Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb (38 page)

I thought of the blackmail photos and wondered how many others might repose in this businesslike little establishment. But there was no time for further speculation. We turned the corner and entered the main chamber.

It was nothing but a low-ceilinged vault, carved out of the rock. The cistern stairs were in the corner, and again a single light bulb gleamed. Its radiance was almost lost in the dark curtains that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. I didn’t quite understand their significance until the notion suddenly came to me: the drapes would muffle all sound here and prevent anything being heard in the fox pen or house above. As a matter of fact, part of this layout—the other two rooms and the corridor—would be directly under the house. The roof there wasn’t stone, but the solid wood flooring of the basement.

This wasn’t the time for architectural speculation. It was a time to file around the big round table in the center of the room and take chairs. Sylvestro and the Professor sat on one wedge; the three of us occupied the remaining chairs as a group.

The Professor stared at us. I don’t know what he saw—fear, hopelessness, resignation.

I stared at the Professor. I saw a little, bald-headed psychopath. I saw a brilliant psychotherapist gone wrong. I saw an immobile basilisk carved out of solid ice. I saw the Devil. And then I saw a small, fat, middle-aged expatriate who had somehow broken under suffering; who had taken a twisted road years ago and could not go back. He drove others because he was driven, he issued commands because he was commanded, he meted out punishment because he was punished. All men were suckers to the Professor, because he’d been a sucker, once. And he was still a sucker now. Even if he killed me, even if he killed all of us, he was a sucker. I almost pitied him.

There was no pity for me in his face, in his voice, when he spoke. “There is not much time,” said the Professor. “I will be brief.”

The gun gestured. “No need to discuss the circumstances which bring us together. I regret them as much as you probably do. Mr. Caldwell had no business to get mixed up in this matter. Miss Post, I had hoped to spare you as much as possible. But now there is no choice.”

His eyes were on me again. I didn’t flinch. “As for you, what can I say? I offered you everything, and you betrayed me. From this night on, Y-O-U is finished and your usefulness is at an end. Both Doctor Sylvestro and myself will have to seek another field of operation.”

“Come on,” said Doctor Sylvestro. “We don’t need a funeral oration, do we? Thought you said you’d be brief.”

“Allow me please to explain,” the Professor answered. “I must tell these people what we have worked out, in order that they may...cooperate.”

“They’ll cooperate, all right,” said Sylvestro. “I guarantee that.” He gestured with his gun for emphasis, although it was unnecessary.

“The Doctor and I have spent some time discussing just what we can do and how we can move to rectify tonight’s mistakes. I think we have found a solution.” The Professor smiled.

“It will require your assistance, however. Mr. Caldwell, you will play the role of witness.”

Caldwell’s knuckles gripped the table. “Witness to what?” he muttered.

“A murder.”

“Now, look here—”

“Might I remind you that I still retain possession of certain pictures and negatives? Besides which, you have no choice. You’re here, and you’ll have to watch. The chances are, you’ll never need to testify as to what you see.”

The Professor turned his gaze to Ellen. “As for you, my dear, your role is equally passive. You are to be a murderess. Oh, you needn’t look so shocked—you won’t actually kill anyone. It’s just that you’ll have to put your hand on the gun for a moment, after it is used and safely emptied. We shall require your fingerprints.”

Ellen’s eyes entreated me. I half-rose, but Doctor Sylvestro’s gun was watching me.

“Again, the chances are you will never be brought to trial for the crime. Because I have good reason to believe that I can sell the murder weapon quite promptly—to your uncle.”

The picture was beginning to take shape, now. He had his blackmail scheme worked out after all. In spite of all that had happened, all the obstacles in his path, the Professor never faltered or failed. He’d use Caldwell as a witness, frame Ellen with a murder, and then go to her uncle and bleed him dry. A quick touch and then he’d run.

All he needed now was his victim. And that answer came, too. The Professor looked at me.

“I don’t need to tell you what role you’re going to play here tonight,” he murmured. “It is not something I had intended—but you’ve chosen the part yourself. Your actions make it imperative and inevitable.”

Ellen began to sob. “Do something, Eddie. Don’t let him kill you. Do something!”

Caldwell patted her shoulder. The Professor’s gun followed his every move. Sylvestro kept me covered.

“Let’s get it over with,” he said.

The Professor nodded slowly.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he murmured.

Sylvestro’s gun came up. The hand holding it across the table was steady. I watched his left eye. It was beginning to squint. I watched his index finger. It was beginning to squeeze. I watched the muzzle of the gun, waited for the explosion to come.

Then I braced my feet and my knees went up, hard, and my arms shot under and the side of the table rose in the air.

Ellen screamed as the gun went off, and then Sylvestro screamed. The flash blinded me for an instant, but I caught sight of the red blur which had once been Sylvestro’s face. The Professor was on the floor, his shoulder pinned by the table. Caldwell bent over him, and the Professor tugged his arm free, fired. The shot went wild, found another target—the light bulb.

