Phantoms

things there?”
    “Pandemonium.”
    “It’ll get worse.”
    As Bryce was putting down the receiver, Jenny Paige returned from her safari in search of drugs and medical equipment. “Where’s Lisa?”
    “With the kitchen detail,” Bryce said.
    “She’s all right?”
    “Sure. There are three big, strong, well-armed men with her. Remember? Is something wrong?”
    “Tell you later.”
    Bryce assigned Jenny’s three armed guards to new duties, then helped her establish an infirmary in one corner of the lobby.
    “This is probably wasted effort,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “So far no one’s been injured. Just killed.”
    “Well, that could change.”
    “I think it only strikes when it intends to kill. It doesn’t take halfway measures.”
    “Maybe. But with all these men toting guns, and with everyone so damned jumpy, I wouldn’t be half surprised if someone accidentally winged someone else or even shot himself in the foot.”
    Arranging bottles in a desk drawer, Jenny said, “The telephone rang at my place and again over at the pharmacy. It was Wargle.” She told him about both calls.
    “You’re sure it was really him?”
    “I remember his voice clearly. An unpleasant voice.”
    “But, Jenny, he was—”
    “I know, I know. His face was eaten away, and his brain was gone, and all the blood was sucked out of him. I know. And it’s driving me crazy trying to figure it out.”
    “Someone doing an impersonation?”
    “If it was, then there’s someone out there who makes Rich Little look like an amateur.”
    “Did he sound as if he—”
    Bryce broke off in mid-sentence, and both he and Jenny turned as Lisa ran through the archway.
    The girl motioned to them. “Come on! Quick! Something weird is happening in the kitchen.”
    Before Bryce could stop her, she ran back the way she had come.
    Several men started after her, drawing their guns as they went, and Bryce ordered them to halt. “Stay here. Stay on the job.”
    Jenny had already sprinted after the girl.
    Bryce hurried into the dining room, caught up with Jenny, moved ahead of her, drew his revolver, and followed Lisa through the swinging doors into the hotel kitchen.
    The three men assigned to this shift of kitchen duty—Gordy Brogan, Henry Wong, and Max Dunbar—had put down their can openers and cooking utensils in favor of their service revolvers, but they didn’t know what to aim at. They glanced up at Bryce, looking disconcerted and baffled.
     
    “ Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush,
    the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush .”
     
    The air was filled with a child’s singing. A little boy. His voice was clear and fragile and sweet.
     
    “ Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush,
    so early in the moooorrrninnnggg!”
     
    “The sink,” Lisa said, pointing.
    Puzzled, Bryce went to the nearest of three double sinks. Jenny came close behind him.
    The song had changed. The voice was the same:
     
    “ This old man, he plays one;
    he plays nick-nack on my drum,
    With a nick-nack, paddywack,
    give a dog a bone—”
     
    The child’s voice was coming out of the drain in the sink, as if he were trapped far down in the pipes.
     
    “ —this old man goes rolling home .”
     
    For metronomic seconds, Bryce listened with spellbound intensity. He was speechless.
    He glanced at Jenny. She gave him the same astonished stare that he had seen on his men’s faces when he had first pushed through the swinging doors.
    “It just started all of a sudden,” Lisa said, raising her voice above the singing.
    “When?” Bryce asked.
    “A couple of minutes ago,” Gordy Brogan said.
    “I was standing at the sink,” Max Dunbar said. He was a burly, hairy, rough-looking man with warm, shy brown eyes. “When the singing started up… Jesus, I must’ve jumped two feet!”
    The song changed again. The sweetness was replaced by a cloying, almost mocking piety:
     
    “ Jesus loves me, this I know,
    for the Bible tells me so .”
     
    “I don’t like this,” Henry Wong said. “How can it be?”
     
    “ Little ones to Him are drawn.
    They are weak, but He is strong .”
     
    Nothing about the singing was overtly threatening; yet, like the noises Bryce and Jenny had heard on the telephone, the child’s tender voice, issuing from such an unlikely source, was unnerving. Creepy.
     
    “ Yes, Jesus loves me.
    Yes, Jesus loves me.
    Yes, Jesus—”
     
    The singing abruptly ceased.
    “Thank God!” Max Dunbar said with a shudder of relief, as if