Black Bargain and Other Raw Deals

by Robert Bloch

Contents:

THE OLD COLLEGE TRY
BLACK BARGAIN
DAYBROKE
THE PAST MASTER
A GOOD IMAGINATION
FOUNDING FATHERS
FANGS OF VENGEANCE
DEATH IS AN ELEPHANT
PHILTRE TIP
METHOD FOR MURDER
UNTOUCHABLE

THE OLD COLLEGE TRY

Originally published in the Gamma #2 from 1963

Administrator Raymond's head was a hive of hornets. He could feel them buzzing in his brain, and before opening his eyes he held out his hand.

The Yorl, who had probably been crouching at his bedside for the past hour, in anticipation of this very moment, thrust a glass of Aspergin into his shaking fingers.

Administrator Raymond gulped it down, and gradually his fingers ceased twitching. The buzzing died away inside his skull, and he was able to open his eyes. In a moment he could even manage to sit up.

The blue-skinned little Yorl smiled at him and said, "Goo morning, Ministrata," then bowed as he offered Raymond his undergarments.

Raymond acknowledged the greeting with a friendly grin. He wondered just how much longer the Yorl would continue to bow if he knew that this was the last day. The new Administrator was arriving, and soon Raymond would go home—back to Vega and civilization. It would be good to see a normal world again—a world where grass was an honest pink and the birds snarled sweetly all the day.

On the other hand (even though that hand might tremble a little) he rather regretted leaving Yorla. He even regretted leaving the Yorls. The dark-visaged, stunted little blue humanoids might seem alien and uncivilized to strangers, but after five years on Yorla, Administrator Raymond was oddly fond of them.

Puffing a trifle, Raymond struggled into his uniform. Damned nuisance, but he had to keep up appearances. After all, today he must welcome the new Administrator. He hoped they were sending out a good one. It took a certain temperament to endure the heat and the solitude of life on Yorla. And, more important, it took a certain temperament to understand the Yorls.

"Ship has land!" Another Yorl came scuttling in, as usual, without bothering to knock. He grinned up at Raymond. "Bringa pinky."

"Pinky." That's what the Yorls called humans. He must be referring to the new Administrator.

"I'm coming," Raymond told his informant.

The Yorl shook his head. "No botha. We bring him, in your office now."

So they'd organized their own welcoming committee. Good. Raymond smiled as he thought of the new Administrator stepping out of the ship and being confronted with a mob of naked blue Yorls. Must have been something of a shock, particularly if they'd paraded for him with their trophies. Well, he'd just have to get used to it—as Raymond himself had gotten used to it when he arrived, five years ago.

"You go back, tell him I'll be right down," Raymond instructed. The Yorl messenger withdrew, and the other Yorl gave Raymond a shave, a shoeshine, and another glass of Aspergin, in that order.

Then Raymond waddled downstairs to his office and greeted the new Administrator.

He found him standing on his hands in the center of the floor.

"Greetings," he called, from his upside-down position. "You must be Raymond, eh? I'm Philip."

"Pleased to meet you," Raymond said, wondering if he ought to advance and shake Philip by the foot.

"Excuse the informality," Philip said. "Just trying to get back a little circulation. Long trip, and the decompression effect is a bother."

He lowered himself to the floor, but instead of rising, began to do push-ups. He was good at it, and Raymond felt himself grow tired just watching the exercise.

"One's duty to keep fit, eh?" Philip said, cheerily. He didn't even pant.

Raymond nodded, staring at the newcomer. Philip upsidedown or Philip horizontal was still a remarkably handsome young man. He had blonde, curly hair, regular features, sparkling blue eyes, white and gleaming teeth, and a super-abundance of muscles. His smile radiated enthusiastic vitality. In a word, he looked a bit too good to be true, and Raymond wondered how on Vega a prime specimen like this had ever been relegated to a post as Administrator on remote little Yorla.

Philip bounded to his feet, healthily flushed and perspiring mightily, and held out his hand to Raymond. His grip was as hearty as his voice.

"Good to see you," he said. "By the way, Captain Rand sends regrets. There was a slight mishap when we landed—something went wrong with the auxiliary grav-mech. I don't understand the technical side, but I'm afraid he and the crew are in for about a week of repairs here before they can take off on a return flight."

"A week?" Raymond couldn't conceal his frown. "But I'm all packed—I thought we'd be leaving today."

Philip shrugged. "I know how you feel," he said. "But speaking selfishly, for my own sake, I'm glad of the delay. It gives me a chance to find out a few things from you. In a week you can brief me on this post."

Raymond remembered his duties as a host. "Of course," he said. "Glad to."

"Want to see my papers?" Philip asked.

"Not necessary. Just a formality." Raymond turned and beckoned to his waiting Yorl. "Two Aspergins, hup-hup!"

As the Yorl nodded and backed out of the room, Philip shook his head. "Nothing for me, thanks. Never touch the stuff."

"Better learn," Raymond advised. "This is a fever-planet."

"I'll manage," Philip said, confidently. "They gave me all the new shots before I left. Besides, I've never been sick a day in my life." He paused, waiting until the Yorl had disappeared, then lowered his voice. "Odd creatures, aren't they?"

"You'll get used to them," Raymond said. "They make wonderful servants. You'll find you'll never have to lift a finger to do anything. There's a post staff here of twenty—they'll bathe you, dress you, brush your teeth for you if you like."

"I'm afraid I'm not accustomed to such luxuries," Philip told him. "Besides, isn't it a bit—ostentatious?"

"If you mean expensive, forget it," Raymond answered. "It costs Interplan next to nothing in wages. The Yorls aren't greedy. And they actually enjoy working for a pinky. That's what they call us, you know. It's easier than slaving in the Mines. You'll find them faithful and loyal if you treat them decently. Once you get used to the blue skins and the language, and accept their customs—"

Philip sat down, cracking his knuckles. "Their customs," he said. "Do you know how they met me when the ship landed? They came running out waving their spears. And on the tip of each spear was a head."

"They meant to do you honor," Raymond explained. "I told them a new Administrator would be arriving. So they got up a group to welcome you and brought out their trophies for display."

"Trophies? You mean they're actually head-hunters?"

"Of course not. They prize heads, and preserve them, but they don't go around killing one another just to collect more. After all, they're not barbarians. Besides, Interplan wouldn't tolerate such savagery."

"Then where do the heads come from?"

"Well, as you know, most of the Yorls work in our mines. The labor is hard and they don't particularly enjoy it, but they like our trade goods and the arrangement has worked out satisfactorily for all concerned. So much so that when the Yorl chiefs made their agreements with Interplan, they set up a quota. Every Yorl who signs up for mining is obliged to produce a set amount of ore. If a Yorl fails to meet his quota, if he's caught shirking—his companions merely chop off his head."

"And you say they're not barbarians," Philip murmured.

Raymond shrugged. "This is Yorla, not Vega or Titan. Remember the old saying—when on Rigel, do what the Rigelians do."

"But chopping off one another's heads that way! I should think something would be done about policing them."

"Meaning I should have done something as Administrator?"

Philip flushed but made no effort to deny the words.

Raymond sighed. "Maybe I felt the same way when I arrived here, five years ago. Since then I've learned a few things. As I say, the Yorls don't kill for the sake of killing, even though they value their trophies more highly than anything else. They have their own restraints, and it's all a matter of meting out justice."

"But the laws—"

"They have their own laws. Remember, Interplan sent us here to administrate, to supervise the mining operations and trade with the natives. It is not our duty to superimpose our own concepts or customs on this planet. Besides, oddly enough, the system works. We want what the mines produce. The Yorls see that we get it. They eliminate their own slackers and misfits, weed out their own criminals, deal with them promptly and efficiently. Why, we'd need to employ hundreds of men to act as overseers if we tried to keep them in line according to our own methods. This is a simpler, easier, cheaper way."

"But it's not right! In the name of common humanity—"

"Humanity." Raymond sighed again. "The Yorls are not humans. They are humanoid. That's the first thing you have to learn, the one thing you must always remember."

A Yorl bowed his way into the room.

"Affanoon, Ministrata," he said.

Philip glanced at Raymond, who nodded briefly. "That's right, it is afternoon. You're going to have to accustom yourself to the shorter days here." He turned and confronted the Yorl. "What is it?"

"You go way, tha ri'?"

"That's right. I will be going away, and Mr. Philip will be your new Administrator. But I won't leave for a while, not until the ship is ready."

"We no wish you go."

"Sorry. Interplan makes the rules. And you'll like Mr. Philip, I'm sure."

"So. But first you come long torga, this night, we hold koodoo, your honna."

"He's inviting us down to the village here for a party," Raymond explained.

"You come long?"

"We'll be there."

"Yaya!" The Yorl grinned happily. "Much fun!"

* * * *

It may have been much fun according to Yorl standards, and it may have been much fun for Raymond, but Philip didn't enjoy the koodoo a bit.

He sat there on the dais, sweltering in the heat of the warm night, and watched the dancers with a strained smile on his face. The pounding of the drums made his head ache. And when Raymond got up to make his speech, explaining how he was leaving and Philip would be taking over, the Yorls had shouted for almost five minutes. It was unnerving. Then there had been the banquet, and the nauseous concoctions he had to pretend to sample. Raymond didn't seem to mind—but then, he kept washing down his food with Aspergin.

Philip didn't like the setup at all. They were savages, and no amount of talking would change the fact. Dancing in a huge circle of spears set up in the sand—and each spear surmounted by the preserved and grinning head of a Yorl. The way those heads grinned was actually frightening, but the grins on the faces of the living dancers seemed worse.

And yet he had to maintain outward calm, outward dignity. Even when a hundred little blue Yorls writhed naked before him, chanting and contorting their bodies in gyrations that were positively obscene.

How could Raymond endure the noise, let alone the sight of them? Why, he was actually grinning himself—his fat face flushed and foolish, as if he enjoyed the disgusting spectacle. He was drunk, that was the answer.

Now the dancers had separated into two groups, male and female. They formed two lines, facing one another, and the drums beat in a quickening tempo. The lines advanced, converged, and then the drums went frantic. And now the dance was no longer a dance. It was mass orgy. Why, they were actually going to—

"Raymond!" Philip whispered. "Look! Aren't you going to stop them?"

"What for? They seem to be enjoying themselves."

"But in the name of common decency—"

"I told you they have their own customs. This is being done in our honor."

"Disgusting!" Philip rose abruptly.

"Natural." Raymond blinked. "Where are you going?"

"Back to my quarters. I'm afraid I'm not up to this sort of thing."

"Wait!"

But Philip did not wait. He moved away. Raymond waddled after him, puffing. Philip didn't slow his stride. The older man didn't catch up to him until they reached the Administration Building.

"Come back," Raymond wheezed. "You can't do this. You're insulting them by walking out."

"Insulting them? What did you expect me to do, get down there and wallow with them?"

"If they invited you, yes."

"Are you serious?"

Raymond nodded. "Of course. You can't offend their sense of hospitality." He chuckled. "Besides, it isn't so bad. Maybe their skins are blue, but you'd be surprised how white they look after five years out here."

"Not to me." Philip scowled. "I'm turning in."

"You're angry? Now look, son, let me explain a few things to you about—"

"Never mind. I've heard some of your explanations. And I'm afraid the Company reports are right. Interplan gave me specific orders to come out here and clean up the situation—"

Philip hesitated, then took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I mentioned it, but perhaps it's better that you know just where you stand. They know about you, Raymond. They know how you've been running this operation, and they don't approve of it any more than I do. Lording it over the natives like one of those colonial governors in prehistoric days back on Earth."

