The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 7

  “So it was Boris that Eagle heard clucking like a hen?”

  “Possibly, but it may have been Myshkin. Until last night he had no idea Boris could speak. He’d conducted his conversations with Boris either in writing or by signs, and lately, after weeks of intense labor, vocally—learning some of their vowel inflections. So what Eagle heard may have been Myshkin talking to Boris. That also explains the written dialogue. Myshkin had to put technical questions about the chicken-men’s progress in writing, and Boris wrote whatever answers he decided to give. But there’s the explanation of Eagle’s reaction. He might as well have tried to analyze chicken scratches as a chicken-man’s handwriting…” Siegman sighed. “Tell me, where is Boris now?”

  “I have no idea. I told you what happened.”

  “Oh yes. You saved his life and let him escape. Why?”

  “Why? For one thing, last night I didn’t know—as it seems apparent now—that Boris is the ringleader in the chicken-men’s plan, whatever it is.”

  “Myshkin didn’t say what he suspects their plan is?”

  “No, I do know it terrifies him, especially after last night. I couldn’t lock the place when I left, and Myshkin was out hunting Boris. Meanwhile the chicken-men got in, rummaged around and stole important blueprints. That was why Myshkin was so drunk when I got back. He was just about ready to give up, he said.”

  “What does that mean? How would he go about giving up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has anyone except you and Myshkin ever seen these chicken-men of his? How do you think they get in and out of that darkroom—let alone traveling around New York?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I shrugged. “Boris told me he reads at the library. Maybe they don’t come out until late at—”

  “How many are there, anyway?”

  “I don’t know; my impression is half a dozen or so.”

  “And every one of them looks like Myshkin?”

  “What?” I said, startled. “I never thought of that!”

  “Really? You might like thinking if you tried.”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “According to Myshkin, they’d look like whoever posed for the machine. If it was Myshkin—who else?—they should all look like him. For that matter, like Boris too. But then how can he tell them apart?”

  “How indeed?”

  “There must be an answer…”

  Siegman sighed, “I never doubted it. The only—”

  Suddenly our cab swerved and screeched to a stop. Turning a corner, it had almost crashed into a police prowl car standing broadside across the middle of the street. Beyond it, and for several blocks down, there were more police cars, motorcycles, at least one emergency wagon and plenty of cops, many of them carrying rifles. We were two blocks and a right turn from where Myshkin lived, but before our cab could back up a cop signaled us to stay put.

  I said quietly, “Something happened to Myshkin. I feel it.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Siegman said. “This looks big.”

  The cop stuck his head partway into the cab and looked us over. “Where you boys headed?”

  “Twenty-two Force Tube Avenue,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “A friend of ours lives there.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I told him and he wrote it down and told us to wait. Another cop had come up and the first one spoke to him briefly and gave him the slip he’d written on. The second cop walked down the street to where two more cops sat in a motorcycle and sidecar. The paper changed hands again, and a moment later the motorcycle kicked alive and swung around. As the first staccato burst of its engine exploded in the riverfront quiet, every cop for blocks down quickly turned to face the sound. I watched the motorcycle until it turned into Myshkin’s block, then I got out of the cab, and was surprised to see that a prowl car had unobtrusively parked a few yards behind us, cutting off the way we’d come. The cop near me caught my glance and grinned.

  “Orders, lieutenant. Been some trouble and this area’s closed off. These river streets, see, they’re dead-ends or they go to piers and warehouses—and this being Sunday, with most of them closed, anybody comes by has to explain. They’ll let you back out in a few minutes, I guess. Might even bring your friend. I didn’t know anyone lived around here.”

  “Then this has nothing to do with my friend?”

  “Hell, no.” He leaned closer. “The biggest goddam robbery you every heard of. Had a ship full of gold tied up at one of them piers, and some good operators with an inside got aboard and took it off. Must’ve got millions.”

  I took an easier breath, “Any shooting?”

  “All over the joint. Two dead, four wounded.”

  I went back to Siegman and told him. Then we heard the motorcycle coming back. A detective had replaced the cop in the sidecar. He came over and addressed me.

  “Is your name Henry Bannerman?”

  “That’s right,” I nodded.

  “Come with me, please. Both of you.”

  Siegman said doubtfully, “Listen, Henry, suppose you go—”

  “Both, both,” the detective said wearily.

  Siegman and I looked at each other. I shrugged, paid off the cabbie, and we followed the detective to Force Tube Avenue.

  The whole block was alive. There were cops getting into a squad car in front of Myshkin’s house, and others getting axes out of an emergency wagon across the way. At the foot of the street near the piers there were more police cars, and half a dozen cops with tommy-guns were coming out of a warehouse cellar. The detective let us into the house motioned us to precede him upstairs. Halfway up, a cop appeared at the top.

  There were two detectives and a police lieutenant in Myshkin’s wildly disordered room. The lieutenant and one detective sat on the bed and squinted at us. With no light on, even the bright morning was semi-darkness filtering through the grimy front windows. The standing detective came closer and asked. “Are you Lieutenant Bannerman?”

