The Red Gem of Mercury (4 page)

“Dead?”

“Poisoned. I don't know how. I'm checking up on the trustees and the internes. One of ‘em tied up with Pasqual, I know, and he managed to kill Stohm before the man could sign a confession. And now Vane—”

Lankershim came into the lawyer's range of vision. The hard, seamed face was very tired.

“I feel sorry for the kid. Maybe he was framed, maybe he wasn't. The cards were stacked against him, anyhow. And now he's cooling on a slab—” The chief's lips tightened. “Go ahead and find out what killed him, Doc. If I can pin this on Pasqual, so help me, I'll send him to the chair.”

A scalpel gleamed in the bright white glare. Vane felt a wave of hopeless sickness. His body tingled with expectation of the searing pain of sharp steel. His body … tingled …

Yes. It felt like—like pins-and-needles, the prickling sensation in a limb when circulation is restored to it after a long time. A pulsating, faint stir, too brief to be called a movement, came …

His heart! It was beginning to beat again! But already the coroner was placing the point of his scalpel below Vane's sternum, preparing for the incision. Vane tried desperately to move. He managed to make one eyelid quiver. Neither the medico nor Lankershim noticed. The lawyer threw all his will into a silent, frantic command.

The coroner hesitated, bent again to his task. Suddenly he threw his arm out in a convulsive gesture. The scalpel flew from his hand and rebounded off the wall, to clatter upon the floor. Lankershim said, “What the hell—”

“I—funny! I couldn't help it! Some reflex—”

It was no reflex. As life returned to Vane, the power of the Stone from the Stars waxed strong. His heartbeat was distinctly detectable now. The coroner recovered the scalpel, stared at it, and thrust it into a sterilizer. He donned another pair of rubber gloves, and, with a different scalpel, advanced again upon the corpse.

Then he stopped. His eyes and mouth expanded to their ultimate limits of flexibility. He gurgled inarticulately.

Behind him, Lankershim gasped, “My God! Look at that!” The corpse sat up.

Vane winced, stretched out his arms, and yawned. He swung his feet from the table and sat eyeing the two astounded men.

The coroner whispered, “You're dead! You're dead!”

Lankershim came out of his trance. He sprang forward.

Vane frowned and said, “Don't move, either of you.” His voice was harsh, husky. His throat felt tight and dry.

Water. He needed that, first. Clutching the sheet about him, he went to a cooler in the corner and drank nearly a quart of icy liquid. After that he felt better.

He turned to stare at the two men, who were immobile statues. A warm stickiness on his arm drew his gaze. The incision to coroner had made was beginning to bleed as blood flowed again through Vane's arteries. Luckily, the wound was not deep, and there was adhesive tape in a glass cabinet nearby. Gingerly he fingered the jewel on his forehead. It was still there, chill, glassy, alien.

He thought swiftly. Pasqual was a shrewd, ruthless antagonist, and he himself was not as powerful as he had imagined. These trances might overtake him at any time. Again he felt the tug of painful hunger. Food was the immediate necessity. He was weak as a cat.

Food—and clothing. Neither the coroner nor Lankershim wore garments large enough to fit Vane's big-boned frame. The lawyer hesitated and finally said, “You'll both wake up in half an hour. Lankershim, I'm going to have a show-down with Pasqual tomorrow morning. At six A. M. I'm going to his office on the East Side. I want you to be there, and I want you to see that Pasqual's there, too. I don't care how you do it, but that's an order. Understand?”

“I understand,” Lankershim said dully.

“Swell. Now—I'll need some decent clothes…” Gray dawn broke over the East Side. Smoke rose greasily from the chimneys. People rose early in the slums; they had to. Garbage trucks, milk wagons rattled past. Pushcarts were loaded for the day's trade.

In the back of Uncle Tobe's grocery, Steve Vane stood up from the table. Mickey was watching him with awed eyes. The lawyer smiled at the boy.

“Gosh, you can sure stow it away! I never seen a guy eat so much.”

Vane pulled the hat lower over his eyes. “I was hungry. Don't wake Uncle Tobe. I'll be seeing you.”

