"With A Blunt Instrument"
Unknown Worlds – December 1941
(1941)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by Edd Cartier

It was a perfectly safe little way of cheating the insurance companies. Just murder a well-insured man with the aid of a certain peculiar "Blunt Instrument"

-

	Mrs. Banstead squatted like an immense bullfrog, stared grimly across the big black desk and said, "I want to be a widow."

	"Really!" Digger Kelly registered interest by raising a sardonic eyebrow. His face was long and leathery, his eyes cold, blue and shrewd, his grin both hard and mirthless. "How much is he carrying?"

	"Five thousand dollars." Her broad, flat face quirked at mention of the sum. "I've been paying for seven years, and if something isn't done damn quick, I'll go on paying for another forty. I'd rather have his money than his company."

	"I'm sure you would." Again the grin. "You have my sincere sympathy." He watched her speculatively. She stared back at him with the blatant, unwinking gaze of a fat basilisk. "You know my terms—fifty-fifty?" She nodded. "And what leads you to suppose that I can—er—be of assistance to you in this respect?"

	"You were recommended," she told him, her voice a hoarse monotone, "by my sister, Melissa Gates."

	"Ah!" Opening a drawer, Kelly raked through a file, extracted some papers. He studied them in silence, then, "Yes, Mrs. Gates provided my sixteenth case. A very successful one, even though I say so myself. Nice and smooth and satisfactory in every way. I attended the burial." Carefully he replaced the papers.

	"Aren't you risking a length of hemp with those documents around?" Mrs. Banstead's devilish tranquility was disturbed. Her great, repulsive bosom heaved with her breathing.

	"No." He grinned at her again, his cold eyes running over her bulging shapelessness. Two hundred fifty pounds, he guessed—she wouldn't need more than seven feet of rope. "They record nothing of use to anyone but me."

	They didn't either. Not even Dan Fletcher could use them effectively, supposing that he'd get his long, thin, inquisitive fingers on them. Dan Fletcher needed watching all the same. Better keep strictly to his plan of doing twenty-five before skipping. Twenty-five was risk enough in a town this size. In fact, twenty-five came dangerously close to inserting a curious factor in Fletcher's infernal mathematics. Fletcher played with numbers like a maestro fingering the strings of a harp, and he was liable to start tuning up immediately. He sensed a discord.

	"The sum you have mentioned, Mrs. Banstead," he said smoothly; "is low, very low. I must tell you frankly that I'm hardly enamored of the proposition." Inserting strong strangler's thumbs in the armholes of his vest, he pursed his lips doubtfully.

	She said, in a funereal monotone, "I'm paying rates upped twenty percent. It buys me a clause: I get twelve thousand if the hairy louse goes before the age of forty-eight."

	"Of natural causes, of course?" hazarded Kelly.

	"Of natural causes," she confirmed.

	"That makes a considerable difference." Extracting a thumb, he pressed a stud on the ebony desk. A dwarf answered. The dwarf was squat, pot-bellied, black-skinned, and he wore a suit of sloppy clothes as if reluctantly conforming to an insane custom. "This," said Kelly, "is Mrs. Banstead, our latest client."

	The dwarf emitted a piglike grunt, glowered at her with sullen eyes. There was something weirdly fundamental about him, something totally out of place—like a Hottentot in a penthouse. Mrs. Banstead vaguely wondered if the creature was a Hottentots He was animal, and she could smell him from where she sat, a pungent, goatish smell. She didn't like him.

	Kelly gabbled at the dwarf in a strange language composed of snorts and grunts. The dwarf went out.

	"The matter will be dealt with," said Kelly. He stood up, his long, wiry figure topping six feet. His manner indicated that the interview was at an end.

	"But—"

	"The agreement between us," he responded, sensing her question, "remains unwritten. In due time you will pay me." He leaned across the desk, smiled with the air of a businessman who has just pulled a satisfactory deal, then said, very slowly and very, deliberately, "God help you if you don't!"

	Mrs. Banstead heaved her great form erect. Now that it was all arranged, she felt shaken. But Melissa had got away with it, so why shouldn't she? Besides, this hex doctor fairly radiated confidence. She calmed herself as she walked ponderously to the door.

	With her hand on the handle, she asked, "When . . . when will it be?"

