight, but if I did, I wouldn't learn anything more about the mummy, and other details I had come to clear up.
The sheet was large. It hung to the floor on one side of the table, I went to my knees and grunted my way under it. Sort of a lower birth, with a babe without much sex-appeal occupying the upper. I waited.
The footsteps came down the stairs and assumed the form of patent-leather shoes and neatly-creased trousers. The patent-leather shoes went briskly across the room and I heard the click of a house phone being taken from the hook. Lion's voice said:
"Lester?"
Evidently it was. Lion sounded angry, and very impatient.
"He's not down here. Search the grounds. Find him this time and put him away. I should have done it when I had the chance."
I guess Lester thought he needed help, because Lion listened a minute and swore at the phone softly.
"Never mind. It's your job and you can catch him or get out. If you wish to go on living in a world, without iron barred windows, find him."
He hung up.
FOR a couple of long minutes he moved from place to place in the room, and although I could see only the feet and the lower part of the trousers, I knew that he was preparing for some work at the table. Then he went to the stairs and touched a light switch. The room blacked out. I felt prickly heat traveling up and down my neck. A soft, glowing light came from above the table. I could see little slices of it reflecting on the floor. It must have been some sort of a heating lamp.
Then Frank Lion's footsteps traveled up the stairs and I heard the door at the top slam, A bolt rasped into place. I climbed out from under the table and looked around. Little Miss Egypt, of what year I don't know, was fairly glowing in the heat-light treatment I wondered how long it would be before her B.O. would get into action.
So far I had some additional information and didn't know what to do with it. I gum-shoed up the steps. The door was locked from the outside. I went back down and moved around the roam like a small squirrel in a big cage, There was one more door. I slipped the bolt and opened it. It was the door that led up a flight of steps to the rear of the house.
If I went out that way, I'd be seen. After that, it was just a matter of time before I got tossed out again, or worse. No, I'd stick around a little while yet. This was always an avenue for escape if it became necessary.
Footsteps in the hall above again. It was beginning to become a habit, and my nerves rubbed on each other until they produced a short circuit. The whole mess was getting too hot, and I wasn't getting anything but added trouble. I ran up the steps as quietly as possible and tried to press myself into the wall behind the door. The bolt rasped and Lester came into sight, a hulking shadow above me.
"Mr. Lion," he bellowed, and pushed the door open, I was behind it. He rushed past me, thundering down the steps. Evidently he didn't like the mummy, relaxed under the glow of the heat lamp. He came back up again.
He never did find out what hit him. I let him have about six inches of lead pipe over the head. He tipped backward and thumped all the way to the cellar. The sound was soft music to my ears.
Just to make sure he wouldn't get another opportunity to go snooping around and get himself hurt, I wrapped him up neatly with some rope that lay in a corner with a lot of packing cases. I pushed him up on the table where he could get the benefit of the heat lamp, turned him gently so that he would awaken with his eyes staring at the comfortably warm mummy, and covered them both with the sheet. Lester was in for some more bad moments, when he awakened.
I bolted the basement door behind me and rubbed paint off the wall, all the way along the hall, to make myself a small target. My ears kept me posted on who wasn't around and I made a tour of the down-stairs rooms. There were a lot of them, but Neva Lion didn't materialize.
I tried the second floor, stopping occasionally to look out toward the front of the house. I don't know where Frank Lion went. He still had me worried.
There was a third floor. I found Neva in a small bedroom, stretched out on the silk spread with nothing on but some smooth, very white flesh. She was, according to my understanding of such things, deader than a smoked herring.
THIS girl was even more lovely than I had thought. I would no more have touched that delicate face than I would have tried to paint over a masterpiece. She was lying on her back, her honey-colored hair acting as cushion to the small, well formed head. Every line was softened and made more beautiful by the blue silk stretched beneath her.
I stood there cussing Frank Lion for doing this to an Angel. I was so interested in cussing Lion that I stopped worrying about him until he pushed a rifle barrel into my back.
"I wouldn't turn around if I were you," he said in a soothing voice; "This time I'm not going to worry about where I hit you."
He didn't have anything to lose now. He knew what I knew, and that was too much. He couldn't let me go again. I'd come back— with a lot of little helpers.
"Go ahead," I said. "Don't let me suffer."
He chuckled. I never did like his kind of humor. It wasn't healthy.
"You still have courage," he said. "I suppose you've seen a lot of things you don't understand. You worked just a little too fast for us."
I kept my mouth shut. I concentrated my eyes on the body of the girl. It kept me from being frightened. I was still so sore I didn't have time to sob about my own tough luck.
"Satisfy your curiosity?" he asked.