"But Interplan sent me out here to supervise the mines. I've done a good job. They get their ore, there's no trouble, the natives are satisfied—"

"Of course they're satisfied! Why shouldn't they be, when they're allowed to run wild; killing each other at will, indulging in every debauchery? You haven't made a move to stop them, have you? In five years you've made no attempt to educate them, no attempt to institute reforms, no attempt to provide them with decent government, decent standards of living. Instead of setting an example for them, you've merely sunk to their level."

"Now wait a minute—"

"I'm not waiting a minute! Starting tomorrow, I'll take over. Officially. You'll stay here until Captain Rand completes his work on the ship, but from now on I'm in charge."

"It isn't that simple. I know the Yorls, I understand them. You can't hope to change them overnight." Raymond blinked at him with his reddened eyes. "Why, you don't even like them! And that's the first thing, the most important thing. You've got to learn to like them."

"And I suppose you do?" Philip laughed shortly. "I suppose you think you're being kind to them when you take a staff of twenty servants to wait on you hand and foot as if you were some kind of lord of the manor here? Is it kindness to permit them to murder and rape?"

"They're entitled to their own way of life, their liberty."

"Liberty isn't license."

"You don't understand."

"Oh yes, I do, only too well. Administration and Aspergin don't mix. I advise you to go to bed and sleep it off."

Philip turned on his heel and marched down the corridor to his room. A Yorl squatted beside the door, and as Philip approached, he rose hastily and bowed.

"You wanna—" he began.

Philip took a second look, then realized that the Yorl was not a he after all, but a young female. He flushed as he guessed the nature of the unfinished question; flushed first with shame and then with indignation.

"No!" he shouted. "Get away from me! Go to Raymond."

Obediently, the Yorl trotted off along the corridor.

Philip entered his room and slammed the door. Immediately a second Yorl—this one unmistakably male—rose and approached him with a fan.

"Out!" Philip ordered. "I don't need you here."

"But I cool you good."

"I'll cool myself."

"Take off clo'se?"

"No! Can't you understand? I don't want any servants! From now on I'll take care of myself."

The Yorl left, bowing so low that Philip barely caught a glimpse of his puzzled grimace.

All right, so he was puzzled. It wouldn't last long. Philip vowed he'd make his position perfectly plain in the near future. There were going to be some drastic changes made around here. And he'd start from scratch.

Philip wasn't worried about it, because he knew that he could take care of himself. He'd told off Raymond, and now he'd get to work on the Yorls. Tomorrow was the time to start. And the first and most important thing to do was to put an end to the head-chopping. No more heads on pikes.

Tomorrow, then.

But tonight, as Philip drifted into fitful sleep, the heads appeared on the long spears; parading through his dreams, just as they had today when the ship landed and tonight when the dancers gathered for the koodoo.

There was only one slight difference. As Philip remembered them, the heads had all been grinning.

And they were laughing, now ...

* * * *

Raymond was somewhat agreeably surprised to see Philip join him at the breakfast table. He was even more surprised to note that the young man appeared in a conciliatory mood.

He didn't apologize for anything he had said the previous evening, but he seemed much less belligerent as he explained his plans.

"I don't want you to misunderstand me," Philip told him. "I know as well as you do that there's no sense in trying to run roughshod over the feelings of the natives. I have no intention of issuing any formal orders about head-taking in the mines. And I couldn't enforce such orders if I gave them."

"Now you're talking sense," Raymond said. "I knew that once you really thought things over, you'd see it was impossible."

"I didn't say anything about impossibility," Philip corrected. "I merely told you that force wouldn't help. The answer lies in the psychological approach. It's all a matter of channelizing their aggressions."

"Huh?"

"I'll merely provide them with other outlets for their energies, offer them suitable substitute activities."

"This is something they teach you in the College of Space?"

"Exactly. I trust you weren't meaning to be sarcastic?"

"Certainly not," Raymond said. "I know my place."

"Good. Then perhaps you can help me clarify the situation."

"Gladly."

"You tell me the Yorls only take heads of slackers, wrongdoers, inefficient workers. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And yet they value individual head collections very highly."

"True."

"So I infer that they're always on the lookout for someone who breaks the rules."

"That's right. Every Yorl keeps a close watch on the activities of his fellow workers. It's a sort of wholesale espionage system, you might say."

"In other words, they compete with one another to detect possible victims."

"You might say that."

"And in that—that orgy last night—" Philip hesitated, his pink face coloring. "I didn't see very much, understand, but I gather that there is a certain competitive factor in their debauchery."

"If you're trying to make out that the male who takes the most females is supposed to be the best, then you're correct."

"Ah, yes. Again, competition enters into it. Now, if I can provide harmless substitute outlets for their competitive instincts, I'll soon have them functioning normally."

"Normally? What's abnormal about sexual activity?" Raymond blinked. "Forgive the question, but you see, I never attended the College of Space."

"Please! There is nothing abnormal about such activity, provided it is carried out under the proper legal arrangements, and for the purposes of procreation only." Philip smiled. "After all, I'm not narrow-minded, you know."

"Sure." Raymond gestured, and a Yorl came over and wiped his forehead. "So what do you plan?"

"Well, we've established the basic fact. The Yorl is a highly competitive creature, and his social institutions are based upon competition. I think I can introduce some new institutions."

"Such as?"

Philip smiled again. "Wait and see," he said.

Raymond waited, and three days later, he saw.

To be specific, it was three evenings later when Philip came to his office and invited him down to the torga. It was unusually hot, and Raymond chose to be transported in a litter, borne by four Yorls.

He couldn't imagine where the younger man got his energy from, but there he was, hopping around like one possessed, making last-minute arrangements in the big clearing before the huts. He kept jumping in and out of the ring—

Ring.

"Wait a minute," Raymond murmured. "Don't tell me you're planning a boxing match?"

"Exactly!" Philip beamed happily. "I've conferred with the villagers here and they seem quite excited. They donated their services to put up the ring, and I've had the females weaving gloves out of ritan. There were no end of volunteers for contestants, after I explained the procedure. I've coached the two we finally selected, and I think they'll put on a great show. The Yorls seem to have a natural coordination that is quite remarkable. I'm looking forward to this evening."

"I'm not," Raymond murmured.

"What's that?"

"Nothing. When do you begin?"

"Almost immediately. See, they're assembling right now."

And they were. The blue-skinned little humanoids had gathered on all four sides of the improvised ring, squatting on the ground and staring up expectantly as the Yorl fighters made their way to their respective corners. Philip, clad in a sweat shirt and shorts, climbed through the strands of porga serving as ropes. He was obviously serving as referee, and a whistle dangled from a cord around his neck. He conferred briefly with each of the contestants, and the little blue boxers nodded and grinned up at him in turn.

Then there was a roll of the drums and Philip came forward to the center of the ring, lifting his hands for silence. He spoke very briefly about the rules of the coming contest, and the virtues of the manly art of self-defense. This, he declared, would be a clean fight, demonstrating the finest principles of sportsmanship. And now, at the drum-signal

It came.

Philip stepped back.

The Yorls rushed out from their respective corners. The crowd yelled.

The Yorls exchanged expert blows.

The crowd screamed.

The taller Yorl hit his opponent below the belt.

Philip stepped forward hastily.

The smaller Yorl brought his knee up and kicked the other fighter in the chin.

Philip blew his whistle.

The Yorls paid no attention. Perhaps they couldn't even hear the whistle above the shrieks of the audience. At any rate, they went into a clinch. Both of them were kicking at one another's loins. They had shed their gloves.

Philip waved, frantically, then tried to separate them. The Yorls put their heads down and kicked harder. Then, suddenly, they were rolling around on the floor of the ring. The smaller Yorl ended up on top of his opponent. He got his hands around the windpipe and squeezed.

The crowd went crazy then, but not half as crazy as Philip.

"Stop!" He shouted. "You're killing him!"

The little Yorl on top nodded, grinning happily. He released one hand, then dug his fingers into his victim's eyes.

And then Raymond somehow managed to clamber his way into the ring. He helped Philip pull the Yorl off the prostrate body of his opponent, and he said something to quiet the crowd and disperse them.

Afterwards he walked Philip back to Administration in the darkness.

"But I don't understand," Philip kept saying. "I don't understand! I offered them a logical outlet for sublimation—"

"Maybe they don't want to sublimate," Raymond said. "Maybe they can't."

"But the principles of psychology—"

"—apply to human beings," Raymond finished for him. "Not necessarily to Yorls." He wheezed heavily and patted Philip on the shoulder. "Anyway, you tried. Now, perhaps, you can see why I've never attempted to change their ways. There just isn't any use."

"I'm not licked yet," Philip declared. "I know the idea is sound. Sport is the best substitute for actual combat. It always works."

Raymond led him into his office, and a Yorl jumped up from the floor to pour a glass of Aspergin. Raymond gulped, and the Yorl wiped his chin.

"Substitute," he said. "Can't you realize the Yorls don't believe in substitutes? Why should they, when they can have the real thing? A pretense of combat or a limited combat will never satisfy them when they can actually—"

"The real thing," Philip murmured. He stood up abruptly. "Of course! That's the answer, you're right! Why didn't I think of it? Nobody accepts a substitute when the real thing is available. But if the real thing is not available any longer, then perhaps they'll learn to cooperate."

"What do you mean?" Raymond asked. "If you've got any wild ideas, I advise you to forget them."

Philip shook his head. "No wild ideas. Just common sense. You did me a great favor tonight, Raymond. I won't forget it."

He turned and headed down the corridor towards his room. A Yorl rose to follow him, then hesitated, remembering that his services were not required there. Instead he poured Raymond another glass of Aspergin. And another.

It was almost two hours later that Raymond finally sought his own bed. He was pleasantly tired, pleasantly tipsy, and pleasantly unaware of the faint glow and the faint cries from outside his window.

Not until the Yorl came running in did he open his eyes and sit up.

"What's the matter?" he muttered.

"You come," the Yorl panted. "Come to torga, fast!" "Why?"

The Yorl's blue-veined eyeballs rolled. "Otha Ministrata there. He burn heads!"

"Damn and blast-off!" Raymond rose, thrusting out his feet as the Yorl brought his shoes. He fumbled in the rear of a drawer, looking for the needler he never carried. It felt cold and heavy in his hand as he followed the Yorl down the path, running in the direction of the torga.

The faint glow had flared into flame now, and the faint cries rose to a chattering crescendo as Raymond entered the clearing.

The Yorl had told the truth.

Philip had waited until the village was quiet, then crept back there in darkness and done what he'd planned. He'd gone from hut to hut and gathered the spears which stood upright before them. He'd gathered the spears, harvested the heads, heaped them like ripe melons in a central pile at the end of the clearing, and ignited them. They were blazing furiously now—but not half as furiously as the Yorls themselves.

Philip stood before the fire, needier in hand, facing them defiantly. The Yorls confronted him in a body, screeching and howling, waving their spears. And they were edging forward—

"Get back!" Philip shouted. "I'm not going to harm you! This is for your own good, don't you see? It is wrong to take heads. It is wrong to kill."

Raymond made out the words vaguely through the tumult. He doubted if the Yorls could hear or understand, and even if they did, it meant nothing to them. Because they kept inching forward, closer and closer, and the spears were poised for the cast.

"Stop!" Philip cried. "I'm your Administrator. I order you to go to your huts. One more step and I—"

Nobody took a step.

Instead, a spear whizzed past Philip's head.

He didn't run. He didn't duck. He didn't flinch. He merely faced the Yorl who had hurled the spear; faced the weaponless little blue humanoid and pressed the tip of his needler.