	"In six to eight weeks' time." Kelly sat down again, frowned like a busy man bothered by superfluous questions. "The twenty-fifth," he murmured after she had gone. His hard eyes bored at the wall. "Providing Fletcher suspects nothing, I can get out and start again elsewhere. Damn Fletcher!" He continued to stare at the wall for some time. Then he rang the bell, and the dwarf came back.

	"Charlie," he said, "I've got a job for you." He lapsed into a torrent of outlandish gutturals. The dwarf listened without emotion, grunting occasionally.

-

	Mason sighed resignedly, suppressed a yawn, and said, "You may be right and you may be wrong. I wouldn't know. But if you ask me, I'd say you've either got a nasty mind, or else you place too much faith in statistics. You're mathematics mad!"

	"Did you ever hear," demanded Dan Fletcher, "of any insurance company that didn't do business upon a statistical basis?" He didn't wait for a reply. His clenched fist landed with a thump on Mason's desk, and a gob of that worthy's ink leaped from the pot and made an unsightly splash. "No," he said emphatically.

	Finding the blotter, Mason dabbed gloomily at the smear and said, "I see no cause to start a smelling out of witches just because there's a peak in the graph. I've seen dozens of graphs in my time, and most of them had peaks. They get dragged down to average by equally periodic dips." He put away the blotter, eyed Fletcher's fist, cautiously closed the lid of the inkpot. "Sinkers compensate for soarers if you wait long enough for nature to take its course. So relax, be soothed. Peace be upon you."

	"Twenty-four," persisted Dan Fletcher irefully. "Twenty-four policies that are stinkers. Either someone has blundered or we've been made suckers." Finding a chair, he planted his broad beam upon it, his legs braced as if to bring him upright in a flash. His bold gaze examined Mason until that person began to fidget. "Ever seen our statistical morgue at head office?"

	"Can't say that I have," admitted the other reluctantly.

	"Go up and see it sometime," invited Fletcher. "It holds thousands upon thousands of records going back for a hundred and forty years. It is a mathematical whiz. Given certain of the necessary details and applying them to our mathematical data, I could tell you your expectation of life correctly to within two years. What's more, I could also give you decimal-pointed percentages covering possibilities of intervention by accidents of any imaginable kind." He got up, walked around restlessly. "As you well know—or ought to—policies aren't based on guesswork. They're based on data that doesn't cover and can't cover freak events and rare, epidemics, but are good enough to eliminate the possibility of twenty-four stinkers in a row."

	"I know you're the company's official trouble-shooter," said Mason feebly, "but how in hell can you shoot the peak off a graph? If twenty-four geeziks pop off fifteen to thirty years too early, and if twenty-four reputable medicos swear that their days had properly dawned, what can you do about it? Can you order a couple of dozen exhumations on the strength of a statistical flaw?"

	"A grand total of three hundred thousand smackers is more than a statistical flaw."

	"Yes, but all the deaths were natural. If a couple of them had been done in with the usual blunt instrument, I'd be leery myself. But when you get clean certificates, what else can you do but pay up with a smile and hold your trap?"

	"You can mooch around," said Dan Fletcher darkly. He caught Mason napping, walloped a spurt of ink from the other pot which had been left open. "I'm going to mooch around. Something smells, and I'm going to find it."

-

	This was the house. The sixteenth down Dan's list; he'd picked it at random—one had to start somewhere if one were going to get anywhere. Running his finger down the list, he checked up on the name: Mrs. Maisie Curtin. The board in the foyer said she nested on the fifth floor.

	Using the elevator, Dan Fletcher slipped the operator a five-spot and said, "This Curtin woman —can you give me a brief resume of her life?"

	"A floozie." The operator magiced the note away, gave Fletcher a respectful look. "Her old man kicked the bucket about six months back, and she collected plenty on him. Did she weep for him—hah!" His sniff was loud and contemptuous. "Her and Curtin never got along. He liked books and things. She was fond of bingo, boys and booze. Now she's setting the pace."

	"Making the play, eh?"

	"I'll say!" The elevator stopped with a rubbery bounce. "Curtin never did anybody any harm, and he was mighty good to me." He opened the gate, let Fletcher out. "But he faded away. I watched him sinking week after week. Then he died." He struck his head out and added. "Second on the left, and thanks, mister!"

