Lieutenant Marino took his feet off the desk and turned around to look at Singing Rock. He puffed at his cigarette for a few moments, and then he said: "Some detectives like wacky cases, you know. I mean, some detectives go out of their way to solve these real eccentric mysteries, and stuff like that. Do you know what I like? I like open-and-shut homicides. Victim, motive, weapon, conviction. So do you know what I get? Wacky cases, that's what I get."
Singing Rock raised his lacerated cheek "Does that look wacky?" he asked Lieutenant Marino quietly. Lieutenant Marino said nothing, and shrugged.
Singing Rock said: "I'm going to tell you this straight because we don't have very much time, and even if you don't believe me now, you will when things start to happen. My friend here is right. The man downstairs is a Red Indian medicine man. I won't stretch your imagination too far and tell you how he got here, or what he's doing on the tenth floor of a private hospital, but I can tell you that his powers are quite real, and highly dangerous."
"Is he armed?" asked Detective Narro, a young, neatly dressed cop in a blue suit and blue check shirt.
"Not with guns," said Singing Rock. "He doesn't need to be. His magical powers are far more effective than guns. What's more, your guns will be quite useless against him, and potentially dangerous to yourselves. If I can't impress anything else on you, let me convince you of that. Please — no guns."
Lieutenant Marino raised his eyebrows. "What do you suggest we use as an alternative — bows and arrows?"
Singing Rock frowned. "Your humor is a little out of line, lieutenant. There's nothing funny about what's happening downstairs, and you're going to need all the help and all the information you can get."
"Well," said Lieutenant Marino, "what is happening downstairs?"
"It's not easy to understand," said Singing Rock. "I'm not even sure of this myself. But here's the way I read it right now. Misquamacus, the medicine man, is preparing a magical gateway to summon Red Indian demons and spirits from the other side."
"The other side of what?"
"The other side of physical existence. The spirit world. He's already managed to conjure up the Star Beast, which is the servant and messenger of the Great Hierarchy of Red Indian demons. Mr. Erskine here — well, he saw the Star Beast with his own eyes, and nearly died."
Lieutenant Marino said: "Is that true, Mr. Erskine?"
I nodded. "It's true. I swear it. Look at the state of my hands."
Lieutenant Marino peered at my blue and blotchy patches of frostbite and said nothing.
Singing Rock said: "It isn't easy for any medicine man to conjure up beings from beyond. They're pitiless, dangerous and powerful. Most of the greater beings from Red Indian history are sealed off from us by ancient locks and spells that were imposed on them before the white man even placed one foot on our continent. The medicine men who locked them away in the spirit world were masters of their craft, and there isn't a single spiritual wonder-worker alive today who can match them. That's why these manitous are so perilous. If Misquamacus releases them, there is no one who can send them back. I'm not even sure that Misquamacus could send them back himself."
Detective Narro was confused. He said: "These beings — do you mean they're hiding in the building?"
Singing Rock shook his head. "They are all around us. In the air we breathe. In the woods and rocks and trees. Everything has its manitou, its spirit. There are the natural manitous of the skies and the earth and the rains, and there are manitous in everything that is made or created by man. Every Indian lodge had its manitou; every Indian weapon had its manitou. Why do some bows shoot straight and others crooked? It depends on the faith of the man who holds the bow, and the sympathy he has for the manitou of his weapon. That is why your guns would be so dangerous to you. A gun has a manitou, according to whatever faith and craft has been invested in it, but your men do not believe that, and the manitous of their own weapons could quite easily be turned against them."
Lieutenant Marino was still listening, but he was looking more and more miserable with every word that Singing Rock spoke. Detective Narro was trying to keep up with it, but it was plain that he believed that Misquamacus was a criminal maniac with a hidden gang. In Detective Narro's life, spirits and insubstantial shades from nether worlds just didn't exist. I wished to God that they didn't exist in mine.
Singing Rock said: "From the gateway that Misquamacus is preparing, I think that he is calling on the most terrible of all spirits, the Great Old One."
Lieutenant Marino said: "The Great Old One? Who is the Great Old One?"
"He is the equivalent to your Satan, or Devil. Gitche Manitou is the great spirit of life and Red Indian creation, but the Great Old One is his constant enemy. There are many accounts of the Great Old One in ancient Indian writings, although none of them agree what he looked like, or how he could be summoned. Some say he looked like a huge toad, the size of several pigs, and others say he looked like a cloud with a face made of snakes."
Lieutenant Marino sniffed. "Kind of hard to send out an APB on that description."
Singing Rock nodded. "You wouldn't get the opportunity, Lieutenant. The Great Old One is the most ravenous and hideous of all demons. I have said that he's like your Satan; but Satan, by comparison, is a gentleman. The Great Old One is a being of infinite cruelty and malevolence."
There was a long silence. Finally, Lieutenant Marino stood up, and adjusted his revolver in his belt. Detective Narro closed his notebook and buttoned up his coat.
"Thank you for your information and your assistance," said Lieutenant Marino. "Now I think we'll go catch ourselves a homicide." Singing Rock said: "Lieutenant — you're not taking your gun?"
Marino simply smiled. "Your stories about demons and all that stuff are very imaginative, Mr. Singing Rock, but I have a homicide squad to run. The hospital has asked us to winkle out a mad patient who's already killed one nurse and injured a doctor, and it's my duty to go down there and get him out. Dead or alive, you understand, depending on how he wants it. What did you say his name was? Mickey something?"
"Misquamacus," corrected Singing Rock quietly. "Lieutenant, I'm warning you —"
"Warn me no warns," said Lieutenant Marino. "I've been serving this force for longer than a coon's age, and I know what to do in situations like this one. There won't be no trouble, and there won't be no fuss. Just keep your heads down until it's all over."
He opened the office door, and the press and the TV people came pushing in. Singing Rock and I stood amongst them, silent and depressed and frightened, while Marino gave a tough two-minute résumé of what he planned to do.
"We're going to seal off the whole floor, then comb the corridors with marksmen and tear gas. We're going to do it real systematic, and we're going to issue regular warnings to this nut that if he doesn't come quiet he's in genuine trouble. I'm also sending three men down in the elevator to cut him off from that direction."
The reporters scribbled down Marino's plan, and then bombarded him with more questions. Marino raised his hands for silence.
"I'm not saying anything else for now. Just watch how we flush him out, and then we'll chew the fat later. Is everyone ready, detective?"
"Ready, sir," said Narro.
We watched despondently as a squad of eight armed patrolmen went to the staircase and disappeared through the door. Lieutenant Marino was standing by the elevator with his hand held intercom, checking for the moment when the search-and-destroy team would reach the tenth floor. Three men — two uniformed officers and Detective Narro — were waiting by the elevator, revolvers ready, all keyed up for the moment to go down there and shoot it out. After nine or ten minutes of restless waiting, there was a buzz from the men down below.