Murderer's chain

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe March 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

If Maudie had only given me the ten thousand dollars to invest in the Martian Development Company there would have been no reason to kill her. The money would have been more than tripled and my financial troubles would have been over. But Maudie has always been so unreasonable. Even though she grudgingly admitted that I had been right in the Martian venture, she still had no faith in my business judgment. She was as adamant as ever about parting with the smallest fraction of her vast fortune when I had the opportunity to step in on the ground floor of the Balsavius Six Mining Corporation.

Balsavius Six, in case you don't know, is the newest planet which Earth's space ships have touched. Everything about Balsavius has been kept strictly hush-hush. Only a handful of people have the slightest concept of the value of the new planet's mineral deposits. It just happened that one of the men in on the top secret was my friend Sylvester, and he was willing to cut me in on a slice of the corporation he was forming for as little as five thousand dollars on the line.

The problem was how to get my hands on that much folding stuff. The answer should have been easy. Maudie (Mrs. Maude Terrain) was one of Earth's wealthiest women and, after all, Maudie was my mother-in-law. The trouble with Maudie was that she was narrow-minded, prejudiced, I might say bigoted. She liked to boast that her family have come from good, solid Earth stock from the beginning of time and, while she mingled with the socially elite from Venus, she considered Martians crude, and refused to entertain guests from what she described as "the minor planets."

Maudie's second trouble was that she was mean. Although her daughter, Isabelle, and I have been married for eight years, Maudie never did more than to provide us with a modest allowance. She always felt that I should work which, after all, is pretty non-sensical when there are so many ways for a man with a little capital to get rich quick.

Isabelle isn't like Maudie. She's easy-going, pliant, susceptible to flattery and, on Maudie's death, Isabelle would inherit her full fortune. So with a deal like this in the offing, it didn't take any great brain to see that Maudie's rapid demise would remove the single obstacle that stood between myself and untold wealth.

The thought of killing Maudie had come often to my mind since my talk with Sylvester but the available weapons all seemed too crude. I'm a fastidious person and the idea of shooting or stabbing Maudie was just too vulgar. One of the more subtle poisons might have turned the trick, but certainly nothing as obvious as cyanide or arsenic. As for curare or beleston, to be frank, I hadn't the foggiest notion where to lay my hands on them.

That's the way things stood when I just happened to stop in front of the window of Melvin Rosy's House of Fantastic Jewelry in Greenwich Village. I'd passed by the shop many times but I'd never paused to look in. Of recent years, the Village has filled up with all sorts of peculiar people, Martians, Venusians and the little green men from outer space. One thing I'll have to hand to Maudie, she was right about calling some of these people uncouth. Some of the Galaxians really are riff-raff.

Out in front of the store were some long pink fliers advertising the jewelry within. I picked one up idly, for it had just occurred to me that Maudie's birthday was the next day and that it might not be a bad idea to soften her up with a gift. I looked at the monstrous chunks of jewelry in the display window--rings, bracelets and whatnots, decorated with staring eyes, floating amoebas and gilded kidneys. Maudie was a pushover for spectacular accoutrements but this stuff exceeded even her flamboyant taste.

Probably I would have walked on by if a couple of lines at the top of the flier hadn't caught my attention. They were written by some old time humorist called S. J. Perelman and he described the jewelry as being like, "an egg balanced on a cone, an erg balanced on a bone, a hag balanced on a roan."

That last part seemed a perfect description of Maudie--"a hag balanced on a roan." Almost by instinct I started to climb the crooked stone steps to the shop. The door was open and the proprietor was standing behind the counter. Other than that the place was empty.

I'd seen Melvin Rosy around before. He was a big brute of a man with a shaggy red beard who sported a dangling jade earring in his left ear. I'd always suspected that Rosy had Martian blood but I'd never been sure until I glimpsed the little purple flecks in the lines of his palms that are a dead giveaway.

Rosy looked up and his gaze seemed to go right through me. Some of these Martian chaps have an uncanny skill at reading your mind. Rosy's voice was clear and soft but it had the timbre of some stringed instrument. He said, "A gift perhaps. For a woman?"

I nodded but I almost jumped out of my skin when he added, "For your mother-in-law, I should imagine. I'm sure I have just the thing."

He showed me a half dozen pendants and bracelets but I could see his heart wasn't in it. He was sizing me up, wanting to make sure of me before he offered the piece de resistance. I could feel excitement surging up inside of me, even though I had no notion of what he would bring forth.

