CHRYSALIS Read online

  “Reaction, Doctor?”

  “None immediately,” Simon said carefully. “I suppose there’s no question about Dr. Kellerman's equipment functioning properly?”

  “My first question to her. She ran another patient through, and the sections were clear. She then ran the original patient through again, an old woman named Shallcross, and the dark area was there.”

  “So Kellerman has two sets of the Shallcross sections. Are they identical?”

  “Very good, Doctor,” Guyton-Brown beamed. “You’re anticipating me. Yes, she has two sets of sections, taken approximately twenty four hours apart, and very interesting they are.”

  He put another disk in the viewer, punched a series of commands into the computer, and the sections began again, but this time with two pictures on the screen, side by side. “The sections we just saw, the first ones taken, are on the left. Those on the right are the second set.”

  They appeared identical until Frame 13, when the first small black area appeared on the left hand picture, as before, but the right hand picture was still clear. Frame fourteen showed a small black area on both pictures, and as the sections were walked through the viewer it was clear the dark areas did not match.

  “I’ve looked at these pictures side by side and superimposed,” Guyton-Brown said. “They are very, very similar, but they aren’t identical. Now watch this. I’m going to show you the first set of sections again.”

  He punched a few keys and the sections cleared from the screen, replaced with a close-up, transparent, three-dimensional view of a brain. The computer program rotated the picture through the long axis, then through the short axis, giving a complete view of both the interior and exterior of the brain of Mrs. Shallcross from every conceivable angle.

  “Sonofabitch,” Simon whistled.

  “Very apt,” Guyton-Brown agreed. He stopped the rotation of the figure, freezing it. “Tell me what you see.”

  “I see a black dog with what appears to be something through its body, though clearly it cannot be anything of the kind.”

  “Zooming in,” Guyton-Brown said quietly, and the snarling, fangs-bared face of the dog filled the screen, open eyes staring straight ahead. A touch of the keys and the dog slid through the screen, its body coming into view, lying on its side, legs thrust outward toward the viewer. A long wooden stake pierced the body, the sharpened end protruding a short distance from the downward facing side.

  “And now I’ll show you the second section,” Guyton-Brown said. “I believe you will find this remarkable.”

  The screen split again, and another three-dimensional shot of the dog's face appeared, alongside the first, identically oriented.

  Simon studied the two faces intently, for clearly Guyton-Brown considered this the reason for bringing him here. He looked at the pictures carefully before committing himself, but he had noticed the difference immediately. The eyes were different. The orientation of the dog's head was identical in the two pictures, but in the second picture the dog's eyes were looking directly out of the screen while in the first picture the eyes were looking to the left, beyond the viewer.

  “The eyes have moved,” Simon said.

  “Look at the mouth.”

  “Yes,” Simon whispered. “The mouth is different. His mouth has moved.”

  “And his body,” Guyton-Brown said. “His body has moved. Not much, but he has moved.”

  “There has to be an explanation,” Simon said shakily.

  Guyton-Brown smiled. “If you can explain how an old woman can get a dog in her brain, I can come up with a fairly plausible explanation of how he came to move. Want to see more?”

  They spent the next hour running the sections through the computer, Simon questioning Guyton-Brown about every aspect of what was clearly a monstrous impossibility.

  “What do you make of it, Doctor?” Guyton-Brown said finally.

  “It would seem, Doctor,” Simon said with a wan smile, “that an Ada Shallcross of Cleveland, Ohio, has a black dog with a wooden stake through its body in the right cerebral hemisphere of her brain.”

  “Very good, Doctor,” Guyton-Brown said evenly. “And what else do we know?”

  “It would seem we also know, Doctor,” Simon said, rising unsteadily, “that the dog is alive.”

  5

  He left Baltimore quite late, returning home to a fitful sleep. A troubled Simon Pure entered his office just before noon the following morning, to find Marykate busily transcribing case notes into the office computer.

  “How was Baltimore?” she asked, without looking up.

  “Interesting,” Simon said, in what he thought was a non-committal tone of voice.

  She looked up sharply. “Uh-oh,” she said, “what happened?”