The rifle was rubbing the skin off my back. "Suppose you take that cannon away from my back. I can't think straight."
He stepped back a few paces. I pivoted, slowly.
"Thanks," I said. "You can still hit me at ten paces, if the mood takes you."
He nodded, his eyes bright, not speaking. I sat down on the edge of the bed. My hand touched the girl's arm. It startled me. The flesh was warm. Then, she couldn't be dead. I think he noticed the change In my face.
"You're really not too bright, are you?" he asked
Lion was the sort of guy who would do a lot of talking if I could get him started. I knew the type. He had done something that he was very pleased about and he wanted to share his secret. I talked because I didn't want him to lose interest and pull that trigger.
"You know, Lion, your wife is smart."
He wet his lips with his tongue. The rifle wavered a little.
"Where does she figure into this?"
"You've been wanting to know where I came from," I said. "Well, there's no secret now, because your wife is out of the way. She hired me to throw a match into this mess and watch it explode."
HIS face betrayed color. His eyes, no longer bright, were narrowed.
"With her out of the way," I said, "I don't care if you guess the rest of the story. She was putting up the cash and when that stops coming, I stop working."
"You're damned right you do," he said. "You stuck your neck out four miles and it's too late to pull it in again."
I chuckled. I tried to make it sound full of humor and good-will.
"I am the son of a long line of turtles," I told him. "Let me explain. Ordinarily, this would be a tough spot to be in. Me, I'm a hard shelled turtle, and I can get my neck into that shell pretty fast. For instance, I know that you found out where your wife was hiding out. You put her out of commission a few hours ago. Now then, if I pointed you out as a strangler, you wouldn't have a chance to drill me. You'd be busy saving your neck."
He didn't deny it. He didn't tell me anything. He just started moving toward me with that rifle ahead of him. He was going to murder again-any time now, and it was a pretty personal problem with me. I talked big to get him excited, and I guess he was.
"You came back once too often," he said. He hardly spoke above a whisper.
"Sure, big shot," I teased him. "Shoot me right up close, so there'll be a big hole. You're having fun with those dried up hunks of humanity in the basement. They can't fight back. Your daughter couldn't fight back either. You kept her doped to the ears."
WHAM.
Just before he pressed the trigger, I took a dive, I had been trying to time it. I wasn't quite right. The slug tore a red hot hole in my right shoulder, I rolled over and over and found myself under the bed. Lion had lost his calm now. He didn't know just what to do, and while he was trying to figure out where I was going to show up next, I came to my feet on the far side of the bed. The rifle was slow merchandise to use in the small room. I took a short run, put both feet ahead of me through the window and landed amid splintering glass on the porch roof ten feet below. It broke my fall. Half dead and unable to hold on, I rolled across the roof, grabbed for the edge and got a finger hold. I saw him at the window. I dropped to the ground and started to run.
He fired again, and the bullet buried itself in the turf at my side. I held in the blood that was spurting from my shoulder. The arm didn't hurt any more.
I zig-zagged across the lawn toward the garden. Ahead of me was the pool where the swan boat was tied. I had a chance to get out, if I played it right. I kept on going until I was about ten feet from the pool. Looking around, I saw that Lion, still in the window, had the rifle lifted to his shoulder. I heard the slug sing past me and dropped on my belly. I lay still, trying to make it look good. Then I started to crawl, dragging one leg behind me. I guess he figured I was winged. I wanted it that way. When I looked again, he wasn't there. It would take a minute for him to rush down-stairs and come out by the rear door.
I took a swift sprint and went into the pool head first. I forgot to close my mouth and took, a gallon of water into my system. By the time I had come up to exchange the water for air, Lion was out on the lawn. As quietly as possible I sank to the bottom of the pool. I found a handful of weeds, and held on to them. The water was cool and very clear. Some distance away, the hull of the boat was visible in the shimmering surface of the pool. It was pretty close to evening. I had to wait for dark. I swam under-water and came up on the far side of the boat. I held on to the side of the boat and took a big mouthful of clear air.
LION was on the other side of the pool, and I don't think he was very happy. His language didn't sound that way. He spent ten minutes wandering around among the trees, and had to give up. He went back to the house. I crawled out of the pool and managed to make the trip down to my special entrance over the wall. I took it by degrees. Once I was over, I felt better. Down at West Hills Village I found a doctor and had my shoulder cleaned up and bandaged. I lied to him. I said I had been cleaning a gun and it had turned on me and let me have it. Guns are very nasty like that, I said.
He eyed me carefully and pretended that everything would be all right. Could he have my name? Usual report; to the police. I gave him my name and my address.