He pushed through the curtains, went through the shop, unlocked the front door. He stepped out in the street, and, with a quick glance around, began to walk swiftly southward. It was nearly six A.M. Time for the rendezvous. Pasqual's office was a dingy, mean little place squeezed in between tenements. Through the glass window Vane could see the squat gangster seated uncomfortably at his desk, shooting occasional glances behind him, where, no doubt, Lankershim was hidden. Vane wondered what means of coercion the chief had used on Pasqual to induce the gangster to keep this appointment. Well, that didn't matter. The lawyer's lips tightened grimly.

He walked into the store. Pasqual shot up from his chair. His hand was hidden in his coat. Vane smiled.

“I'm unarmed,” he said.

The gangster's thick lips twisted. He called, “Larkershim! Quick!”

From the back of the office came the sound of hurrying feet. The chief, flanked by four uniformed patrolmen, stepped into view. He walked toward Vane. “I don't know why I did this,” he said. “But I had to, somehow. Vane, you're under arrest. Put up your hands.”

Vane said, “All right,” and obeyed. He was thinking fast. At a word from him he could force Pasqual to commit suicide. Certainly the gangster deserved death… No. There was another way. But— Lankershim was walking forward, handcuffs clinking as he held them. “Come on, Vane. “

“Wait a minute.”

The chief stopped.

Vane looked at Pasqual. The squat gangster still kept his right hand out of sight under his flashy sport coat. His little eyes were fixed on the lawyer. He snarled. “For God's sake, put those cuffs on him!”

“I just wanted to tell you something, Pasqual,” Vane said, very softly.

“Remember Tony Apollo? Remember how he used to lick the tar out of you when we were kids? Remember how much you hated and feared him? Tony swore to get you, Pasqual, and he never broke his word.”

“Apollo's dead,” the gang chief lashed out.

“He told me nothing could kill him till he'd kept his last promise.”

Pasqual started to reply, but no sound came from the thick lips. The tiny eyes turned toward the door. It was opening, very slowly.

Tony Apollo stood on the threshold.

Pasqual sucked in his breath sharply. A sound came from his throat. It wasn't intelligible.

Lankershim whispered, “Apollo!” He reached for his gun.

Vane said, “Don't move, Chief.” His glance took in the four patrolmen. “Or you either. This is between Pasqual and Tony Apollo.”

Pasqual glanced around frantically. His face was a sickly butter-color. Tony Apollo walked forward.

Pasqual screamed and clawed out his gun. He fired point-blank at the other. Blood gushed from Apollo's chest. He didn't stop. He ignored the wounds. He kept on walking toward Big Mike Pasqual.

And Big Mike Pasqual wasn't big any more. He was just a terrified little rat, yelling and picking up the telephone from the desk and hurling it at Apollo. The latter's nose was crushed by the impact. The fixed, unchanging smile did not fade.

Tony Apollo kept on walking forward.

Pasqual seized a chair, lifted it, and smashed it down on Apollo's head. “Keep away from me!” he mouthed. “Damn you, leave me alone! I never framed you! For God's sake, Tony—”

Pasqual picked up a heavy lamp from the desk and used it like a club. He kept hitting again and again at his opponent's face. Apollo didn't try to resist or protect himself. He just stood there, while his features slowly vanished in a mangle of red, pulped flesh.

Tony Apollo came walking on …..

Horrified gasps went up from the crowd outside. Pasqual whirled suddenly and made for the door. He forced his way through the mob, and men and women alike shrank from the hysterical lord of the underworld—now a shaking, shrieking wreck. Pasqual looked over his shoulder.

Tonv Apollo was following.

Vane said to Lankershim, “Come on, all of you.” He nodded at the officers, and they trailed him out on the sidewalk. Amid the seething crowd, they stared after Pasqual.

The gangster was climbing a fire-escape, in a frantic attempt to escape from his pursuer. Up and up he went, five stories above the ground to the roof. White faces watched him from the tenement's windows. On the summit Pasqual vanished for an instant, and then reappeared, holding in his hands a brick he had wrenched from a crumbling chimney.

Tony Apollo was climbing the fire-escape.

And Tony Apollo wasn't a man any longer. He was a red butchered Thing from which blood dripped in a steady stream to the pavement below. The street was filled now with a huge mob; hundreds of eyes were turned up to the roof.

“Keep away from me! I didn't frame you! Stay back!”

The brick shot down with the force of a bullet. It smashed against Apollo's shoulder. The man's body was torn from its grip. It plummeted down through the air.

