Once Departed

“There’s more to a human body than organs, damn it.”

“Sure there is, but the organs are the toughest, not the easiest to transfer from one body to another. You’ve read about the lad, a year or so ago, who had both of his arms severed in an accident. The doctors simply sewed them back on. I tell you, Quint, today science is at the point where it could, literally, create the manufactured man that was impossible in Mary Shelley’s times. The Frankenstein story could now become an actuality.”

Quint finished his second drink, feeling it not at all. He said, “You forget one big thing. Why? Who would want to go to the trouble, particularly if it involved getting entangled with the law? All aside from the fact that it would cost one devil of a lot of money.”

“That’s what held me up at first.” Mike admitted, “But possibly I’ve got the answer to that too. Just possibly. Let’s grant the creating of such a creature; a super-man, because if it wasn’t superior to other men, why go to the bother? Such a super-man might be free of ordinary man’s short-comings, such as growing tired, or such as growing old. That’s always been one of man’s prime difficulties. When he’s finally got the education and knowhow to really bring his fondest dreams to fruition, he’s too old to pull the job off. Look at Philip of Macedonia. He spent a life time developing the Macedonian phalanx and perfecting his army. By the time he was ready to invade Persia, he was an old, crippled man. His son Alexander the Great had to take over and reaped all the glory. The same with Gengis Khan and later, Tamerlane, the Mongols. By the time they were ready to conquer the world, they were too old to do it, and none of their sons were up to the job.”

Quint decided to let him rave on, and get it off his chest. He leaned back to listen.

Mike said urgently, “Possibly the creator of such a superman would expect to instill it with his own beliefs and ideals. And superman or not, don’t think that would be too impossible to do. The things that you learn when in your earliest years are almost impossible to unlearn. Our minds, which are supposedly so capable of reason, are actually largely swayed by the prejudices picked up while we’re still babes or children. Take religion, for an example. You start getting it before you’re out of your mother’s arms. By the time you’re an adult, supposedly educated and a rational person, religion is so engrained in you that a negligible number of people ever change from that which they learned as a child. Otherwise, you’re intelligent, but there is no use trying to argue with you logically about religion. You know you’re right and the other guy can argue with you till hell freezes over without success. It makes no difference if you’ve been raised a Moslem, a Christian of whatever sect, a Jew or a Buddhist, or whatever; the same thing applies.

“And it’s not just religion. I covered one of these international peace conferences once. It was held in Stockholm and there were lads from all over the world represented. One night I sat in on an argument between a sharp American college boy, and a Russian lad about the same age. One, of course, was for communism, and the other for capitalism. But they weren’t really having a discussion. Because neither even heard the other’s points. Each knew he was correct and didn’t bother considering the other’s argument.”

Quint said interestedly, “And you think this creator of the superman would instill his modern day Frankenstein monster with his own ideals, eh?”

“Right.”

Quint leaned back in his chair, stuck his hands into his pockets and said, wryly, “Okay. Let’s hear the pitch. There must be some pitch. Where do I come in?”

Mike said earnestly, leaning forward again. “Now look, Quint, hear me out before you say no. The problem is to smoke this guy out.”

“Guy? You’re thinking of Ferencsik, aren’t you? Why not say so? Only there’s one big fly in the ointment, Mike. Nicolas Ferencsik wasn’t even in Madrid until less than a week ago. He was in Budapest. These murders you’ve been talking about with the drained blood, and the surgically removed organs, have been going on for months from what you’ve said.”

Mike said impatiently, “I didn’t say it was Ferencsik. I don’t know who it is, though I’ve got my suspicions. But we’ve got to smoke him out. And this is how we do it. The guy obviously hasn’t any conscience. His dream is big enough so that nothing else counts. Nothing can be allowed to stand in his way. So, okay. What you do is write a column. It’s written tongue in cheek style, as though you’re kidding. Most of your columns are that way, anyway. But in this you give the whole story. Everybody else that reads it thinks you’re kidding, but this guy knows you aren’t. He realizes you’re hip to him. So what does he do?”

“I know what he does,” Quint said, coming to his feet, in disgust. “He bumps me off.”

“Now, wait,” Mike said urgently, looking up at him. “No he doesn’t, Quint. Because we’re expecting him. It’s a trap. And you’re the bait. We’ll have him.”

“Not that way, we won’t.” Quit growled, picking up his beret and adjusting it onto his head. “You’re not going to tie me up like a baby goat waiting for the tiger to show up.”

“What’s the matter, damn it? Are you yellow?”

“Of course,” Quint said dryly. “But that’s pronounced, are you too intelligent to get suckered into something like this?” He bent down over the table, leaning on it with both hands. “Listen. In the first place I don’t think I buy your story. It’s too complicated, and you’ve got too little to back it up. But even if I did buy it, I’m not going to play bait for some Jack the Ripper type. Find another patsy.”

And with that he started for the door.

“Hey,” Mike yelled. “Who’s paying for these drinks?”

Quint looked hurt. “I was your guest,” he called, closing the door behind him.

Bartholomew Digby, Central Intelligence Agency field man in Madrid, had dinner with his immediate superior, who had come down from Paris, at the roof garden of the Plaza Hotel, off the Plaza de Espana. It hadn’t been a particularly successful meeting, and the disgruntled operative decided to walk off both his heavy Spanish type dinner and some of his miffed feelings.

He lived in an apartment hotel on Calle de Quintana, less than half a mile from the Plaza, had he taken the route direct. However, he had been making a practice of strolling through the Jardines Publicos of an evening, and he repeated the usual itinerary. Hands in pockets he strolled down Jose Canizares to Ferraz and turned right.

He circled the Cuartel de la Montans, still in ruins from the war days, and entered the park proper, nodding grumpily to the Guardia Civil whom he had passed a dozen times in his hikes about the park of a nighttime. Not far from the point where Calle del Rey Francisco touches the extensive grounds of the Jardines, he came in the dullest of shadows to a bench upon which were seated two figures.

He supposed sourly that they were lovers. In his present mood, the conception of love and the desirability of sitting upon park benches with the object of one’s affections until dawn was beyond him. However, he opened his mouth to begin a mild greeting and an apology for intruding on their privacy.

It was cut short when the larger of the two figures stood erect and came toward him.

The shadow that remained upon the bench said, in a voice that could only be described as womanish. “But we have been waiting for you, Herr Digby.”

And suddently he knew, even as the bulk of the other was upon him. His teeth thinned back in a fighting snarl as he went into a gunman’s crouch and his hand snaked for his quickdraw holster. Too late. Too late, he remembered. That damned columnist, Quentin Jones, had wrested his gun away from him and tossed it into a corner of his apartment. Digby hadn’t as yet had the occasion to acquire a new one here in Spain.

The other was upon him, mewling and snarling in its throat, as with incredible, unbelievable strength, it tore into his life.

Bartholomew Digby went down fighting. His left hand fought its way to trouser pocket and emerged with a switch blade fighting knife. Already, under the banging, rending, tearing, he was feeling the blackness ebbing up. The brutal, unresistable strength of the hulking creature, its nauseous breath, the guttural snarls, not even animal-like. Not of this world.

The blade flashed in the dimness of starlight, and he plunged it with his last ebbing strength, and again and again into the grunting, growling figure that loomed above him, grinding him into the gravel of the walk.

And as the fighting knife plunged deep, it affected his foe not at all, and the blows and rending