Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 307 - Happy Death Day

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HAPPY DEATH DAY
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," September 1946.
A maniac runs amok and a whole family is doomed to die, while The Shadow
faces an enflamed foe in a fierce struggle against dreadful powers of evil...
CHAPTER I
THERE are families, who, once proud and haughty, genteel and honorable,
withdraw too much from the world. They become so over conscious of the dignity
of their line that they lose sight of honor and dignity and a transmutation
takes place. Stiff-necked hatred of any one who is not part of their line,
takes the place of what once was but a sort of smiling pride of family.
Such a family there was in one of the suburbs of Chicago. And in that
family, in an old house on the side of a knoll that overlooked the majesty of
Lake Michigan, the line had petered out. The blood, watered down by generation
after generation of courtship and marriage, all within the circumscribed group
that custom had decreed was the only group that mattered, turned sour,
curdled,
till the virtues that they so espoused became vices...
Ugly vices that had led to mutual distrusts and hatreds... that had
caused
festering sores that dug deep below the surface. Sores that no one but the
family ever saw, sores that had once, two years ago, come to the surface!
With cataclysmic horror, the discreet, the genteel family found its name
smeared over the brawling headlines of every tabloid in the country, for, when
the sore had erupted, death followed!
Murder! Murder in the Lively family! Somehow, to most of them, the horror
was more in the headlines than in the killing. And what headlines! For the
murder had been a bizarre one with outre overtones. A man, Eugene Lively, had
been shot. He had died almost instantly from that shot. But despite the fact
that his body had begun to stiffen in rigor, an hour later, the murdered body
was shot again!
"Dead Man Killed!" That had been the tenor of the headlines. "Maniac Runs
Amok In Old Gold Coast Family!" How many variations had been run on that
theme!
Then too there were other peculiar circumstances; the killer had struck
not an hour after the whole family had moved into a brand new, most modern
house. They had left behind them the dank and dismal relic of the
eighteen-eighties that had housed them for so long. They were about to begin a
new life in new surroundings. The new house, the last word in modern
architecture, had been furnished in as forward thinking a way as it had been
designed. And in that new house with all the trimmings of the "brave new
world," death had struck!
They had caught a man; one of the Livelys it was, too. They put him in
jail at first, but after they had heard the irrelevancies of his testimony, no
jury would send him to a death cell. Instead he was placed in an asylum.
Foster
Lively, in a lunatic asylum. That had been another bitter pill for the fanatic
family pride to stomach.
Bastille Day, July 14. That had been the day on which the murder had
occurred and now, two years later to the day, a note went through the channels
of the U. S. Postal Service.
It had been addressed to the matriarch of the family, old Grandmother
Lively. It read in part... "Happy Deathday! Will see you soon... and when I
do... you will no longer see! You have called me maniac and such I have
become.
You will do well to fear me!" The note was signed with pathetic braggadocio,
"The Maniac."
The old woman, stern, and strong with an inner strength of some kind that
burned and yet did not consume, read the note, shrugged and passed it to her
grandson.
"Here, Alfie." Her smile was bitter and withdrawn. She knew Alfie for
what
he was. A youthful weakling.
He read it slowly. Then he reread it faster this time with dawning
comprehension and horror in his eyes. He crumpled the note.
"This is serious! I'm going to call the police!"
"You'll do nothing of the kind! We have had our last contact with those
rapscallions!" Her voice was low, but it held conviction. "You will not
communicate with them. This is a family matter and we will deal with it. In
the
first place, he is safely behind bars. Any threats he may make are idle. I do
not doubt that he hates us with a bitter and unremitting hatred. In some ways
I
cannot find it in myself to blame him too much. He feels the family has let
him
down!"
"B-b-but," Alfie stammered, "suppose he escapes!"
"Tosh! How could he possibly? I have been to that asylum. It is no
Bedlam,
but it is a well constructed and intelligently run place. No, Foster will
never
escape until death carries him from one cell to another! Now forget it!"
Alfie nodded in humble obedience. But he was frightened and as a fearful
rat will summon a last desperate surge of courage and decision, just so, Alfie
was determined this one time, to go counter to his grandmother's wishes. He
ran
his hands through his thinning blond hair.
