MAD DOG!

 

 

I got it the minute I saw that distorted face peering around the corner of the turn in the hallway. I wasn't looking toward the hallway, of course, but toward MacCready. Back of Mac's desk was a mirror and it was in the mirror that I saw it.

For just a minute I thought I had 'em, then I remembered Mac's screwy ideas on mental therapeutics, and I grinned. I kept the grin to myself, though. Here's where I have some fun with good old Mac, I thought to myself. Let him pull his gag and pretend to play along.

So I kept on with what I was saying. “Mac, old horse,” I told him, “can't you get it out of your head that this isn't a professional call? Quit psychoanalyzing me, dammit, or I'll leave you flat and hike right back to Provincetown over these bloody roller-coaster anthills you call dunes, and get myself drunk.”

He snorted, a well-bred Scotch snort. “You'd fall flat on your lace before you got halfway. Bryce, how you ever made it out here's got me beat. And how you ever write plays that get on Broadway, when you keep yourself so full of whiskey that---” He shook his head in bewilderment.

“Ever see any of my plays, Mac? Maybe you'd get the connection. But---”

I caught sight of that face again in the mirror, and I calculated the angle and decided that Mac couldn't see it from where he sat. The guy in the hall had come around the corner now, and was pussy-footing up to the door. He was smiling, if you could call it a smile; one corner of his mouth went up and the other down so his mouth looked like an unhealed diagonal wound across the bottom of his face. His eyes were so narrowed you couldn't see the whites. I thought crazily that if the British had done that at Bunker Hill they wouldn't have got fired on at all.

All in all it wasn't a nice expression. I shuddered a bit, involuntarily. Whoever was stooging for Mac on this gag of his ought to be on the stage. He could do Dracula without makeup, unless he already had the makeup on, and if he did, it was a wow.

Mac was talking again, it dawned on me. “If this wasn't my vacation---” he was saying. “Listen, Bryce, even if it is, I'll take you on. It'd take me three months to get you wrung out so you'd stay that way, but I'll do it if you say the word. You're darned far on the road to being an alcoholic. At the rate you're going, pal. . . .”

I grinned at him. “You underestimate me, old horse. I'm a lush of the first water, right now. I like it. But listen, Mac, there is something that worries me. I'm three months overdue on starting my next play, and I haven't a ghost of an idea. I thought a summer in Provincetown would fix me up. Cape Cod and all that and the picturesque fishing smacks and all that sort of tripe. But---well, I'm worried stiff.”

I was, too. There's nothing worse than not having an idea when you need an idea. That's the trouble with being a playwright. If you need a house or a horse or a multiple-head drill or a set of golf clubs, you go out and buy it, but if you need an idea and need it bad, you sit and stew and maybe it comes and maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't, you go slowly nuts.

You get to the stage where you remember that an old friend of yours is a psychiatrist and has his summer home on the other side of the cape, with the waves of the Atlantic rolling into his front yard, and you hike across the dunes to see him to find out what's wrong that you haven't got an idea.

He said, “How to help you there, Bryce, I'm not sure. But this should be good country for you. Eugene O'Neill got his start here, and Millay, and others. Harry Kemp has a place only a few miles from here, and . . .”

That was when the guy in the hallway reached around the door jamb and switched off the light. Mac's head---I could still see dimly because it was only eight-thirty and not completely dark out yet what with daylight savings time and a bright moon---jerked around toward the doorway and I saw his eyes widen. He reached quick for a drawer of his desk and then slowly started to raise his hands up over his head instead. He was going to take it big, I could see that.

I turned my head slowly toward the doorway. The man had stepped fully into the room now, and although his face was in the shadow now, I could see how big and powerful he was. He wore an overcoat three sizes too large for him, and he held something in his hand that looked like a cross between a pistol and a shotgun. It must be, I decided, a scattergun---one of those things cautious householders keep on hand for burglars. It's useless at any range to speak of, but up to twenty feet it can't miss a man, and it can't miss doing unpleasant things to him. It shoots a small gauge shotgun shell.