"124 Foothill Boulevard," I said, "I'm staying with Mr. Frank Lion."
I'll bet he was on the telephone three minutes after I left. That was what I wanted. Foggerty would be here looking-for me, and the Intellect would not be far behind. I might need them.
By the time I got back, it was dark. Climbing that wall was a cinch for me now, even with a game arm. I felt more natural going in this way than I would have through the gate. Safer—also.
The room below the house was empty. The door was open that led down to it. I had left it locked. Both Lester and his mummy were gone. So was the table. I ducked out into the night again and circled so that I could look up toward Neva's room. There was a light in the room. Whatever Lion was up to, he was in a hurry. As long as I was circulating, he had to move fast.
I'm not built for Superman stuff. I managed to huff and puff my way up the column of the porch to the roof. I was still ten feet below the window. I couldn't stretch myself that far. The bricks were rough, with one or two turned end-wise and set in for scenic effect. That's a very poor ladder for a fat man, but I tried it. I made it. I was under the window with two jutting bricks and ten feet of oxygen under me. It wasn't comforting.
Lester was in there, and Frank Lion, and a lot of stuff I've never seen before. I was glad I'd come for the show. Neva's body still lay on the bed, not a muscle, not a finger, moved from the original position.
The mummy was there, on the table, her sheet missing. She didn't seem to mind. At the foot of the bed there was a big cabinet with dials and tubes and wires dangling all over it. It was something out of a nightmare, in the Superman vein. Lester was imitating a big, dumb ape with his mouth hanging open. That was an easy part for Lester.
Lion busied himself by carrying hands full of copper wire and attaching them to various spots on his daughter's body. For each, wire leading to Neva, there was another clipped to the mummy.
Lion seemed well satisfied with the arrangements, for he worked swiftly and well. Perspiration stood out on his face. His hands, very white under the light, were shaking.
He stepped to the light switch and turned out the single bulb that illuminated the room. Then the tubes on the machine started to flicker, became powerful and the cabinet hummed like a queen-bee. Then I held on and watched it happen.
Neva Lion seemed suddenly to change. Her white, delicate flesh turned dark, then brown. It shrivelled and her flesh seemed to fall away beneath it.
I held down a yell of terror. I kept looking, forgetting that my face in the window might be seen anytime. No danger. Lester and his boss weren't looking for anyone in my direction.
THE girl was changing before my eyes, into a bony, mummified corpse. Then I knew what Lion was doing. He was destroying his daughter and producing a sort of cross current that gave her qualities to the mummy on the table.
Flesh filled out under the cracked, dried skin of the thing on the table. The skin itself changed color and glowed with life. The face took shape.
Lion had discovered the deadly secret of exchanging one life for another. I knew that this thing had taken place once before. The mummy, now a well formed, sleeping girl with long black hair, was the same creature I had seen floating about in the boat on the surface of the lagoon.
I wanted to do something. I wasn't in a position to do anything but hold on. In three minutes, and they seemed like centuries, the thing was over. Lion was turning off the machine and wrapping the girl in a soft blanket, Lester covered the thing on the bed. They left the room and I started backing downward as fast as I could. I did all right until I was six feet from the porch roof. Then I took the fastest way.
I lay still on the roof-top and watched them carry the girl to the garden. Lion's voice came up to me clearly.
"Watch the gate. We'll be out of here in an hour. The shock would be too great to her if we left at once."
Lester growled something I didn't understand and went back toward the front of the house. So this was the payoff. After Lion was out of sight in the darkness, I crawled down the post and followed him.
In the shelter of the trees, I watched him place the girl on the bench near the water and pull the swan boat toward him on a long rope. He gathered her into his arms and 'placed her in the boat. Her arms sought his neck and drew him down close. Their lips met. The girl was like a hypnotized thing. She moved slowly, without energy, without interest in anything but him.
"You have awakened again, Princess," Lion said. "We will go soon, to strange places in this world."
He was a pretty convincing wolf as wolves go.
"I am glad," the girl said.
"I made you sleep again," he said. "Now you, will remain awake and will not suffer. Do you like your lagoon and your swans?"
She nodded, and the long, ebony hair moved in the breeze.
"I brought you to your lagoon so that you would not be frightened. Will you leave with me, and not be frightened when you see strange things? Will you trust me?"
"I am safe with you," she said. "And very happy."
I looked away from this tender scene and thought of the ugly corpse on the bed in Neva's room. I fought down all the emotions I felt toward the dream stuff in Lion's arms. Who was she? Nothing but a mummy, I told myself. A damned, dried up mummy who had no reason to live again.
