Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction Page 11

  “Say—” rumbled the basses.

  “Good—” piped the soprano.

  And now the entire ensemble, Helmholtz included, joined in a hair-raising final chord, “Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Helmholtz pinched off the final chord with his thumb and forefinger.

  Tears streamed down Big Floyd’s cheeks. “Oh my, oh my, oh my,” he murmured. “Who arranged it?” he said.

  “A genius,” said Helmholtz.

  “Schroeder?” said Big Floyd.

  “No,” said Schroeder. “I—”

  “How did you like it, Selma?” said Helmholtz.

  There was no reply. Selma Ritter had fainted dead away.

  HALL OF MIRRORS

  There was a parking lot, and then a guitar school, and then Fred’s O.K. Used Car Lot, and then the hypnotist’s house, and then a vacant lot with the foundation of a mansion still on it, and then the Beeler Brothers’ Funeral Home. Autumn winds, experimenting with the idea of a hard winter, made little twists of soot and paper, made the plastic propellers over the used car lot go frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

  The city was Indianapolis, the largest city not on a navigable waterway in the world.

  It was to the hypnotist’s house that the two city detectives came. They were Detectives Carney and Foltz, Carney young and dapper, Foltz middle-aged and rumpled. Carney went up the hypnotist’s steps like a tap dancer. Foltz, though he was going to do all the talking, trudged far behind. Carney’s interest was specific. He was going straight for the hypnotist. Foltz’s attention was diffused. He marveled at the monstrous architecture of the hypnotist’s twenty-room house, let his mournful eyes climb the tower at one corner of the house. There had to be a ballroom at the top of the tower. There were ballrooms at the tops of all the towers that the rich had abandoned.

  Foltz reached the hypnotist’s door at last, rang the bell. The only hint of quackery was a small sign over the doorbell. K. HOLLOMON WEEMS, it said, HYPNOTIC THERAPY.

  Weems himself came to the door. He was in his fifties, small, narrow-shouldered, neat. His nose was long, his lips full and red, and his bald head had a seeming phosphorescence. His eyes were unspectacular—pale blue, clear, ordinary.

  “Doctor Weems?” said Foltz, grumpily polite.

  “‘Doctor’ Weems?” said Weems. “There is no ‘Doctor’ Weems here. There is a very plain ‘Mister’ Weems. He stands before you.”

  “In your line of work,” said Foltz, “I’d think a man would almost have to have some kind of doctor’s degree.”

  “As it happens,” said Weems, “I hold two doctor’s degrees—one from Budapest, another from Edinburgh.” He smiled faintly. “I don’t use the title Doctor, however. I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake me for a physician.” He shivered in the winds. “Won’t you come in?”

  The three went into what had been the parlor of the mansion, what was the hypnotist’s office now. There was no nonsense about the furnishings. They were functional, gray-enameled steel—a desk, a few chairs, a filing cabinet, a bookcase. There were no pictures, no framed certificates on the high walls.

  Weems sat down behind his desk, invited his visitors to sit. “The chairs aren’t very comfortable, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Where do you keep your equipment, Mr. Weems?” said Foltz.

  “What equipment is that?” said Weems.

  Foltz’s stubby hands worked in air. “I assume you’ve got something you hypnotize people with. A light or something they stare at?”

  “No,” said Weems. “I’m all the apparatus there is.”

  “You pull the blinds when you hypnotize somebody?” said Foltz.

  “No,” said Weems. He volunteered no more information, but looked back and forth between the detectives, inviting them to state their business.

  “We’re from the police, Mr. Weems,” said Foltz, and he showed his identification.

  “You are not telling me the news,” Weems said.

  “You were expecting the police?” said Foltz.

  “I was born in Romania, sir—where one is taught from birth to expect the police.”

  “I thought maybe you had some idea what we were here about?” said Foltz.

  Weems sat back, twiddled his thumbs. “Oh—generally, generally, generally,” he said. “I arouse vague fears among the simpler sorts wherever I go. Sooner or later they coax the police into having a look at me, to see if I might not be performing black magic here.”

  “You mind telling us what you do do here?” said Foltz.