	Dan Fletcher thumbed the button on the door indicated. Short, swift steps sounded the other side, and the woman who opened the door was very small, very blond, with wide blue eyes. She was well rounded, well lipsticked, and made a fair job of looking like a foolish virgin.

	"If you're selling something," she said in a babyish voice, "you can damn well—oh!" Her voice changed as her blue eyes took in Dan's craggy features, broad, trim figure, and neatly pressed suit. The eyes became interested and calculating. "Come in," she invited, standing aside.

	He entered, his hat in his hand. "Mrs. Curtin?" he asked. She nodded, still weighing him up speculatively. "My name's Dan Fletcher."

	"It's a pleasure," she said. She studied him like a housewife about to buy a hunk of beef. "Won't you be seated—er—Mr. Fletcher?" He sat, stared around the room. It was a picture of garish opulence. Mrs. Curtin opened a cocktail cabinet, found a flask and two glasses. "Like a drink?" She eyed him again, deliberately coy.

	"No, thanks, Mrs. Curtin." He noted that she had not yet asked his business. Watching her carefully, he added, "I've come around from the Atlantic & General Assurance Co."

	She didn't drop a glass, but he saw her knuckles -whiten as her grip closed, and he did not miss the sudden, unfathomable expression that sprang into her eyes. Was it fear, or what?

	"Indeed," she murmured after a long silence. Her interest in him seemed to have changed suddenly. Putting down the flask and the glasses, she played around with her hands as if she didn't quite know what to do with them. Her eyes were on him all the time.

	He let her get on with it, curious to see how she'd make the conversation. She fidgeted a bit more, then reclaimed one of the glasses and poured herself a drink. It was a stiff one, Fletcher noted, a good, full-sized sea dog's snifter, and she poured it into her baby face as if it were far from being the first and equally far from being the last.

	The drink crawled around her innards and did things to her, including a reddening of her face. "Go on," she ordered, tipping another into the glass.

	"It's about the policy on your late husband, Robert Curtin," Fletcher went on cautiously.

	Downing the second one, she stood up and said, "What of it?" Her voice had altered now—it was harsh and slightly bellicose.

	"The company," lied Fletcher, "is associated with the Eastern Investment Corp., whom I represent. Frankly, for the sake of good will and hope of further business, we are prepared to offer excellent advice and undertake financial dealings on behalf of clients who have—"

	"Oh," she interrupted, "so you're after my twenty-five thousand bucks." She smacked down the glass, jammed small fists on prominent hips, and glared. "No soap—get out!"

	"Very well, Mrs. Curtin." With a resigned sigh, Dan Fletcher found his hat. "You will understand, I hope, that we waited a decent time before approaching you, that we've no desire to bother you unduly, and that we only wish to retain the good will of clients."

	"When I get a load of money," she told him, "I know what to do with it. You're wasting your time, mister. Now scram!"

	Pausing by the door, he surveyed her again, then said, "The assistance that we are always glad to give may not interest you, Mrs. Curtin, but possibly it may be welcome to others whom you can recommend. In such cases we would, of course, follow the usual practice of paying you—er—a commission on any business you introduce."

	"Well," she responded thoughtfully. The angry light died slowly from her eyes. "If there's any more to be got, I guess I can use it." She thought awhile, then stared him in the face. "You won't get a damn cent of mine, see? But if this commission stunt of yours is on the up and up, I reckon I can give you a couple of names."

	"Thank you, Mrs. Curtin," he answered with deceitful humility. "Our integrity is above reproach."

	"It'd better be!" She scribbled a note, gave it to him. He saw her reaching for the glass again as he went out.

	Downstairs, he looked at the note. It bore three names and addresses. Then he looked at his list, found the three among the twenty-four thereon, carefully put a tick against each.

	"Now how," he-asked himself * "in the name of all that's holy, does it come about that one of the queers knows three of the others?" Then he phoned Mason.

-

	Melissa Gates was of a very different type from the Curtin woman, red-haired, peaky-faced, shrewish. If features betrayed character, hers was nosy and suspicious.

	"Who sent you round?" she asked.

	"Mrs. Curtin," Dan Fletcher told her. "She thought you might be interested."