Of course, this one wouldn't be loaded. Maybe my pal Colin MacCready didn't know I'd read his most recent book, but I had. In it, he told his ideas about what he called “shock treatment.” Alcoholism was one of the things it was supposed to help. I won't go into details, but the basic idea is to scare the pants off the patient.

He'd described several ways of doing it; apparently the treatment was varied to suit the individual case. I personally thought the idea was screwy when I read about it, but then I'm not a psychiatrist, thank heaven. Anyhow, it sounded interesting, and for a moment I wished that that book hadn't tipped me off in advance so I could tell how I'd feel if things really were what they were maybe going to be.

The guy with the gun was talking now, to Mac. He said, “Come out from behind that desk, Doc. You and this other mug stand close together. Who is he?”

What faint light came in the window fell on Mac's face when he stood up, and he was doing it well. He didn't look frightened, but he looked deadly serious, and a little pale. He kept his hands up level with his shoulders. He started to edge around the desk toward my chair. Then his face got into the shadow again.

He said, “This is just a friend of mine, Herman. Now---when did you escape?”

I stood up and bowed ceremoniously. If I'd been sober, by that time I'd have been suspecting my diagnosis of the situation. There was something just a little phony about it to be wrong. It was too slow an approach, it lacked the zip and tempo, the suddenness of shock described in that book. But I wasn't sober, quite.

Anyhow, I bowed low and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” or something equally idiotic, and started across the room toward the guy Mac had just addressed as Herman. The gun jerked up in my direction.

I heard Mac call out sharply, “Don't shoot! I'll---” and I didn't hear the rest of it for something that must have been Mac's fist clouted me on the side of the jaw. Mac is no lightweight and that wallop had, I guessed, his whole weight behind it. I went down, groggy, but not completely out.

Something---it must have been common sense---told me to stay there. I heard Mac say, “Whew!” and this guy Herman say coldly, “Another funny move like that from either of you---”

“Another funny move won't happen, Herman,” said Mac, soothingly. “My friend is a little drunk, that's all. Quite a little. What can I do for you?”

“First, you will tie up your friend so I'll not have to watch him. Who else is in the house?”

I heard Mac say, “No one, Herman. I have one servant but he has the day off. Drove in to Wellfleet.”

He was telling the truth, I knew. That proved nothing one way or the other, of course. Mac said, “There's rope in the kitchen, Herman. Shall I---”

“Take off his necktie and yours, Doc. You tie his ankles with one and his wrists, behind him, with the other. Tight.”

Mac came over and untied my cravat. He pretended to have trouble unknotting it, and bent down close and whispered. “Careful, Bryce. Homicidal maniac. Escaped. I had to sock you or---”

He didn't have to finish that “or---” if the rest of it was true. At an order from the man with the scattergun, he stepped back. At another order, he opened a drawer in his desk in which he kept a gun and then stepped back flat against the wall while the maniac pocketed the gun.

Then he said, “Sit down, Doc.” He kept the scattergun in his hand ready for action.

I'd rolled over, cautiously, so I could keep an eye on what went on. Mac had tied my wrists and ankles, and had done a good job of it, probably thinking he'd be checked up on it. I saw Mac cross cautiously to the desk and sit down.

He said, “What are you going to do, Herman?”

Sitting at the desk, Mac was in what little light came in from the windows. The other man was now nothing but a huge dark shadow standing there. He didn't say anything for a moment, and in the silence you could hear the waves lapping on the shore outside and the far squeaky cry of a circling gull.

He said, “I'm going back to finish. To kill the rest of them. Do you think I'm crazy?” He laughed a little, as though he had said something very funny.

“Your father and your brother both?” Mac's voice was quiet. “Why? Your sister---well, I thought you killed her, Herman, because there was always enmity between you. But Kurt---what have you got against Kurt? Why should you want to kill your brother?”