When I had worked my temper past the luke warm point and it was boiling, I stood up and went toward Lion. I pushed my automatic ahead of me. They looked pretty silly when they saw me. The girl didn't mind. She was out cold as far as thinking was concerned. Not Lion. He knew I wasn't playing games this time.
"I'm not talking very much," I said. "I'm not wasting any lead."
He managed to drop her and get to his knees. The girl threw her arms around him and he tore himself loose. She started to sob.
I said, "You got fifteen seconds to start talking."
I SOUNDED pretty frightening. My voice slipped way down into the bass fey and I imitated a tough guy who is having fun being that "way. I guess I was. He talked.
"You've got to let us go," he said. "There's nothing in this for you. I've got money. I'll pay you well. Give me an hour. I can pay."
"You're repeating yourself," I said. "Stand up."
He slipped and fell flat on his back. He got to his feet. He was a changed man. I guess the strain had been pretty heavy on him. He really liked that kid in the boat and he had worked hard to keep her.
"I don't like men who murder their wives and their daughters," I said. "They stink—in any language."
Lion got some control over his voice.
"I had Jo kill my wife," he said. "She wouldn't shut up. I offered her money arid a divorce. She would have gone on talking."
"You strangled her," I said.
He took a step in my direction.
"Don't you—can't you understand what this means to me?"
"Sure," I said. "I understand that there's a girl upstairs who gave up her life for this."
He started to, plead his case, and he would have made a clever shyster lawyer.
"You haven't anything to gain by this," he said. "I worked for years to perfect the thing I have done. I wasn't a criminal. I found that I could bring life back to people of the past. I didn't mean any harm."
His voice became cool and technical. He was so wrapped up in his own greatness that he forgot to be frightened.
"I can steal the blood, the soul, even the atom structure from one person's body and transfer them to another. I doped the person from whom I stole. I gave them back their life when I had completed the work."
He looked tenderly at the girl.
"I was learning history from the very lips of the past. Then I created this—this girl. She was lovely. She stole my heart. I couldn't bear to send her back to the tomb."
He paused and made a futile little gesture with his hands.
"I fell in love."
"Nice sentiment," I said.
He sent a flood of words at me. He recited a well learned lesson.
"I wanted the Princess. My wife thought I was mad. She saw the girl in my arms. She learned what I had done. I told her she was crazy. I went on and built the lagoon down here. I put the swan boat' and the swans on the lagoon. All this cushioned my Princess from the shock of entering this world. My wife left, but I could not let Neva leave. Then you came, and I had to revive Neva so that you could talk to her.
"Tonight I have brought my Princess back to the lagoon for the last time. If you help us, we will both be gone from here in a few minutes. Think, man! I can make you rich! You will speak to no one. No one will ever know."
"It sounds profitable for me," I admitted.
"It will be. I'll write a check. You name the amount."
"It sounds profitable," I repeated. "It also sounds like the kind of a deal a skunk like you would dope out."
He was coming after me. There was an insane streak in the man. He had the spirit of an animal, fighting for its mate.
"You spoiled everything," he said coldly. "Why didn't I kill you when I had the chance?"
He moved like lightning. The girl cried out as he hit me in the belly! It knocked the wind out of me, but I brought the barrel of the gun down on his head and saw red. It was his blood.
He fell back and hit the trunk of a pine tree.
He grunted and didn't move again.
I DON'T know how I went through with it, I never really use my head for anything but taking the brunt of any attack. I must have been thinking without realizing it, I took the girl by the hand and dragged her toward the house. She didn't have any fight 'in her. She was like a sleep-walker. I guess I'm human. I wondered for a while, when I was close to her, if it wasn't a good idea for me to skip the country—and take my little mummy with me. Then I got back on the right track and didn't dare to look at her again. She had a lot of figure that would have made me happy, if I could have forgotten Neva.
I locked her in the room with Neva. I didn't worry about her much. She slumped down on the bed and sat there. I got Lion and dragged him up to the house. His feet beat a tattoo on the stairs and I grunted and strained until we reached the room on the third floor.
I dumped Lion in the corner of the room. He was still out cold. I picked up the girl and put her on the table. She couldn't think for herself. She didn't have an ounce of fight in her.
"Don't worry, chicken, this isn't going to hurt—much."
I had been day-dreaming for a long time. I didn't think of Lester again until he came into the room like the Twentieth Century on a record run. It wasn't time now to employ idle conversation. I saw him coming, that meatball face of his all lighted up with a slaughter-house look. I pivoted and drew at the same time. I pumped lead into him until he stopped coming and went down on his knees.
Even then he wasn't afraid. He tried to speak twice, and finally got the right words out.