	"Oh, she did, did she?" She rubbed thin, blue-lined hands on her pinafore, sniffed audibly. "What's she getting out of it?"

	"I'm afraid I don't understand you, Mrs. Gates."

	"Never mind. I know her, and she knows me. That woman wouldn't buy anything outside of a bottle and maybe a perm for her peroxided mop. If I was to tell you—" She checked herself, sniffed again, and said, "All right, say what you've got to say."

	"I thought you and Mrs. Curtin were friends," prompted Fletcher.

	"So we are, but that doesn't alter my opinion of her." She sat down, peered at her visitor with ratlike eyes. "Did she let you invest her money?"

	"As a matter of fact, she didn't."

	"I guessed not. She'll play it around until she hooks a good one. Then she'll bury him for plenty. Never satisfied, that's her! One of these days she'll—" She checked herself again, seeing the look on Dan Fletcher's face. Hurriedly she added, "Maisie Curtin's the sort who goes after wealthy old men."

	"I see," said Fletcher doubtfully.

	"Anyway, I've hung on to my dough," continued Melissa Gates, sniffing her satisfaction. She pursed thin lips, stared at him beadily, like a rodent peering round the bend of a sewer. "And I'm still sticking to it. Twelve grand's a lot of money, more'n I ever had before. Some day I may need it—quick!" She emitted a shrill cackle. "That's where some of them'll be mighty sorry they poured it down the sink."

	"Who'll be mighty sorry?" Dan Fletcher thrust.

	"Why . . . why"—she searched for words, suddenly wary—"those who throw dough away and live to regret it."

	"The preventing of which is precisely my business."

	She went to the door, her wariness and suspicion strengthening to the verge of alarm. She licked thin lips as she looked at him, heir shifty eyes silently cursing her ready tongue.

	"Sorry you've wasted your time." Opening the door, she waited for him to go.

	Outside the door he took a' long shot and said easily, "Ah, well, there's always the—er—others. Mrs. Curtin also recommended a Mrs. Schultze. Do you think she's a likely prospect?"

	"Maisie's .a loudmouth," snapped Mrs. Gates positively. "And Lucy Shultze is a screwball. Go pound your dogs and find out. It's no business of mine." With that she slammed the door.

	Dan Fletcher went down the block and round the corner. He consulted his list once more. The name of Lucy Schultze, which he'd raked from his memory, stood fourth from the bottom.

	"Now," he muttered, his brow corrugated with a frown, "that Curtin dame definitely did not mention Schultze. Yet Gates knew her, called her Lucy, and acted as if Curtin knew her also." He tipped his hat on the back of his head. "The way things are shaping, it looks like the whole damn bunch know one another."

	Entering a telephone booth, he dialed a number. "That the Bodin Agency? This is Fletcher of the A & G. I want a couple of good operatives to help me dig out some routine data. What've you got in stock that can third-degree with tact and gentlemanly seemliness?" He grinned as the other voice gabbled back at him. "Yes, at once. I'll wait for them here." Giving the location, he pronged the receiver. Then he strolled to the curb, lit a cigarette and waited.

-

	Banstead was a muscle-bound individual with a barrel chest, broad jowls, and big arms lush with black hair. Once he'd been a logger up in Canada, but now was bidding fair to end his days as a loud noise in wholesale timber. Another twenty years might do it.

	There had been a few tough episodes in his horny-handed past, enough of them to make him feel well able to take care of himself. He wasn't superstitious. He'd walk under ladders, stare at the new moon or spill salt without a single qualm. Nevertheless, he didn't like the pair of guys at the next table. They gave him the creeps.

	The big cafe was half full, and the offending pair particularly prominent. A subtle something about their manner suggested less interest in food than in Banstead. He'd never seen either of them before, had no yearning ever to see either of them again.

	One of the pair was a tall, lean, athletic guy with the hard, tanned complexion of a roughrider. Only his eyes were abnormal: they were more intent and colder than a snake's.

	The other resembled nothing that Banstead had ever seen. He was a black-skinned dwarf, wrinkled, slightly pot-bellied and had the sharp, uneasy eyes of a nervous monkey. His clothes looked like they'd been thrown at him and stuck where they touched.