  He hung up his coat without answering and crossed the room to his desk, where he sat down and looked out the window at the gray winter day. “Guyton-Brown has a woman with a dog in her brain,” he said finally, “or at least Dr. Kellerman has. I've seen the pictures. They’re quite remarkable.”

  “FantasyLife?”

  “I don't think so. If it is, it's very clever. In any event, I don't see it being a detective case. I’m convinced Guyton-Brown wanted my professional medical opinion.”

  “I see,” she said doubtfully. “And how often have you seen a brain with a dog in it?”

  “Not often,” he smiled. He rummaged around in a desk drawer, took out the traditional FantasyLife supplied bottle of bourbon and looked to Marykate. “Have a belt?”

  “Not that rotgut, and not this early,” she said, making a face. “I keep some Bushmills Irish Whiskey in my desk if you feel the need of something decent. But the question is not what are you going to drink, but what are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean are you a detective or aren't you? If I were a world famous private detective I’d want to find out how that dog got into that woman's brain!”

  “I'm not world famous, Marykate,” he said lamely.

  “And you're not going to be either,” she snorted, “sitting in your office drinking rotgut bourbon. Reputations are made on this kind of case! Who else knows about this dog?”

  “Just Kellerman, Guyton-Brown and me, as far as I know.”

  “And the other two are doctors, looking at it as a medical phenomenon, right? That leaves you to find out who the woman is and how she got a dog in her brain.”

  “I have to ask you, Marykate,” he said slowly, trading, for the first time, on their growing relationship. “Is this a FantasyLife production?”

  “If it is, I'm not in on it. Now what do we know about the woman and the dog?”

  “The woman is named Ada Shallcross, she lives in Cleveland, is presently in a coma in Ohio State University Hospital, she’s ninety-six years old, and the dog is black, with a stake through its body.”

  “My God!” Marykate said softly, gorgeous eyes wide. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Deadly serious.”

  She sat at her desk, unmoving. “You know,” she said finally, “I’ve been with the company eight years. I’ve been private secretary to a dozen would-be Sam Spades or Philip Marlowes, and one or two Miss Marples. I know the production cases by heart. This one sounds different, this one sounds real.”

  “Very real,” Simon said. “And one more thing. The dog is alive.”

  Hand to mouth, face pale, she looked at him intently for some moments.

  “What should I do, Marykate?”

  She got up and walked briskly toward his desk. “I don't know about you, boss,” she said unevenly, “but I'm going to have some of that rotgut.”

  6

  Sariot Kosh, Ph.D., Director of the World Federation, ruler of most of what he surveyed, looked intently at the huge Mercator Projection wall map of the world and rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

  “Well done, lads,” he said merrily, doing a very brief, very dignified jig on the handsome Astrakhan carpet. “The hound is laid
to rest?”

  “As restful as may be, Your Grace,” Mogred smiled crookedly, bad teeth gleaming dully in the shaft of mote filled sun coming in the skylight. “Tom and I saw him to his prison grave, with a stout white birch sapling through his blackened heart, didn't we, Tom?”

  “Aye, that we did, Your Grace,” his colleague agreed, nodding energetically. “Filled it in and patted it down, we did. Won't nobody find it, neither, not lessen you be wantin' them to. The hound be well hid.”

  “The hound is intended he be found, friend Tom,” Kosh smiled indulgently, “but not by just anyone. Was the hound placed in the furrow, by the lake, as instructed? In the precise spot I’ve indicated he must be laid?”

  “Aye, Your Grace,” Mogred answered. “Between the lava runnels, in the soft, clean earth, well clear of the sulfur dust, hard by the lake edge, as indicated.”

  “There were an old aspen tree in the furrow, as you said, Your Grace,” Tom confirmed. “The hound be forty paces, exact, due north of the tree.”

  “Excellent,” Kosh beamed. “The hound and the trap be truly laid. We must lure Tal Avenger to the lava field before the sulfur cones complete their work.”

  “The sulfur cones be trembling, Your Grace,” Tom said, “even as we be tamping Old Bo to his rest. The rain be tasting of sulfur on the skin.”

