The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ®. C.J. Henderson

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СКАЧАТЬ fast we are!”

      —Robert Browning

      It was the strangest thing the inspector had ever seen. The first thing he noticed, as had those few others who had peered into the old house out near the swamp, were the traps in the doorway. Immediately, there in the front foyer, surrounding the mail slot in the door, spread in a semi-circle, he had come across two lines of traps. Mouse traps. Rat traps.

      “In here, el Grande…”

      Their positioning made them appear to be set for something their owner must have felt was going to come through the mail slot. A quick inspection showed the opening to be only one inch by three, covered by a springed hinge that had to be opened with a bit of effort.

      “Come in and meet the former Hector Claro, and…” the officer’s voice shifted to a supercilious tone, “let me tell you right now, Inspector…”

      What, wondered former Inspector-of-Police John Raymond Legrasse, could the man have been expecting to come through such a tiny and hard-to-open aperture other than his mail?

      “You’re not going to believe this.”

      Legrasse hated to admit it, but his one-time lieutenant was correct. Even after all he had seen in his time, he did not believe what he found in the next room. It was too odd. Too despairing.

      “This isn’t one of your pranks, is it?”

      Too perplexed by the oddity of the inside of Hector Claro’s home to make one of his usual wisecracks, Lieutenant Joseph D. Galvez shook his head gravely, admitting:

      “I could but wish my sense of humor were this magnifico.”

      Legrasse nodded, understanding the smaller man without need for further explanation. The scene in the humble home’s main room was one snatched from nightmare. The one-time inspector of police fell into old habits at once. In less than a minute his virgin notepad was bleeding its first page and a half—

      Victim found sitting in a corner diagonally positioned as far from the front door as possible.

      Victim appears to have been facing front door at time of death.

      Found, foyer: on arrival: various spring traps set within the doorway. Immediately, three large traps—set but not baited—spread in triangle formation before the mail slot in the door.

      Further on, spread in semi-circle, two additional lines of traps. Mouse traps. Rat traps. Just in the foyer.

      Inside: traps everywhere—scores? Hundreds? Set out…

      Patterns?

      “Can you believe this guy,” asked Galvez. The man’s voice was indecisive, unable to pick a tone, to slide into either humor or concern. Or worse. “He surrounds himself with traps. He’s scared of what? What? I dunno.”

      “You want to know why he did it?” asked Legrasse, half in humor, half seriously. “I’m still working on how he did it.”

      Galvez snorted, then sprang another trap with the cane in his hand, a handsome thing covered with graceful carvings which he had acquired from the umbrella stand in the foyer.

      “Crazy,” the Spaniard muttered, “set all these traps, but don’t bait them. How you supposed to catch anything that way?”

      It had been decided that, although they would, of course, need to leave as much of the insane landscape intact as possible to see if there was any clue as to what had happened in the old Backtown house out near the swampfronts, some would have to be sacrificed for both basic mobility as well as general safety.

      “Smells wonderful,” snapped the lieutenant, rubbing another wipe of preventive gel under his nose. Don’t he?”

      Legrasse merely glared in response. Galvez went silent. Though his one-time commander was now merely consulting, only a citizen, still he was Legrasse, who had lived through it all and won against the devil himself. They had been through much together, and Galvez knew his old boss well. Already he could see the old instincts taking over, could sense his boss was closing in on what had happened within his mind. He watched Legrasse’s hand moving across the page, knowing that somehow he would unravel the bizarre scenario before them.

      Victim seems to have bolted all other doors behind him. All other rooms are cut off from the front room. Cracks around doors are stuffed with rags, old newspaper, slivers of cardboard cut to fit. Boards appear to have been nailed over all of this wherever possible.

      Victim seems to have been afraid of something approaching him, something small enough to fit under a door, or through a mail slot, any small crack.

      Victim does not seem to have been restrained in any manner. If this is the case, then the only conclusion one can have is that he remained in his corner, surrounded by his traps, until he starved to death, by choice. Dying of thirst was preferable to him rather than…

      Than what?

      And then Legrasse’s eye caught a detail he had previously missed. Indeed, one that everyone had missed so far. Staring at the desiccated corpse in the corner, he asked Galvez:

      “Do you see that bulge in Mr. Claro’s breast pocket?”

      The lieutenant indicated that he did. Legrasse asked him to fetch it if he could. Galvez stepped into the opening already made near the corpse and slid his hand gently inside the pungent cloth. His hand came out with its prize, a thin, leather-bound volume with a stub of pencil attached to it by a short length of string. The lieutenant paged through it quickly, then announced:

      “It’s a diary.”

      Legrasse accepted the black book and opened it to its first page. In a simple style made up of competent but uncomplicated sentences of mostly one and two syllable words, Hector Claro introduced himself and his dilemma to the inspector.

      Claro told his tale from the beginning. The first date showed that it had been some four weeks back, after a particularly violent storm which had rained lightning down on the swamps for an entire night and half the next day. Legrasse remembered the storm vividly. He had been caught outside in it and had been drenched in moments. The noise and electrical power of it had sent much of the city into a panic. Normally calm, well-mannered horses had gone wild in the streets, crashing carriages and trampling citizens. It had been one of those times Legrasse was glad he was no longer a public servant, and the memory of the violent night connected him to Claro in a personal way.

      The man told of finding scores of dead fish and other swamp creatures the next day, floating on their sides in the muddy, boiled water behind his home. Great trees had fallen during the night, and the swamp had gone through such convulsions that Claro even noted a fresh spring bubbling up through the crayfish encrusted mud.

      At first he had been pleased by the events. The shocked fish had provided him with a much needed windfall. He had quickly set to gathering and preserving as many of the still living, but insensate fish as he considered safe for the salting. The new spring was fresh and looked as if it would be a constant rather than a fluke. All in all, the storm seemed to have been a blessing for Claro, unlike what it had proved to be for the rest of New Orleans. But then the next night came, and his opinion of things took a different turn.

      Claro’s next episode told of a noise in the night, that of a rat trap being sprung. СКАЧАТЬ