Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 316 - Jabberwocky Thrust

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JABBERWOCKY THRUST

Maxwell Grant

http://www.blackmask.com

? CHAPTER I

? CHAPTER II

? CHAPTER III

? CHAPTER IV

? CHAPTER V

? CHAPTER VI

? CHAPTER VII

? CHAPTER VIII

? CHAPTER IX

? CHAPTER X

? CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER I

"OH MY ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" the White Rabbit said as he hurried down the long

hallway.

Alice watched him with a puzzled frown on her young, lovely face. From where she was standing she

could see the White Knight out in the center of the big room. The White Knight moved his horse-shaped

helmet a bit.

The Duchess, holding a piglet under her arm, stomped down the center of the room. The man dressed in

newspapers walked toward the Duchess.

He said, "You dropped your pepper shaker, Duchess."

She nodded majestically. She took the pepper shaker and shook it all over the little pig.

Alice looked further down the room. At the door the Frog Footman took an invitation from the Red

Queen and gestured for the Red Queen to come in.

The caterpillar sitting on a big mushroom took a big puff of smoke from his hookah. He blew the smoke

out in perfect circles.

"Have to watch these little details, you know," the White Knight said, moving the box of his own

invention a little higher on his hip. It was upside down and the cover of it hanging down rattled against his

armor.

He looked down at it and said, "Wonderful thing, that box."

Alice took up her cue as she walked to the White Knight. "But you know everything's falling out. The

cover's loose."

"My own invention, you know," the White Knight said and then looked at the box. "Keeps the rain

out—carrying it this way, you know."

"Then all the things must have fallen out!" The White Rabbit looked impatiently at the box. "The box is no

good with nothing in it."

The White Knight was about to toss it away when he suddenly noticed a desk nearby. He placed it there.

He said to Alice, "You know why I do that, don't you?"

"No."

"In hopes some bees may make a nest in it." He smiled. "Then I should get all the honey!"

The Red Queen came up in great agitation. "What's the French for fiddle dee dee?"

"Fiddle dee dee's not English," Alice said.

"Whoever said it was?" the Red Queen asked impatiently.

Alice said, "You tell me what language fiddle dee dee is and I'll tell you the French for it."

The Red Queen drew herself up haughtily. "Queens never make bargains!"

Tweedledum and Tweedledee who were standing next to what seemed to be a well sat in the center of

the floor, looked down into the well. A sign on the side of it said in big letters 'Treacle'. Tweedledum

turned the handle that let a little pail go down to the fluid at the bottom of the well and said, "I hope it isn't

really treacle."

"It better not be," Tweedledee said. "I've stood about as much of all this as I can."

It wasn't treacle. It was instead a lovely combination of stout and champagne. This is a drink sometimes

called, euphoniously enough, black velvet.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum were both drinking deeply when there was a commotion across the room.

They spun as one man and saw the White Knight falling face down in the center of the room.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum dropped their glasses and ran to the White Knight. The man on the floor

gasped. "Ugh..."

Tweedledum asked, "Is this some of this tomfoolery or is this legit?"

"I don't remember it in the holy writings." Tweedledee said and removed his mask. Lamont Cranston's

thin aquiline face looked oddly incongruous staring out of the fat costume of Tweedledee.

He dropped to his knees next to the White Knight. The armor, Cranston realized with a start of surprise,

was real. In the book it was tin, of course.

The White Knight pulled his mask off and his face was strained. He gestured Cranston away and said in

a low voice, "Send me the White Rabbit."

Dropping his gloves with excitement, as though he were in reality the White Rabbit, the man dressed so

bizarrely took Cranston's place next to the fallen man.

Cranston was to regret his instinctive politeness. For he stepped back and did not hear the whispered

colloquy between the White Knight and the White Rabbit.

Standing to one side as he was, he saw a bread knife lying on the floor. The handle was about two feet

away from the blade proper. An ugly crack showed with what strength the knife had been jabbed at the

armor-plated White Knight.

