Curtain for a Jester (23 page)

Jerry crouched by the body, peered at it, and thought that what he did was senseless. The smallish man in the gray suit—but the suit was no longer entirely gray—was as beyond help as—as Humpty Dumpty, Jerry thought, as Humpty Dumpty fallen from the wall, as—Damn this place, Jerry thought, and stood up.

“Never saw him before,” he said. “From what Bill told us, a man named Dewsnap. Managed the place for Wilmot—
Pam!
”

Pam did not appear to be listening. She was looking up at the mezzanine, at an empty office dimly lighted by a single bulb in the ceiling, at an open sliding window. She did not appear to hear Jerry, but she had heard.

“Mr. Dewsnap,” she said. “Yes. Somebody dropped him, Jerry. Dropped him—
upside down!
”

Jerry looked up, looked down again at what was broken on the floor. He nodded slowly. It seemed very likely that somebody had dropped Mr. Dewsnap; had held him head down out of the mezzanine window, had dropped him head-first to the tile floor a dozen feet below.

“There's a telephone up there,” Pam said. “I'll—”

“Wait,” Jerry said.

“Not here,” Pam said. “Not with—” She broke off. “There must be stairs,” she said. “There'd have to be, wouldn't there? You stay. I'll—”

She was gone, then. She went around the body, close to a counter on her right, her head averted. Her body seemed queerly rigid in the shadows.

Jerry hesitated. She was right. It was no place to stay. He was himself fighting nausea; he could watch Pam in the office above; he could—By that time it was decided for him. Pam had disappeared around the end of the counter.

But she couldn't wander alone in the darkness, Jerry thought, and moved, and at the same time heard a sound which seemed to come from behind the counter along which Pam had walked. He moved quickly to the counter, and leaned over it. He saw a darker shadow there, but not in time. There was a great noise, but it was inside the skull of Gerald North. Gerald North staggered back from the counter, reeled halfway across the aisle, grabbed the counter on the other side just as blackness engulfed him. He tried to fight it off, tried to stand up, and lost the fight.…

Pam found the stairs. She went up them, came to a door and opened it and was in the office. She could have looked down from the open window, and she would have seen more than she expected. But she had seen enough. She kept her back to the window; she faced a closed door in the wall opposite the window. She reached for the telephone on the desk, and the door by which she had entered opened.

“Jerry,” Pam said, “I'm so glad you—” And then she cried, loudly, “
Jerry! Jerry!
” because it was not Jerry at the door, coming into the office.

Mr. Punch came through the door; Punch with a great hooked nose; Punch red-faced and leering. But it was not the dwarfed, round Punch. The head of Punch was atop a tall figure in a black robe, a robe on which stars were scattered. The figure raised an arm and pointed at her.

“Don't use that,” the towering Punch said, in a strange, muffled voice—a slurred voice; an unrecognizable voice. “Jush—”

Punch advanced and Pam cried, once more, “
Jerry!
” and then jumped for the door in the wall opposite the window.

“I'm not—” Punch said in the same muffled, jumbled voice, and took another step. But Pam had reached the door, thrown herself against it as she turned the knob, and was in a corridor beyond. The door remained open behind her, and there was faint light from the office bulb. Then the light was almost blotted out by a moving shadow, and on the wall ahead, and to her left, there was momentarily the wavering outline of Punch's great, misshapen nose, grown in the shadow infinitely monstrous.

Pam North ran down a corridor between doors. Ahead was only darkness. She ran in shadow; she held out a hand on either side to ward away the walls. It seemed that the corridor would never end, and that the shadow pursued.

The corridor ended. Just before she hurtled down a steep flight of wooden stairs, Pam caught herself by the railings on either side. For a moment she hung over the steps, her weight wrenching at her handholds. But then she regained her balance. She went down the stairs, dropped down them, sustained by the railings.

Far beyond her, tall windows let in a little light. There was enough light to see that she was in another spreading, shadowy room, with counters like the room in the front of the building, again with racks along the walls and things dangling from them, like men and women hanging.

