Читать книгу House of Living Death - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 4

Table of Contents

MY HEAD was a swelling balloon of agony as I weltered up toward consciousness through oceans of pain-shot blackness. I heard my own name spoken in Dunn's liquid, foreign voice. "—Harold Armour, whose father's estate I am managing. He burst in here shouting accusations at me and when I tried to placate him he attacked me with that knife. Luckily this heavy seal was on my desk and I managed to knock him out with it before he did any damage."

"Lucky is right," a gruff voice responded. "That's a wicked blade, and he's big enough to split you in two with it."

I struggled to open my eyes. Hands were fumbling at me, a pungent odor stung my nostrils and something wet dribbled along my lips. Some of the fluid got into my throat and I swallowed convulsively. There was a minor explosion in my chest and my lids popped wide. A pink face was over mine. It had a little blonde mustache and was topped by a blue cap with a red cross embroidered above the visor. I tried to get up, found my arms were being held by iron fingers. My head jerked sidewise, I saw the glowering features of a clerk who had leered at me as I came through the outer office. "Easy," the ambulance surgeon said gently. "Take it easy, old man, and you'll be all right."

A squirrel was chasing its tail inside my skull, but my vision cleared a little and I could see, beyond the doctor, a policeman talking to Dunn. "Grab that man," I mourned. "Arrest him! He's a murderer!"

The cop grinned, infuriatingly, and took a step that brought him above me as I lay on the floor. "That's all right," he chuckled. "You just calm down an' let the doc take care of you."

I forgot the throbbing pain in my head. "You damn fool," I howled, fighting to get away from the hands holding me down. "You...ass! It was Dunn killed the man inside, he tried to kill me, and you're letting him get away with it!"

The officer's eyes narrowed and his thick fingers moved along his nightstick. But the hospital man straightened and whispered something in his ear. The cop grinned and nodded. "What man?" he asked, more smoothly. "Inside where?"

"For the love of God!" I grunted. "The dead man in that room." I rolled; somehow the fellow holding me had relaxed his grip; started to point, started to say "Behind that door." And did neither!

There was no door in the wall back of me! The shelves stretched solidly to the window! The door through which I had lunged to the unknown's cry for help had vanished! There was no sign, absolutely no sign, that an opening had ever existed in that book-lined wall!

I felt my eyes widen, heard myself gasp.

"There was a door," I shrieked. "There was a door there!"

"Sure," the physician said soothingly. "Sure there was a door there. But it isn't there any longer. Now you be a good fellow and let me take you to the hospital. Our doors stay put."

My stomach turned over as I realized that he was humoring me. Great heavens above! Dunn had made them think I was insane!

The thought sobered me. I must be careful, shrewd. I must match his guile with my own.

"All right, Doctor," I muttered very calmly. "All right. I'll go with you. But you'd better take the black man with you too. He might hurt somebody with his gat."

"Hell!" the cop grunted. "He's batty as a loon."

"Keep quiet, Rafferty," the medico snapped. "I'll do all the talking." His blue eyes were shining with interest. "I want to find out just what he thinks he saw." Then, to me, "Who's this black man you're talking about, pal?"

"The fellow without any clothes that pulled a gun on me," I answered, talking slowly and carefully. "He couldn't get away without someone's seeing him."

"No, he couldn't get away." The man in the white coat smiled, and turned his head. "Anybody see a naked black man around here with a gun?"

There was a chorus of "no's," and for the first time I saw the staring-eyed girls crowding the door from the outer room. Fright mingled with morbid curiosity, on most of the white faces, but I saw pity in the eyes of one pert-featured minx. And somehow that pity made me cold, suddenly, cold all over.

"No one could have come into or out of this office without all of us seeing him," another girl said, her voice shrill with excitement. "We all know Mr. Dunn was alone in here till this man barged in, and nobody went in after him."

There was a general murmur of assent. "I heard him shouting at Mr. Dunn,"—the clerk who was holding me offered, "and I was just coming over when there was a crash and the boss yelled for help. I was the first one in. Those two were the only ones to be seen, and nobody could have gotten past me without my knowing it."

The floor rocked under me. They couldn't all be in a conspiracy against me! There was no door in the side-wall, there had been no naked negro! Great God! Were they right? Was I...insane?

"Hell, Doc," the patrolman growled. "Let's get it over with. Let's put the nut in the wagon and get going."

I remembered the scratch on the door-plate. Tiny thing that it was, it steadied me, gave me infinitesimal hope to which to cling. I couldn't have imagined that, I told myself. I tried to keep my voice even. "Doctor," I said. "Doctor. I know it looks bad for me. But will you do me a favor?"

"What is it, old man?" Bless him! He was convinced I was a madman, a homicidal maniac. But he was kindness itself, his voice gentle. May his tribe increase.

"I'd like to see what's behind this wall before you take me away."