	A more ill-assorted pair it would be impossible to conceive, but there they were, in company, an elusive bond of union between them. Banstead could sense this bond, and instinctively felt that he should be able to identify it. But he couldn't. The tall guy, he reckoned, was not an American, and his companion was not a Negro. These two negatives ought to make a positive, but the quietly observing Banstead didn't know enough about racial types to put a finger on this pair.

	Stolidly he dug into his hunk of pie. The tall cowboy was too slick to watch him openly, but the other was/glaring at him as if at long last he'd tracked down the infidel who'd stolen the green eye of his little yellow god. There was an eerie quality in that glare, a quality that was neither animosity nor downright hatred, but rather vague and fundamental—like a primitive threat from the dawn of time.

	Finishing, Banstead got up, made his way out. He favored the dwarf with a stare of challenge as he passed, got in return a fierce, unwavering gaze that caused tickling sensations in the region of his kidneys. For two pins the black runt would carve him apart.

	"A returned explorer and an uncaged cannibal," Banstead hazarded as he got outside.

	Glancing back through the plate-glass windows at the brightly illuminated interior, he saw the weird couple leave their seats. He summoned a taxi, watched the rear-view mirror as the machine purred down the street. The mysterious pair came out of the cafe, took a yellow-top and followed. He scowled to himself, directed his driver around the block, lost the shadowing machine, but was still vaguely suspicious.

	The two had not reappeared by the time he got near home, and already he was accusing himself of giving way to his nerves. In the nighttime gloom, here was an empty yellow-top standing around the corner two hundred yards from his destination, but he gave it no more than a glance. A big green automobile was waiting farther down the street, and he studied that with greater interest, since it was parked outside the entrance to the long drive leading to his house. A broad-shouldered, well-dressed individual was lounging near the green car as Banstead came up.

	Getting out of his taxi, Banstead paid the driver, gazed belligerently at the waiting onlooker, started up the path. Swift footsteps came after him; he whirled to face his pursuer, his bulldog jaw sticking out pugnaciously. It was the broad-shouldered man.

-

	In a pleasant voiced the other said, "Mr. Banstead, I believe?" 

	"Correct."

	"I just missed you at your office and had to catch you here. My name's Fletcher, Dan Fletcher. I represent the Atlantic & General Assurance Co."

	"I'm not interested," said Banstead curtly. "Moreover, I'm a busy man and haven't time to discuss taking out a policy even if I had the inclination—which I haven't." He jerked his head to indicate the thin edge of the moon now riding high. "This is a hell of a time to go chasing prospects."

	"I'm not out to sell you anything," replied Dan Fletcher evenly. His keen eyes noted the underlying toughness of Banstead's features. "All I want is a brief talk with you, in private, about a very delicate matter."

	"Ho!" scoffed Banstead derisively. "I -know that gag. It's in those courses on supersalesmanship you get by mail. Method No. 4. The approach oblique."

	"All right," retorted Fletcher quietly. "Have it your own way. What I'm out to do is to prevent crime and save money. I don't like the notion of dishing out several thousand smackers across your dead body." •

	"No," agreed Banstead.. "I'll bet you don't!" His laugh was a deep rumble as he turned and walked away. On the third step his advancing foot stopped, he came swiftly about and snapped. "What? What was that you just said?"

	"I'll explain in private, and that doesn't mean out here in the open."

	Banstead looked, around. The trees along the gloomy drive rustled sibilantly and ragged clouds drifted across the moon. His wife, her yapping mother, two maids, the cook, and probably the shrewish Melissa Gates would be snooping around the house. But he wasn't going back to town at this time of night.

	"I'll give you ten minutes in your car," he decided, "and you'd better make it interesting."

	Dan Fletcher hesitated. "O. K." They got in. Banstead settled himself comfortably in a corner. Fletcher brought out his papers and proceeded to explain.

	"So after that, with the help of some Bodin operatives, I discovered that all the people on this list know some of the other people on it, and that there is a traceable link from one to the other.. There are three cases not listed, which occur within the same period, but since they do not link with any of these, and especially since they conform to the mathematical data for such a period, I accept them as genuine claims. But these on the list are not genuine."