Her voice was sharp. "Alfie! How many times must I ask you not to do
that?"
His hands jumped away from his hair guiltily. He looked at her in his
near
sighted way and pretended to be giving her his full attention as she spoke of
the gathering she expected that evening. But, behind his lackluster pale blue
eyes, his mind was busy. Who could he call on? Not the police... she was right
about that...
A name flashed across his mind. At first he rejected it. Somehow in the
house which they had returned to after the tragedy in the new house, the name
that had entered his mind seemed brash, new, anachronistic.
But the name was persistent. There was no one else to whom he could turn.
He would call him and take his grandmother's wrath when it came. It was too
important that something be done and quickly.
He glanced around the room and as he did so his resolution weakened. He
eyed the dark heavy drapes, the solid mahogany furniture, the incredible
variety of knick-knacks and dust collectors that were spread around the gloomy
old room. No he couldn't... But then, as though projected by some unseen
force,
a face appeared in his consciousness. He had met him at a reception in New
York... a gentleman who amused himself by dabbing in matters criminological...
what was that man's name? Cranston! Lamont Cranston!
He had exquisite manners, not even the old lady would be able to quibble
about that...
It took quite a while. First there was the question of the long distance
operator getting Cranston's address, then the wait for the lines to be
clear...
Alfie was nervous. He was warm and getting warmer. He was nervous about
flouting
his grandmother's wishes. He was nervous about that threatening note... And it
was the end of summer. It got quite hot in Chicago... But adding all these
factors together still didn't account for the warmth that Alfie felt.
He twiddled a pencil nervously as he waited. It was getting hotter. Sweat
gathered on his brow and ran down the side of his face. He shook his head
impatiently as he finally heard the operator say, "Chicago calling New
York"...
there, the connection was complete.
Holding the phone a little way from his ear, he rubbed the gathered sweat
away. He heard the click at the other end of the wire and a girl's voice he
did
not recognize, answered.
"Is Mr. Cranston there?"
"I'm sorry. He's not. May I take a message?" the girl asked.
This was the one thing that he had not thought of... Cranston not
there...
what was he to do? He looked away from the phone and gasped in horror. He knew
now why he was so warm!
Smoke was curling in under the door. The walls seemed to be giving off
heat. Suddenly, a flare of flame roared through and the door was gone.
Alfie gasped into the phone, "My name's Alfred Lively... in Chicago... we
need help... Cranston knows me! Tell him there's a murderous maniac on the
loose! My god... The heat... Fire!"
His voice had trailed off into a high-pitched squeak. He dropped the
phone
and pulling the smoking drapes to one side, looked out the window. He was one
flight up. He slammed the window up and stepped out onto a gabled roof that
led
out about six feet.
He ran to the edge and getting down on all fours grasped the edge and
lowered himself down. It was but a couple of feet from that position to the
ground.
All around him, out on the lawn were other members of his family. His
grandmother, face lighted up by the infernal glow from the fast burning house
said, "We couldn't imagine where you were. We called you but there was no
answer."
Alfie watching the blaze with frightened eyes said, "I was phoning. You
know that room is almost soundproof."
"Was, not is," his grandmother said dryly.
The top of the old house was aflame now. In the distance they could hear
the faint wail of approaching fire engines. It was impossible for them to do
much. The house was too far gone.
Alfie looked around at the people who covered the lawn. They looked like
part of a Dali landscape with the red of the flames, and the impeccable lawn
around them spotted with white, iron animals. Deers, dogs, indescribably badly
sculpted, they were part and parcel of the Lively estate and as such had been
kept in position.
His mother, wild-eyed, hair flying, looked like a witch, he thought
sourly. Good old Eugenia, you could depend on her to rise to a situation. She
was working herself up to hysterics if he knew the signs. And he did, only too
well.
His sister, Toni, was watching with a smile of derision. She seemed to
find the sorry spectacle possessed of an infinitely humorous quality. Her
blond
hair, combed and brushed till it gleamed in the fire's light, was a casque of
loveliness that framed her piquant features.