There was a faint crackling sound and the silvery flash of the energy-arc. The Yorl fell, shrivelling and blackening before he hit the ground.

A great sigh arose from the crowd, and then a hundred arms were raised, a hundred spears went back.

And halted.

Halted, as the pyre of heads hissed suddenly, then disappeared in a black billow.

Raymond had tossed the water on the fire.

Everyone turned as he stepped forward and grasped Philip by the arm. They watched as he took the needler from Philip's hand and tossed it into the center of the dying blaze. They watched as he tossed his own weapon on the ground.

Raymond raised his arms over his head.

"I am truly sorry," he murmured. "A wrong has been done, but it shall never be repeated. We ask to go in peace." Silently, he led Philip away into the darkness.

Raymond did not speak to his companion until they reached the office agan, and then only when he had dismissed the waiting Yorl servant.

"I think you'd better change your plans, now," he said, mildly. "The ship will be ready to leave in three days, according to what Captain Rand tells me. You'd best leave with him."

He didn't wait for Philip to reply, but turned his back and poured a glass of Aspergin.

He was still gulping it down when Philip walked away.

* * * *

It was already afternoon of the following day when Philip reentered the office. Raymond looked up expectantly. "Started your packing?" he asked, casually.

Philip shook his head. "I'm not going."

"But—"

"I'm not going. Why should I?"

"You ask me that, after last night? After what you did?"

"What did I do?"

"You mortally offended the Yorls. You violated the great taboo. You killed one of their leaders."

Philip shook his head again. "It was self-defense," he said. "As for what I did, it was right."

"According to your standards, yes. But the Yorls—"

"Look at him!"

Philip levelled his finger at the corner. A Yorl servant crouched there, his blue face ashen, his eyes bulging in terror as Philip stared at him.

Philip smiled. "Don't you see? He's afraid of me, now. They all are, after last night. I didn't realize it at the time, but I'd done the one thing necessary. By putting an end to this head fetishism, by destroying their trophies, I proved that a human is stronger than their whole barbaric culture and belief. That's the sort of practical demonstration they needed in order to understand. A show of force."

"But they hate you now—"

"Nonsense! They hated me last night, and I'm quite sure that after we left they got together and prayed for my destruction. I don't pretend to understand their superstitions, but I'll bet they expected their gods to destroy me with a bolt of flame. So when I went down to the village today, it came as quite a shock to see me alive and healthy."

"You went back to the village again?"

"I've just come from there." Philip glanced carelessly at the Yorl, who cringed. "That's the reaction I got from all of them. Nobody dared to harm me, nobody dared speak. I summoned them out and laid down the law. From now on, no more taking of heads. The mines will be operated efficiently on the basis of my orders, and on the threat of my punishment. Nobody else will take the law into their own hands. They understand that I mean business."

Raymond scratched his head. "But you were the one who objected to my colonialism, as you called it! I thought you didn't like this business of having servants, of ordering them around."

"I don't," Philip answered. "Not when it's just a matter of selfish personal comfort. But this is different. We're dealing with fundamentals here. In order to bring civilization and sanity, one must issue orders and enforce them."

"I never used force. You know that. The Yorls enjoy serving me, it's better than the mines."

"Yes. That's just the trouble. You gave them a choice. You never used force. You never established the first and most important principle—that we, as human beings, are superior. They must obey for their own good, so that we can raise them to a decent level."

"But they don't want to be like human beings, it's not their nature to be."

"Nonsense! You can't halt evolution, you can't halt progress. From now on, we'll operate according to sound, scientific principles. That means taking a firm hand."

Raymond sighed. "What about the sports?" he asked, softly. "I suppose this isn't important any more under the new regime?"

Philip smiled. "If you're indulging in sarcasm, spare the effort," he replied. "It so happens that I've no intention of abandoning the program. In fact, as I told you yesterday, I consider sublimation very important. Now it's more important than ever. The natives will need outlets for aggression. And as I said then, once their old outlets are gone, they will embrace the new much more willingly. As they are doing now."

"Now?"

"Yes. I issued instructions to the villagers. They are laying out a football field."

"Football?"

"Of course. I really should have thought of it first, instead of this silly boxing business. Football is the natural sport. Calls for team participation, allows substitute activity to a much greater number at one time. It's the ideal sublimation—a rough body-contact sport, and it's a great vicarious outlet for the spectators, too. I was star halfback,. for two seasons at the College of Space. They went crazy over the game—"

"Human beings do, perhaps. But the Yorls won't play football. They don't understand abstractions. Why should they think it worthwhile to fight over the possession of a—"

It was Philip's turn to interrupt, and he did so with a laugh.

"I'm not interested in your arguments," he said. "The fact remains that the Yorls will learn football. They are building a stadium alongside the field. I will organize their teams and instruct them. They're bright enough, in their way. A few skull-practice sessions, a little actual training, and you'll see. By tomorrow I expect we can raise the goal posts."

"Please, you're making a mistake. I can't stand by and watch you do this."

"Not necessary." Philip laughed again. "I keep forgetting you won't be around to observe the results. The ship leaves in three days, you say." He turned. "Well, I'll not keep you. I expect you'll want to get on with your packing."

Raymond didn't want to get on with it, but he did. During the next two days he saw nothing of Philip. If he was organizing and coaching his teams, there was no sign. Raymond made no effort to visit the torga or to inspect the playing field behind it. He packed, and he drank incredible amounts of Aspergin, and he did his best to welcome and maintain the numbness which resulted.

On the night before the day of departure, Raymond deliberately courted stupor. Philip left after dinner, and that was just as well; he did not want to be reminded of Philip's presence, or his own coming absence.

Ordinarily, he'd have been delighted with the prospect of leaving Yorla and returning to the pleasures and comforts of Vegan civilization. The Aspergin was better there, too. Well, he'd need plenty of Aspergin now, with Interplan breathing down his neck. So they didn't like the way he'd run things here. What did they know about the Yorls—the way they lived, the way they thought? Maybe he'd never attended the College of Space, but he understood how to do a job. And he'd miss doing it.

That was bad, but the thought of Philip as Administrator was worse. Using force on the Yorls, ruling through fear—it would never work.

Raymond signalled and his glass was automatically refilled.

No, force and fear would never work. But they had worked, they were working. He must admit it. The Yorls were afraid of Philip and they obeyed. They'd even play his stupid football games if he commanded. Sublimation seemed to be the answer.

"Maybe I'm wrong," Raymond told himself. "Maybe I've misjudged them."

Suddenly he felt very old, and very tired. He leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his fat paunch.

And it was there that the Yorl found him.

He came bursting into the office, his face contorted in an amiable grin.

"Goo evening, Ministrata. You come now?"

"Come where?"

"See game."

"Game? You mean you're playing football already?"

"Tha ri'. Foo ball game now. Your honna."

"But I'm tired, I've got to finish packing—"

"Your honna."

"All right. Just for a little while." Raymond rose, fighting fatigue and the dizzying effects of the Aspergin. He didn't want to go, but it was the last night, and the Yorls would be disappointed. They were like children, really—they always wanted to share their pleasures with him.

Maybe it was a good idea to show up. Give Philip a chance to shove his weight around and do a little crowing, but that wasn't important. Give credit where credit was due. If Philip could actually organize a football game in just three days, he deserved some recognition.

Besides, if he felt good enough, he might let Raymond say a few words. A farewell speech, perhaps. He could make that final gesture—at least, attempt to patch up the situation and assure the Yorls that Philip only had their welfare at heart. He'd tell them to obey Philip.

Raymond shrugged as he followed the Yorl out into the night and down the path which wound behind the village. He'd forgotten something—apparently it wouldn't be necessary to ask the Yorls to obey the new Administrator. They already were obeying. Playing football at night!

Progress had come to Yorla, and he was only in the way. So he wouldn't make a speech after all. He'd just watch.

It wasn't difficult. The Yorls had heaped fuel all about the playing field, and the blazing fires illuminated the scene. The drums pounded in joyous excitement, and the blue-skinned audience cavorted in frantic enthusiasm as several minor chieftains danced before them, waving spears in a Yorla version of cheerleading.

The two teams were already on the field, engaged in a furious scrimmage. There was no hint of compulsion about their movements, not the slightest vestige of constraint amongst the spectators.

Raymond sighed. Philip had been right, and he was wrong.

The evidence of his own eyes furnished the final proof. Once a game was substituted for reality, the Yorls conformed, just as humans did. And from now on, the rest would be easy. In five years Philip would have them all working in the mines and paying taxes. They'd become a civilized community, with jails and orphanages and asylums.

Somehow, he'd never believed it would work out this way. The Yorls had always seemed such realists. How could they get so excited over make-believe, this stupid business of fighting for possession of a football?

One of the teams was trying for a field-goal now, and a player was getting ready to kick the ball. Raymond tried to locate Philip on the field. He must be out there, acting as referee.

Raymond squinted through the firelight, but he couldn't see him. All he could see was the ball, sailing over the goal-posts. And the crowd roared.

The crowd roared, and Raymond sighed again, and he turned back up the path to the Administration Building. He was tired, but he'd have to unpack. And he'd have to write a report to Interplan, explaining that he was right after all and that Philip was wrong. He'd have to explain that progress was not coming to Yorla and that the Yorls were still realists. They didn't understand about sublimation, or the necessity of fighting over useless objects. They would play football, yes, but only for a real trophy, like the one he had just seen soaring over the goal-posts.

It was Philip's head ...

BLACK BARGAIN

Originally published in the May 1942 issue of Weird Tales

It was getting late when I switched off the neon and got busy behind the fountain with my silver polish. The fruit syrup came off easily, but the chocolate stuck and the hot fudge was greasy. I wish to the devil they wouldn't order hot fudge.

I began to get irritated as I scrubbed away. Five hours on my feet, every night, and what did I have to show for it? Varicose veins. Varicose veins, and the memory of a thousand foolish faces. The veins were easier to bear than the memories. They were so depressing, those customers of mine. I knew them all by heart.

In early evening all I got was "cokes." I could spot the "cokes" mile away. Giggling high-school girls, with long shocks of uncombed brown hair, with their shapeless tan "fingertip" coats and the repulsively thick legs bulging over furry red ankle socks. They were all "cokes." For forty-five minutes they'd monopolize a booth, messing up the tile table-top with cigarette ashes, crushed napkins daubed in lipstick, and little puddles of spilled water. Whenever a high-school girl came in, I automatically reached for the cola pump.

A little later in the evening I got the "gimme two packs" crowd. Sports-shirts hanging limply over hairy arms meant the popular brands. Blue work-shirts with rolled sleeves disclosing tattooing meant the two-for-a-quarter cigarettes.

Once in a while I got a fat boy. He was always a "cigar." If he wore glasses he was a ten-center. If not, I merely had to indicate the box on the counter. Five cents straight. Mild Havana—all long filler.

Oh, it was monotonous. The "notions" family, who invariably departed with aspirin, Ex-Lax, candy bars, and a pint of ice-cream. The "public library" crowd—tall, skinny youths bending the pages of magazines on the rack and never buying. The "soda-waters" with their trousers wrinkled by the sofa of a one-room apartment, the "hairpins," always looking furtively toward the baby buggy outside. And around ten, the "pineapple sundaes"—fat women Bingo-players. Followed by the "chocolate sodas" when the show let out. More booth-parties, giggling girls and red-necked young men in sloppy play-suits.

In and out, all day long. The rushing "telephones," the doddering old "three-cent stamps," the bachelor "toothpastes" and "razor-blades."

I could spot them all at a glance. Night after night they dragged up to the counter. I don't know why they even bothered to tell me what they wanted. One look was all I needed to anticipate their slightest wishes. I could have given them what they needed without their asking.