Silence, after that a dull, heavy thud. Then, suddenly, Pasqual screamed like a damned soul. For Tony Apollo was getting up, slowly, carefully, and starting to climb the fire-escape again.

Pasqual found more bricks and hurled them down. Some found their mark; some missed. But Apollo did not lose his grip again. He reached the third story—the fourth—the fifth. White faces watched him with horror from the windows. Apollo ignored them.

He had no face. Blood was literally pouring from his body. And he kept on smiling, silently, horribly, as he climbed.

Pasqual suddenly began to scream, “Stop, Tony! I framed you! I framed you! But I'll give everything back—everything! Only don't come any closer—”

Tony Apollo pulled himself over the edge of the roof. He stood up. Pasqual staggered back, clawing at the air, sobbing hysterically.

Then he fell, and was hidden beyond the parapet of the roof. Tony Apollo fell, too.

Vane turned to Lankershim. “Better send your men up to the roof. I think our friend Pasqual will talk now. If he's still sane …”

The chief harked a command. Two officers raced forward, clambered up the fire-escape. After a moment one returned, while the other, carrying Pasqual's limp body, followed more slowly.

The first officer halted before Lankershim. His voice was puzzled. “Apollo wasn't up there.”

“He got away?”

The patrolman swallowed convulsively. “I—I guess so. There wasn't any blood on the roof—”

Lankershim expelled his breath in disbelief. “No blood! Why, the pavement's covered with it. Look!” He pointed—and then his jaw dropped.

There wasn't any blood visible. It had vanished …

A month had passed. Vane sat in the back of Uncle Tobe's shop, eating Hasenpfeffer with gusto. The old man was smoking a battered corncob and nodding thoughtfully.

“Business is better for everyone now that Pasqual's gang is broken up. He confessed everything, didn't he—how he framed you—everything?”

“That's right.”

Uncle Tobe suddenly leaned over the table. “I've been thinking, Steve—they never found Tony Apollo after he disappeared from that roof.”

“Probably dead,” Vane grunted. “A wonder he kept alive as long as he did.”

The grocer smiled. “I have been thinking of various things,” he said, apparently at random. “The way you hypnotized Stohm when he knocked over my showcase—and that red stone you used to have on your forehead.”

Vane looked up sharply. His face was immobile for an instant. Then, abruptly, he grinned.

“All right,” he said. “You saw the jewel, eh?”

“I got a glimpse of it, yes. And now there is a little scar in the center of your forehead—”

“Operation. I'd figured that I'd have to wear that stone till I died, like the original owner. But he wasn't—exactly human.” Vane hesitated. “Maybe his race didn't know much about surgery. Maybe their nervous structure was more sensitive. I dunno. An operation removed the jewel, and I'm still alive.”

“I see. And what really happened to Tony Apollo?”

“He died the first day after we broke out of prison. Before that, he asked me to get Pasqual for him if he failed. Tony Apollo was a crook and a gangster, but he played square, in his own way. And he never broke a promise.”

“But it wasn't Apollo who followed Pasqual up that fire-escape.”

Vane smiled grimly. “Pasqual saw him. The Chief saw him. The whole crowd saw him—so did you.”

“Yes, I saw him,” Uncle Tobe nodded. “But—did you?”

There was a brief silence. Then Vane shook his head.

“No, I didn't see him. He wasn't there, except in the minds of Pasqual and the chief and all the rest. I—well, let's say I used hypnotism.” Involuntarily the lawyer's hand went up to the scar on his forehead.

Uncle Tobe tugged at his lower lip, “The red jewel? You still have it? What did you do with it?”

“It's safe,” Vane said. “Someday—perhaps I may be forced to use it again. Anyway—” He picked up his fork “—this Hasenpfeffer is swell. How about another helping?”

 Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was an American author who was known for his literary prose and worked in close collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. Their work together spanned the 1940s and 1950s and most of the work was credited to pseudonyms, mainly Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell. It has been stated that their collaboration was so intensive that, after a story was completed, it was often impossible for either Kuttner or Moore to recall who had written which portions. Among Kuttner's most popular work were the Gallegher stories, published under the Padgett name, about a man who invented hi-tech solutions to client problems (including an insufferably egomaniacal robot) when he was stinking drunk, only to be completely unable to remember exactly what he had built or why after sobering up.