  “Then we must hurry the cursed Avenger to his ordained doom. The hound was still alive, was he not? My instructions were quite explicit, the hound was to be buried alive, for it’s his aura which will draw the Avenger to us.” He had another reason for keeping the hound alive, a reason Kosh did not see fit to share with his henchmen, and that was the promise to Dorothea that no permanent harm would come to the hound.

  The henchmen hesitated. “He gave a sigh,” Tom said, “as the shovel forced the stake downward into the side of the grave.”

  “That he did, Your Grace,” Mogred affirmed. “The hound were well and truly alive, though much diminished in spirit.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” Dr. Kosh bubbled. “You shall be handsomely rewarded, both of you. Now be off with you.”

  They backed out of the room and Dr. Kosh returned his attention to the wall map, something he did with increasing regularity lately, ever since the hound had come into his possession. With the hound as bait, Tal Avenger would soon be in his hands, after which he could realistically look forward to the fulfillment of his dreams, the accomplishment of his sacred mission. He smiled, thinking of it. The whole of planet Earth, its people and its animals, its minerals, trees and cities, its rivers, lakes, dams and streams, united, under his leadership. The dream was close to reality, for his dominion held sway over all but the western half of the United States, a lonely outpost of benighted resistance, led by the insufferable Tal Avenger and the equally intolerable hound. He smiled at the thought of the hound, now the centerpiece of his plans. He laughed aloud at the memory of how easily the brute had been delivered into his hands by the hag Dorothea, his dotingly demonic and increasingly absentminded lover.

  The thought of Dorothea caused a frown. She had lately shown signs of indifference, a cause of much concern to Kosh, for his power and his plans were totally dependent on Dorothea, on her continuing love for him. He knew that should she withdraw that love she’d withdraw the power as well, and what would happen to him in that event was painfully clear, for he knew what had happened to Juan and to Khalid, former lovers whom she’d tired of. The thought was not pleasant. But he was nothing if not courageous, and he dismissed Dorothea from his mind. She loved him still, and all was well. What would be would be.

  He was a tall man, was Dr. Kosh, almost six and one half feet, and very thin, almost to the point of emaciation. A large, hawk-like aquiline nose dominated his gaunt face. On either side were two deeply set coal black eyes. The eye sockets were prominent and blackened, and the eye ridges bare of eyebrows, giving him a skull-like appearance. His thin, bloodless lips barely hid two rows of very large, evenly spaced, beautifully capped white teeth. He was entirely bald, a created effect, for his barber shaved and waxed his head and eye ridges every morning. His uniform consisted of a form-fitting black leotard, soft black leather slippers, and a silver, long sleeved, vee necked blouse. He presented a striking figure, calculatedly so, as befitted the Director of the World Federation, an organization devoted to the furtherance of the career and ambitions of Dr. Sariot Kosh. But his appearance was of little concern to him now. What concerned him now was turning the capture of the hound to advantage. He cast one last look at his immense wall map, a map that, except for the western half of the United States, was colored entirely green, which meant it belonged to him, a thought that caused a smile of satisfaction. His gaze lingered briefly on that unsightly western half of the United States, the states west of the Mississippi uncolored, bare and sterile, under the protection of the one man in all the world he truly despised, because he was the one man he truly feared, Tal Avenger. He strode purposefully from the room, still smiling, for the plan was underway.

  “He will come to rescue the hound,” Kosh chuckled, “and we shall have him!”

  And when he had Tal Avenger, he would color the western states green.

  7

  Marykate settled the matter. “Go to Cleveland,” she said. “Look into the background of Ada Shallcross. Search the house. Maybe something will turn up.”

  A call to Dr. Kellerman revealed the old woman had been found in the back second floor bedroom by her cleaning woman, a woman named Rose, or Rosa. Simon thanked her, accepted an invitation to discuss the case while he was out that way, and hung up.

  “I don't know about this, Marykate,” he said doubtfully, the inevitable second thoughts weakening his resolve. “This is clearly breaking and entering.”

  “Whatever happened, happened in that bedroom, Simon,” Marykate insisted. “I think checking out that house would be the first thing Philip Marlowe would’ve done.”

  “No doubt,” Simon said dryly, “and Bulldog Drummond, as well.”