The servants made a back-drop behind his family. Somehow they seemed more
solid than did his people, more human, as though they had been made from a
sturdier mold.
The only one missing the fun, he thought satirically, was Danny Downs,
his
dead father's brother. Uncle Danny... he'd gone downtown to the "Loop" earlier
that day to pass some time with his old cronies. Idly, fleetingly, Alfie
envied
his uncle. His "common" uncle as the family called him. The black sheep of the
domain. Black sheep he might well be, but he certainly got a lot more fun out
of life than the rest of them put together. There was another missing, Uncle
Harry - but Alfie knew where he was...
The fire seemed to be getting angrier. Great roars of sound came from the
dying house now. The fire had made some kind of a thoroughfare for itself and
a
back draft was aiding the destruction of the funeral pyre that was the
ancestral
home of the Lively's.
The fire engines clanged up the long winding private road that ran like a
mad snake from the gate to the house. The roof with all its gables was falling
in. The firemen looked at it and made a sort of resigned unanimous shrug.
There
was not much they could be expected to do.
Alfie looked from the house to the fire engines and his mind conjured up
a
laughing, maniacal face. The madman who had shot Alfie's father, shot him
twice,
once while he breathed and once long after his lungs had stopped ever moving
again, must be behind this pyromaniacal blaze. That was Alfie's thought as his
grandmother walked to his side.
"Not a word about that..." her voice trailed off but her tone was
meaningful.
He shook his head no. "I won't say anything."
He would not say another word. But all his hopes were pinned on the broad
shoulders of one man. Lamont Cranston!
Any one of the elegantly trimmed shrubs might hide a skulking figure,
brain warped by confinement in a cell. Warped brain, warped even further by
the
two years that had penned him away from society.
A shadow made real by the flickering despairing flames of the gutted
house
seemed momentarily implicit with life. Alfie stared at the shadow with bulging
eyes! Was the deadly figure of Foster there? Could even a maniac have the
fearlessness to lurk so near the center of attention?
He breathed a sigh of relief, it was a shadow, nothing more. That was one
shadow that could not harm him. But night would bring a thousand more and
every
one might hold the crouching figure of a murderous mind, cankered and
sadistic!
He hoped Cranston would get there soon... Otherwise...
CHAPTER II
IN New York, that muffled cry for help was passed along a certain series
of patterns. The person who had answered the phone was but an employee of a
service. A telephone answering service that took care of your calls for a
nominal fee. They recorded the relevant parts of the conversation and then
repeated them to you at your request.
It was a wonderful time and money saver for harassed business men, for
doctors out on call, for people who could not afford a full-time secretary.
All calls that came in for Lamont Cranston went through a special
service.
Instead of the operator merely jotting down the time of the call and the name
of
the person calling as well as their business, there was a little more to it
when
Cranston's number was rung. A dictaphone was switched on by the operator who
never heard the details of the conversation. When the light on her board
re-lit, she pulled the plug and then turned the dictaphone off.
None of the girls knew this, but at odd times through the day, Burbank,
whom they considered just part of the furnishings, a supervisor of some sort,
would re-play the record.
Burbank, one of The Shadow's oldest and most reliable aides, had a
lightning-swift mind. He it was who gathered together slight stray bits of
rumor; the slightest deviation from the normal, and Burbank's brain would
swing
into action like the finely made machine it was.
He correlated the data, weighed it up, and if he thought it warranted The
Shadow's attention, he made a breakdown of the relevant facts and sent them
along to his mentor.
The Shadow had come to regard Burbank's opinions as being practically
infallible. If some sixth sense of Burbank's led him to wonder, it was The
Shadow who went out and dug around. Some of The Shadow's most fantastic
successes had been the result of his following up some seemingly irrelevant
odds and ends that Burbank had passed along.
Burbank listened to the recording of Alfred Lively's voice. The urgency
was unmistakable. So it was, that a long-distance call to California was made.
The call caught The Shadow just as he was tying together the last clues
of
the case of the "Blackest Mail." Burbank's call, mentioning the fact that
Lively
had phoned Lamont Cranston led The Shadow to doff his cape and as Cranston to
get aboard a plane that took him from sunny California to hot and steaming
Chicago.