The madman chuckled. His voice started out soft, almost a whisper in the darkness, and got louder. “The ears, Doc. Like the rest of them. Dad, too. I never told anybody about that, but I didn't really hate Lila, except for them. Those damned ears---they---”

Unless it was magnificent acting, he was starkly mad. His voice had risen in pitch and volume until he was shouting meaningless obscenities. I heard Mac's voice cut in quietly, calmly.

“Herman-”

“You can't stop me, Doc. I---I just stopped here to show you that I'm not crazy, like you said I was at the hearing. See? Why don't I kill you? This friend of yours? Because I don't have to. I'll shoot you in a minute if you try to stop me, both of you, but if what you said about me was true, why don't I do it now?”

He went on arguing, calmer now, sometimes talking almost sensibly, sometimes with the perverted logic of paranoia. Mac egged him on, tried to reason with him from his own premises, tried to convince him without contradicting flatly any of the madman's statements.

I started quietly to work on the knots in the cravat that held my wrists behind me. I knew Mac was stalling, trying to hold the fellow as long as he could. He wasn't stalling for help from me. I knew that from the way he'd tied those blamed knots so tightly. He figured me as a liability rather than an asset after that fool stunt I'd pulled, and I couldn't blame him for that. But I went to work on those knots just the same.

“You won't believe me, Doc,” I heard Herman say. “All right, so you won't. But don't think I don't know why you're stalling. You think they're after me, and will trail me here.” He laughed again.

“How did you get away, Herman?”

“They aren't after me, Doc. Not here, I mean. They've got a swamp surrounded back ten miles from the sanitarium, and I'm supposed to be in it, armed, and they're taking their time. I've got till morning. I've got lots of time. It's just getting dark now.”

“Herman, you won't get away with it. They'll catch you and---”

“And what? Listen, I'm crazy; you said so and you swore to it, and other doctors, too. If they do catch me, what can they do but put me back, see? I'm going to tie you up now, Doc, so you won't go running for help. Stand up and turn around.”

“I'm anxious to talk to you more about your father and about Kurt. Herman, you mustn't---”

“I've talked enough, Doc. Get up. And before I tie you, I'm going to hit you on the head hard enough to knock you out, because I don't want any trouble. But I won't hit hard enough to kill you.”

Mac's voice again, persuasively; the madman's, sharper. He took a step nearer the desk, and that put him within a yard of where I lay. Those knots hadn't budged a millimeter. But, standing where the guy was, and with Mac on hand to finish what I could start, I saw a chance.

If I swiveled around and doubled up my legs and lashed them out right at the back of his knees, he'd go down like a ton of bricks. And Mac is no mean scrapper; he should have been able to take over from there.

Maybe if I'd been cold sober, I wouldn't have been ready to take a chance like that. But I wasn't. And I wasn't entirely convinced that there wasn't something phony about the set-up. It seemed just a bit theatrical to be true, like a second act that needs patching.

Anyway, I braced my wrists and heels against the floor and swiveled myself around, and I made enough noise in doing it to make the guy with the scattergun take a quick look around behind him to see what was going on. And that was the end of my little scheme.

I suppose I was lucky he didn't pot me with the gun, but my luck didn't seem so hot at the moment, for he pulled back his foot and lashed out a kick at my head that would have killed me if it had landed squarely.

And it missed landing squarely by a narrow margin. I jerked under it and the toe of his shoe passed safely over, the heel catching my mouth a glancing but painful blow. There was a taste of blood in my mouth---and the realization that I'd come within less than an inch of losing my front teeth. Then and there I abandoned any doubt I'd had about whether that gun was loaded and whether the man holding it was playing for keeps.

I could hear, but not see, Mac starting across the desk, trying to close in during the diversion I'd caused. But he didn't have time. The maniac swung back, raised the barrel of that scattergun and brought it down on Mac's head with a sickening thump. Mac's momentum carried him on across the desk and he fell unconscious, on the floor near me.

