The Magic Talisman Read online

“How on earth did you do it?” David asked.

  Wayland shrugged, then winced as the movement hurt his arm. “If I get out the mess I’m in I’ll show you. That is a promise. But right now I’m going to ask my granddaughter to take me out of here, with Barby, Rick, and Scotty as aides.”

  “Your granddaughter?”Rick repeated, stupefied.

  “My spiritual granddaughter.”Wayland smiled. “She and I are en rapport, we and the talisman.”

  Jan held it out to him. “I almost forgot. Here it is.”

  Wayland took her hand and closed it around the stone. “Keep it for me, my dear, until I need it again.

  But I haven’t told you why I haven’t come out before. I’ve wanted to, but I had a small problem. At first, the only one I could trust was my charming young friend, here, although later I came to trust all of you.

  But when you were here, within my reach, the others were here, too, and I couldn’t risk exposing you to them.”

  “Who are the others?” Rick asked.

  “My nephew and a few of his friends.They want very badly to get their hands on me. I would have risked it last night when I saw Jan and Barby step out of the closet, but just then the talisman told me the others were near. I dropped the talisman for her to use and ran for cover. It was either that or risk giving you away. I couldn’t let them know you were friends, even though they undoubtedly saw you through the mirror at one time or another.”

  “But why do they want you?” Jan asked.

  “Later, my dear.The story will keep. For now, I suggest we go. The others are not around at the moment, but there is no telling when they’ll return.”

  As they all moved to the stairs and started down, Rick told the Camerons, “If you can make it, I wish you’d come this afternoon.”

  “We wouldn’t miss it,” Derek assured him.

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  “Then suppose we pick you up at the landing at three. We’ll have a light snack. If Dr. Frame can fix Mysto up, and I’ll bet he can, we can solve this mystery with a few minutes conversation.And about time, too!”

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Magician’s Tale

  The Brant family doctor injected Mysto’s arm with a local anesthetic, cleaned out the wound, gave him a massive shot of antibiotic to combat the infection, and oral medication to reduce his fever. Putting a sling on the wounded arm, he told the old magician the wound needed time to drain before closing it, and to get some rest and good food, and come back tomorrow.

  The Spindrift four took Mysto home, but before he was allowed to rest, Mrs. Brant insisted on a hearty breakfast, which he ate with obvious pleasure. He then submitted with equal pleasure to being led to bed in the spare room. Scotty loaned him pajamas and Rick found him a new toothbrush.

  By the time the Camerons, Millers, Winstons, and Brants gathered in the library, Mysto had slept for nearly six hours. Rick estimated that the magician was about his own size, and greeted him with a complete change of clothing. The hours of sleep and medication had taken the fever flush from Mysto’s face and he looked fine.

  After introductions were made all around, Rick broiled strip steaks on a grill in the fireplace. Jan and Barby had set up TV and lap trays, and as Rick took the steaks from the fire, the girls placed them in buttered buns for ease in eating. Scotty served bowls of salad with Green Goddess dressing.

  When everyone was fed, and at least half the guests had managed to sneak a bitto Dismal-including Mysto-the magician turned to Dr. Brant. “Shall I begin?”

  “Please do. I’m sure you’ve anticipated our questions.”

  Mysto smiled. “I’m sure I have.”

  Barby served him coffee, and he sipped appreciatively. “Of course, you wonder how I can be alive when I’m so legally dead, my death certified by a reputable physician and confirmed by the police. You did check with the police? Yes, I was sure you would. I must explain that the first part of what I’m about to tell you is pieced together from scattered bits of information, and from guesses based on my knowledge of the people concerned.

  “To sum up, I am a victim of my nephew, Carl Cleary, the only son of my only sister. Carl is totally amoral, and I helped him out of one scrape after another, used much influence and paid many fines to keep him out of jail. I also kept him supplied with enough money for ordinary needs, but not enough for Carl. Although I disliked him intensely, I saved his hide, for my sister’s sake. Like some mothers of wayward sons, she thought he was really a candidate for sainthood, the victim of nasty people.”