  “What I do, sir,” said Weems, “is as simple and straightforward as what a carpenter or any other honest workman does. My particular service has to do with the elimination of undesirable habits or unreasonable fears.” He startled young Carney by gesturing at him suddenly. “You, sir, obviously smoke too much. If you were to give me your undivided attention for two minutes, you would never smoke again, would never want to smoke again.”

  Carney put out his cigarette.

  “I must apologize for the chair you’re sitting on, sir,” said Weems to Carney. “It’s brand-new, but something’s wrong with the cushion. There’s a small lump on the left side. It’s a very small lump, but after a while it makes people quite uncomfortable. It’s surprising how a little thing like that can actually induce real pain. Curiously enough, people usually feel the pain in the neck and shoulders rather than in the lower spine.”

  “I’m all right,” said Carney.

  “Fine,” said Weems. He turned to Foltz again. “If a man had a fear of firearms, for instance,” he said, “and his work made it necessary for him to be around them, I could eliminate that fear with hypnosis. As a matter of fact, if a policeman, say, were only a moderately good pistol shot, I could steady his hand enough by means of hypnosis to make him an expert. I’ll steady your hand, if you like. If you’ll take out your pistol and hold it as steadily as possible—”

  Foltz did not draw his pistol. “Only two reasons I ever take my pistol out,” he said. “Either I’m gonna clean it, or I’m gonna shoot somebody with it.”

  “In a minute you’ll change your mind,” said Weems, and he glanced at his expensive wristwatch. “Believe me—I could make your hand as steady as a vise.” He looked at Carney, saw that Carney was standing, was massaging the back of his neck. “Oh, dear,” said Weems, “I did warn you about that chair. I should get rid of it. Take another chair, please, and turn that one to the wall, so no one else will get a stiff neck from it.”

  Carney took another chair, turned his first chair to the wall. He carried his head to one side. His neck was as stiff as a bent crowbar. No amount of rubbing seemed to help.

  “Have I convinced you?” Weems said to Foltz. “Will you tell my friends and neighbors that I’m not practicing witchcraft or medicine without a license here?”

  “I’d be glad to do that, sir,” said Foltz. “But that isn’t the main thing we came to see you about.”

  “Oh?” said Weems.

  “No, sir,” said Foltz. He took a photograph from the inside pocket of his coat. “What we really wanted to ask you was, do you know this woman, and do you have any idea where we could find her? We’ve traced her here, and nobody seems to know where she went after.”

  Weems took the photograph without hesitation, identified it promptly. “Mrs. Mary Styles Cantwell. I remember her well. Would you like to know the exact dates when she was here for treatment?” He opened a card file on his desk, searched for the card of the missing woman, found it. “Four visits in all,” he said. “July fourteenth, fifteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first.”

  “What did you treat her for?” said Foltz.

  “Would you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?” said Weems.

  “What?” said Foltz.

  “Your pistol,” said Weems. “It’s pointing right at me.”

  Foltz looked down at his right hand, discovered that it really did hold a pistol, a pistol aimed at Weems. He wa
s embarrassed, confused. Still, he did not return the pistol to its holster.

  “Put it away, please,” said Weems.

  Foltz put it away.

  “Thank you,” said Weems. “Surely I’m not being that uncooperative.”

  “No, sir,” said Foltz.

  “It’s the heat in the room,” said Weems. “It puts everybody’s nerves on edge. The heating system is very bad. It’s always boiling hot in this room, while the rest of the house is like the North Pole. It’s at least ninety degrees in here. Won’t you gentlemen please take off your coats?”

  Carney and Foltz took off their coats.

  “Take off your suit coats, too,” said Weems. “It must be a hundred in here.”

  Carney and Foltz took off their suit coats, but sweltered still.

  “You both have splitting headaches now,” said Weems, “and I know how hard it must be for you to think straight. But I want you to tell me everything you know about me or suspect about me.”

  “Four women who’ve been reported missing have been traced here,” said Foltz.

  “Only four?” said Weems.

  “Only four,” said Foltz.

  “Their names, please?” said Weems.