There didn't seem to be anything to say, so I didn't say it, and the silence was so thick you could spread it with a knife. The guy who had just slugged Mac grunted once, then he went out toward the kitchen and came back with some heavy twine, a ball of it. He kept an eye on me while he tied up Mac.

Then he said, “You going to lie still while I put some of this on you, or---” He hefted the gun significantly, a shadowy bludgeon in the gathering darkness.

“I'll lie still,” I told him. “Is---Mac---all right?”

He came over and began to supplement the two neckties that held my wrists and ankles with wrappings of the twine. “Sure,” he said, “he's breathing. I should have killed him and you, too, but---”

He was finishing my ankles now.

I'd been thinking. Maybe I was getting sober or maybe I was just beginning to feel the effect of what I'd drunk; I don't know. Anyway, along with the taste of blood in my mouth was a taste of something strictly phony. I knew now, of course, that this wasn't any idea of Mac's, but it was still a bad second act.

Yes, that was it---call it a playwright's instinct, but this was a second act; there'd been a first one that I didn't know about. I'd walked in during the intermission.

“Listen,” I said, “why did you come here at all, really?”

The moment the words were out, I knew I shouldn't have said it. He'd just stood up, and the gun was still in his pocket where he'd stuck it to tie me up. Slowly he took it out again, and, like he was thinking hard while he was doing it, he swung the muzzle around until it pointed at my head.

At times like that, you think crazy things. The first thought that popped into my head, while that gun was swinging around was---“This tears it. It's going to be a hell of a second act curtain, with the hero getting killed!” Sure, I thought of myself as the hero. I don't know why; but who doesn't?

That screwy notion, though, took just about as long to flash through my head as it took the gun to move an inch or two. The second thought, and I guess it was what saved me for the third act, was---“This man isn't crazy; if he's a real homicidal maniac, then I'm Bill Shakespeare.” And I'm not Bill Shakespeare, but I do have a strong sense of motivation, and that was the rub here. There was a motivation behind the visit of the chap with the scattergun who was about to use it to scatter my brains over Mac's carpet. I'd called him on it, and that was how I'd asked for trouble.

And I saw that the reason I was going to die, if I was, concerned that very question of whether or not he was crazy. He suspected now that I suspected he wasn't. My only chance was to convince him otherwise, and darned quick.

I started talking, and I didn't start out by accusing him of being batty---that would have been a giveaway of what I was trying to do. I talked fast, but I made my voice soft and calm and soothing, like Mac's had been when Mac was trying to talk him out of committing a couple of murders. I talked as though I were talking to a madman and was trying to calm him down.

“Listen,” I told him, “you don't want to shoot me, Herman. I've never done anything to you, have I? Sure, I made a pass at you before, but that was because I thought you were going to kill Mac, and Mac's a friend of mine, Herman. A good friend. You can't blame me for that, can you?” Well, I went on from there, and I repeated myself with variations, and I guess I got it across. The gun stayed pointed at my head, but it didn't explode and I began to think that it wasn't going to.

Funny, come to think of it. Here was a guy who was either a homicidal maniac or he wasn't, and I felt convinced that if he thought I thought he was crazy, I'd get by. If he thought I saw through his act, as that incautious question of mine had indicated, I was a dead duck. And the only way to convince him that I was being hoodwinked, was to pretend I thought he was mad and was humoring him. So I humored him; I talked, believe me, I talked.

And then, abruptly, he grunted and stuck that scattergun through his belt. He took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened a four-inch blade.

He reached down and grabbed a handful of my coatfront and dragged me across the carpet a couple of yards to where a square of bright moonlight came in the open window behind Mac's desk, and he held me so my head was in that moonlight, and---

I gave an involuntary yowl and began to almost wish he'd decided to use that scattergun after all. He took a handful of my hair in his left hand, and---sitting on my chest so I couldn't move---he turned my head around sidewise.