  A furious roar came out of the corner near the sink. In the gloom I hadn’t noticed that the big chair had been moved to that corner, with its back to the room, but now I realized that Myshkin was out of sight in it. I heard enough to understand that he thought I had called the cops; the rest were promises of what he would do to me and screaming pleas not to steal his machine. It increased in volume, frenzy and epithet, and finally the lieutenant put his hands to his ears and shouted something to the detective beside him.

  The detective got up, tore away part of the already torn sheet and went to the corner. He leaned over the chair with the strip in his hands and Myshkin’s stentorian fury was abruptly muffled, and only his labored breathing remained audible. But the astonishing lack of resistance from Myshkin could only mean that he’d been handcuffed—and probably tied to the chair.

  The detective near us mopped his brow. He was a big, slow-moving man in tweeds, with harassed eyes. “Man alive,” he sighed. Then he put away his handkerchief and asked me, “You live here, am I right?”

  “In a way,” I said, and explained.

  “Let’s say you live here temporarily,” the detective decided. “Anyway, you were here last night and went out early this morning. What time?”

  “Six-thirty or seven, I’d say.”

  “Hah! Kind of indefinite, isn’t it?”

  “My watch was broken during the night.”

  “Well then, maybe it was seven-thirty or eight? Why not?”

  “Because I was already at Siegman’s place—this is Siegman—a little before eight. That’s Twenty-fourth and Second and I walked it, so that took time, didn’t it?”

  “Where’s your watch?”

  I took my watch out of a shirt pocket and gave it to him. Its crystal had shattered in my short struggle with Myshkin and the hour hand was gone. He handed it back.


  “How come you walked all the way across town?”

  “If I’d known I’d be questioned about it, I might have taken a cab,” I said. “As it was, I wanted to walk so I walked.”

  “Ahhh, the hell with it, Nulty,” said the lieutenant, getting off the bed and coming to us. “Even a good theory’s only a theory.” He brushed a speck of lint from his uniform. “Personally, I’m inclined to think yours generally stink a little.”

  Then he turned to me. “Son, there was a hell of a mess on the pier next street to this. About half past seven this morning. Robbery. Sawed-off shotguns, submachine guns. Two men dead, maybe more. Damn serious. Now, we’ve gone through your stuff in those army bags, seen your papers and like that—even got some reasonable answers from Mr. Myshkin there, and we know you had nothing to do with it. What we want to know is did you see anything when you left this morning? Maybe a car, or some men hanging around near a shed or warehouse, or somebody walking down one of these side-streets. Anything like that, follow me? Well, just think a minute and see.”

  I tried to look as if I were thinking, but I knew it was useless, so I shook my head and said no.

  The lieutenant gave a short, vigorous nod, as if my word on a matter settled it. “Now, I want to ask you a few questions about your friend, Mr. Myshkin. You’ve been a soldier, I don’t have to give you a pep talk about loyalty, duty and like that. If you know anything, I think you’ll tell us even though you’re liable to incriminate a friend. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, first: have you seen or heard anything in this house or from Mr. Myshkin that might lead you to suspect he’d be mixed up in robbery or other criminal activities?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. Do you know where he was this morning?”

  “What time this morning?” I asked.

  “Let’s say as far as you know, until you left him.”

  “Well, it didn’t happen that way—he left me. He was in all night until… well, five-thirty or six—it was just beginning to get light outside—and then he went out. I left an hour or so later, but he wasn’t back yet.”

  “Then you don’t know where he was after five-thirty or six?”

  “Just that it was somewhere around here.”

  “And you don’t know what he was doing?”

  “No, sir,” I said. The alternative was to tell him that Myshkin had been out after the chicken-man.

  “I see,” said the lieutenant, almost regretfully. He looked at Nulty, then back to me. “We’ve information that Mr. Myshkin was seen running around on the lot at the foot of this street, and the one a block north of that, and on the piers near both these streets. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why did you say you knew he was around here somewhere?”

  “I thought he’d gone out for air.”

  The lieutenant asked, “Does he usually run around and shout at the top of his voice when he goes out for air?”

  I shrugged. “Not when I knew him.”

  “Does he usually return covered with blood?”

  “Blood?” I said. A shiver ran through me. I said, “Maybe he fell and cut himself?”

  “With his hatchet?” Nulty shot at me. “Or with that long curved Turkish knife of his?” he added, pleased with my reaction.

  “I didn’t know about either,” I said.

  “Hah! You know now,” said Nulty. “Does it make any difference?”

  “No.”

  “A man goes out to walk off a drunk, he doesn’t carry a knife or a hatchet, does he?” said the lieutenant. “All right, you didn’t see him take them. He hid them. But what’s your idea?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Talk, son. It’ll go easier for you.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Your friend thinks there is. You heard him yelling when you came in, didn’t you? He said he’d kill you if you betrayed him. He pleaded with you to remember you were old friends. What was that about? Come on!”