  “Mrs. Mary Styles Cantwell, Mrs. Esmeralda Coyne, Mrs. Nancy Royce, Mrs. Caroline Hughs Tinker, and Mrs. Janet Zimmer.”

  Weems wrote the names down, just the last names. “Cantwell, Coyne, Royce … Selfridge, did you say?”

  “Selfridge?” said Foltz. “Who’s Selfridge?”

  “Nobody,” said Weems. “Selfridge is nobody.”

  “Nobody,” echoed Foltz blankly.

  “What do you think I did with these women?” said Weems.

  “We think you killed them,” said Foltz. “They were all fairly rich widows. They all drew their money out of the bank after they came to see you, and they all disappeared after that. We think their bodies are somewhere in this house.”

  “Do you know my real name?” said Weems.

  “No,” said Foltz. “When we get your fingerprints, we figure we’ll find out you’re wanted a lot of other places.”

  “I will save you that trouble,” said Weems. “I will tell you my real name. My real name, gentlemen, is Rumpel-stiltskin. Have you got that? I will spell it for you. R-u-m-p-e-l-s-t-i-l-t-s-k-i-n.”

  “R-u-m-p-e-l-s-t-i-l-t-s-k-i-n,” said Foltz.

  “I think you should phone that information in to headquarters immediately,” said Weems. He held out absolutely nothing to Foltz. “Here’s the telephone,” he said.

  Foltz took the nothing he’d been handed, treated it like a telephone. Using the nonexistent instrument, he put a call through to a Captain Finnerty, reported gravely that Weems’s real name was Rumpelstiltskin.

  “What did Captain Finnerty say when you gave him the news?” said Weems.

  “I don’t know,” said Foltz.

  “You don’t know?” said Weems incredulously. “He said I was the man who made people pass through mirrors, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Foltz. “That’s what he said.”

  “I admit it,” said Weems. “You’ve got me dead to rights. I am Rumpelstiltskin,” he said, “and I have hypnotized people into stepping through mirrors, into stepping out of this life and into another on the other side. Can you believe that?”

  “Yes,” said Foltz.

  “It’s certainly possible, once you think about it, isn’t it?” said Weems.

  “Yes,” said Foltz.

  “You believe it, too, don’t you?” Weems said to Carney.

  Carney was a hunchback now, his neck, shoulders, and head ached so. “I believe it,” he said.

  “So that explains what happened to the ladies you’re looking for,” said Weems. “They’re far from being dead, believe me. They came to me, very unhappy about the way their lives were going, so I sent them through mirrors to see if things weren’t better on the other side. In every case, they chose to remain on the other side. I’ll show you in a moment the mirrors they went through, but first I’d like to know if there are any more police outside, or on their way here.”

  “No,” said Foltz.

  “Just you two?” said Weems.

  “Yes,” said Foltz.

  Weems clapped his hands lightly. “Well—come along, gentlemen, and I’ll show you the mirrors.”

  He went to the office door, held it open for his guests. He watched them closely as they passed out into the hall, was gratified when they both began to shiver violently, as though struck by bitter cold.

  “I warned you it was like the North Pole out here,” he said. “You’d better bundle up, though I’m afraid you’ll still be quite uncomfortable.”

  Carney and Foltz bundled up, but continued to shiver.

  “Three flights of stairs to climb, gentlemen,” said Weems. “We’re going to the ballroom at the top of the house. That is where the mirrors are. There is an elevator, but it hasn’t run for years.”

  Not only was the elevator inoperative. It didn’t even exist anymore. The elevator, the paneling, the ornate light fixtures, and everything remotely valuable had been stripped from the mansion years before Weems took it over. But Weems invited his guests, even as their feet crunched broken plaster on bare floors, to admire the immaculate and lavish decor.

  “This is the gold room, and this is the blue room,” he said. “The white swan bed in the blue room is said to have belonged to Madame Pompadour, believe it or not. Do you believe that?” he said to Foltz.

  “You couldn’t prove it by me,” said Foltz.

  “Who can be sure of anything in this world, eh?” said Weems.

  Carney repeated this sentiment word for word. “Who can be sure of anything in this world, eh?” he said.