	"You're trying to invent trouble," pooh-poohed Banstead. "Graphs and figures-can be made to mean anything. Besides, where do I come in? I'm not on that list of yours. D'you think I've bumped the lot?"

	"If you'll give me time, I'll explain where you come in," said Fletcher. "After I'd obtained this data, and analyzed it, I took the next logical step."

	"What was that?"

	"I extracted all local policies still open for considerable sums and, with the help of the operatives, tried to extend the links. Of seventeen policyholders, I found only one having a connection with people on this list." He looked the other straight in the eyes. "That one was Mrs. Banstead."

	"What, Josephine?" He laughed harshly. "Scheming to collect on me? That fat frump wouldn't have the guts!"

	"So that's how it is," thought Fletcher, his confidence rising considerably. Bluntly, he said to his sardonically amused listener, "I'll, admit I'm only following my nose, but if figures mean anything—and I believe that they do—they mean you're likely to kick the bucket before long. If you do, I'd like, to learn how it's brought about, but if you keep your wits working you may prove me wrong."

	Heaving himself out of the car, Banstead rumbled, "Many thanks for the tip, but I think you're nutty. You've a score of doctors against you on your own admission."

	"That's just the hell of it. Somebody's invented what looks like the perfect crime, and I want to prove that it isn't."

	"Well," joked Banstead, "see you when I'm dying!"

	Then his burly figure faded into the darkness of the drive. The screen of trees on either side thickened the gloom about the path, and the blackness swallowed him like a hungry maw.

	As his feet crunched steadily nearer and nearer to the house, a tall, lean man waiting in the thick shadow of an outhouse nudged a small, black figure glowering at his side. The black one dragged something white from his pocket, turned his back toward the oncoming walker in the night.

-

	At the wheel of his car the disgruntled Fletcher stared up the silent road and murmured, "Curse it! If only he'd been the jumpy sort. If only he'd been willing to collaborate, we might have gotten somewhere." He pondered sullenly for a while, then his foot moved toward the starter.

	A voice somewhere up by the house called in loud and angry tones. Then a moment of silence, while slowly, dismally, the crescent moon swam through cloudy seas. Another call, louder, angrier, followed by a shot. Two more shots. Finally a fourth. They were thunderous in the quiet of night.

	Dan Fletcher was out of the car and into the dark drive before the echoes of the last explosion had died away. Ahead of him, somebody, or something, started squealing like a stabbed hog. Lights sprang up all over the distant house as the squeals rose crescendo. It was a long, thin, horrid sound that split the night and wailed up to the wan stars.

	A body was crashing through the undergrowth to his left, moving with all the mad abandon of a demented elephant. With lightning speed, his mind decided that flight meant guilt and he plunged that way, his arms pumping at his sides as he hurled his big body along.

	He followed entirely by sound, catching first glimpse of his quarry when a lean, lithe figure gracefully vaulted the fence and reached the road. Way back, the eerie screams had changed to a sobbing howl that was slowly dying. The fugitive was a mere ten yards ahead, but going fast, so fast that even the speedy Fletcher could not gain on him by so much as an inch. The fellow seemed completely unaware of one so close upon his heels.

	There was a yellow-top waiting around the corner. The fugitive dived into it, bellowed at the dozing driver, saw Fletcher for the first time. Sticking an arm out of the window, he fired at the pounding Fletcher from a range of three yards and missed. His hand was still shaking after the exertion of his wild flight, and his bullet whipped Fletcher's hat from his head.

	"Hey!" yelped the taxi driver, suddenly awake.

	"You—" growled Fletcher.

	He was up to the cab by now and his big hand darted out and seized the wrist behind the menacing gun. Vigorously, Fletcher jerked the wrist upward as the weapon exploded again. The heavy bullet whipped through the treetops and a couple of stricken leaves came floating down.

	Still holding the wrist, Fletcher heaved its owner clean out of the cab. At first the other resisted, then suddenly responded to the heave with pantherish agility that almost put Fletcher on the ground.

	Caught off-balance, Fletcher retained his steely grasp upon the wrist, fastened his other hand upon his snarling opponent's jacket, toppled and went down, dragging the fugitive with him. In grim silence broken only by their panting breaths the two rolled on the sidewalk, fighting furiously.