The White Rabbit walked away from the man on the floor and, picking his gloves up off the floor, went

out of the room. Alice watched him go, and again her lovely forehead wrinkled in thought. She was

completely at sea.

Cranston helped the White Knight to his feet. The man who had been attacked looked at the broken

knife lying on the floor and a twisted smile crossed his face. His visor was pushed up and the

horse-shaped helmet was on the back of his head.

He said, "A little invention of my own. Armor... real armor."

He was not hurt, Cranston realized. It was the force of the blow from the knife, so strong as to break the

knife, that had thrown him off balance. Once down, the weight of the armor prevented him from getting

up.

The White Knight whispered to Cranston, "You see, I was not having hallucinations of persecution.

That's the fourth time!"

Remembering how unbelieving he had been, Cranston nodded in accord. "I certainly thought you were

being a little... nervous, when you told me about that car that almost hit you, and the brick that fell off the

construction job so near you..."

"To say nothing," the White Knight said, "of the time I was in the steam room of my club and the heat

increased so unbearably... And the 'bad' sea food I ate that put me to bed for a day..."

It certainly added up. But truly, thought Cranston, this was the first murder attempt that could not be

passed off as an accident. This was real. This should give him something to get to work on.

But it didn't.

Investigate as he would, question all the people in that strangely conducted ball, press pryingly into where

who was at the time of the abortive stabbing, blank walls rose at every side.

No one remembered who was near the host, the White Knight, let alone saw the arm come down with

the knife in the hand.

The girl dressed as Alice did remember, and said so when questioned, that the White Rabbit had been

near. But so, for that matter, had the man dressed in newspaper.

All the masks had been removed while Cranston was doing his best to get a lead to who the attempted

killer was. The people's faces, white with strain, ugly, in some cases with anger at being subjected to

interrogation, looked even more strange with the masks off than they had with them on.

The end result, as Cranston confided to Tweedledum, who was in reality that ace homicide man, Joe

Cardona, was zero.

The White Rabbit and the man dressed in paper were the nearest. They were close enough for one of

them to have been the stabber. But— and this was a big but—the man dressed in paper was Francis

Royal, whose business depended on the host, Bruce Ten Eyk.

Royal said, "Don't you realize, sir, that if Mr. Ten Eyk were to die, God forbid, my contract might not be

renewed at midnight... and if it isn't, I may as well close up my factory."

There was a pause. Cranston looked at Marshall. The man dressed in paper said, "It looks more to me

as if it were one of my competitors who wants Ten Eyk dead. They all know how long I've known him.

They know that while he lives my contract will be renewed almost automatically. What would happen if

Ten Eyk were to die, I shudder to think. The vice president of the concern certainly doesn't love me,

that's a sure thing."

"Who's he?" Cranston asked.

The man dressed in paper pointed down to the end of the room where the Duchess was petting her pig.

"The Duchess. That's Joe Sarren."

"Why doesn't he like you?"

"Thinks he can get a better price from one of my competitors. That's about all. He's strictly business.

Friendship, or the length of time I've been dealing with Ten Eyk doesn't enter into it."

"I see," Cranston said, "any of your competitors here?"

"Only Bernie Marshall."

"How is he dressed?"

"Oh. I thought you knew. He's the one Ten Eyk talked to after the stabbing. The White Rabbit."

Joe Cardona, looking completely ridiculous as Tweedledum, looked around the room and said, "Hey,

where'd the Rabbit go? He never came back!"

That brought on another search. Cranston, Cardona and the servants all combined forces and went

through the house like a vacuum cleaner. But of Mr. Bernard Marshall, whilom White Rabbit, there was

no sign.

CHAPTER II

TWEEDLEDEE and Tweedledum finally went back to the "treacle well". Cranston said, "For a murder in

Wonderland, I suppose we should have gone to school with the mock turtle."