  “Here is the staircase to the ballroom,” said Weems. The staircase was broad. There was a pedestal at its base that had once supported a statue. The original banisters were gone, naked spikes showing where the uprights had once been moored. There was only one banister now, a length of pipe held by clinched nails. The bare steps were studded with carpet tacks. A tack here and there held a twist of red yarn.

  “I’ve spent more money restoring this staircase than I’ve spent on anything else in the house,” said Weems. “The banisters I found in Italy. The statue, a fourteenth-century Saint Catherine from Toledo, I bought from the estate of William Randolph Hearst. This carpet we’re walking on, gentlemen, was woven to my specifications in Kerman, Iran. It’s like walking on a feather mattress, isn’t it?”

  Carney and Foltz did not reply, there was so much splendor to appreciate. But they lifted their knees high, as though they were indeed walking on a feather mattress.

  Weems opened the ballroom door, a handsome door, actually. But its handsomeness was spoiled by a message whitewashed across its fac. keep out, said the sign. Two coat hangers hung from the doorknob, tinkled tinnily as Weems opened and closed the door.

  The ballroom at the tower’s top was circular. Around its walls, full-length mirrors alternated with ghastly leaded-glass windows of purple, mustard, and green. The only furnishings were three bundles of newspapers, tied up as though for a paper sale, two pieces of track from a toy train set, and the headboard of a brass bed.

  Weems did not rhapsodize about the glories of the ballroom. He invited Carney and Foltz to give their full attention to the mirrors, which were real. And the play of mirrors on mirrors gave each mirror the aspect of a door leading to infinite perspectives of other doors.

  “Sort of like a railroad roundhouse, isn’t it?” said Weems. “Look at all the possible routes of travel radiating from us, beckoning to us.” He turned to Carney suddenly. “Which route attracts you most?”

  “I—I don’t know,” said Carney.

  “Then I’ll recommend one in a moment,” said Weems. “It isn’t a decision to be taken lightly, because a person changes radically when he passes through a mirror—he or she, as the case may be. Handedness changes, of course. That’s elementary. A right-han
ded person becomes left-handed, and vice versa. But a person’s personality changes, too—and his future—his or her future, as the case may be.”

  “The women we’re looking for—they went through these mirrors?” said Foltz.

  “Yes—the women you’re looking for, and about a dozen more you’re not looking for besides,” said Weems. “They came to me with the shapeless longings of widows with money, but without confidence, hope, irresistible beauty, or dreams. They had been to physicians and quacks of every sort before they came to me. They could describe neither their ailment nor the hoped for cure. It was up to me to define both.”

  “So what did you tell them?” said Foltz.

  “Couldn’t you make a diagnosis on the basis of what I’ve told you?” said Weems. “It was their futures that were sick. And for sick futures”—and he swept his hand at the seeming doors all around them—“I know only one cure.”

  Weems shouted now, and then listened as though expecting faint replies. “Mrs. Cantwell? Mary?” he called. “Mrs. Forbes?”

  “Who is Mrs. Forbes?” said Foltz.

  “That is Mary Cantwell’s new name on the other side of the glass,” said Weems.

  “Names change when people go through?” said Foltz.

  “No—not necessarily,” said Weems, “though a lot of people decide to change their names to go with their new futures, new personalities. In the case of Mary Cantwell—she married a man named Gordon Forbes a week after passing through.” He smiled. “I was the best man—and, in all modesty, I don’t think anyone ever deserved the honor more.”

  “You can go in and out of these mirrors any time you want?” said Foltz.

  “Certainly,” said Weems. “Self-hypnosis, the easiest and commonest form of hypnosis.”

  “I’d sure like a demonstration,” said Foltz.

  “That’s why I’m trying to call Mary or one of the others back,” said Weems. “Hello! Hello! Can anybody hear me?” he shouted at the mirrors.

  “I thought maybe you’d go through a mirror for us,” said Foltz.

  “It’s a thing I don’t care to do, really, except on very special occasions,” said Weems, “like Mary’s wedding, like the Carter family’s first anniversary on the other side—”