Or, rather, I suppose I couldn't. Because what most of them really needed was a good long drink of arsenic, as far as I was concerned.

Arsenic! Good Lord, how long had it been since I'd been called upon to fill out a prescription! None of these stupid idiots wanted drugs from a drug-store. Why had I bothered to study pharmacy? All I really needed was a two-week course in pouring chocolate syrup over melting ice-cream, and a month's study of how to set up cardboard figures in the window so as to emphasize their enormous busts.

Well—

He came in then. I heard the slow footsteps without bothering to look up. For amusement I tried to guess before I glanced. A "gimme two packs"? A "toothpaste"? Well, the hell with him. I was closing up.

The male footsteps had shuffled up to the counter before I raised my head. They halted, timidly. I still refused to give any recognition of his presence. Then came a hesitant cough. That did it.

I found myself staring at Caspar Milquetoast, and nearly rags. A middle-aged, thin little fellow with sandy hair and rimless glasses perched on a snub nose. The crease of his froggish mouth underlined the despair of his face.

He wore a frayed $16.50 suit, a wrinkled white shirt, and a string tie—but humility was his real garment. It covered him completely, that aura of hopeless resignation.

* * * *

To hell with psycho-analysis! I'm not the drug-store Dale Carnegie. What I saw added up to only one thing in my mind. A moocher.

"I beg your pardon, please, but have you any tincture of aconite?"

Well, miracles do happen. I was going to get a chance to sell drugs after all. Or was I? When despair walks in and asks for aconite, it means suicide.

I shrugged. "Aconite?" I echoed. "I don't know."

He smiled, a little. Or rather, that crease wrinkled back in a poor imitation of amusement. But on his face a smile had no more mirth in it than the grin you see on a skull.

"I know what you're thinking," he mumbled. "But you're wrong. I'm—I'm a chemist. I'm doing some experiments, and I must have four ounces of aconite at once. And some belladonna. Yes, and—wait a minute."

Then he dragged the book out of his pocket.

I craned my neck, and it was worth it.

The book had rusty metal covers, and was obviously very old. When the thick yellow pages fluttered open under his trembling thumb I saw flecks of dust rise from the binding. The heavy, black-lettered type was German, but I couldn't read anything at that distance.

"Let me see now," he murmured. "Aconite—belladonna—yes, and I have this—the cat, of course—nightshade—um-hum—oh, yes, I'll need some phosphorus, of course—have you any blue chalk?—good—and I guess that's all."

I was beginning to catch on. But what the devil did it matter to me? A screwball more or less was nothing new in my life. All I wanted to do was get out of here and soak my feet.

I went back and got the stuff for him, quickly. I peered through the slot above the prescription counter, but he wasn't doing anything—just paging through that black, iron-bound book and moving his lips.

Wrapping the parcel, I came out. "Anything else, sir?"

"Oh—yes. Could I have about a dozen candles? The large size?"

I opened a drawer and scrabbled for them under the dust.

"I'll have to melt them down and reblend them with the fat," he said.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just figuring."

Sure. That's the kind of figuring you do best when you're counting the pads in your cell. But it wasn't my business, was it? So I handed over the package, like a fool.

"Thank you. You've been very kind. I must ask you to be kinder—to charge this."

Oh, swell!

"You see I'm temporarily out of funds. But I can assure you, in a very short time, in fact within three days, I shall pay you in full. Yes."

A very convincing plea. I wouldn't give him a cup of coffee on it—and that's what bums usually ask for, instead of aconite and candles. But if his words didn't move me, his eyes did. They were so lonely behind his spectacles, so pitifully alone, those two little puddles of hope in the desert of despair that was his face.

All right. Let him have his dreams. Let him take his old ironbound dream book home with him and make him crazy. Let him light his tapers and draw his phosphorescent circle and recite his spells to Little Wahoo the Indian Guide of the Spirit World, or whatever the hell he wanted to do.

No, I wouldn't give him coffee, but I'd give him a dream. "That's okay, buddy," I said. "We're all down on our luck sometime, I guess."

That was wrong. I shouldn't have patronized. He stiffened at once and his mouth curled into a sneer—of superiority, if you please!

"I'm not asking charity," he said. "You'll get paid, never fear, my good man. In three days, mark my words. Now good evening. I have work to do."

Out he marched, leaving "my good man" with his mouth open. Eventually I closed my mouth but I couldn't clamp a lid on my curiosity.

That night, walking home, I looked down the dark street with new interest. The black houses bulked like a barrier behind which lurked fantastic mysteries. Row upon row, not houses any more, but dark dungeons of dreams. In what house did my stranger hide? In what room was he intoning to what strange gods?

Once again I sensed the presence of wonder in the world, of lurking strangeness behind the scenes of drug-store and apartment-house civilization. Black books still were read, and wild-eyed strangers walked and muttered, candles burned into the night, and a missing alley-cat might mean a chosen sacrifice.

But my feet hurt, so I went home.

II

Same old malted milks, cherry cokes, vaseline, Listerine, hairnets, bathing caps, cigarettes, and what have you?

Me, I had a headache. It was four days later, almost the same time of night, when I found myself scrubbing off the soda-taps again.

Sure enough, he walked in.

I kept telling myself all evening that I didn't expect him—but I did expect him, really. I had that crawling feeling when the door clicked. I waited for the shuffle of the Thom McAn shoes.

Instead there was a brisk tapping of Oxfords. English Oxfords. The $18.50 kind.

I looked up in a hurry this time.

It was my stranger.

At least he was there, someplace beneath the flashy blue pinstripe of his suit, the immaculate shirt and foulard tie. He'd had shave, a haircut, a manicure, and evidently a winning ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes.

"Hello, there." Nothing wrong with that voice—I've heard it in the ritzy hotel lobbies for years, brimming over with pep and confidence and authority.

"Well, well, well," was all I could say.

He chuckled. His mouth wasn't a crease any more. It was a trumpet of command. Out of that mouth could come orders, and directions. This wasn't a mouth shaped for hesitant excuses any longer. It was a mouth for requesting expensive dinners, choice vintage wines, heavy cigars; a mouth that barked at taxi-drivers and doormen.

"Surprised to see me, eh? Well, I told you it would take three days. Want to pay you your money, thank you for your kindness."

That was nice. Not the thanks, the money. I like money. The thought of getting some I didn't expect made me genial.

"So your prayers were answered, eh?" I said.

He frowned.

"Prayers—what prayers?"

"Why, I thought that—" I'd pulled a boner, and no mistake.

"I don't understand," he snapped, understanding perfectly well. "Did you perhaps harbor some misapprehension concerning my purchases of the other evening? A few necessary chemicals, that's all—to complete the experiment I spoke of. And the candles, I must confess, were to light my room. They shut my electricity off the day before."

Well, it could be.

"Might as well tell you the experiment was a howling success. Yes, sir. Went right down to Newsohm with the results and they put me on as assistant research director. Quite a break."

Newsohm was the biggest chemical supply house in our section of the country. And he went right down in his rags and was "put on" as assistant research director! Well, live and learn.

"So here's the money. $2.39, wasn't it? Can you change a twenty?"

I couldn't.

"That's all right, keep it."

I refused, I don't know why. Made me feel crawling again, somehow.

"Well then, tell you what let's do. You are closing up, aren't you? Why not step down the street to the tavern for a little drink? I'll get change there. Come on, I feel like celebrating."

So it was that five minutes later I walked down the street with Mr. Fritz Gulther.

We took a table in the tavern and ordered quickly. Neither he nor I was at ease. Somehow there was an unspoken secret between us. It seemed almost as though I harbored criminal knowledge against him—I, of all men, alone knowing that behind this immaculately-clad figure of success, there lurked a shabby specter just three days in the past. A specter that owed me $2.39.

We drank quickly, both of us. The specter got a little fainter. We had another. I insisted on paying for the third round.

"It's a celebration," I argued.

* * * *

He laughed. "Certainly is. And let me tell you, this is only the beginning. Only the beginning! From now on I'm going to climb so fast it'll make your head swim. I'll be running that place within six months. Going to get a lot of new defense orders in from the government, and expand."

"Wait a minute," I cautioned, reserve gone. "You're way ahead of yourself. If I were in your shoes I'd still be dazed with what happened to me in the past three days."

Fritz Gulther smiled. "Oh, that? I expected that. Didn't I tell you so in the store? I've been working for over a year and I knew just what to expect. It was no surprise, I assure you. I had it all planned. I was willing to starve to carry out my necessary studies, and I did starve. Might as well admit it."

"Sure." I was on my fourth drink now, over the barriers. "When you came into the store I said to myself, 'Here's a guy who's been through hell!' "

"Truer words were never spoken," said Gulther. "I've through hell all right, quite literally. But it's all over now, and I didn't get burned."

"Say, confidentially—what kind of magic did you use?"

"Magic? Magic? I don't know anything about magic."

"Oh, yes, you do, Gulther," I said. "What about that little black book with the iron covers you were mumbling around with in the store?"

"German inorganic chemistry text," he snapped. "Pretty old. Here, drink up and have another."

I had another. Gulther began to babble a bit. About his new clothes and his new apartment and the new car he was going to buy next week. About how he was going to have everything he wanted now, by God, he'd show the fools that laughed at him all these years, he'd pay back the nagging landladies and the cursing grocers, and the sneering rats who told him he was soft in the head for studying the way he did.

Then he got into the kindly stage.

"How'd you like a job at Newsohm?" he asked me. "You're a good pharmacist. You know your chemistry. You're a nice enough fellow, too—but you've got a terrible imagination. How about it? Be my secretary. Sure, that's it. Be my secretary. I'll put you on tomorrow."

"I'll drink on that," I declared. The prospect intoxicated me. The thought of escape from the damned store, escape from the "coke"-faces, the "ciggies"-voices, very definitely intoxicated me. So did the next drink.

I began to see something.

We were sitting against the wall and the tavern lights were low. Couples around us were babbling in monotone that was akin to silence. We sat in shadow against the wall. Now I looked at my shadow—an ungainly, flickering caricature of myself, hunched over the table. What a contrast it presented before his suddenly erect bulk!

His shadow, now—

His shadow, now—

I saw it. He was sitting up straight across the table from me. But his shadow on the wall was standing!

"No more Scotch for me," I said as the waiter came up.

But I continued to stare at his shadow. He was sitting and the shadow was standing. It was a larger shadow than mine, and a blacker shadow. For fun I moved my hands up and down, making heads and faces in silhouette. He wasn't watching me, he was gesturing to the waiter.

His shadow didn't gesture. It just stood there. I watched and stared and tried to look away. His hands moved but the black outline stood poised and silent, hands dangling at the sides. And yet I saw the familiar shape of his head and nose; unmistakably his.

"Say, Gulther," I said. "Your shadow—there on the wall—" I slurred my words. My eyes were blurred.

But I felt his attitude pierce my consciousness below the alcohol.

Fritz Gulther rose to his feet and then shoved a dead-white face against mine. He didn't look at his shadow. He looked at me, through me, at some horror behind my face, my thoughts, my brain. He looked at me, and into some private hell of his own.

"Shadow," he said. "There's nothing wrong with my shadow. You're mistaken. Remember that, you're mistaken. And if you ever mention it again, I'll bash your skull in."

Then Fritz Gulther got up and walked away. I watched him march across the room, moving swiftly but a little unsteadily. Behind him, moving very slowly and not a bit unsteadily, a tall black shadow followed him from the room.

III

If you can build a better mousetrap than your neighbor, you're liable to put your foot in it.