Suddenly we were in darkness. I grabbed Ellen’s arm. “Quick!” I panted. “Over here.” We could hear Caldwell gasping, struggling with the Professor. Then came a thud and silence.

“Caldwell!” I shouted. “You all right?”

The answer was a burst of flame. The shot echoed down the narrow corridor. I ran for it, dragging Ellen behind me. We crouched in the corner of the photographic darkroom. I smashed the yellow bulb.

I could hear Ellen gasping. I could hear slow footsteps dragging across the floor. They came down the corridor, closer and closer.

Ellen and I moved back against the table. I groped amidst the chemicals in the darkness, hoping to find something to use as a weapon. The hanging negatives brushed the back of my head.

I picked up a glass jar, held it ready. The footsteps were close, now. They paused in the doorway.

“I give you one chance to come out quietly,” said the Professor. “Otherwise I must shoot. And at this range, I will not miss.”

He was telling the truth. I thought of Ellen beside me. I thought of a .45 slug tearing into her flesh, ripping and rending. Better to come out quietly, take my medicine. I’d done my best and failed. The Professor never failed.

“I’ll count to three,” said the Professor.
“One...two...”

I didn’t wait for
three.
I threw the glass jar forward with all my might. At the same time I pulled Ellen down on the floor; at the same time the Professor’s gun shredded the darkness with a fountain of flame. He screamed.

The jar had either hit him or smashed on the wall behind him. It didn’t matter. The acid, whatever it contained, had splashed. Splashed over his face and throat and chest, splashed and eaten. He writhed on the floor, and we could see him.

We could see him.
I turned, swiftly. The bullet had struck the dry negatives hanging from clips on a wire. They flared now. One of them dropped to the table, and a thread of fire ran to the photographic paper.

“Get out, fast!” I shouted. “This place is full of chemicals!”

We ran back into the other room. Caldwell was groping in the darkness next to the cistern stairs.

“Can you make it?” I panted.

He mumbled an assent. “Then hurry, start climbing.” I boosted Ellen up the rungs. A muffled explosion sounded from behind us, and suddenly the darkness was suffused with acrid fumes.

Caldwell was at the top of the cistern now. The lid came off. The rush of fresh air swept through the chambers below us. The fire billowed and rose. Caldwell took Ellen’s arms and I lifted her legs from below. She was out. I climbed swiftly, half-suffocated by the rising smoke. Another crash sounded from below.

Then I was out, I could breathe fresh air, I could look up at the stars as they whirled around calmly and coldly, calmly and coldly.

Whirling calmly and coldly, I passed out.

Ellen drove me to the beach house and put me to bed. I stayed there for the next two days. I had a fever, and nightmares, and a constant need for her hand on my forehead, her voice in my ear, saying, “It’s all right, Eddie. Go to sleep, now, and rest.”

Gradually I managed to pull out of it. On the third day she showed me the newspaper stories about the fire at Vista Canyon.

The house had burned: the fire had risen through the basement over the photo lab, and by the time an alarm was given it was too late. Jake, Sylvestro and the Professor were presumed to have perished in the flames. As for Miss Bauer—they must have disposed of her remains immediately after I found the deep-freeze, because there was no mention of her at all. Rogers was at the bottom of the hill, his neck broken. They surmised he’d been fleeing from the fire in the cable car when the cable broke.

Of course an investigation was in progress. Police were “linking Otto Hermann, well-known psychological consultant, with an organized cult-racket run from his hideout in the Canyon house.”

Apparently they hadn’t found much to go on. The fire had taken care of that. My name wasn’t mentioned. Judson Roberts wasn’t tied into this deal, and Eddie Haines never had been. He never need be.

I’ve gone back to the office and closed it up. May, the secretary, had already shown enough sense to disappear. She left the Judson Roberts record file behind, though, and I destroyed it completely. Since there’s no connection between Judson Roberts and Eddie Haines, officially, I’m in the clear.

I can leave town with Ellen now, and nobody will ever know what happened. I can even go to work for Caldwell if I like—he’s grateful enough, and he has reason to keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, I can spill the works. I can go to the authorities and lay the whole mess on the table.

There’s no need to “confess” anything. I don’t feel that compulsion. My own part in the racket was no better and no worse than the role played by thousands who still operate their phony “self-help” swindles today.

But that’s just the point. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Maybe it would help someone if I told the truth. Maybe it would make it a little easier for the suckers and a little harder for those who prey upon them. I have no illusions about breaking up the whole system, but it might do some good.

Ellen and I can go away, today. Or I can stay here and face the music, risk taking a rap if they want to pin one on me for what happened. Writing it all down here, the way I have these past weeks, I’ve been trying to make up my mind. I can turn it over to the authorities tomorrow. Or I can burn it, the way the Professor was burned, the way the past was burned.

What should I do? Will I be a seeker or a sucker? And which is which? I think I’m going to leave those questions for Ellen to decide. She’ll know what’s best for me and for both of us.

Yes, I’ll ask her. And whatever she says, I’ll do. Just as long as she remembers to call me “Eddie.”