The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

“Entrada, por favor,” so I
entered.
    A plump middle-aged lady,
with black hair and a no longer young but very beautiful face, was
seated behind a small desk on my right. She looked up as I
approached.
    “ I’m Shell Scott,” I said.
“Dr. Hernandez is expecting me.”
    “ Oh, yes!” she said
enthusiastically, dazzling white teeth flashing as she smiled. “You
go right in, Mr. Scott. Henry is not with a patient.”
    I nodded, glancing toward
a closed door on my left that she’d indicated. But before I could
move toward it, the lady leaned forward and said, “Wait,” speaking
softly.
    I looked at her as she
said, almost in a whisper, “Mr. Scott, you are a detective. I
listened on the phone. Please help him. Please. He is very good
man, very good doctor. He should not have to suffer all
this.”
    Suffer all this what? I
wondered. But I said, “Well, if he wants me to do a job for him,
and I decide....”
    It was a little sticky. I
could hardly tell this lovely plump lady that, before I joined his
team, I wanted to be sure the Doc wasn’t a fruitcake. Once I agree
to take on a case for any client, I feel morally obligated to give
that client 100% no matter what comes down the pike, so I have to
be careful that I don’t sign on with dingdongs.
    She was looking up at me
soberly, intently. “I am his wife,” she said, still almost
whispering. “Eleanora Hernandez. He will not beg. Never. Not if
death was the other...the altervativo? Ah—he is too proud. But I
will beg. Please? He cannot do this, not alone. He needs a man
young, strong, to help. A man with vigorous power, like you, Mr.
Scott. Do assist him, I pray. Please?”
    It was more than a little
weird. The lady, Mrs. Hernandez, had suddenly moved me, in a
strange way had gotten to me. It wasn’t because she’d called me
young and strong and powerful—I already knew that—but because there
was a kind of fierceness, almost desperation, in her whispering
voice, a conviction and strength and need that I felt somewhere
inside me, not just in my ears.
    “ Look,” I said, “I haven’t
even met Dr. Hernandez yet, but I’ll do my best to help him,
whatever it is he...you?...may want, honest, as long as I’m
convinced he’s not a complete—”
    I cut it off. What I’d
started to say was “complete nut-case,” but I was afraid that
wouldn’t go over with a real bang here. However, I couldn’t think
of any other way to make my point completely clear, so I chuckled
lightly, I hoped, and added, “—nutcase.”
    Surprisingly, she laughed,
pulling her head back and looking up at the ceiling, some extra
flesh beneath her chin wiggling during the merriment. “Nutcase, it
is like crazy, cuckoo, es un hombre muy loco?”
    “ Yeah. At least yeah for
the crazy-cuckoo. I’m not sure– ”
    “ My husband the doctor, he
is a nutcase, you bet, verdad! But he is a nutcrazy like Leonardo
De Vinci, or Viktor Schauberger, or Hahnemann and Lakhovsky and
Rife and Koch, like those. You will see.” She paused, peering
closely at me, then smiled. “And you will help. You are the
one!”
    “ I’m the one?”
    “ Si, yes. You are good man.
Good like my husband doctor. That way good. You will help, it will
be very well. I can tell this because I have some. I am a...” She
stopped, frowning slightly, and with one index finger tapped the
side of her head.
    “ Nutcase?” I said
helpfully.
    She laughed merrily again.
“Psychic, a little bit,” she said. “That is how you say it, I
think. Sometimes I have the clear seeing. All right, you go in
now.”
    I shrugged, and did as I
was told, turning and taking a couple of steps toward the doctor’s
office door. Maybe there were two people a little bit psychic
here—not including me. Because at that moment the door opened and a
tall, slim, gray-haired man looked out, nodded at me, smiling with
large teeth as white as Mrs. Hernandez’, and saying: “Ah, bueno!
Mr. Scott, true? Do come in, please! I am