  The magician paused for a sip of coffee. “After my sister died, I kicked Carl and his wife out. He had Page 79

  married a woman even greedier than he, and moved her in with me.”

  Mysto stood up and began to pace slowly in front of the fire. “It is important that I admit at the onset that I was more than a bit eccentric. My house was nearly always full of guests, and I played pranks on them, harmless practical jokes, materializing ghosts in the middle of the night, pulling magic tricks at unexpected moments, and generally keeping the household in a state of excitement, which my guests enjoyed.

  “It would be quite natural for you to think of me as childish and immature. I was all of that, and more. I had plenty of money to use as I wished, and I was alone, in spite of a house full of people. A psychiatrist later told me I reverted to my childhood to escape from myself, by building a house of fun with secret rooms and passages, recalling books I had read as a child which stimulated my fantasies.”

  “You never married?” Mrs. Brant asked.

  “No, and that is my real sorrow. It takes a rather special kind of woman to share the life of an itinerant entertainer, and there was one, who was to me much as Karen is to David. We planned to be married during the next pause in our schedule. We had taken the show to entertain troops during one of our various wars, and the enemy chose the height of the show to shell us. She and three of my troupe were killed, two were badly wounded, and I escaped with a minor cut.”

  The magician shrugged. “After that the prospect of marriage was gone, and so was my interest in keeping on. I built the estate and named it Mirella in her memory, and filled the place with anyone who cared to come, just to keep the stillness away.”

  He accepted a coffee refill. “My nephew developed a plan to squeeze money out of me. While playing high stakes poker, he met a psychiatrist whose greed exceeded his ethics, if he had any. I believe the psychiatrist invested money in Carl’s scheme. He arranged an introduction to me through someone, and we became quite close friends, I thought. Naturally, he learned a great deal about me.

  “Finally, he suggested that I was suffering from intense guilt feelings from having taken my fiancee to her death, and said those feelings could be exorcised with analysis sessions, which he offered out of friendship. I agreed.”

  “Your nephew didn’t come into the picture at all?” Hartson Brant asked.

  “Not at all.I never suspected he was at the root of it, until he showed his hand. Well, we had some weeks of sessions, and then my psychiatrist stopped coming and wouldn’t answer calls or letters, and I was turned away when I went to his office. I kept a small apartment in the theatre district of New York, and one day while I was there I was served a subpoena to appear in court for a sanity hearing.”

  The listeners gasped.

  “Yes. My nephew had asked for my commitment. He let me know that, for a million in cash, he would let the insanity matter drop. I refused. After all, I knew I was sane.”

  Mysto smiled wryly. “Carl had made his plea to a judge known for accepting large cash donations to be given by him to his favorite charity. You can imagine what charity.”

  Derek asked, “Didn’t you get a lawyer at once?”

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  The magician shook his head ruefully. “No, Derek. I never needed a regular lawyer. My business legal needs were handled through my accountants. I was a true innocent, believing in the system of justice, and I knew a court would find me sane.”

&nb
sp; “But the court had to give you a lawyer,” Dr. Brant commented.

  “Yes, and did.A stupid man who may also have taken a donation to his favorite charity. My psychiatrist testified that I was mentally incompetent—insane, within the legal meaning of the term, and recited details he had learned of my pranks, ghostly manifestations, and so on, and on. A pair of his colleagues examined his notes and testimony, and concurred in his opinion. Carl also testified at exaggerated length.

  Between them, they made me out the worst madman in court history and a public menace.”

  “Incredible!” Dr. Miller asked, “Didn’t you ever get good legal aid and a competent examination?”

  “No, although I tried.But I was without funds or friends. The court had me immediately locked up in theBellevue psychiatric ward, froze my assets, and named as trustee a Newark bank where I had a substantial account. This was at Carl’s suggestion. In solitary confinement, I had no communication except for attendants, and when I pleaded that I was quite sane, I was doing no more than the worst real case in the institution.