"Certainly," he responded. "I'd like you to. Maybe if you see how impossible it is for the things you imagine to have really happened it will help us to cure you."

At a word from the surgeon my captor released me. I was sore all over as I staggered to my feet. The burly clerk closed in on one side of me, the cop on the other, and we moved to the door. The girls scattered as we came toward them.

Dunn himself opened the door of the office on the right of his own. I looked in, and my legs were suddenly water-weak. The apparently unused room was utterly unfamiliar. Although I had only glimpsed that in which I had seen a man killed, I knew this could not possibly be the same. I had looked possibly twenty feet ahead of me into that one, this was only some seven wide. There was no break in the painted expanse of the wall on the left. And there, in a line with those in Dunn's chamber, were windows through which the sun was streaming...

"Are you satisfied?" the medico asked quietly.

"Yes," I forced past the lump in my throat. "Take me away."

A black mist formed in front of my eyes and I swayed, clutching the cop's arm to keep from falling. "Come on," the policeman grunted.

"Wait," Avery Dunn said smoothly. "What are you going to do with him?"

"Take him to the psychopathic ward at Bellevue. I suppose he'll go to Manhattan State Hospital on the Island after a couple of days."

An icy shiver swept over me. Bellevue! The Island!

Dunn's reply came dully to my ears. "I should like to arrange that he go to a private sanitarium. I am in charge of his father's estate and there is plenty of money to give him the best of care."

The interne looked gratified. "That can be done," he said heartily. "But he'll have to be certified by two lunacy commissioners and committed by a judge. You'd better let me take him to Bellevue till the red tape is unwound."

The vertigo with which I was struggling eased a bit, and I watched Dunn warily. One corner of his thick mouth twitched a bit and a film seemed to drop over his Oriental eyes. "I have some influence," he smiled. "It won't take me long to get things fixed up."

A blood-freezing thought flared into being at the back of my tortured brain. In a public institution I should have some chance to prove, to myself and to others, that I was not insane. In a private asylum I should be utterly in the power of the evil-faced Dunn, utterly without hope. "No," I croaked. "No. I want to go with you, Doctor. Take me away with you."

The young fellow turned and patted me on the shoulder. He had to reach up to do so. "Don't be foolish, buddy," he said in the tone one used to a willful child. "If you knew what I do about the Island you'd appreciate the break you're getting."

My biceps swelled and my heart pounded. They thought me mad and would pay no attention to what I wanted! Dread closed in on me, quivering, black dread. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps I was a lunatic—a knife-wielding, murderous maniac. No! I thought of something. The knife with which I was supposed to have attacked Dunn! Where had that come from? I had no weapon of any kind when I left the Pedro. "Damn it!" I bellowed. "Don't talk to me like that. I'm being framed. I'm not crazy, I'm as sane as you are!"

The cop's fingers tightened on my wrist. "That's what they all say," he chortled with the unholy glee of the sane in the presence of the unbalanced. "All these nuts think there's a plot against them."

It was as if his ham-like fist had pounded against my jaw. I rocked back on my heels and the room swung dizzily around me. Faces, faces everywhere leered at me, and all about hundreds of fingers pointed in derisive scorn. An unhuman, horrible voice shrilled, "He's crazy! Hal Armour's crazy," broke into a cackle of triumphant laughter that echoed and re-echoed in vast spaces. Other voices shrieked and bellowed, roared and screamed, "Crazy! Crazy! Hal Armour's crazy!" and the pandemonium was threaded by the squealing gleeful laughter of insensate fiends.

I crouched, suddenly, and sprang, twisting as I leaped. My wrists tore from the grasp of my captors and I was free. Someone got a hand on my shoulder, I whirled and crashed a blow to a blond mustache on a pink face. I hurdled a desk, and dashed down a long aisle as screaming women scattered before me. Someone in an alpaca coat, pig-like eyes glittering, loomed in front of me and my fist flailed out.

He was down and I had leaped his sprawled body. I stumbled and crashed against wood. Ink spilled and papers flew through the air. I saw the railing in front of me, glimpsed the insolent-eyed telephone girl with her mouth wide open and her face fish-belly gray. I thumped into the flimsy barrier, it splintered with a rending crash, and I saw the girl throw something, her earphones, at me. I dodged them, but the wires tangled around me. I plunged on in my bull-like rush, the phone switchboard dragged after me. I stopped to rip the cords away, and someone grabbed me from behind. I twisted to him, bellowing, and fists flew at me from every side. Tugging hands pulled my feet from under me and I crashed to the floor. Sweaty bodies piled atop me, swarmed over me. I was pinned down, helpless.

"Don't hurt him," the doctor's voice sounded thinly through the roaring in my ears. "Don't hurt him more than you can help."

A hand fumbled at my wrist, twisted it. I felt the sharp sting of a hypodermic needle and liquid being forced into a vein. Blackness spread swiftly through my arteries, reached my brain...