He leaned back in the cab that was whizzing up Michigan Boulevard and
looked at the six-lane highway. He had little or no information. Therefore his
mind was in neutral.
He fanned himself with his ever-present briefcase and wondered idly how
it
was possible that all the water in Lake Michigan did not cool off the air at
least a trifle.
The cabbie said, "If one more guy asks, 'Is it hot enough for you?' I'm
going to flatten him, so help me!"
"It must be pretty hot sitting over the engine the way you have to," said
Cranston sympathetically.
The cabbie weaved in and out of the traffic for a while and then,
evidently only because of the sympathy in Cranston's voice, for he had said
nothing when Cranston gave him the address, said, "Do you know what you're
letting yourself in for out there?"
"Letting myself in for? What do you mean?"
"That address... there ain't nothing out there but a real estate
development that never developed!"
"I am sure of the address; I checked at the airport."
"Then you are going to that house. Brrr... gives me the chills even in
this weather!"
The cabbie looked honestly distressed at the prospect. "You know what
happened out there a couple of years ago, don't you?"
"I have heard some rumors," Cranston said.
"I thought the family closed the joint down after the murder."
"If they did, they have reopened it."
The cabbie snapped his fingers. "I got it! On accounta the housing
shortage... I betcha they had to move back to that house when their old dump
burned down to the ground!"
Cranston sighed. So Burbank had smelled out trouble again. That frenzied
phone conversation, so short and unilluminating, had meant more to Burbank
than
it would have to most ears.
The cab drove on into the north. The stockyards, the "Loop," the business
section of Chicago was left far behind. They were in the swanky section of
town
now, and going further up all the time.
They passed lovely homes, beautifully kept, landscaped within an inch of
their lives. The meter on the cab ticked along like an animated cash register.
The section was less built up now. They were past even the lordly homes with
the many-acred grounds around them.
The cab drove off the main highway into a less traveled road. This road
led to one that had never felt concrete. It was gravel. That road gave out and
far ahead, on a little rise, Cranston could see a tiny house. Made small by
the
distance, it was perfect. Like a gem, the wilderness that surrounded it made a
perfect backdrop for it. It seemed more like a stage-set than reality.
The designer had used taste, the most modern materials, long walls of
solid glass that welcomed light, instead of shutting it out in fear, the way
old houses did. The roof, broad and low, was set at a slight slant. Eaves
projecting out had a purpose that Cranston recognized. They had been designed
so that in summer, the rays of the sun were shut out and kept the house cool.
In winter the same design allowed for the different angle of the sun so that
it
had full entry.
The cabbie was impressed. He whistled in admiration. "Chee, what a dump!
Looks like somethin' out of a movie about the future!"
It did indeed. It looked like what it was, a design for living that made
a
home a flexible thing, instead of crowding people into a box helter-skelter.
He vocalized what Cranston was thinking. "It seems worse, don't it, when
you figure that a killing had to happen there?"
"Yes," Cranston thought, murder belongs in old houses, ugly houses, not
in
a thing like this where there should only be beauty, serenity and purposeful
living.
The cab stopped in front of the door that faced the road. Cranston paid
the sizable bill and increased it by a thumping good tip. The cabbie grinned
his thanks and was gone as the door opened.
"I say! This is a pleasant surprise, Cranston old man! I knew you were in
Chicago and hoped you'd be able to get out to see us! Come in! I'm being
butler
while Darrel has a case of nerves. He's getting to be pretty much of an
old-timer you know. Butling is aging him fast."
Alfie was talking fast and loud. It was obvious that he wanted Cranston
to
play up to his lead.
"To tell you the truth, I'm imposing on you. I was in a hot, stuffy hotel
room and then I remembered your invitation," Cranston smiled.
A crotchety old voice interrupted. "Alfie! Don't stand there in the
doorway. Invite your company in!"