"Don't—shoot—any more," he said, and slumped down on the floor. I didn't. It wasn't necessary.
When I got through with Lester, Frank Lion was on his feet again. He was so groggy he didn't know what it was all about. He was game, though, and desperate. He staggered toward me.
"Stay away," I said. "It's my party now."
He didn't hear me. His eyes were glazed over. He was breathing hard. He grabbed a handful of tubes and was going to break up the machine. I let him have it. I emptied the automatic into his guts. He didn't have time to ruin the cabinet. He let go of the tubes, grabbed himself with both hands and went to the floor. Saliva was drooling from his mouth. Then the saliva was red. He wasn't going to get up.
I DON'T know how I did it. I go to church only on Easter Sunday. I don't ask God for a lot of things that I'm better off without in the-first place.
I guess I have-a photographic mind. I had watched it all happen once. I figured I had to try.
I locked the door. I'm glad I did. Before I had turned my back, I heard footsteps pounding up toward me. The Intellect was shouting my name.
"Okay," I said. "I'm in here. The door's locked. Don't break it down."
"Are you crazy?"
"I don't think so," I said. "You go down stairs and wait there. I got something to do. I'll come down when I'm ready."
The Intellect sounded hurt.
"I don't get it," he said,
I sighed. I was busy tying the girl-down to the table. The copper wire came in handy. She didn't protest. Her eyes never left Lion's corpse.
"You'll get it, ail right," I called to the Intellect, "You wait a while, and you get more than you asked for."
He was arguing with someone outside the door. After a minute, they all went away.
I tried to figure out all the wires. Evidently Lion had had trouble on the same thing. They were labelled, on the face of the cabinet. "Right foot"—"left hand"—"negative"— "positive."
I guessed that the Princess ought to be negative, and hoped I was right. Neva was positive, I got all the wires in place.
I've never prayed. I looked up toward the ceiling, because that was supposed to be the right direction to look in at a time like this. I didn't see the ceiling. I saw the clear, star filled sky beyond it. I don't know what else I saw, but I said:
"It. Isn't for me. It's for Neva. She's a pretty good kid. She deserves some help."
I pressed the switch that lighted the tubes.
I think if I had had another slug in my gun, I would have used it on myself in those next few moments. Nothing happened; I gave up. I looked at the poor, dead thing on the bed and there was sweat standing out in beads on my face. Then my eyes started to sting, and I wiped them with my coat sleeve. That wasn't sweat.
Slowly, the change started to take place. I leaped closer, apt during to trust my $yes. There was movement below the skin. There was color, coming slowly back to the skin itself.
Gradually, the change became complete. I have never witnessed a miracle before. I wouldn't know how to tell it, so a person could understand. Maybe Lion could, but not any longer for he was dead.
I WENT down the stairs carrying Neva in my arms. I left the door open upstairs because no one was going to get away—not now. I had wrapped Neva in a soft blanket, and I carried her proudly, holding her close to me. She was my baby now, and I had given back her life to her.
She wasn't awake. The drug would hold her in its spell for a long time. Her body was normal, though. So normal that it made my heart beat like a trip-hammer.
The Intellect met me at the bottom of the steps. Foggerty and a half dozen xops were there. They started asking questions.. I didn't let go of Neva. I didn't feel the wound in my shoulder. I felt swell.
"You'll find two dead men and a mummy upstairs," I said to Foggerty. "When Frank Lion died, he had confessed to murdering his wife. He tried to kill his daughter. She'll tell you that when she's normal and well again. The other corpse is an ex-con. You won't have to jail him. You can bury him instead."
"You said there was a mummy," Foggerty said, and I didn't blame him for looking at me as though I'd better go to the hospital myself.
"Just misplaced," I said. "Put her back in her coffin in the front hall. She won't hurt you."
We all stood there wondering what to do next. I said:
"How about an ambulance and a police escort. This girl needs a doctor."
Foggerty came put of his trance and jumped for a phone. I eased myself into a chair and cuddled Eva's head on my shoulder. Her clean, blond hair tickled my nose. It smelled wonderful. In her sleep, she snuggled closer. They all went upstairs. When they came down, they tried to pump me.
"I'm not talking yet," I said. "I've got business first. When Neva feels better, I'll try to tell you some things I don't know much about myself."
Foggerty was a good cop, and a good guy.
"Sure," he said. "Sure, you better rest up. You've been shooting to beat hell, and you collected a little lead yourself. I think everything is going to turn out okay."
I heard the police siren in a distance. I stood up and Foggerty made a path to the door for me.
In the ambulance, I started to feel a lot better.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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