He put the knife down a moment and took hold of my left ear, bending down as though to examine it carefully. Then he let go and picked up the knife again. And I remembered what he'd been saying to Mac ten minutes or so ago---“The ears, Doc. Those damned ears---they---”

Was the guy crazy, or was he just trying to convince me that he was? I thought for a minute it was going to cost me an ear or two to find out. I howled, “Herman, don't---” and never knew until then just how eloquent I was.

Whether it was my eloquence or not, he decided at last that he didn't want my ears. He grunted and put the knife back in the pocket of that capacious overcoat. He said, “No good. They're not Wunderly.”

He got up from my chest and started toward the door. He must have guessed that I was already wondering how soon it would be safe to yell for help. He turned back a minute and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. Then he said, “The hell with it. Yell all you want. Yell to the seagulls.”

I watched the big dark shadow of him go through the doorway and I didn't say thanks or good-bye. I was going to let well enough alone. I heard his footsteps across the porch.

I didn't yell to the seagulls; he was right about that. Mac's place is a mile from its nearest neighbor, three miles from the coast guard station that has the only telephone on that part of the beach. And I didn't worry about trying to loosen my bonds; I'd found them too tough to handle even before he'd added to them with the heavy twine.

Mac was my---our---only chance of getting out of there in time to make a third act curtain. I crawled across, or rather wriggled my way across, to where he lay. He was breathing heavily now, and once as I worked my way toward him he moved a bit.

Probably he'd have snapped out of it quickly if I'd been able to give his face a few healthy slaps, but that wasn't possible. Fortunately he was lying on his side; I'd have had a devil of a job rolling him over if he'd been on his back where I couldn't get at the knots at his wrists.

I wriggled up behind him, and began work on those knots with my teeth. It was slow tough work, about the hardest thing I ever tackled. But I plugged along at it, and in between tries, I yelled at him and nudged him in the back with my head. Finally he said, “What happened, Bryce?”

“He's gone,” I told him. “We're tied up. That's all. Listen, Mac, I'll keep on with these knots. If you can talk okay, tell me who the guy is and what's what, while I get you loose if I can.”

His voice gradually got stronger as he talked. “Herman Wunderly,” he told me. “Homicidal maniac killed his sister several years ago. Gruesome business; cut off her ears. He's got some mania about ears.

“I was up here for the summer when it happened, and I helped handle him, and had to testify. The Wunderly place is a mile down the beach; nearest house here, in fact. They're year-rounders, residents, a bit eccentric. There's old man Wunderly now, and Herman's brother Kurt. He's going back to kill them unless we can---”

I'd got the knot loosened a bit now; it wouldn't be much longer. But my bruised and cut lip hurt so badly I had to stop for a second or two. I said, “Are they all as batty as Herman? Good Lord---sorricide, patricide---”

Then I went back to work on the knots. Mac said, “Neither. Herman and Kurt are brothers, but they were adopted. So Ethel wasn't their sister, and Old Man Wunderly isn't---”

Then the knot gave way, and Mac sat up, got his hands braced on the edge of the desk, stood up and worked his way around it. I said, “Hey, how about me? Untie---”

“Scissors,” he told me. “Quicker.” He found them in a drawer, cut the cord from his ankles, and then cut me loose. “One of those neckties,” I said, “was mine. And a new silk one at that. You owe me---”

“Shut up, you dope. Listen, you take the coast guard station, three miles northwest. Have 'em send men quick. I'll go to the Wunderlys', and maybe I'll be in time to---”

“Got another gun, Mac, besides the one he took?”

He shook his head. “Tell the coast guard boys to come armed. Don't worry about me; handling nuts is my business. I can take care of---”

I'd switched the light back on while he was talking, and I grinned at him. “So I noticed,” I cut in. “Come on, if you're going.”

He was going, all right. He was running so fast I had to yell the last of that remark after him. I ran after, using the forethought to grab up a fairly hefty cane that was in the umbrella rack in the corner of the hallway. I wasn't leaning on Mac's persuasive abilities with a homicidal maniac---nor counting on my own to work a second time.

I caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “You can't run a mile through sand,” I yelled. “You'll fall down before you get half way---”

He saw the point in that and slowed down, and I panted alongside. “Our ears,” I said. “We should have taken them off and left them back where they're safe.”

“You're still drunk. Listen, be sensible and go back to the coast guard station and let me handle this. It isn't any of your business.”

“They wouldn't get there in time and you know it and I'm not still drunk, dammit. And that second act stank, Mac. It needs doctoring, and I'm the guy who can---”

“Shut up, you sap. If you're going to come, save your breath for getting there.”

It was good advice, and I took it.

He pushed on, sometimes running, sometimes walking---mostly according to the footing---and we were both fairly winded when we rounded the dune that hid the Wunderly house.

Mac said, “Shhh,” and grabbed my arm. We were pretty close now, and he pointed to a window that was open about ten inches. We tiptoed to it, and got it open wider without making as much noise as I thought it would make.

The window was low enough that we could see in, and as far as we could tell looking into the darkened room, it was empty. Mac went in first, and I followed him. The room was just sufficiently illumined that we could make out where the furniture was, when our eyes had got accustomed to it.

Mac pointed toward one of the two closed doors and said, “Hallway. Stairs.” And we crossed over and opened it. It didn't squeak, but the latch clicked when I let go the knob, and Mac grabbed my arm again, so hard and unexpectedly that I almost let out a yawp.

The hall was darker. I reached in my pocket for a box of matches, but Mac pulled me over to him and whispered in my ear, “I've been here. I know where the stairs are.” He started off, feeling along the wall with one hand. I held on to the sleeve of his coat and followed.

We came to a turn, and he whispered, “This is the back of the staircase. Feel your way around it and you'll come to the bannister on the other side. We're going up.”

“And then what?”

He answered, “Kurt and the old man sleep upstairs, and it looks like they've turned in early---unless we're too late. We'll see if they're all right first.”

That sounded sensible. If they were all right, we'd have allies, and we could use them. And maybe there'd be a gun around. I still didn't feel very happy about chasing an armed maniac with only a walking stick for defense.

I whispered, “Listen---” and reached out for Mac.

But he'd moved on. I found the wall with my left hand and started to follow it around the staircase. Just around the corner, there was a door. A door there under the stairs meant a closet. I don't know why I opened that door. I heard a faint rustling sound, or thought I did, inside the closet, as my hand went along the outside of the door. But I should have caught up with Mac and told him, and we should have done the thing cautiously. But I didn't wait. Like a fool, I jerked the door open.

For just a second there was so much light that I couldn't see a thing. Some closet doors are rigged like that---particularly closets off darkish hallways. When you open the door the light inside the closet goes on, and when you close it the light goes off again.

It's a handy arrangement, but I didn't appreciate it just then. That light seemed to flash right in my eyes, and it utterly blinded me. I heard an exclamation from Mac, who'd reached the foot of the stairs, and I heard another rustle in the closet and a noise that sounded like the growl of an animal.

For what was probably two seconds, but seemed two hours, I stood there blinking, and then I could see again.

I saw, back among the coats and things hanging in the closet, a tall figure in an outsize overcoat. Terrifyingly expressionless eyes stared at me out of a twisted face. And a familiar-looking scattergun pointed squarely at the pit of my stomach from a range of two feet or less.

It was one of those awful instants that seem to hang poised upon the brink of time's abyss interminably. There wasn't time for me to grab for that gun or jump sidewise from in front of its muzzle. But, as though in slow motion, I could see the knuckles of his hand whiten as his finger tightened on the trigger. I could see the hammer go back, hear the click as it slipped the pawl and see it start down toward the single chamber of the gun.

