Free The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) by Richard S. Prather Page A

few
seconds, then said simply, “Ten.”
    I suppose several seconds
passed before I became aware that I had crushed the book-sized
series of photographs in my hand, crumpling the pages. The cover
was torn.
    Hank, without my being
aware of his movement, had gone back behind the big desk, was
seated in his leather chair again. Without a pause, he went on
casually. “You should see my little movie flippers of cats in small
cages being given electrical shocks, hundreds of shocks, to
determine how long is required before the cats stop jumping and
making pain noises, or convulsing, how long until they give up and
stop attempting to escape from the box that cannot be escaped from.
It is a portion of research by psychiatrists, those who testify as
experts in court about our sanity.”
    It was a very strange
moment. With part of my attention I had been following Hank’s
words, visualizing some of what he described, almost involuntarily
pursuing his suggestion that I consider the mentalities of those
people he spoke of; and at the same time, in my mind’s eye, I had
glimpsed a flickering and almost cartoon like procession of men,
and even women, who looked and walked and talked like all the other
citizens of earth but who beneath the skin-deep surface of smile
and speech and joke and grin were cold, cruel, calloused, like
bloodless aliens in our midst, strangers more at home with pain
than pleasure and with death than life.
    But the rest of the
strangeness of that moment was a recognition, in that other less
busy part of my mind, a sudden certainty that nothing said to me
this morning by Henry Hernandez, M.D., had been merely a pleasant
old geezer’s ramblings or the casual poppings-off of an overly
“exercised” new client. Some of that, maybe; but most of it and
maybe all of it had been the product of a keen and calculating
mind, a controlled and considered exercise deliberately designed
to... To what?
    The silence, in which
neither of us spoke, lasted only a few seconds; but it was a long
silence nonetheless. “Hank,” I said finally, “what is it you really
want from me?”
    He smiled slightly,
pointed mustache lifting to form and almost straight gray line
across his upper lip. “For now... keep me from getting run over,
find Rusty, tell the Vungers to make new appointments, take two
aspirins and call me in the morning.”
    I smiled, the strangeness
of that earlier moment slipping away, being replaced by
common-sense normality. So I said, “Feel better already, Doctor,”
and stood up.
    Hank was also standing,
looking at his watch. “Good timing,” he said. “My patient is in
half a minute.”
    I felt like asking him
what this patient had been dying from when he brought him/her back
from the grave; and I still had several unanswered questions
concerning the Vungers, among a number of other curious
things.
    But I merely said, “I’m on
my way, then. I don’t really know what to think about... Well,
let’s just say for now that I guess I got some sort of medical
education this morning–or brainwashing–along with the case. Hadn’t
expected that, but I’ve done jobs for a circus snake-charmer and a
belly dancer from Bombay, so I guess–”
    “ Wait,” he interrupted me,
walking around his desk and stopping before me. He placed one hand
lightly on my shoulder and, looking first at the wall, then the
floor, and finally at my face, said, “I must be truthful with you,
Sheldon. I must confess. This, the medical things, the brainwash,
was most purposeful. It was not an accident that I went into areas
that may seem not germane to the case you have taken. But I wished
you to hear certain things, and I wished to observe closely your
reactions to them.”
    He paused. “I need
someone...” It was clearly difficult for him to get the next part
out for some reason, but he continued briskly, “...to help me. In
more than just the hit-and-miss green van. And that someone–I now
believe for certain it is you,