The mezzanine from which she had come was a wide bridge across an enormous room. Corridors ran under it. If she could run back through one of the corridors, she could get to where Jerry was.

She turned to her left, and moved again between counters. On one of the counters, the one on her right, she could just make out the dull gleam of—she checked herself for an instant, and looked unbelievingly. Arranged neatly on the wooden top of a counter were a dozen automatic pistols. Pam North seized the nearest and went on.

She came to a corridor which, since it again ran to her left, must go under the mezzanine bridge. It was almost completely dark in the corridor. Pam held the pistol tightly, a little in front of her, and plunged into the darkness.

Almost instantly, she walked into something, and the something was soft and yielding—and human. For a moment, Pam was locked with the other as in an embrace, and then each pushed against the other and Martha Evitts said:

“
John. No!
” And then, “
You're not John!
”

Martha spoke softly, her voice reedy.

“Sh-h!” Pam said, and whispered. “It's Pam North.
Punch is chasing me.
”

She reached out and held Martha's arm.

“I've got a gun,” Pam said. “We'll—”

“Let me go,” Martha said. “Can't you understand? Let me go. John isn't here. He didn't—”

She pushed at Pam, trying to get past her.

“Wait,” Pam said. “I don't know whether John Baker's here. He could—somebody's dressed as Punch. And somebody killed Mr. Dewsnap. Somebody dropped—”

“You've got to let me go!” Martha said, and pushed and Pam took a step back in the darkness and would have fallen but someone caught her.

“What the devil?” a man's voice said, harshly, and a thin, questing ray of light shot out and fell on Pam North's face, moved to Martha's face.

“John,” Martha said. “Don't—don't—”

The man had a revolver in his hand. He was not pointing it, but it was ready. The pencil of light had not found the automatic in Pam North's hand. She raised it, pointed it in the general direction of the light.

“Let us go or—” Pam said and then, convulsive, with the automatic pointing at the man, she pressed a trigger.

A balloon—a quite large, vari-colored balloon—spread itself from the muzzle of the automatic. It squeezed itself out and spread and spread, and then it floated prettily from a cord in a narrow shaft of light, at the end of the automatic. Pam stared at the balloon without belief.

Then she turned and tried to run, but Martha Evitts blocked her progress in one direction and the man with the light in the other.

Pam used the automatic as a club, the balloon wavering grotesquely, and swung it at the hand which held the light. Martha cried, “
Don't! It's John!
” and the butt of the automatic hit the metal of the flashlight with a sharp sound and the light went out and down and clattered on the floor.

“Of all the—” the man said, and grabbed at the automatic and the balloon gave a loud “pop!” in the darkness. Pam leaped to the side, holding Martha's hand, dragging at her. For an instant, Martha Evitts resisted; then she came. A hand caught at Pam, held briefly to the fabric of her blouse, and the blouse gave.

“You little idiots,” the man said. “Wait. Don't you—”

They heard him. They did not stop. They ran out of the corridor into the rear showroom. Silhouetted against one of the distant windows, Punch towered. At the sound of their running, Punch turned toward them.

“I know it's John,” Martha said. “I—”

“With Punch's head,” Pam said, in a whisper. “Under here!”

Jerry came out of the blackness and pulled himself up, holding to the counter. He was on his feet, but the room wavered around him. He had to get to Pam.

Holding to the counter, while the room still wavered, he looked up at the mezzanine window. He could see all of the little office and it was empty. No—he could not see it all. He could not see the floor of the office. Pam was not standing there, not at the telephone on the desk. She might be—

His legs were lead; his whole body seemed numb. There was a man somewhere who was quick and merciless, who—He heard a sound, but as he stood it was behind him. He turned, slowly, painfully, and between him and the entrance door there was a man, coming toward him.

Jerry forced himself to stand unsupported in the aisle; forced himself to walk—although in reality he staggered—toward the man, whose face was a blur in the light. The man stopped and stared at him.

“Slug me, will you,” Jerry said, and swung at the man while he was still some feet from him. Jerry swayed and the man caught hold of him, and held him.