  “Then the court remanded me to a private sanitarium in upstateNew York , costs to be paid by the trustee bank. This was at Carl’s suggestion because the amount in that bank was a relatively minor part of the estate, and he was after control of the whole thing.”

  “You must have lost hope,” Barby said sympathetically.

  “Yes, for a while. When I tried to get in touch with old friends, I had no response. I found later, through the one person who came to myaid, that Carl had been in touch with all my friends and employees, and told them that his poor old uncle was hopelessly mad and would surely try to get in touch. He told them it would be more humane to ignore me than to answer and raise false hopes.”

  “I’m beginning to look forward to meeting Carl,” Scotty said grimly.

  “I hope you never do, Scotty. At first I thought the staff at the sanitarium would realize I was sane, but they were only interested in examining me about the crazy exploits in the court record. Finally, I accepted the fact that I was stuck. They allowed me pencil and paper, and I began a project I’d once planned, a definitive history of magic, in outline, because I had only my memory.”

  Mysto chuckled. “I had the talisman. At first I hoped the resident medicos would realize its value and accept it as evidence that I was emotionally stable, but either they were not attuned or didn’t believe their feelings-probably the latter. It happens more often than you might think. People just refuse to believe anything out of the ordinary, especially if it has mystic connotations.”

  “I’m surprised they let you have a stone, even a small one,” Dr. Winston commented.

  “Ah, but it was essential to my well-being,” Mysto said, laughing. “It held my soul, and I would die without it at hand. I threw tantrums, screamed until I had no voice left, beat my head against the wall, and finally collapsed. The moment they gave it to me I became a quiet, smiling, perfect patient. I repeated the performance until they gave up and I was allowed to keep it. After a while they put me in a ward of quiet, harmless people, where we each had a room and bath, and only the main ward doors were locked.”

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  “How much time had elapsed?” Dr. Brant asked.

  “About three years. In all that time I had one occasional visitor, a former assistant who had been with me during the shelling that killed my fiancee . He was wounded badly, and ceased performing. Instead, he became a carnival barker, and later operations manager for a string of three carnivals that moved around the region. By one of those wonderful coincidences that happen perhaps once in a lifetime, he was inspecting a carnival playing the city where I was sent when the local paper announced my arrival with a feature headed, ‘Famous Magician a Patient at Sweetacres .’ From then on, whenever he was in the area, he came and spent a couple of hours.”

  “Your nephew didn’t know him, I guess,” Rick observed.

  “No. He had never been to the house. Well, I began to itch for freedom, and when my friend said he’d be back in a month or so, I asked him to bring me some special black hair dye.”

  “Did the sanitarium actually allow you hair dye?” Jan asked in surprise.

  “Yes, but it took time and a new act. I said I’d decided to grow young again. I explained that, for my hair to grow black again, it would have to be encouraged, and shown how, so I needed hair dye. They laughed when out of my sight, of course, but I pleaded and wept and persisted and made a nuisance of myself. Finally, the psychologist in charge of my case told me the problem was that they could never explain an expenditure for hair dye to the trustees. I told him I could have a friend bring it, and he finally gave up. Why not? It was a harmless fancy.”

  The listeners were sitting forward, waiting for more details.

  “Everything depended on timing. I knew there was a better chance of things going wrong than of going right, but what did I have to lose? The essence of my plan was this: across the hall was a patient who had suffered from some mental problem that kept him staring into space for hours on end. He had no visitors, and seldom spoke to anyone. He also suffered from a bad heart, and emphysema, and his principal sound was a continuous cough.

  “He was about my size, with the same color eyes and white hair. We didn’t look a lot alike, but we were of the same facial type. Through the Talisman, I was en rapport with him to the extent his troubled mind allowed, and I sensed far better than the outside physician who came to treat us that he was nearing the end. Morbid as it seems, I just waited for the poor man to die.