That's certainly what I had done with Gulther. Here I was, ready to accept his offer of a good job as his secretary, and I had to go and pull a drunken boner!

I was still cursing myself for a fool two days later. Shadows that don't follow body-movements, indeed! Who was that shadow I saw you with last night? That was no shadow, that was the Scotch I was drinking. Oh, fine!

So I stood in the drug-store and sprinkled my sundaes with curses as well as chopped nuts.

I nearly knocked the pecans off the counter that second night, when Fritz Gulther walked in again.

He hurried up to the counter and flashed me a tired smile. "Got a minute to spare?"

"Sure—wait till I serve these people in the booth."

I dumped the sundaes and raced back. Gulther perched himself on a stool and took off his hat. He was sweating profusely.

"Say—I want to apologize for the way I blew up the other night."

"Why, that's all right, Mr. Gulther."

"I got a little too excited, that's all. Liquor and success went to my head. No hard feelings, I want you to understand that. It's just that I was nervous. Your ribbing me about my shadow, that stuff sounded too much like the way I was always kidded for sticking to my studies in my room. Landlady used to accuse me of all sorts of things. Claimed I dissected her cat, that I was burning incense, messing the floor up with chalk. Some damn fool college punks downstairs began to yap around that I was some kind of nut dabbling in witchcraft."

I wasn't asking for his autobiography, remember. All this sounded a little hysterical. But then, Gulther looked the part. His sweating, the way his mouth wobbled and twitched as he got this out of me.

"But say, reason I stopped in was to see if you could fix me up a sedative. No, no bromo or aspirin. I've been taking plenty of that stuff ever since the other evening. My nerves are all shot. That job of mine down at Newsohm takes it all out of me."

"Wait a minute, I'll get something."

I made for the back room. As I compounded I sneaked a look at Gulther through the slot.

All right, I'll be honest. It wasn't Gulther I wanted to look at. It was his shadow.

I blinked, but that didn't help.

When a customer sits at the counter stools, the storelights hit him so that his shadow is just a little black pool beneath his feet.

Gulther's shadow was a complete silhouette of his body, in outline. A black, deep shadow.

I blinked, but that didn't help.

Stranger still, the shadow seemed to be cast parallel with his body, instead of at an angle from it. It grew out from his chest instead of his legs. I don't know refraction, the laws of light, all that technical stuff. All I know is that Fritz Gulther had a big black shadow sitting beside him on the floor, and that the sight of it sent cold shivers along my spine.

I wasn't drunk. Neither was he. Neither was the shadow. All three of us existed.

Now Gulther was putting his hat back on.

But not the shadow. It just sat there. Crouched.

It was all wrong.

The shadow was no denser at one spot than at another. It was evenly dark, and—I noted this particularly—the outlines did not blur or fade. They were solid.

I stared and stared. I saw a lot now I'd never noticed. The shadow wore no clothes. Of course! Why should it put on a hat? It was naked, that shadow. But it belonged to Gulther—it wore spectacles. It was his shadow, all right. Which suited me fine, because I didn't want it.

Fiddling around compounding that sedative, I got in more peeks.

Now Gulther was looking down over his shoulder. He was looking at his shadow now. Even from a distance I fancied I saw new beads of sweat string a rosary of fear across his forehead.

He knew, all right!

I came out, finally.

"Here it is," I said. I kept my eyes from his face.

"Good. Hope it works. Must get some sleep. And say—that job offer still goes. How about coming down tomorrow morning?"

I nodded, forcing a smile.

Gulther paid me, rose.

"See you then."

"Certainly." And why not? After all, what if you do work for a boss with an unnatural shadow? Most bosses have other faults, worse ones and more concrete. That shadow—whatever it was and whatever was wrong with it—wouldn't bite me. Though Gulther acted as though it might bite him.

As he turned away I looked at his departing back, and at the long, swooping black outline which followed it. The shadow rose and stalked after him. Stalked. Yes, it followed quite purposefully. To my now-bewildered eyes it seemed larger than it had in the tavern. Larger, and a bolder black.

Then the night swallowed Gulther and his non-existent companion.

I went back to the rear of the store and swallowed the other half of the sedative I'd made up for that purpose. After seeing that shadow, I needed it as much as he did.

IV

The girl in the ornate outer office smiled prettily. "Go right in," she warbled. "He's expecting you."

So it was true, then. Gulther was assistant research director, and I was to be his secretary.

I floated in. In the morning sunshine I forgot all about shadows.

The inner office was elaborately furnished—a huge place, with the elegant walnut panelling associated with business authority. There was a kidney-desk set before closed venetian blinds, and a variety of comfortable leather armchairs. Fluorescent lighting gleamed pleasantly.

But there was no Gulther. Probably on the other side of the little door at the back, talking to his chief.

I sat down, with the tight feeling of anticipation hugged somewhere within my stomach. I glanced around, taking in the room again. My gaze swept the glass-topped desk. It was bare. Except in the corner, where a small box of cigars rested.

No, wait a minute. That wasn't a cigar-box. It was metal. I'd seen it somewhere before.

Of course! It was Gulther's iron-bound book.

"German inorganic chemistry." Who was I to doubt his word? So naturally, I just had to sneak a look before he came in. I opened the yellowed pages.

De Vermis Mysteriis.

"Mysteries of the Worm."

This was no inorganic chemistry text. It was something entirely different. Something that told you how you could compound aconite and belladonna and draw circles of phosphorescent fire on the floor when the stars were right. Something that spoke of melting tallow candles and blending them with corpse-fat, whispered of the uses to which animal sacrifice might be put.

It spoke of meetings that could be arranged with various parties most people don't either care to meet or even believe in.

The thick black letters crawled across the pages, and the detestable odor arising from the musty thing formed a background for the nastiness of the text. I won't say whether or not I believed what I was reading, but I will admit that there was an air, a suggestion about those cold, deliberate directions for traffic with alien evil, which made me shiver with repulsion. Such thoughts have no place in sanity, even as fantasy. And if this is what Gulther had done with the materials, he'd bought himself for $2.39.

"Years of study," eh? "Experiments." What was Gulther trying to call up, what did he call up, and what bargain did he make?

The man who could answer these questions sidled out from behind the door. Gone was the Fritz Gulther of the pin-stripe suit personality. It was my original Caspar Milquetoast who creased his mouth at me in abject fear. He looked like a man—I had to say it—who was afraid of his own shadow.

The shadow trailed him through the doorway. To my eyes it had grown overnight. Its arms were slightly raised, though Gulther had both hands pressed against his sides. I saw it cross the wall as he walked toward me—and it moved more swiftly than he did.

Make no mistake. I saw the shadow. Since then I've talked to wise boys who assure me that under even fluorescence no shadow is cast. They're wise boys all right, but I saw that shadow.

Gulther saw that book in my hands.

"All right," he said, simply. "You know. And maybe it's just as well."

"Know?"

"Yes. Know that I made a bargain with—someone. I thought I was being smart. He promised me success, and wealth, anything I wanted, on only one condition. Those damned conditions; you always read about them and you always forget, because they sound so foolish! He told me that I'd have only one rival, and that this rival would be a part of myself. It would grow with success."

I sat mute. Gulther was wound up for a long time.

"Silly, wasn't it? Of course I accepted. And then I found out what my rival was—what it would be. This shadow of mine. It's independent of me, you know that, and it keeps growing! Oh, not in size, but in depth, in intensity. It's becoming—maybe I am crazy but you see it too—more solid. Thicker. As though it had palpable substance." Crease-mouth wobbled violently, but the words choked on.

"The further I go the more it grows. Last night I took your sedative and it didn't work. Didn't work at all. I sat up in the darkness and watched my shadow."

"In darkness?"

"Yes. It doesn't need light. It really exists now. Permanently. In the dark it's just a blacker blur. But you can see it. It doesn't sleep, or rest. It just waits."

"And you're afraid of it? Why?"

"I don't know. It doesn't threaten me, or make gestures, or even take any notice of me. Shadows taking notice—sounds crazy, doesn't it? But you see it as I do. You can see it waiting. And that's why I'm afraid. What's it waiting for?"

The shadow crept closer over his shoulder. Eavesdropping. "I don't need you for a secretary. I need a nurse."

"What you need is a good rest."

"Rest? How can I rest? I just came out of Newsohm's office. He doesn't notice anything—yet. Too stupid, I suppose. The girls in the office look at me when I pass, and I wonder if they see something peculiar. But Newsohm doesn't. He just made me head of research. Completely in charge."

"In five days? Marvelous!"

"Isn't it? Except for our bargain—whenever I succeed, my rival gains power with me. That will make the shadow stronger. How, I don't know. I'm waiting. And I can't find rest."

"I'll find it for you. Just lie down and wait—I'll be back."

I left him hastily—left him sitting at his desk, all alone. Not quite alone. The shadow was there, too.

Before I went I had the funniest temptation. I wanted to run my hand along the wall, through that shadow. And yet I didn't. It was too black, too solid. What if my hand should actually encounter something?

So I just left.

I was back in half an hour. I grabbed Gulther's arm, bared it, plunged the needle home.

"Morphine," I whispered. "You'll sleep now."

He did, resting on the leather sofa. I sat at his side, watching the shadow that didn't sleep.

It stood there towering above him unnaturally. I tried to ignore it, but it was a third party in the room. Once, when I turned back, it moved. It began to pace up and down. I opened my mouth, trying to hold back a scream.

The phone buzzed. I answered mechanically, my eyes never leaving the black outline on the wall that swayed over Gulther's recumbent form.

"Yes? No—he's not in right now. This is Mr. Gulther's secretary speaking. Your message? Yes, I'll tell him. I certainly will. Thank you."

It had been a woman's voice—a deep, rich voice. Her message was to tell Mr. Gulther she'd changed her mind. She'd be happy to meet him that evening at dinner.

Another conquest for Fritz Gulther!

Conquest—two conquests in a row. That meant conquests for the shadow, too. But how?

I turned to the shadow on the wall, and got a shock. It was lighter! Grayer, thinner, wavering a little!

What was wrong?

I glanced down at Gulther's sleeping face. Then I got another shock. Gulther's face was dark. Not tanned, but dark. Blackish. Sooty. Shadowy.

Then I did scream, a little.

Gulther awoke.

I just pointed to his face and indicated the wall-mirror. He almost fainted. "It's combining with me," he whispered.

His skin was slate-colored. I turned my back because I couldn't look at him.

"We must do something," he mumbled. "Fast."

"Perhaps if you were to use—that book again, you could make another bargain."

It was a fantastic idea, but it popped out. I faced Gulther again and saw him smile.

"That's it! If you could get the materials now—you know what I need—go to the drug-store—but hurry up because—" I shook my head. Gulther was nebulous, shimmery. I saw him through a mist.

Then I heard him yell.

"You damned fool! Look at me. That's my shadow you're staring at!"

I ran out of the room, and in less than ten minutes I was trying to fill a vial with belladonna with fingers that trembled like lumps of jelly.

V

I must have looked like a fool, carrying that armful of packages through the outer office. Candles, chalk, phosphorus, aconite, belladonna, and—blame it on my hysteria—the dead body of an alley-cat I decoyed behind the store.

Certainly I felt like a fool when Fritz Gulther met me at the door of his sanctum.

"Come on in," he snapped.

Yes, snapped.

It took only a glance to convince me that Gulther was himself again. Whatever the black change that frightened us so had been, he'd shook it off while I was gone.

Once again the trumpet-voice held authority. Once again the sneering smile replaced the apologetic crease in the mouth.

Gulther's skin was white, normal. His movements were brisk and no longer frightened. He didn't need any wild spells—or had he ever, really?