"Huh?" Cardona looked blank.

"Where they teach reeling and writhing. There's certainly going to be plenty of writhing before we're done

with this. Look at them... men indistinguishable from women because of the costumes, no one knowing

what they look like, all faces concealed behind masks; yes, we should have taken lessons in reeling and

writhing."

"Oh, Lamont, cut it out. I never know when you're quoting from that blasted book and when you're

talking sense."

The Mad Hatter, huge hat tilted back on his head, wandered by talking to himself. He muttered, "The

time, tch tch, if only time hadn't become furious all this wouldn't have happened."

Cardona nodded at the Mad Hatter. "There, see what I mean? Is that from the book?"

"More or less." Cranston was keeping as much attention as he could on his host, the White Knight. There

was some kind of an argument going on. The Duchess, pig under arm, Alice, the man dressed in paper,

and there, the Mad Hatter was joining in the argument...

Cardona was saying plaintively, "I don't dig all this. What makes?"

"Umm..." Cranston said with only half his attention, "these people are all members of the Dodgson cult."

"Hey, wait a minute. How'd a guy name of Dodgson get in this? All I even know for sure about Alice in

Wonderland is that it was written by Lewis Carroll."

"Carroll was a pseudonym for Dodgson who was a mathematics professor. He was a bit off-field with his

masterpieces, Alice and Through The Looking Glass, so he published them under the pen name."

"I see."

"These people at this masque ball are joined together by their love for the two books, just as the Baker

Street Irregulars are by their love of Sherlock Holmes.

"Just as the Baker Street Irregulars meet to talk over and argue some fine point of the Holmes saga, so

do these people of the Alice cult meet. Then once a year they have one of these balls. This is the

twenty-first, I understand."

"How come," Cardona asked shrewdly, "that so many people from Ten Eyk's business are members?"

"Obvious, isn't it? They're buttering up the boss. I don't suppose half of them are really interested."

Cranston saw that some kind of agreement had been come to in the argument across the hall. The host,

Ten Eyk, rattling his armor, was walking off.

Cranston approached the circle where the argument had become even more vehement. The Duchess was

saying, "Of all the ridiculous things, of course Ten Eyk is right. Jabberwocky begins: 'Twas brillig and the

slithy toves', not 'boves'."

Ten Eyk called over his shoulder, "I'm going to get my first edition of Through the Looking Glass. That

should settle the argument!"

The Mad Hatter said, "I don't know; in an obscure edition I have, it's 'boves' and not 'toves'."

Cardona wiped his forehead. Of all the silly things... 'Twas brillig...' that didn't mean anything! As for

toves or boves... he made a face. At the moment he wished with all his heart and soul that he was over

on San Juan Hill battling with some bad boys. There, at least, a blackjack settled arguments. And they

were settled.

The Mad Hatter said, "No use arguing any further. Ten Eyk will settle it once and for all. Alice, may I

have you for a partner at croquet?"

Alice smiled and joined him. "I'd be glad to, but my flamingo seems to have flown away."

As they walked out of earshot, the bewildered Cardona heard the Mad Hatter say, "Doesn't matter too

much, I guess. The hedgehogs have run away, too."

The people, the fantastically dressed people swirled around Cardona's brain like a Welsh-rarebit

nightmare. He shook his head wearily. This was just too much of a muchness. He looked for and found

Cranston as a rock to which to cling.

At the door, the Frog Footman bellowed out the names of "The Ten of Clubs, the Jack of Diamonds,

the..."

Cardona did a double-take as the footman's voice rumbled on. So long that Cardona wondered if a

whole deck of cards was coming in. The first of the new guests came in and for a reeling second it

seemed to Cardona that his wild guess was right. For the man was the Ten of Clubs.