  “Nothing,” I said, exhausted. “He’s got a machine downstairs he invented. He thinks I sent for you because I want to steal it from him.”

  “What about that machine? What does it do?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”

  “Then why does he think you want to steal it? Why did he think you might call the police? What’s going on here that makes him afraid of police?”

  “Lieutenant—” Siegman began.

  “Shut up, Al!” I said. “Keep out of this!”

  But the lieutenant gave Siegman honey: “You wanted to say something?”

  Siegman nodded. “Something about your wasting time.”

  The lieutenant beamed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Myshkin’s been working himself to death for months, and he’s probably had what you’d call a nervous breakdown. That machine of his may be responsible, or it may just be one of the more spectacular results of his condition—but from start to finish, it’s stark staring nonsense. My friend Henry’s too stupid to understand he won’t help poor Myshkin by covering up for him, though it should be apparent by now how impossible that is. Anyway, that’s why he went to me this morning, and why I came here with him.”

  There was a brief silence before Nulty slowly asked: “And who might you be?”

  “Hmmmm,” said Siegman, regarding him distantly. Then in a gentle, bored monotone he said, “I might be, and I probably am, the one person here with intelligence enough to suspect that a man who gallops around empty lots at daybreak, howling and brandishing hatchets and knives, isn’t manifesting rational behavior—so I’d hardly hunt a rational explanation. However, the fact that I’m a physician may conceivably constitute an unfair advantage, for which I apologize.”

  The lieutenant was laughing so hard he had to stagger back to the bed and sit down again. He waved an arm toward the big chair in the corner, as if he was telling us to go there. I turned to Nulty and he said go ahead, so I went.

  Myshkin was slumped deep in the chair. He’d been put into a strait jacket and his arms reached halfway around his skinny frame. His ankles were bound with clothesline and lashed to the chair. The lower half of his face was hidden by the strip of bed sheet that gagged him, but the rest of it was a mass of cuts and ugly bruises. There was clotted blood on a deep gash on his nose and bloodstains on his trousers and his bony knees stuck out through long rips in the cloth, and the bandages on them were brown with dried blood. The yellow powder I had seen in the room where he kept the machine was all over him, and even his eyeballs were yellow under their blood-streaks. He began to twist and heave, but he was helpless, and by the time Siegman came over, he had stopped struggling. His terrible eyes kept staring at us. I couldn’t look at him.

  “Easy now,” Nulty said. “You want your friend jumping through windows trying to kill himself? He would’ve gone through that window, frame, glass and all. Charged across the room like a crazy bull. If we hadn’t chucked a nightstick between his legs…” He left the sentence unfinished and kept nodding at me solemnly.

  My temples were pulsing so hard I couldn’t think. I said: “Lieutenant, what are you going to do with him?”

  He frowned. “What if he tries another dive out the window and does it? Sure, you’ll watch him and he’ll be fine as soon as we’re gone and like that—but what about the hatchet and that long, dirty knife? You know, I’m a cop, I got to think about things like that. He might get to worrying about the invention he’s got downstairs, and the next thing somebody’s hair gets parted two inches deep. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s—”

  “But he isn’t violent—”

  “Isn’t he? He punched and kicked and bit half a dozen cops before we got the canvas on him. Hell, th
at’s nothing to us, but the ordinary private citizen, he’s got a right to expect us to put… well, to have somebody look at him, anyway.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “If only—”

  “That’s enough, Henry!” Siegman said sharply. “For your own sake as well as Myshkin’s, keep this thing straight. You told me yourself he attacked you twice before you were home twelve hours. Can’t you understand that these elaborate fantasies only emphasize his dangerous potential because they seem to justify his violent reactions? Do you want him to turn murderer? You see he’s getting worse.”

  He turned to the lieutenant. “There’s no question that he needs attention. I suppose you’ll send him to Bellevue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, one of the residents is a good friend of mine,” said Siegman, more to me than the lieutenant. “I’ll phone and see that he’s handled gently.”

  When they led Myshkin out, he had quieted sufficiently to have his legs untied, and he let himself be walked down the stairs. The lieutenant said goodbye to us, and only Nulty stayed behind. He explained the police theory that the men they were after had holed up somewhere in the vicinity; the whole area would be closed until it had all been thoroughly searched. That meant we’d need permission to leave or receive visitors—if we were staying—but he would see to it that we had no trouble.

  Just before he left, Nulty said, “Speaking of theories, I had one that your friend was mixed up in this robbery. It was all gold they had on that ship, you know—bullion, bars and ingots—and there was that yellow dust on your friend. Kind of golden, you might say, am I right? Hah! Well, we all make mistakes, but would you mind telling me what that yellow stuff was?”

  Siegman told him that had something to do with Myshkin’s machine, and they talked for another minute or two about a parallel case Nulty remembered, and then Nulty left. I was standing at one of the front windows, looking down into the sunny street, trying to get things arranged in my mind.