Suddenly I felt as though I'd been a victim of my own imagination. After all, men don't make bargains with demons, they don't change places with their shadows.

The moment Gulther closed the door his words corroborated my mood.

"Well, I've snapped out of it. Foolish nonsense, wasn't it?" He smiled easily. "Guess we won't need that junk after all. Right when you left I began to feel better. Here, sit down and take it easy."

I sat. Gulther rested on the desk nonchalantly swinging his legs.

"All that nervousness, that strain, has disappeared. But before I forget it, I'd like to apologize for telling you that crazy story about sorcery and my obsession. Matter of fact, I'd feel better about the whole thing in the future if you just forget that all this ever happened."

I nodded.

Gulther smiled again.

"That's right. Now we're ready to get down to business. I tell you, it's a real relief to realize the progress we're going to make. I'm head research director already, and if I play my cards right, I think I'll be running this place in another three months. Some of the things Newsohm told me today tipped me off. So just play ball with me and we'll go a long way. A long way. And I can promise you one thing—I'll never have any of these crazy spells again."

There was nothing wrong with what Gulther said here. Nothing wrong with any of it. There was nothing wrong with the way Gulther lolled and smiled at me, either.

Then why did I suddenly get that old crawling sensation along my spine?

For a moment I couldn't place it—and then I realized.

Fritz Gulther sat on his desk, before the wall but now he cast no shadow.

No shadow. No shadow at all. A shadow had tried to enter the body of Fritz Gulther when I left. Now there was no shadow. Where had it gone?

There was only one place for it to go. And if it had gone there, then—where was Fritz Gulther?

He read it in my eyes.

I read it in his swift gesture.

Gulther's hand dipped into his pocket and re-emerged. As it rose, I rose, and sprang across the room.

I gripped the revolver, pressed it back and away, and stared into his convulsed countenance, into his eyes. Behind the glasses, behind the human pupils, there was only a blackness. The cold, grinning blackness of a shadow.

Then he snarled, arms clawing up as he tried to wrest the weapon free, aim it. His body was cold, curiously weightless, but filled with a slithering strength. I felt myself go limp under those icy, scrabbling talons, but as I gazed into those two dark pools of hate that were his eyes, fear and desperation lent me aid.

A single gesture, and I turned the muzzle in. The gun exploded, and Gulther slumped to the floor.

They crowded in then; they stood and stared down, too. We all stood and stared down at the body lying on the floor.

Body? There was Fritz Gulther's shoes, his shirt, his tie, his expensive blue pin-stripe suit. The toes of the shoes pointed up, the shirt and tie and suit were creased and filled out to support a body beneath.

But there was no body on the floor. There was only a shadow—a deep black shadow, encased in Fritz Gulther's clothes.

Nobody said a word for a long minute. Then one of the girls whispered, "Look—it's just a shadow."

I bent down quickly and shook the clothes. As I did so, the shadow seemed to move beneath my fingers, to move and to melt.

In an instant it slithered free from the garments. There was a flash—or a final retinal impression of blackness, and the shadow was gone. The clothing sagged down into an empty, huddled heap on the floor.

I rose and faced them. I couldn't say it loud, but I could say it gratefully, very gratefully.

"No," I said. "You're mistaken. There's no shadow there. There's nothing at all—absolutely nothing at all."

DAYBROKE

Originally published in Star Science Fiction, January 1958

Up in the sky the warheads whirled, and the thunder of their passing shook the mountain.

Deep in his vaulted sanctuary he sat, godlike and inscrutable, marking neither the sparrow's or the missile's fall. There was no need to leave his shelter to stare down at the city.

He knew what was happening—had known ever since early in the evening when the television flickered and died. An announcer in the holy white garb of the healing arts had been delivering an important message about the world's most popular laxative—the one most people preferred, the one four out of five doctors used themselves. Midway in his praise of this amazing new medical discovery he had paused and advised the audience to stand by for a special bulletin.

But the bulletin never came; instead the screen went blank and the thunder boomed.

All night long the mountain trembled, and the seated man trembled too; not with anticipation but with realization. He had expected this, of course, and that was why he was here. Others had talked about it for years; there had been wild rumors and solemn warnings and much muttering in taverns. But the rumor-mongers and the warning-sounders and the tavern-mutterers had made no move. They had stayed in the city and he alone had fled.

Some of them, he knew, had stayed to stave off the inevitable end as best they could, and these he saluted for their courage. Others had attempted to ignore the future, and these he detested for their blindness. And all of them he pitied.

For he had realized, long ago, that courage was not enough and that ignorance was no salvation. Wise words and foolish words are one—they will not halt the storm. And when the storm approaches, it is best to flee.

So he had prepared for himself this mountain retreat, high over the city, and here he was safe; would be safe for years to come. Other men of equal wealth could have done the same, but they were too wise or too foolish to face reality. So while they spread their rumors and sounded their warnings and muttered in their cups, he built his sanctuary; lead-guarded, amply provisioned, and stocked with every need for years to come, including even a generous supply of the world's most popular laxative.

* * * *

Dawn came at last and the echoes of the thunder died, and he went to a special, shielded place where he could sight his spyglass at the city. He stared and he squinted, but there was nothing to be seen—nothing but swirling clouds that billowed blackly and rolled redly across the hazed horizon.

Then he knew that he must go down to the city if he wanted to find out, and made due preparations.

There was a special suit to wear, a cunning seamless garment of insulated cloth and lead, difficult and costly to obtain. It was a top secret suit; the kind only Pentagon generals possess. They cannot procure them for their wives, and they must steal them for their mistresses. But he had one. He donned it now.

An elevated platform aided his descent to the base of the mountain, and there his car was waiting. He drove out, the shielded doors closing automatically behind him, and started for the, city. Through the eyepiece of his insulated helmet he stared out at a yellowish fog, and he drove slowly, even though he encountered no traffic nor any sign of life.

After a time the fog lifted, and he could see the countryside. Yellow trees and yellow grass stood stiffly silhouetted against a yellow sky in which great clouds writhed and whirled.

Van Gogh's work, he told himself, knowing it was a lie. For no artist's hand had smashed the windows of the farmhouses, peeled the paint from the sides of the barns, or squeezed the warm breath from the herds huddling in the fields, standing fright-frozen but dead.

He drove along the broad arterial leading to the city; an arterial which ordinarily swarmed with the multicolored corpuscles of motor vehicles. But there were no cars moving today, not in this artery.

Not until he neared the suburbs did he see them, and then he rounded a curve and was halfway upon the vanguard before he panicked and halted in a ditch.

The roadway ahead was packed with automobiles as far as the eye could see—a solid mass, bumper to bumper, ready to descend upon him with whirring wheels.

But the wheels were not turning.

The cars were dead. The further stretches of the highway were an automotive graveyard. He approached the spot on foot, treading with proper reverence past the Cadillac-corpses, the cadavers of Chevrolets, the bodies of Buicks. Close at hand he could see the evidence of violent ends; the shattered glass, the smashed fenders, the battered bumpers and twisted hoods.

The signs of struggle were often pitiable to observe; here was a tiny Volkswagen, trapped and crushed between two looming Lincolns; there an MG had died beneath the wheels of a charging Chrysler. But all were still now. The Dodges dodged no longer, the Hornets had ceased their buzzing, and the Ramblers would never ramble again.

It was hard for him to realize with equal clarity the tragedy that had overtaken the people inside these cars—they were dead, too, of course, but somehow their passing seemed insignificant. Maybe his thinking had been affected by the attitude of the age, in which a man tended to be less and less identified as an individual and more and more regarded on the basis of the symbolic status of the car he drove. When a stranger rode down the street, one seldom thought of him as a person; one's only immediate reaction was, "There goes a Ford—there goes a Pontiac—there goes one of those big goddam Imperials." And men bragged about their cars instead of their characters. So somehow the death of the automobiles seemed more important than the death of their owners. It didn't seem as though human beings had perished in this panic-stricken effort to escape from the city; it was the cars which had made a dash for final freedom and then failed.

He skirted the road now and continued along the ditch until he came to the first sidewalks of the suburbs. Here the evidence of destruction was accentuated. Explosion and implosion had done their work. In the country, paint had been peeled from the walls, but in the suburbs walls had been peeled from the buildings. Not every home was leveled. There were still plenty of ranchhouses standing, though no sign of a rancher in a gray flannel suit. In some of the picturesquely modern white houses, with their light lines and heavy mortgages, the glass side walls remained unshattered, but there was no sign of happy, busy suburban life within—the television sets were dead.

Now he found his progress impeded by an increasing litter. Apparently a blast had swept through this area; his way was blocked by a clutter of the miscellaneous debris of Exurbia.

* * * *

He waded through or stepped around:

Boxes of Kleenex, artificial shrunken heads which had once dangled in the windows of station-wagons, crumpled shopping-lists and scribbled notices of appointments with psychiatrists.

He stepped on an Ivy League cap, nearly tripped over a twisted barbecue grille, got his feet tangled in the straps of foam-rubber falsies. The gutters were choked with the glut from a bombed-out drugstore; bobbie-pins, nylon bobby-socks, a spate of pocketbooks, a carton of tranquilizers, a mass of suntan lotion, suppositories, deodorants, and a big cardboard cutout of Harry Belafonte obscured by a spilled can of hot fudge.

He shuffled on, through a welter of women's electric shavers, Book-of-the-Month-Club bonus selections, Presley records, false teeth, and treatises on Existentialism. Now he was actually approaching the city proper. Signs of devastation multiplied. Trudging past the campus of the university he noted, with a start of horror, that the huge football stadium was no more. Nestled next to it was the tiny Fine Arts building, and at first he thought that it too had been razed. Upon closer inspection, however, he realized it was untouched, save for the natural evidence of neglect and decay.

He found it difficult to maintain a regular course, now, for the streets were choked with wrecked vehicles and the sidewalks often blocked by beams or the entire toppled fronts of buildings. Whole structures had been ripped apart, and here and there were freakish variations where a roof had fallen in or a single room smashed to expose its contents. Apparently the blow had come instantly, and without forewarning, for there were few bodies on the streets and those he glimpsed inside the opened buildings gave indication that death had found them in the midst of their natural occupations.

Here, in a gutted basement, a fat man sprawled over the table of his home workshop, his sightless eyes fixed upon the familiar calendar exhibiting entirely the charms of Marilyn Monroe. Two flights above him, through the empty frame of a bathroom window, one could see his wife, dead in the tub, her hand still clutching a movie magazine with a Rock Hudson portrait on the cover. And up in the attic, open to the sky, two young lovers stretched on a brass bed, locked naked in headless ecstasy.

He turned away, and as his progress continued he deliberately avoided looking at the bodies. But he could not avoid seeing them now, and with familiarity the revulsion softened to the merest twinge. It then gave way to curiosity.

Passing a school playground he was pleased to see that the end had come without grotesque or unnatural violence. Probably a wave of paralyzing gas had swept through this area. Most of the figures were frozen upright in normal postures. Here were all of the aspects of ordinary childhood—the big kid punching the little kid, both leaning up against a fence where the blast had found them; a group of six youngsters in uniform black leather jackets piled upon the body of a child wearing a white leather jacket.

Beyond the playground loomed the center of the city. From a distance the mass of shattered masonry looked like a crazy garden-patch turned by a mad plowman. Here and there were tiny blossoms of flame sprouting forth from the interstices of huge clods, and at intervals he could see lopped, stemlike formations, the lower stories of skyscrapers from which the tops had been sheared by the swish of a thermonuclear scythe.