Dressed so as to resemble the court card was the Jack of Diamonds. All the guests who were dressed as

cards wore what could have been sandwich signs. Only, Cardona realized wearily, instead of advertising

something sensible like Benny's Meat Market, these sandwich signs were painted to look like cards in a

pack.

Cranston said, "Ah, now the croquet game can start. The hoops are here."

"Ah no, Lamont, don't do this to me. What do you mean..." Cardona gulped as he saw one of the men

dressed as the four of clubs suddenly bend over so his back was arched. The Duchess, holding a

plaintive looking flamingo under her arm, was trying to bat a hedgehog which lay rolled in a protective

ball on the floor. The Duchess was trying to drive the hedgehog under the arch of the card Cardona saw.

Just as, by a wild swipe and lucky swing, the Duchess managed to propel the hedgehog toward the arch

of the man-card, the man suddenly got up and stretched. The hedgehog rolled by, missing completely.

The Duchess roared, "Off with his head!"

Cardona made his way back to the treacle well and gulped down some black velvet. Cranston was at his

side smiling. "Too much for you?"

"Cranston, this is a madhouse. This is no masquerade, these people are as batty as..."

Alice passing by, swirling in a weird dance step with the Mad Hatter, said, "Do bats eat cats? Do cats

eat bats?"

Cranston chuckled to himself. If the hard-boiled cops down at Center Street could see their Joe Cardona

at this moment! His face was as blank as if he had been pole axed.

"'Do bats eat cats?'" Cardona said. "Lamont, does that make any sense to you?"

Before Lamont could answer his friend, the man dressed in paper brushed up to them rudely and pushed

Cardona away from the "treacle well". He said, "Pardon me, but I need a drink worse than you do!"

He gulped the champagne and stout mixture as if it were water. There were spots of sweat on his

forehead. He pushed his mask up and it knocked his paper triangle of a hat off.

The White Queen, seeing that he was upset, came over like a good hostess and said, "Bats, what's the

matter?"

Cardona groaned inwardly. More bats. But he brightened a little as the White Queen and the man in the

paper suit talked. It was clear that Bats was a nickname of some kind.

The man in the paper suit said, "There I was, going along minding my own business, a little tight, and why

not? When, down at the end of the hall over there," he gestured to the left, "I saw someone coming

toward me.

"I stopped. The person coming toward me stopped. I put my right hand up. His right hand went up..."

Cardona suddenly realized that Cranston, at his side, was listening attentively. Could this have some

relevance? Was there some sense in this insanity?

The man in the paper suit, Francis Royal, better known as Bats to his friends, was saying, and his voice

was frightened, "I don't know if I can make this seem real to you, but suddenly, as that other figure

repeated every move I made, I became frightened. I turned on my heel and walked back toward the ball

room. I couldn't help it. I sneaked a look back over my shoulder. There, facing me, was the man's face.

Covered with the same mask as mine, it stared at me.

"Only then, so confused was I, that it occurred to me that this other figure was dressed just as I was. He

was dressed in a paper suit."

Cardona, figuring it out, sneered to himself at the stupidity of this jerk. Of course, he was looking in a

mirror.

Bats continued, "I ran a little, I don't mind telling you I was scared to death... and I'm no coward... then,

as I took a last fleeting look over my shoulder, the explanation occurred to me and I felt like an idiot.

"Of course, I'd been looking in a mirror... I calmed down and came back here to join all of you... and

then, just as I was all over my scare, I thought..."

"You thought," said Mrs. Ten Eyk, "what I have been thinking all along."

"Yes," said the man in the paper suit, and he wiped more sweat off his brow, "I suddenly realized there is

no mirror there."

Cranston looked interrogatively at the White Queen who was his hostess. She nodded. "There is no

mirror there. Never has been."

Cardona, the least sensitive of men, suddenly felt a cold chill trickle down his back. This was too much.

This meant... what the hell did it mean?

Cranston said, "This is something I feared. If there is anything amiss here, if anyone does intend to hurt

Mr. Ten Eyk, the easiest way would be to come here disguised..."