Alfie bit his lip but obeyed. He guided Cranston into a room that gave
even Cranston pause. Designed as a unit for the functional house that it was
part of, it now looked like something from a nightmare. For, instead of the
plastic and foam rubber furniture that the glass-walled room cried out for, it
was stuffed any old way, helter-skelter, jam packed full of Victorian
horse-hair monstrosities.
Perched on a straight backed wooden chair, the elderly Mrs. Lively sat
and
knitted. Her hands, half-mittened in crocheted net, she looked as
anachronistic
as a long boat on a Flying Fortress. She nodded at the introduction and her
eyes took in Cranston's face with a searching scrutiny that would have upset a
lesser man. He stood quietly while her eyes probed him.
Her nod was some kind of inner acceptance for she said, "Won't you join
us
in some tea, Mr. Cranston?"
His soul revolted at tea in that weather, but it was seemingly an
accolade
of acceptance so he murmured politely that he'd be delighted.
"You see us at our worst, Mr. Cranston," she said. "It seems there are no
decent houses to be bought, or rented, due to conditions... Therefore we have
been forced to take refuge in this abomination of my dead son's! But believe
me, as soon as it is possible, we will again be where we belong. In a house
that is made with a decent regard for a person's sensibilities." She glared at
the glass wall that made one side of the room.
Of course, she had been the one to so badly mix-furnish the house. She
had
probably thrown the furniture that belonged in this room down into the cellar.
A silent maid placed the tea things on a dollied, fretworked table to one
side of the matriarch.
Mrs. Lively looked them over and nodded. "Call the rest of the family,
please, Katrine."
While they waited she made and poured the tea with a punctilious regard
for all the amenities of tea making.
Alfie cleared his throat and said, "Lamont, let's..."
"I see no reason," said Mrs. LiveIy, "why you should take such an undue
familiarity with Mr. Cranston!" She glared at Alfie, who moved his lips
silently for a second and then gritted his teeth together. Wouldn't she ever
realize that he was twenty-seven, not seven? But he gained solace in thinking
of his bravery in calling Cranston. If she knew why he was there!
There was a short silence broken by the entry of the family.
Cranston filed the faces away in his photographic memory. Eugenia,
flighty, forty and all that it connoted. Toni, somewhere in her twenties, more
than pretty, but sullen and with a strange expression around her eyes.
"You may be seated, Mr. Cranston. Toni never seems to light anywhere long
enough to sit!"
The tea things were passed round and Cranston, balancing a teacup in its
saucer on one knee, nibbled at a petit four as the talk, deliberately light
and
non-consequential, eddied around him.
Making conversation he said, "I've been out on the Coast for a while. I'm
afraid the climate there has undone me. I was not prepared for this..." His
gesture took in the all-pervading heat.
"You were on the Coast!" Eugenia leaned forward till one of her double
chins was wabbling and said breathlessly, "Then you must have seen Mustapha
Ali!"
Cranston blinked and considered. Must have seen Mustapha Ali? In some
vague nook in the back of his mind he remembered the name. He was trying to
place it as she burbled on, "Isn't he the most wonderful thing? His
interpretations of the "Vedanta" opened a whole new field to me... It was as
though I had been looking at a lily bud... never seeing what its ultimate
beauty could be...
"And then Mustapha showed me the way and the lily bud forced its way up
through the muck, reached the air, and opened its petals to the light!"
She made gestures to show the lily forcing its way through mud and up
into
the light.
Cranston had remembered now. Ali was one of the ten thousand cultists who
homed out in the salubrious west. Eugenia seemed determined to guide him
through a whole course in "Vedanta." She chattered on like a waterfall on a
quiet night.
Toni said, "Mother, must you?" Her voice was crisp, incisive and uncivil.
The waterfall stopped, suddenly dammed. A silence descended and Cranston
was wondering what to say to break it when he saw that the elderly Mrs. Lively
was listening, head cocked like an aged setter.
The sound that had caught her attention was that of a door slamming. Mrs.
Lively nodded her head to herself.
Aside from the door's sound, there was no other slightest disturbance
till
suddenly, right outside the door of the room they were in, a course, jovial
voice roared, "Hi, look! Hi, look... it's just about to start! The big show
with more freaks collected under one roof than at any other time, in any other
clime! Hi look... Hi, look..."