He hesitated, wondering if it was practical to venture into this weird welter. Then he caught sight of the hillside beyond, and of the imposing structure which was the new Federal Building. It stood there, somehow miraculously untouched by the blast, and in the haze he could see the flag still fluttering from its roof. There would be life here, and he knew he would not be content until he reached it.

But long before he attained his objective, he found other evidences of continued existence. Moving delicately and deliberately through the debris, he became aware that he was not entirely alone here in the central chaos.

Wherever the flames flared and flickered, there were furtive figures moving against the fire. To his horror, he realized that they were actually kindling the blazes; burning away barricades that could not otherwise be removed, as they entered shops and stores to loot. Some of the scavengers were silent and ashamed, others were boisterous and drunken; all were doomed.

It was this knowledge which kept him from interfering. Let them plunder and pilfer at will, let them quarrel over the spoils in the shattered streets; in a few hours or a few days, radiation and fallout would take inevitable toll.

* * * *

No one interfered with his passage; perhaps the helmet and protective garment resembled an official uniform. He went his way unhindered and saw:

A barefooted man wearing a mink coat, dashing through the door of a cocktail lounge and passing bottles out to a bucket-brigade of four small children—

An old woman standing in a bombed-out bank vault, sweeping stacks of bills into the street with her broom. Over in one corner lay the-body of a white-haired man, his futile arms outstretched to embrace a heap of coins. Impatiently, the old woman nudged him with her broom. His head lolled, and a silver dollar popped out of his open mouth—

A soldier and a woman wearing the armband of the Red Cross, carrying a stretcher to the blocked entrance of a partially-razed church. Unable to enter, they bore the stretcher around to the side, and the soldier kicked in one of the stained-glass windows—

An artist's basement studio, open to the sky; its walls still intact and covered with abstract paintings. In the center of the room stood the easel, but the artist was gone. What was left of him was smeared across the canvas in a dripping mass, as though the artist had finally succeeded in putting something of himself into his picture—

A welter of glassware that had once been a chemical laboratory, and in the center of it a smocked figure slumped over a microscope. On the slide was a single cell which the scientist had been intently observing when the world crashed about his ears —

A woman with the face of a Vogue model, spread-eagled in the street. Apparently she had been struck down while answering the call of duty, for one slim, aristocratic hand still gripped the strap of her hatbox. Otherwise, due to some prank of explosion, the blast had stripped her quite naked; she lay there with all her expensive loveliness exposed, and a pigeon nested in her golden pelvis—

A thin man, emerging from a pawnshop and carrying an enormous tuba. He disappeared momentarily into a meat market nextdoor, then came out again, the bell of his tuba stuffed with sausages —

A broadcasting studio, completely demolished, its once immaculate sound stage littered with the crumpled cartons of fifteen different varieties of America's Favorite Cigarette and the broken bottles of twenty brands of America's Favorite Beer. Protruding from the wreckage was the head of America's Favorite Quizmaster, eyes staring glassily at a sealed booth in the corner which now served as the coffin for a nine-year-old boy who had known the batting-averages of every team in the American and National Leagues since 1882—

A wild-eyed woman sitting in the street, crying and crooning over a kitten cradled in her arms—

A broker caught at his desk, his body mummified in coils of ticker-tape—

A motor-bus, smashed into a brick wall; its passengers still jamming the aisles; standees clutching straps even in rigor mortis—

The hindquarters of a stone lion before what had once been the Public Library; before it, on the steps, the corpse of an elderly lady whose shopping-bag had spewed its contents over the street—two murderMysteries, a rental copy of Peyton Place, and the latest issue of the Reader's Digest—

A small boy wearing a cowboy hat, who levelled a toy pistol at his little sister and shouted, "Bang ! You're dead !"

( She was.)

He walked slowly now, his pace impeded by obstacles both physical and of the spirit. He approached the building on the hillside by a circuitous route; avoiding repugnance, overcoming morbid curiosity, shunning pity, recoiling from horror, surmounting shock.

He knew there were others about him here in the city's core, some bent on acts of mercy, some on heroic rescue. But he ignored them all, for they were dead. Mercy had no meaning in this mist, and there was no rescue from radiation. Some of those who passed called out to him, but he went his way unheeding, knowing their words were mere death-rattles.

But suddenly, as he climbed the hillside, he was crying. The salty warmth ran down his cheeks and blurred the inner surface of his helmet so that he no longer saw anything clearly. And it was thus he emerged from the inner circle; the inner circle of the city, the inner circle of Dante's hell.

His tears ceased to flow and his vision cleared. Ahead of him was the proud outline of the Federal Building, shining and intact—or almost so.

* * * *

As he neared the imposing steps and gazed up at the facade, he noted that there were a few hints of crumbling and corrosion on the surface of the structure. The freakish blast had done outright damage only to the sculptured figures surmounting the great arched doorway; the symbolic statuary had been partially shattered so that the frontal surface had fallen away. He blinked at the empty outlines of the three figures; somehow he never had realized that Faith, Hope and Charity were hollow.

Then he walked inside the building. There were tired soldiers guarding the doorway, but they made no move to stop him, probably because he wore a protective garment even more intricate and impressive than their own.

Inside the structure a small army of low clerks and high brass moved antlike in the corridors; marching grim-faced up and down the stairs. There were no elevators, of course—they'd ceased functioning when the electricity gave out. But he could climb.

He wanted to climb now, for that was why he had come here. He wanted to gaze out over the city. In his gray insulation he resembled an automaton, and like an automaton he plodded stiffly up the stairways until he reached the topmost floor.

But there were no windows here, only walled-in offices. He walked down a long corridor until he came to the very end. Here, a single large cubicle glowed with gray light from the glass wall beyond.

A man sat at a desk, jiggling the receiver of a field telephone and cursing softly. He glanced curiously at the intruder, noted the insulating uniform, and returned to his abuse of the instrument in his hand.

So it was possible to walk over to the big window and look down.

It was possible to see the city, or the crater where the city had been.

Night was mingling with the haze on the horizon, but there was no darkness. The little incendiary blazes had been spreading, apparently, as the wind moved in, and now he gazed down upon a growing sea of flame. The crumbling spires and gutted structures were drowning in red waves. As he watched, the tears came again, but he knew there would not be enough tears to put the fires out.

So he turned back to the man at the desk, noting for the first time that he wore one of the very special uniforms reserved for generals.

This must be the commander, then. Yes, he was certain of it now, because the floor around the desk was littered with scraps of paper. Maybe they were obsolete maps, maybe they were obsolete plans, maybe they were obsolete treaties. It didn't matter now.

There was another map on the wall behind the desk, and this one mattered very much. It was studded with black and red pins, and it took but a moment to decipher their meaning. The red pins signified destruction, for there was one affixed to the name of this city. And there was one for New York, one for Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles—every important center had been pierced.

He looked at the general, and finally the words came.

"It must be awful," he said.

"Yes, awful," the general echoed.

"Millions upon millions dead."

"Dead."

"The cities destroyed, the air polluted, and no escape. No escape anywhere in the world."

"No escape."

He turned away and stared out the window once more, stared down at Inferno. Thinking, this is what it has come to, this is the way the world ends.

He glanced at the general again, and then sighed. "To think of our being beaten," he whispered.

The red glare mounted, and in its light he saw the general's face, gleeful and exultant.

"What do you mean, man?" the general said proudly, the flames rising. "We won!"

THE PAST MASTER

First Published in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, June 1962

Statement of Debby Gross

Honestly, I could just die. The way George acts, you'd think it was my fault or something. You'd think he never even saw the guy. You'd think I stole his car. And he keeps asking me to explain everything to him. If I told him once, I told him a hundred times—and the cops too. Besides, what's there to tell him? He was there.

Of course, it doesn't make sense. I already know that. Honest to Pete, I wish I'd stayed home Sunday. I wish I'd told George I had another date when he called up. I wish I'd made him take me to the show instead of that old beach. Him and his convertible! Besides, your legs stick to those leather seats in hot weather.

But you should of seen me Sunday when he called. You'd think he was taking me to Florida or someplace, the way I acted. I had this new slack suit I bought at Sterns, with the plaid top sort of a halter, like. And I quick put on some more of that Restora Rinse. You know, George is the one down at the office who started everybody calling me "Blondie."

So anyhow he came around and picked me up about four, and it was still hot and he had the top down. I guess he just finished washing the car. It looked real snazzy, and he said, "Boy, it just matches your hair, don't it?"

First we drove along the Parkway and then out over the Drive. It was just packed, the cars, I mean. So he said how about it if we didn't go to the beach until after dinner.

That was all right by me, so we went to this Luigi's—it's a seafood place way south on the highway. It's real expensive and they got one of those big menus with all kinds of oozy stuff like pompanos and terrapins. That's a turtle, like.

I had a sirloin and french fries, and George had—I can't remember, oh yes I do—he had fried chicken. Before we ate we had a couple drinks, and after we just sat in the booth and had a couple more. We were sort of kidding back and forth, you know, about the beach and all, and waiting until after dark so we could go swimming on account of not bringing any suits.

Anyways, I was kidding. That George, he'd just as soon do anything. And don't think I didn't know why he was feeding me all those drinks. When we went out he stopped over at the bar and picked up a pint.

The moon was just coming up, almost full, and we started singing while we drove, and I felt like I was getting right with it. So when he said let's not go to the regular beach—he knew this little place way off somewhere—I thought, why not?

It was like a bay, sort of, and you could park up on the bluff along this sideroad, and then walk down to the sand and see way out across the water.

Only that's not why George picked it. He wasn't interested in looking at water. First thing he did was to spread out this big beach blanket, and the second thing he did was open up his pint, and the third thing he did was to start monkeying around.

Nothing serious, you understand, just monkeying around, kind of. Well, he's not so bad-looking even with that busted nose of his, and we kept working on that pint, and it was kind of romantic. I mean, the moon and all.

It wasn't until he really began messing that I made him stop. And even then, I practically had to sock him one before he figured out I wasn't kidding.

"Cut it out," I said. "Now see what you've done! You tore my halter."

"Hell, I'll buy you a new one," he said. "Come on, baby." He tried to grab me again, and I gave him a good one, right on the side of his head. For a minute I thought he'd—you know—get tough about it. But he was pretty canned up, I guess. Anyhow, he just started blubbering about how sorry he was, and that he knew I wasn't that kind, but it was just that he was so crazy about me.

I almost had to laugh, they're so funny when they get that way. But I figured it was smarter to put on an act, so I made out like I was real sore, like I'd never been so insulted in all my life.

Then he said we should have another drink and forget about it, only the pint was empty. So he said how about him taking a run up to the road and getting some more? Or we could both go to a tavern if I liked.

"With all these marks on my neck?" I told him. "I certainly will not! If you want more, you get it "

So he said he would, and he'd be back in five minutes. And he went.

Anyhow, that's how I was alone, when it happened. I was just sitting. there on the blanket, looking out at the water, when I saw this thing sort of moving. At first it looked sort of like a log or something. But it kept coming closer, and then I could see it as somebody swimming, real fast.

So I kept on watching, and pretty soon I made out it was a man, and he was heading right for shore. Then he got close enough so's I could see him stand up and start wading in. He was real tall, real tall, like one of those basketball players, only not skinny or anything. And so help me he didn't have any trunks on or anything. Not a stitch!

Well, I mean, what could I do? I figured he didn't see me, and besides, you can't go running around screaming your head off. Not that there was anyone to hear me. I was all alone there. So I just sat and waited for him to come out of the water and go away up the beach or someplace.