Finally he went to the rear of the shop and disappeared behind a batik curtain. When he returned he held in his hand a heart-shaped box of deep-napped velvet, royal purple in color. He laid the box on the glass counter but his wide palm nearly covered it.

His eyes held mine and his thick lips quirked in a smile that was almost a grimace. He said, "I take it you want an extra-special gift. I might say a gift for the departing, even a fatal gift."

I gulped and nodded.

He raised the box and slipped the catch. The lid rose slowly on coiled hinges and I was staring at the most delicately wrought necklace I had ever seen. It was long and thin, no wider than a shoestring, and the clasp was a beautifully constructed replica of a snake's head. I looked at the intricate design of the narrow chain with wonder. Certainly it was not a product of Earth, I thought. Nowhere on this planet do we have craftsmen capable of such elaboration of minutiae.

Even more striking than the workmanship of the chain was its coloration. It was not gold, as I had first thought, but a metal unknown to me with a flame-like orange glow. My gaze was drawn away from the necklace by Rosy's soft chuckle.

"It is magnificent, is it not?"

"Yes," I said, "but far beyond my means. I had in mind some trifle--"

Rosy lifted a hand for silence and again I noticed the purple flecks in the palm. He said, "Nothing is too expensive for the woman you hate."

I began to stutter a protest but something in Rosy's expression stopped me. He spoke gently, as though humoring a child. "We do not need to discuss price. The necklace will make you a wealthy man. We can settle upon terms then."

"I don't understand."

"Ah, but you will," he said smiling. "You do not recognize the metal. There is nothing strange about that. Probably no man of Earth has ever seen it and lived. In Mars it has been given the name of Malutrex and, even there, it is both rare and extremely expensive because of its peculiar properties. In all, I doubt if more than a dozen such necklaces were made up. They are called,"--he stopped to underscore his point, "Murderer's Chains."

I think he expected me to ask why. But for some reason my throat was so dry that I couldn't trust myself to speak.

"You will recall," he continued slowly, "that way back in the twentieth century when the Martians first came to Earth, they were not made exactly welcome. Our first space ships were fired upon and many of our people were killed. Our next step was secret infiltration. We landed our ships in deserts and other isolated spots and unloaded select groups to intermingle with the Earth people and, because we are a superior race, soon many of our representatives held important posts among the governments of the Earth, especially that of the United States. To these Martians fell the task of breaking down ancient prejudices so that Earth could be opened to unrestricted trade and immigration. This was not easy. The men of Earth still remained hostile to us and, when we were unmasked as Martians, many of us were imprisoned and some were beaten to death, even executed. The people of Earth were, as a whole, complacent but they were whipped up to a frenzy by scare-mongers and demagogues whose voices it became necessary to silence.

"Open retaliation would have done more harm than good and it was then that the Martians found the perfect weapon--Malutrex. This is a metal quite harmless to Martians for, as you know, our blood has a quite different composition than yours. We can handle Malutrex without the slightest danger. Look--" He reached down, coiled the slender chain about his wrist, caught the hook in the tongue-like catch of the delicate clasp then unloosened it again.

He smiled and was silent for a minute, studying my face. When he spoke again it was with slow deliberation. "Maybe, you remember hearing tales long ago of 'the silent death'. Certain isolationist Congressmen and Senators who spear-headed the opposition to interplanetary development died mysteriously and without visible cause. Malutrex was the cause of their deaths."

I was culling out half-forgotten bits of information that I had learned as a schoolboy. "But how--"

Again the purple-flecked palm raised to interrupt me. "Earth men are hot-blooded. The chemical analysis of their bodies--but I won't bother you with the technicalities. In plain language, once a chain of Malutrex circles human flesh, it begins to shrink, slowly, almost invisibly. It grows tighter and tighter until it becomes a strangler's noose. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the Earth man can do about it. Once the clasp is fastened, no matter how he tries, he cannot undo it nor, after a few minutes, can he loosen the chain from his skin. In most cases the victim is taken completely unaware by the death creeping upon him. Malutrex constricts gradually and painlessly except for the last spluttering moment of life."

My knees felt a little weak and my stomach queezy. "Why tell me? Why should you let me in on this secret?"

Rosy's smile became more intimate. "Mrs. Terrain is not exactly popular among Martians," he said softly. "If I remember correctly, she is the Chairman of the League to Oppose Interplanetary Marriage, and has financed the Earth Citizens Council to name only a few of the discriminatory organizations with which she has linked herself. Perhaps you, as her heir, could put her fortune to a better use."

"There's no doubt of that," I said.

"Well, then--"

"But I've no desire to be dissolved in the death ray chamber for murder."