There was a measured cadence to the voice, like that of a carnival barker
haranguing an unresponsive audience. It went on, "This mammoth aggregation of
unparalleled wonders is to be seen for ten cents... one dime, the tenth part
of
a dollar, step right up... it won't break you, but it can't make you! So step
right up to the counter, ladeez and gents and buy a ticket for..."
Mrs. Lively was out of her chair and at the door. She opened it with
repressed fury. "Come in and stop that caterwauling, Danny Downs!"
He stepped into the room looking as out of place with his meaty good
looks
and loud-checked suit as a three-headed calf. His face was rosy and cheerful.
He
winked at Cranston and said, "Hi, stranger, how'd you let yourself get
corralled
in here on a hot day? Place to stay is in a nice dark, cool barroom!"
His grin was so infectious that a likable quality seemed to exude from
his
pores, thought Alfie. If he only could be more like Uncle Danny instead of...
Danny Downs refused the proffered drink of tea and said, "None of that
slop for me. Rusts a man's tubes, I always say."
"Yes, don't you!" Toni Downs eyed her uncle with badly concealed dislike.
Alfie said, "Well, now you've met all of us." He grinned shyly. "All the
Lively's and the Downs."
"Not quite all," boomed Danny. "Don't forget Foster... and old Uncle
Harry... everybody seems to want to forget Foster and really to forget Harry!"
He shook his head in horror at such unnaturalness.
Foster, Cranston knew, was the one who had been incarcerated in the
asylum, but who was Uncle Harry?
The room was quiet for a moment and then Danny, grinning, dropped a
bombshell. He threw a tabloid out on the table where they all could see it.
Screaming headlines proclaimed, "Maniac On The Loose!"
The subheads read, "Foster Downs, Mad Killer, Breaks Out!"
The heat seemed to be sucked out of the room as though by a giant vacuum
cleaner. Fear horripilated down Alfie's spine. He saw the dateline on the
paper. It was yesterday's. Foster had been out from behind the bars! It had
been he who had set fire to the old house! Death was on the loose and none
could know where its clammy hand would fall!
"You should all read some other papers besides that stuffy sheet you get.
They never have any news till it's dead!"
The word "dead" hung in the room as though suspended there by an
invisible
hand.
CHAPTER III
LAMONT CRANSTON was washing up for dinner. He had no change of clothes
with him and was regretting it; wishing that he could don fresh linen, as he
heard a muffled knock on his door.
He long-legged his way to the door, subconsciously aware of the fact that
the sun's setting had cooled off the air a trifle.
Alfred was at the door. He said, "May I come in?"
"Surely. I was hoping you would. I'm not too sure I have the various
relationships of the family straight in my mind. Clear them up for me, will
you?"
"Well..." Alfie marshaled his facts. "Harriet Lively is my grandmother,
you know that. She had one son, my father. He was... shot... by Foster, you
know."
"So I've been told. Go ahead, please."
"And one daughter, who was my father's twin. My grandfather found it
amusing to name the twins Eugene, that was my dad, and Eugenia... that Toni's
mother. Foster is Toni's brother."
"What about their father, Mr. Downs?"
"He's here one day and not the next. Says he can't stand my grandmother."
Alfie's voice showed how he wished he had enough courage not to be intimidated
by the matriarch. "He's been away most of the summer. Probably be popping in
any day now."
"And Uncle Danny?"
Alfie grinned. "Just call him the black sheep. He's Downs' brother."
"That clears up everything but..." Cranston paused and Alfie answered the
unspoken question.
"The black sheep mentioned another uncle... Harry. You are curious about
him?"
Cranston nodded.
"Follow me." Alfie turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
He led Cranston through the house to a small and inconspicuous door.
"He's
a little peculiar. Don't pay too much attention to Harry. He's really all
right,
once you get to know him."
The door opened into another of the magnificent rooms that the architect
had made with precision and regard. The room was still magnificent, but the
contents were at first sight a little baffling.
A bright light hung down from the ceiling over a primitive sort of
turning
wheel. A man sat turning the wheel with one foot. He held an abrasive cloth
with
the other. He was polishing a big disc of glass.