It clicked down---empty---and I was still standing there alive and without a hole blown through me and my liver splattered over the wall behind me. For another fraction of a second, I was too terrified to move. If that gun hadn't been loaded back at Mac's house, then this whole thing didn't make sense at all. But the guy who'd just pulled the trigger must have thought it was loaded or he wouldn't have pulled the trigger. Until he'd done that he had me buffaloed; I'd have put up my hands like a lamb with that thing looking at me. Add it up, and---

But the guy in the overcoat didn't wait to add it up. He came out of the closet after me in a flying leap like the charge of a tiger. The empty gun was raised now to be used as a bludgeon and just in the nick of time I got my cane up to block a blow that would have crushed my skull.

His wrist hit against the edge of the cane and the gun flew out of his hand, over my shoulder, and knocked a square foot of plaster out of the wall behind, before it hit the floor.

He kept on coming, though, and the momentum of his charge knocked me off my feet, and he was right there on top of me, his hands reached for my throat.

All this had happened before Mac could get back down the two or three steps of the staircase he'd started up, but I heard him yell, “Herman, stop!” and the thud of his feet as he vaulted over the bannister and came running.

One of Herman's hands had found my throat and I was having to use both my hands to keep the other one off when Mac got there. He joined the fray with a nifty full nelson that pulled the maniac's arms away from my throat and yanked him up to his knees. Then Mac let the full nelson slide to a half, and got one of Herman's arms pinned behind him in a hammerlock. It was neat work.

But all of this hadn't been accomplished in silence. Another light flashed on at the top of the stairs, and we heard slippered feet in the upper hallway.

“The old man?” I asked Mac.

“No, he's deaf; this wouldn't have waked him. That'll be Kurt Wunderly.” He called out, “Hey, Wunderly. This is MacCready. Everything's under control, but come on down.”

A tall man in a bathrobe thrown over pajamas was starting down the steps even before Mac finished talking. He said, “What on earth? Herman!”

Herman gave a yank to get free then, and I picked up the empty scattergun. Held by the barrel, it made a beautiful billy. I tapped Herman lightly on the skull---just a soft tap---and said, “Behave, sonny.”

Mac was explaining to Kurt Wunderly. “Herman got away from the sanitarium. He was going to kill you and your foster-father. Stopped at my place to brag about it or something, and left us tied up, but we---”

I said, “My name's Bryce. I was visiting---”

“The famous playwright?”

“Thanks,” I said. “Better get us some ropes.”

He nodded, his face a bit pale. “There should be some in the closet there.” There were, and I got them.

I came in with the ropes. Herman made no resistance, his face was dull, expressionless, and his manner completely lethargic now. I'm no psychiatrist, but I recognized the symptoms of a manic-depressive insanity. Being captured had thrown him into the depressive state. Speechless, on the edge of sheer unconsciousness, he paid no attention to his surroundings or to what was said or done to him. Tying him up was routine. And old Mr. Wunderly turned out to be sleeping soundly, the sleep of the partly deaf, upstairs. Still with his ears on, so we didn't waken him.

Back down in the living room, Mac said, “Bryce and I will go to the coast guard station and phone for---”

“Hold it, Mac,” I cut in. “I figured out what was wrong with that second act. Look,” and I pointed at Herman, “this guy's crazy.”

Mac gawped at me for a minute like he thought I was, too, and maybe he did just then.

I went on: “But your caller wasn't, Mac. He was pretending to be. Add that up.” And I turned the scattergun around and pointed it at Kurt Wunderly, Herman's brother. I said, “Herman escaped and came here and asked you to protect him. He wasn't homicidal, just then. You hid him in that closet, and you came over to Mac's house to establish the idea that Herman was going to kill his foster-father and yourself. You turned out the light in Mac's study before you came in, and you figured that wearing that old overcoat and a hat and acting insane, you could pass for Herman in a darkened room.

“My guess is you wanted to kill Old Man Wunderly, probably because you thought he might live another ten years and you wanted your inheritance now. Or is that a good guess? Maybe you've got a taint of Herman's homicidal streak, too.”