“And what,” Sergeant Mullins said, “is the matter with you, Mr. North?”

“Teach you to—” Jerry said, and struggled for a moment and his head cleared. “Got slugged,” Jerry said, in his own voice. “Pam went to—” He remembered it all, now, more clearly. “Up there,” he said, and pointed.

They looked up at the window of the mezzanine office. A tall figure in black stood there. It wore the head of Punch, the immortal. It looked down at them through Punch's eyes. Then it turned, and seemed to stalk toward the rear of the room.

“What goes on here?” Mullins said, in a voice that filled the spreading room. “In the name of all the saints—
what goes on here?!
”

Martha Evitts was saying, “No, you don't understand. The other man—not—not the man with the mask” and Pam said, “Listen. Listen!”

And then Pam North stuck her head out from under the counter where she had pulled Martha Evitts, pushing aside the black stuff which had curtained them, and spoke. Pam North yelled.

“Mullins!” Pam cried. “Sergeant
Mullins! Watch out for Mr. Punch!
” She paused, gathered breath. “Jerry!” She yelled. “Jer-
ree
. I'm
here!
”

It was perhaps the least illuminating remark Pamela North had ever made. But she made it loudly.

And then, all over the considerable area of the Novelty Emporium, lights went on.

Light changed everything. All that had been shadowy and strange was harshly obvious and, if still strange, so without eeriness. But there was more than that—noise gave place to silence, violent action to cautious movement. And everything—to Pam, standing in an aisle with Martha Evitts beside her—happened at once.

Jerry ran, and staggered as he ran, down a passage under the mezzanine bridge, and another man ran after him, apparently in pursuit. A smallish man dodged back and forth around a table which was piled with dolls, and two men dodged this way and that with him, in a kind of dance. He broke and ran and one caught him roughly; Jerry was beside Pam and had his arms around her—and to some degree around Martha Evitts, also—and the man who had pursued Jerry was Sergeant Mullins, who ran on past the three of them toward several men who seemed just to have entered the room—but from a doorway at the rear, not under the mezzanine.

Then, through another passage under the mezzanine, a uniformed patrolman came running. Just as he reached the second room, he stopped and turned. In an instant he was grappling with still another man. They swayed for a moment, clinching, and then the man not in uniform freed himself. He turned a little as he did so, and there was light on his face and he was John Baker.

Martha Evitts screamed, and then cried: “
No. John! Don't!
” but John Baker, moving so quickly that the movement could hardly be seen, struck the policeman on the side of the jaw and the policeman staggered, revolved slowly and collapsed. Mullins veered in an aisle toward Baker and had his revolver ready and a voice came sharply from among the men who had entered by the rear door. “Hold it, sergeant,” the voice said, commanding, and Mullins half turned, blank surprise on his face. “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “Hold it.” Weigand ran toward Baker and Mullins and brushed a table as he ran. Toads of many sizes spewed from the table spreading, bouncing, on the floor.

“Where is he?” Weigand called, as he ran, and Baker said, “Somewhere around” and then, “Where's Saul?”

“Front,” Bill said.

Then Baker, who was looking beyond Weigand, said loudly, “Stop him, damn it!” and a man in civilian clothes pounced like a big cat on the smallish man, who had dodged so agilely and had somehow, momentarily, dodged free.

One of the men who had come in with Bill Weigand said, “
Look, for God's sake!
” and pointed toward a far corner of the room—the corner nearest the rear windows, most distant from all of them.

There was a spiral iron staircase there. A grotesque figure in black, the black spangled with stars, was going up the staircase. As the man who had seen him first shouted again and pointed, the spiral brought the figure around again and it looked down at them from the face of Mr. Punch. As the figure paused for an instant his grotesque shadow hesitated on the wall beyond.

Then the figure went on up the stairs.

“The door's locked,” Martha Evitts said, tensely, beside Pam. “It's always locked!”

The figure had reached the top of the spiral stairs, and the door there. The black robe hid movement, but it was clear Punch tried the door—clear, as he turned, that the door had stopped him.