  “My friend came, bringing the hair dye. He had taken the precaution of buying a standard brand, emptying it out, and refilling the container with the special dye, which is a kindactors use. It dyes hair well, but washes right out with soap and water. I gave my friend a phrase I would write to him to say when I needed him for the final act.

  “I could feel the man across the hall fading, and I’m sure he had a series of slight heart attacks over a period of a few weeks. I could sense brief intervals of pain, to which he paid no attention. When his energy level got so low I could barely read him, I wrote to my friend that, when the dye wore off in about ten days, I would see if my hair had started turning black as I had hoped.”

  “Of course, you planned a substitution,” David offered. “But suppose the man had died during the day when attendants were about?”

  “That was the chance of which I spoke, David. But he was considerate enough to die about three in the Page 82

  morning. Actually, the odds were on my side, if I understand the statistics. Most deaths in institutions supposedly occur in the early morning hours before dawn. I felt him go, because I was keeping the talisman tight in my hand; it had become a reflex by that time. I carried him to my own bed, rubbed dye in his hair, then washed it from my own. When the shift came on in the morning, they saw what they expected to see in the man’s room, an old white-haired man coughing his life away. And, in my bed, a black-haired man who had died in the night.”

  “But how could that work?” Rick protested. “Surely the attending physician and the staff knew both you and the other man.”

  “True, Rick. But there are things that people don’t realize. First, people who are institutionalized tend to become non-persons. They become ‘cases’ and are treated as objects, not as people. The staff knew me quite well, because the manifestations of my madness they had seen were amusing, though harmless, but they had no interest in examining my ‘dead body’ closely. On the other hand, my dead friend had been almost a zombie with nothing memorable except his cough.”

  “I can see that,” Scotty agreed. “But physicians who treat the sick do have to see people as people, don’t they?”

  “Not in an institution, Scotty, when the physician is called in only occasionally. I saw the attending physician call on my departed friend several times, and not once did he stay for more than two minutes, and not once did he look the man fully in the face. Nor did he really look at me when he gave
me a routine exam. He looked, but he did not see. When he examined the body that morning, he put his stethoscope down on the chest, gave a brief look at the eyes, signed the death certificate attesting heart failure and left. The door was open, and I watched.”

  Derek spoke up. “Magicians learn quickly that people see what they expect to see. The doctor naturally expected to see an older man with black hair and hazel eyes, and that’s what he saw.”

  “Exactly, Derek.Thank you.” The magician added, “Of course you realize that death strips personality from the face, often making it hard to recognize even persons we knew fairly well.”

  “I can see how planning the substitution would have been easy for the Master of Illusion,” Karen said in admiration.

  “Thank you, Karen. Of course, there was one more step. In four days, my departed friend had a visitor, an employee of my carnival buddy, who showed up with blonde hair and moustache, in neat suit and hat.

  He had come, presumably, to talk over a financial matter. After a half-hour visit, the man left. When the attendants came around with afternoon refreshments, they found a bald man bound and gagged in the bathroom.”

  “Didn’t that get him in trouble?” Scotty asked.

  “Very briefly.He threatened to sue because a madman had attacked him, knocked him out, then stole his clothes. The staff found it hard to accept that the patient was capable of it, but, on the other hand, a strange visitor might have triggered a sudden adrenaline flow. The moustache seemed suspicious, but he told them he liked his looks in one, but was unable to grow a decent one. They finally gave him clothes and turned him loose after carefully noting his false name and address. He joined my friend and me at a motel, where I had gone at once.”

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  Rick laughed. “So when the hunt started, it wasn’t even for you!”

  “True, Rick. We drove to one of his carnivals, where I went to work in a game stall. But I must shorten this tale. After two months with the carnival, I put on a simple disguise and made my way to Whiteside and home. I brought with me a knapsack of food and a few other necessities, plus some clothes and toiletries, and moved in. The furnace was on, necessary to keep the pipes from freezing, so I had heat and hot water.All the comforts of home, not in the regular rooms, but in my favorite hideaway. I had often hidden there to get away from the people I invited.”