The scream, corny as the second act curtain of a bad mystery melodrama, came then. It tore at their

nerves, screeched down their sensory systems like a finger nail on a blackboard. It seemed to go on and

on, paralyzing them by its unexpectedness.

Then it stopped, and in some ways the silence was worse.

CHAPTER III

TWEEDLEDEE and Tweedledum, waddling figures meant for fun, ran as fast as the padding in their

costumes allowed. Out into the hall, that hall where the mirror had to be but wasn't, up the stairs that led

to the library, ran Cardona and Cranston.

Even then, under this stress, Cranston found time to glance at his wristwatch. Ten-forty-seven. They ran

on. It seemed an endless run.

Across the balcony they ran. A man, detective written all over him, stood flat-footedly in the hall. Nearby

was a chair. It was tilted back by the force with which he had leaped from it.

Cardona snapped, "Well, stupid, watcha waitin' for?"

The man gulped but didn't answer. It was clear that he was held by the same paralysis which had frozen

the merrymakers downstairs.

In the room which the detective had been keeping under observation, they found the White Knight.

Held upright by the armor, his body sat perched. In front of the body on the desk a book lay open.

Behind Cardona and Cranston, the detective retched. He said, "His head... where's his head?"

There was no puzzle to that. It was on the floor where it had rolled. The horse-shaped armor helmet had

fallen off it.

Hard boiled, phlegmatic Cardona said in a curiously small voice, "'Off with his head'."

Behind the headless figure, a wood fire burned brightly. Cranston, moving as though propelled from a

catapult, leaped to the fireplace. Cardona watched him.

Cranston reached into the blazing fire with complete disregard for his skin and dragged out a flaming

mess. He dropped it on the deep piled rug, and then stamped the fire out of it.

Edged in black, like a mourning announcement, Cardona saw what might have once been a suit. A paper

suit. Nothing was left of what had been a paper hat but a folded ridge, which had resisted the teeth of the

flame.

The trio, manhunters all, stared at that charred remnant of a gay masquerade costume.

Head swiveling as though pushed by an invisible hand, Cardona turned away from the head and the

paper suit. He looked at the book that lay in front of the armored headless body.

He bent down over the desk, avoiding the cadaver. The book was opened at what seemed to be a

poem. But it didn't make any sense.

"Jabberwocky."

"'Twas brillig and the slithy toves...'" The poem went on like that. Cardona, not even thinking, let his eye

race over words like 'gyre and gimble, vorpal, beamish, mimsy... all mimsy were the borogroves'.

The dead man's fingers, curled as though holding a non existent glass, rested near the beginning of the

poem. His forefinger pointed to the first line.

Looking once again, Cardona said, "He was right. It's 'toves', not 'boves'."

Cranston said inattentively, "Of course, any fool knows that."

"How do you mean that? You mean I'm worse than a fool?"

That snapped Cranston out of his introversion. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Joe, but that business of the

argument about the word struck a false note downstairs. I wonder if whoever started the argument didn't

do it in an attempt to make Ten Eyk come upstairs... to his death."

"I see, you mean that any real Alice in Wonderland lover would know the whole poem by heart?"

"If not the whole poem, at least the first line. It's as famous in its way as 'the time has come, the walrus

said'."

"Sure, even I know that. Something about cabbages and kings?"

Cranston nodded. There was a flurry of sound at the door. They turned. Cardona thought of something.

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JABBERWOCKYTHRUSTMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI?CHAPTERII?CHAPTERIII?CHAPTERIV?CHAPTERV?CHAPTERVI?CHAPTERVII?CHAPTERVIII?CHAPTERIX?CHAPTERX?CHAPTERXICHAPTERI"OHMYearsandwhiskers,howlateit'sgetting!"theWhiteRabbitsaidashehurrieddownthelonghallway.A...

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