"Harry, I want you to meet a friend of mine, Lamont Cranston. This is
Harry Parker."
Harry stood up. He was stoop shouldered and ascetic looking. He held out
his left for Cranston to shake. His right hand had darted into his pocket as
the door had opened.
"Fine looking glass you have there." Cranston's voice was full of
admiration.
"The best." Harry grinned in childish delight. "Like to see my old
glass?"
At Cranston's nod, Harry scuttled over to a wooden chest and opened it,
revealing a home-made, but good-looking telescope.
"How many power?" asked Cranston.
"Fifteen." Harry was full of pride. "Made every part of it myself. But
this new one is really going to be a beauty. It's going to be even better than
the one..." His face wrinkled up ludicrously. He was ready to cry.
Alfie said quickly, "The last one he made was destroyed in the fire
yesterday.
"I had just finished it," said the pathetic creature. "And I know that
'scope would have been the one to prove all my theories! Why did the house
have
to burn down... why? Why?"
Alfie patted Harry on the shoulder and signaled for Cranston to leave.
Harry, not thinking, took his right hand out of his pocket with a handkerchief
in it. He wiped his eyes and all saw what he had been self-conscious about.
His
right hand was small. The size of a baby's. It was a perfect ten-month-old
child's hand. Perfect but for a web of flesh that joined the fingers together,
duck fashion.
Cranston watched Alfie close the door.
"You see why grandmother doesn't like to have Harry around too much. He
eats alone."
"Luckily for him, he was away from the house yesterday when it burned
down. The chauffeur took him in to town to buy some parts for his 'scope."
"But I thought he said he built them from scratch?"
Alfie shrugged. "We pretend he does. All he really does is buy the parts
and put them together. I've lost count of how many he's built. He gets one all
set, takes one look at the moon, has a good cry and then starts to build
another."
"Why does the sight of the moon affect him that way?"
"Ummm...Well..." Alfie looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. "You see, he
wasn't too far off till Foster got bad. Harry idealized Foster because Foster
was good-looking. When Foster started to go, he got the idea that he could see
people on the moon. I think he was just teasing Harry. But he'd look through a
telescope and describe all the things he saw on the moon, lovely women, the
animals... Oh, he had it all worked out. But he'd never let Harry look through
his telescope!"
"I see."
"Just before my father... was... you know, Harry tried to grab the 'scope
out of Foster's hands and Foster got in a fury and broke it over Harry's head.
It was quite messy..."
"And ever since that, the poor soul has been trying to make a tube with
which to see what Foster saw."
They were near the dining room. As the clear voices came out, Cranston
thought, on the surface, a normal dinner party like any one, anywhere in the
country... but underneath...
THE food had been good and well served. Vichyssoise, ice cold and
delicate. Some iced fish mousse, a salad with an exquisite dressing, and some
baked Alaska for dessert. It was the perfect light meal for the end of a muggy
day.
Cranston toyed with his demi-tasse and listened to Toni. He had finally
found something to which she was responsive. All her coldness and barriers
were
down. She was saying, "Toulouse Lautrec, I am just too passionately fond
of..."
She giggled and said, "Never end your sentences with a preposition."
Cranston smiled in return and said, "Remember the little boy who said,
'Why did you bring that book I didn't want to be read from out of up for?'"
She smiled. "That's the one to end them all. But about modern art..."
"Modern art!" Uncle Danny mimicked her tone. "Modern my eye! All it looks
like to me is the signs we used to have out in front of the old 'ten-in-one'
shouts! The belly signs! They were just as well done as those characters you
drool over!"
Truthfully, Cranston in his heart of hearts agreed with Danny, but aloud
摘要：

HAPPYDEATHDAYbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"September1946.Amaniacrunsamokandawholefamilyisdoomedtodie,whileTheShadowfacesanenflamedfoeinafiercestruggleagainstdreadfulpowersofevil...CHAPTERITHEREarefamilies,who,onceproudandhaughty,genteelandhonorable,withdrawtoomuchfromthewo...

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