  “They all would have, dear,” she said kindly, “except Nero Wolfe, who would’ve sent Archie.” She turned to the phone, and made reservations on the two o'clock USAir flight to Cleveland.

  The flight was uneventful, and the rental car got him to the old Shallcross place shortly after four of a cold, early December afternoon. He pulled his collar closed against the biting wind whistling off Lake Erie and hurried up the walk and onto the porch.

  The front door was standard issue Victorian glazed double doors, and the big old-fashioned lock gave up easily. He stepped into the tiny entrance foyer, with just enough light lingering in the western sky to make out another pair of glazed double doors. These were unlocked and he found himself in the nearly dark center hall. The light was going fast, but he saw old-fashioned double sliding pocket doors on either side of the hall, closed against the cold, hiding what were no doubt equally old-fashioned sitting and dining rooms. A wide stair led to the second floor. Beyond the stair the entrance hall continued to the back of the house, where other closed doors indicated the location of the kitchen and other back of the house rooms. A small marble topped table stood along the wall opposite the stair, near the vestibule doors. Two letters sat on the table, and Simon used his flashlight for the first time. They were a phone bill and an electric bill, and since the house was cold, but not freezing, that meant someone was bringing in the mail and taking care of the house.

  Probably the cleaning woman, Simon thought, which means I can use the lights. Anyone outside will just think the cleaning woman is here.

  He used his flashlight to find a light switch at the bottom of the stair. He flicked it and the second floor hall light came on, revealing an ornate grandfather's clock at the top of the stair. The clock bonged once, announcing four-fifteen.

  He climbed the stair, hand on the well-rubbed oak stair rail, making tiny glissing noises on the well-worn carpet, reminding him of ice-skating on the pond when he was a boy. The back bedroom door was unlocked. He reac
hed inside and switched on the light.

  A single bed stood against the wall opposite the door. The back wall contained two curtained windows, with drawn shades. The wall opposite the windows was free of furniture, and contained a closed door, presumably the closet. A low chest of drawers stood along the wall just inside the door. On top of the chest of drawers were some magazines, several model airplanes and some comic books. Next to the model airplanes was a framed color photograph of a young man in full dress Marine uniform. On the wall over the chest of drawers was a framed picture of the marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. The magazines were Boys Life, and next to the magazines lay two comic books, the July 1945 issue of Wings, and the June 1946 issue of Fantastic Comics.

  By the bed, on the nightstand, in a small picture frame, was a yellowed newspaper clipping. He read that Lance Corporal James A. Shallcross, age 18, Seventh Regiment, United States Marines, son of Ada and Henry Shallcross of Cleveland, Ohio, was killed in action on November 5, 1950, near Chinhung-ni, North Korea.

  He was an intruder in a private grief. The room was a shrine to her dead son, killed nearly sixty years ago in some long forgotten war. Uncomfortable, he returned to the dresser, to the comic books, lying one atop the other. He moved the copy of Wings aside, revealing the second comic book, and a cold, creeping fear came over him. The garish, boldly drawn full color cover of the June 1946 issue of Fantastic Comics showed a large, square muzzled black dog, heavy bodied, deeply muscled, with short ears that folded over and lay flat against his head. He lay on his side, in a shallow grave, fangs bared, eyes narrowed, a bloody stake through his body, snarling defiance at a grinning man shoveling earth on top of him.

  Every instinct was to run, to get away, but he opened the comic book, as if compelled. The first story was called TAL AVENGER, and he read the colored panels rapidly. The panels told the story of Tal Avenger, who, with his faithful hound, Old Bo, was battling the evil Dr. Kosh, who, with the aid of a magic ruby, was out to conquer the world. Tal Avenger was not without resources, namely an emerald he wore on a chain around his neck, an emerald whose source of power seemed to be centered in the aura of Old Bo. In this issue's story, Dr. Kosh had succeeded in capturing Old Bo, and had imprisoned him in a shallow grave in the lava fields, and was now preparing to lure Tal Avenger to his death. The final panel showed a grinning Dr. Kosh looking at a large wall map of the United States and saying, HE WILL COME TO RESCUE THE HOUND, AND WE SHALL HAVE HIM!