	Desperately, the mystery man clung to his gun. With equal determination, Fletcher struggled to maintain his hold upon the wrist. His free arm moved in pistonlike jabs, to the other's midriff. The cold, hard grin remained fixed upon his opponent's leathery face even as his blows rammed home. Yipping with excitement, the taxi driver danced around their violently writhing forms.

	Then, with a ferocious pull, the fugitive ripped his gun hand free, slashed Fletcher across the face with the barrel. The blow was agonizing in the extreme. In Fletcher's brief moment of pain-racked blindness, the other dexterously tossed his weapon into reverse, grasped the barrel, swung the thing like a club.

	Down it came, butt first. Fletcher flung up a warding hand, caught the heel plate on the base of his palm. Involuntarily, his shocked fingers curled around the butt and the gun went off. The fugitive slowly arose and emitted an ecstatic gasp like a convert arising from baptism, then flopped sidewise. The hole in his chest was as big as a fist.

	"Gawd!" jittered the driver. "You've killed him!"

	His head throbbing as if about to burst, and a line of fire pulsating across his face, Fletcher had a closer look at the victim. A long, lanky, hardbitten specimen, this. Even the ghostly moonlight could not soften these icy features which Fletcher could not remember having seen before.

	Then he recalled the strange howls up near the house, snapped to the wide-eyed driver, "Go fetch the police," and raced back toward the drive.

-

	Although he was dying, Banstead -could talk. Even on his deathbed his old-time roughness remained defiantly in evidence. There was a huge, shapeless, surly woman by his bed, also a white-, haired crone with querulous and watery eyes. The old dame's expression was a mixture of curiosity and fright; the big woman's one of callousness peculiarly undershot with disappointment and alarm.

	"Beat it, ma. Clear out, Josephine," ordered Banstead. He followed them with a hard stare until they had gone. Then he turned his attention to Fletcher. "They've phoned for the doctor.

	He'll be no damned good! I know I'm dying." He was quite phlegmatic about it. "Somehow you can tell."

	"We'll see what he has to say before we give you up," offered Fletcher optimistically.

	"I reckon this plays hell with your crackpot theory, eh?" Banstead grinned lugubriously. "You didn't say anything about strong-arm stuff. I was supposed to pine away gradually."

	"Tell me what happened," Fletcher suggested. "But don't talk too much if the effort pulls you down."

	"I'm O. K. I'll see the dawn, anyway." He licked his lips, winced. "I was at the top of the drive, about to take a short cut across the circle of lawn before the door, when I heard a sort of eerie, subdued gabbling to my left. Looking that way, I saw a black dwarf standing on the edge of the moonlight. He had his back turned to me and was jerking something white over his shoulder, pointing it at me and voicing his mumbo jumbo in guttural undertones."

	"And then?"

	"I bawled, 'What the hell's going on there?' but he took not the slightest notice, went on with his pointing and his gabbling." Banstead's pupils shrank to pin points as he looked at his listener. "Mister, I'm no sucker for abracadabra, but what he was doing sent a parade of little frogs hopping up my spine. Every time that white thing flipped over his shoulder I could feel their feet, cold, colder than the grave."

	"So what did you do?"

	"I had a gun, a baby automatic- I've carried it for years, ever since—well, never mind. So I took it out and yelled, 'Come out of there or I'll shoot!' The dwarf took not a damn bit of notice. I doubt whether he understood what I was saying. Anyway, I fired without further argument, sending a slug an inch over his pate." He stopped, bit his bottom lip, shoved his hairy hands down under the covers and nursed his middle.

	"There was another guy standing in the deeper shadows. I didn't know that! He drew a bead on me and let me have it right in the guts. He knew where to toss his metal, all right! I went down like a poled steer. The dwarf had now realized that this was no kissing competition, he'd dropped on all fours and was scuttling for the dark parts like a frightened baboon. The moonlight sort of silhouetted his distorted form, and I plonked two pills into his dirty belly before I passed out."

	"He's dead," informed Fletcher. "I found his body sprawled at the edge of the lawn. And the guy who plugged you is also cold." He told Ban-stead what had happened.

	"Good," exclaimed Banstead, with painful satisfaction. His eyes were being sapped of gloss and hardness, gradually growing bleary. "Wish Old Man Carver would hurry up." His pain momentarily faded, and his interest returned. "Say, what the devil was the thing with which that dwarf was capering?"