Mac cut in, “Bryce, do you realize what you're---”

“Pipe down, Mac,” I told him, and went on talking to Kurt: “You left us tied up, ready to be witnesses that Herman was going to kill the old man. Then you came back here, gave him back the coat and gun, and you were getting into your pajamas when we came. Then you were going---except that we got here in time---to kill the old man and then ‘capture’ Herman and turn him over with the story that you'd overcome him after the first murder and while he was trying to kill you. He had nothing to lose by being blamed for another murder; he'd just be sent back. And who'd have believed anything he tried to tell them?”

Kurt Wunderly said, “That should make a good play, Mr. Bryce, but you're being absurd. Now put down that empty gun and---”

I laughed. “If you didn't know Herman was here, how do you know this gun is empty? Because you unloaded it before you gave it back to him, to play safe! You weren't in the hall when he clicked it at me. You couldn't have known it was empty, if you're innocent.”

I heard Mac give a low whistle.

I wanted to push the point home while I was at it, so I lied a little. My glimpse of the intruder's face in Mac's mirror had been too brief and too distant. But I said: “I can identify him, Mac. Before he reached around the corner in your study and turned out the light, I had a good look at his face in the mirror behind you---and his fingerprint will be on that light switch, and---”

The other proof came in a way I wasn't expecting. Kurt Wunderly yanked his hand out of his bathrobe pocket, and it held the thirty-two revolver that he'd taken away from Mac back at Mac's place.

He said, “You're too clever, Bryce. That forces me to go through with it---with one alteration. It will be found that Herman killed you and MacCready also.”

I guess I began to sweat a little when I saw what I'd done. Mac and I were each maybe three yards from Kurt Wunderly, and not standing together. But if we tried to rush him, he'd be sure to get one of us. And this time he wasn't going to take any chances; I saw from his face that he was going to shoot us down here and now, and then take the time necessary to get the stage set before he went for help.

For some reason he picked Mac first---maybe to save me for last, I don't know. But he pointed the gun Mac's way, and said “Sorry, MacCready, but---” and I had to do something.

Just to stall an instant I said the first damn fool thing that popped into my head. I said, “It's a good thing I happened to have a shell to fit this scattergun, Wunderly. Drop your pistol!”

I knew as I said it that there wasn't a chance on earth that I'd be believed. People don't carry around small-gauge shotgun shells on the chance they'll find a gun to put them in. But it did divert his attention from Mac for the second. He swung the gun back my way.

The scattergun was hanging at my side and I brought it up as though to fire it. I saw Kurt Wunderly grin as he waited for the empty click that would call my bluff---before he shot me. But I didn't pull the trigger. I kept my hand arcing out with the gun in it, and let go of the gun, sailing it right at his face.

He triggered the revolver then and it spat noise and flame at me. But five pounds of cold steel being thrown into a man's face is enough to spoil his aim, even if he's easily able to duck the missile. That shot came close, undoubtedly, but it didn't hit me.

And Mac had leaped in the second he saw what I was doing, and had Kurt Wunderly by the wrist before he could fire again. I got there myself a split second later, and between us we had no trouble handling him. We tied him and put him on the couch beside Herman.

Mac went across to a decanter of whiskey on the buffet and poured himself a drink with a hand that shook just a trifle. He said, “Five minutes, and we'll go for help. How did you figure out---?”

“Playwright's instinct, Mac. I told you that second act just didn't jell, and you thought I was talking through my hat. But I know how I can make it jell. I got a dilly of an idea for that play I have to write. Listen, I start off with a lonely house and a homicidal---”

“Save it. I'll come down to New York and see it on the boards.” He looked at the decanter of whiskey in his hand and then at me, incredulously. “Mean to say you're not having one with me?”

I shook my head firmly. “On the wagon till the play's complete. Or---say, I don't even want a drink. Mac, is there anything in this shock treatment of yours? And you didn't by any chance arrange all this just to---?”

He'd just downed the drink he'd poured---and he choked on it. When he could talk again he said, “You crazy---” and raised the decanter as though he was going to throw it at me. Then the reaction hit us, and we had an arm around each other's shoulders and laughed until it brought tears to our eyes.