	"This." Fletcher held it up. "It was still in his hand." 

	"A bone!"

	"Yes, just a polished bone. Looks to me like a human thighbone."

	"Bah!" Banstead was frankly contemptuous. "Hex stuff! I still think your theory's crazy!"

	A violent hammering shook the panels of the front door and Fletcher said, "Here's the doc at last."

	"No, the police." Banstead's quiet smile was lopsided.. "They're the only ones who think the whole world is stone deaf."

-

	Mason leaned right back in his seat, put big feet on his desk, and said, "Trouble-shooter, eh? There's been more darned trouble since you turned up in this neck of the woods than I've ever known before."

	"Such as what?" Dan Fletcher helped himself to a cigarette from Mason's cut-glass box.

	"You come around smelling a murder ring. You get Bodin's gang on the hop at our expense. You scare hell out of two dozen policyholders and sit by the deathbed of an insured subject. You've some sort of a finger in a couple of killings and bring the police down on me with a lot of nutty questions."

	"Is that all?" asked Fletcher gently. •

	"No it ain't—-isn't. Not by a long shot. You beat it back to headquarters and stay there three weeks, leaving me hanging in midair." Mason's face was decidedly sour. "Meanwhile, half a dozen crazy claimants return their payments in full and four more return them in part, promising the rest later. Three doctors, have been around pestering me about hypochondriacs with obsessions concerning this outfit." His stare was accusing. "Strange as it may seem—and believe it or not—they say their customers are fading away with a purely imaginary hex stuck on them by the Atlantic & General Assurance Co., and that we've got to make 'em imagine we've taken it off." His face full of disgust, he spat into the fire.

	"You can tell those doctors to inform their patients that their own consciences are killing them." Fletcher dragged a couple of objects from his pocket, put them on the desk.

	"Bones!" The embittered Mason stared glassily, his color rising. "Now he makes the place a charnal house!"

	"The one on the left," said Fletcher carefully, "is a genuine Australian death bone." He stabbed Mason with his glance. "It works!" 

	"Huh?"

	"Don't ask me how it works because I don't know—and neither does anyone else I've been able to consult in the last three weeks. All I've been able to get is some cabled data on the way it's used. You hold the knuckle end, turn your back to the victim, point the splintered end over your shoulder at him, exert the right force, spit the proper curses, and he pines away."

	"As if!" said Mason, wiggling his feet.

	"A beautiful racket," Fletcher went on. "It leaves justice impotent, since the law cannot recognize supernatural ways of killing. Until science can explain the power of the bone, the law's only verdict is death from natural causes."

	"Ugh!" Mason gazed over the toes of his boots at the bone, shifted his feet away from any possible area of potency.

"The brain of this murder ring was one Edward 'Digger' Kelly, known to our central Australian office as a clever and persistent insurance pirate, and badly wanted by the Australian police. The accomplice who performed his devilment was Charlie Murra, a semicivilized Myall priest."

	"And what," demanded Mason, eying the second bone, "is that other relic?"

	"Oh, that?" Fletcher's grin was wide. "Just an ordinary, harmless bone I got from a butcher. Since the law cannot exercise full retribution, I've been exercising some of my own." He produced his list, tossed it onto the desk. "I've made another call on all our esteemed clients and pointed it at them."

	"What?" yelped Mason. He dragged his feet off the desk and sat upright.

	"They didn't like it. Five of them fainted, two had hysterics. All I said to them was six sentences of gibberish regardless of whether or not they'd passed out." His grin spread from ear to ear. "And now, according to you, they're dragging back their ill-gotten gains."

	"Yeah," agreed Mason, popeyed. He thumbed a small notebook. "Eighty thousand so far."

	"Guess I'd better stick to these sad remains." Nonchalantly, he put the bones in his pocket. He studied Mason, found him speculative and unwary. In a loud voice, he said, "And don't say peaks can't be shot off graphs!" His big fist came down on the desk with a hearty thump that shook the room, and the spurt' from both inkpots was eminently satisfactory.

	"No, Dan." Gloomily, Mason heaved himself from his seat, wandered off in search of two large sheets of blotting paper.

The End