Only he didn't go away. He came out and he walked right over to me. You can imagine—there I was, sitting and there he was, all dripping wet and with no clothes. But he gave me a big hello, just like nothing was wrong. He looked real dreamy when he smiled.

"Good evening," he said. "Might I inquire my whereabouts, Miss?"

Dig that "whereabouts" talk!

So I told him where he was, and he nodded, and then he saw how I was staring and he said, "Might I trouble you for the loan of that blanket?"

Well, what else could I do? I got up and gave it to him and he wrapped it around his waist. That's the first I noticed he was carrying this bag in his hand. It was some kind of plastic, and you couldn't tell what was inside of it.

"What happened to your trunks?" I asked him.

"Trunks?" You'd of thought he never heard of such things the way he said it. Then he smiled again and said, "I'm sorry. They must have slipped off."

"Where'd you start from?" I asked. "You got a boat out there?" He was real tan, he looked like one of these guys that hang around the Yacht Basin all time.

"Yes. How did you know?" he said.

"Well, where else would you come from?" I told him. "It just stands to reason."

"It does, at that," he said.

I looked at the bag. "What you got in there?" I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer me, but he never got a chance. Because all of a sudden George came running down from the bluff. I never even seen his or heard the car stop. But there he was, just tearing down, with a bottle his hand, all ready to swing. Character!

"What the hell's going on here?" he yelled.

"Nothing," I told him.

"Who the hell is this guy? Where'd he come from?" George shouted.

"Permit me to introduce myself," the guy said. "My name is John Smith and—"

"John Smith, my foot!" yelled George, only he didn't say "foot." He was real mad. "All right, let's have it. What's the big idea, you two?"

"There isn't any big idea," I said. "This man was swimming and he lost his trunks, so he borrowed the blanket. He's got a boat out there and—"

"Where? Where's the boat? I don't see any boat." Neither did I, come to think of it. George wasn't waiting for any answers, though. "You there, gimme back that blanket and get the hell out of here."

"He can't," I told him. "He hasn't got any trunks on."

George stood there with his mouth open. Then he waved the bottle. "All right, then, fella. You're coming with us." He gave me a wise look. "Know what I think? I think this guy's a phony. He could even be one of those spies the Russians are sending over in submarines."

That's George for you. Ever since the papers got full of this war scare, he's been seeing Communists all over the place.

"Start talking," he said. "What's in that bag?"

The guy just looked at him and smiled.

"OK, so you want to do it the hard way, it's OK by me. Get up that bluff, fella. We're gonna take a ride over to the police. Come on, before I let you have it." And he waved the bottle.

The guy sort of shrugged and then he looked at George. "You have an automobile?" he asked.

"Of course, what do I look like, Paul Revere or something?" George said.

"Paul Revere? Is he alive?" The guy was kidding, but George didn't know it.

"Shut up and get moving," he said. "The car's right up there."

The guy looked up at the car. Then he nodded to himself and he looked at George.

That's all he did. So help me. He just looked at him.

He didn't make any of those funny passes with his hands, and he didn't say anything. He just looked, and he kept right on smiling. His face didn't change a bit.

But George—his face changed. It just sort of set, like it was frozen stiff. And so did everything. I mean, his hands got numb and the bottle fell and busted. George was like he couldn't move.

I opened my mouth but the guy kind of glanced over at me and I thought maybe I'd better not say anything. All of a sudden I felt cold all over, and didn't know what would happen if he looked at me.

So I stood there, and then this guy went up to George and undressed him. Only it wasn't exactly undressing him, because George was just like one of those window dummies you see in the stores. Then the guy put all of George's clothes on himself, and he put the blanket around George. I could see he had this plastic bag in one hand and George's car keys in the other.

I was going to scream, only the guy looked at me again and I couldn't. I didn't feel stiff like George, or paralyzed, or anything like that. But I couldn't scream to save my neck. And what good would it of done anyhow?

Because this guy just walked right up the side of the bluff and climbed in George's car and drove away. He never said a word, he never looked back. He just went.

Then I could scream, but good. I was still screaming when George came out of it, and I thought he'd have a hemorrhage or something.

Well, we had to walk back all the way. It was over three miles to the highway patrol, and they made me tell the whole thing over and over again a dozen times. They got George's license number and they're still looking for the car. And this sergeant, he thinks George is maybe right about the Communists.

Only he didn't see the way the guy looked at George. Every time I think about it, I could just die!

Statement of Milo Fabian

I scarcely got the drapes pulled when he walked in. Of course, at first I thought he was delivering something. He wore a pair of those atrocious olive-drab slacks and a ready-made sports jacket, and he had on one of those caps that look a little like those worn by jockeys.

"Well, what is it?" I said. I'm afraid I was just a wee bit rude about it—truth to tell, I'd been in a perfectly filthy mood ever since Jerry told me he was running up to Cape Cod for the exhibit. You'd think he might at least have considered my feelings and invited me to go along. But no, I had to stay behind and keep the gallery open.

But I actually had no excuse for being spiteful to this stranger. I mean, he was rather an attractive sort of person when he took that idiotic cap off. He had black, curly hair and he was quite tall, really immense; I was almost afraid of him until he smiled.

"Mr. Warlock?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"This is the Warlock Gallery, isn't it?"

"Yes. But Mr. Warlock is out of the city. I'm Mr. Fabian. Can I help you?"

"It's rather a delicate matter."

"If you have something to sell, you can show me. I do all the buying for the gallery."

"I've nothing to sell. I want to purchase some paintings."

"Well, in that case, won't you come right back with me, Mr. —"

"Smith," he said.

We started down the aisle together. "Could you tell me just what you had in mind?" I asked. "As you probably know, we tend to specialize in moderns. We have a very good Kandinsky now, and an early Mondrian—"

"You don't have the pictures I want here," he said. "I'm sure of it."

We were already in the gallery. I stopped. "Then what was it you wished?"

He stood there, swinging this perfectly enormous plastic pouch. "You mean what kind of painting? Well, I want one or two good Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Raphael, something by Titian, a Van Gogh, a Tintoretto. Also a Goya, an El Greco, a Breughel, a Hals, a Holbein, a Gauguin. I don't suppose there's a way of getting 'The Last Supper'—that was done as a fresco, wasn't it?"

It was positively weird to hear the man. I'm afraid I was definitely piqued, and I showed it. "Please!" I said. "I happen to be busy this morning. I have no time to—"

"You don't understand," he answered. "You buy pictures, don't you? Well, I want you to buy me some. As my—my agent, that's the word, isn't it?"

"That's the word," I told him. "But surely you can't be serious. Have you any idea of the cost involved in acquiring such a collection? It would be simply fabulous."

"I've got money," he said. We were standing next to the deal table at the entrance, and he walked over to it and put his pouch down. Then he zipped it open.

I have never, but simply never, seen such a fantastic sight in my life. The pouch was full of bills, stack after stack of bills, and every single one was either a five- or ten-thousand dollar bill. Why, I'd never even seen one before!

If he'd been carrying twenties or hundreds, I might have suspected counterfeits, but nobody would have the audacity to dream of getting away with a stunt like this. They looked genuine, and they were. I know, because—but, that's for later.

So there I stood, looking at this utterly mad heap of money lying there, and this Mr. Smith, as he called himself, said, "Well, do you think I have enough?"

I could have just passed out, thinking about it.

Imagine, a perfect stranger, walking in off the street with ten million dollars to buy paintings. And my share of the commission is five percent! "I don't know," I said. "You're really serious about all this?"

"Here's the money. How soon can you get me what I want?"

"Please," I said. "This is all so unusual, I hardly know where to begin. Do you have a definite list of what you wish to acquire?"

"I can write the names down for you," he told me. "I remember most of them."

He knew what he wanted, I must say. Velasquez, Gorgione, Cezanne, Degas, Utrillo, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Ryder, Pissarro—

Then he began writing titles. I'm afraid I gasped. "Really," I said. "You can't actually expect to buy the 'Mona Lisa'!"

"Why not?" He looked perfectly serious.

"It's not for sale at any price, you know."

"I didn't know. Who owns it?"

"The Louvre. In Paris."

"I didn't know." He was serious, I'd swear he was. "But what about the rest?"

"I'm afraid many of these paintings are in the same category. They're not for sale. Most of them are in public galleries and museums here and abroad. And a number of the particular works you request are in the hands of private collectors who could never be persuaded to sell."

He stood up and began scooping the money back into his pouch. I took his arm.

"But, we can certainly do our best," I said. "We have our sources, our connections. I'm sure we can at least procure some of the lesser, representative pieces by every one of the masters you list. It's merely a matter of time."

He shook his head. "Won't do. This is Tuesday, isn't it? I've got to have everything by Sunday night."

Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous in all your life? The man was stark staring.

"Look," he said. "I'm beginning to understand how things are, now. These paintings I want, they're scattered all over the world. Owned by public museums and private parties who won't sell. And I suppose the same thing is true of manuscripts. Things like the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare first folios, the Declaration of Independence—"

Stark staring. I didn't trust myself to do anything but nod at him.

"How many of the things I want are here?" he asked. "Here, in this country?"

"A fair percentage, well over half."

"All right. Here's what you do. Sit down over there and make me up a list. I want you to write me down the names of the paintings I've noted, and just where they are. I'll give you $10,000 for the list."

Ten thousand dollars for a list he could have acquired free of charge at the public library! Ten thousand dollars for less than an hour's work!

I gave him his list. And he gave me the money and walked out.

By this time, I was just about frantic. I mean, it was all so shattering. He came and he went, and there I stood—not knowing his real name, or anything. Talk about your eccentric millionaires! He went, and there I stood with $10,000 in my hand.

Well, I'm not one to do anything rash. He hadn't been gone three minutes before I locked up and stepped over to the bank. I simply hopped all the way back to the gallery.

Then I said to myself, "What for?"

I didn't have to go back now, really. This was my money, not Jerry's. I'd earned it all by my little self. And as for him, he could stay up at the Cape and rot. I didn't need his precious job.

I went right down and bought a ticket to Paris. All this war scare talk is simply a lot of fluff, if you ask me. Sheer fluff.

Of course, Jerry is going to be utterly furious when he hears about it. Well, let him. All I have to say is, he can get himself another boy.

Statement of Nick Krauss

I was dead on my feet. I'd been on the job ever since Tuesday night and here it was Saturday. Talk about living on your nerves!

But I wasn't missing out on this deal, not me. Because this was the payoff. The payoff to the biggest caper that was ever rigged.

Sure, I heard of the Brink's job. I even got a pretty good idea who was in on it. But that was peanuts, and it took better'n a year to set up.

This deal topped 'em all. Figure it for yourself, once. Six million bucks, cash. In four days. Get that, now. I said six million bucks in four days. That's all, brother!

And who did it? Me, that's who.

Let me tell you one thing: I earned that dough. Every lousy cent of it. And don't think I didn't have to shell out plenty in splits. Right now I can't even remember just how many was in on it from the beginning to end. But what with splits and expenses—like hiring all them planes to fly the stuff down—I guess it cost pretty near a million and a half, just to swing it.

That left four and a half million. Four and a half million—and me going down to the yacht to collect.

I had the whole damn haul right in the truck. A hundred and forty pieces, some of 'em plenty heavy, too. But I wasn't letting nobody else horse around with unloading. This was dynamite. Only two miles from the warehouse where I got everything assembled. Longest two miles I ever drove.

Sure, I had a warehouse. What the hell, I bought the thing! Bought the yacht for him, too. Paid cash. When you got six million in cash to play with, you don't take no chances on something you can just as well buy without no trouble.

Plenty of chances the way it was. Had to take chances, working that fast. Beat me how I managed to get through the deal without a dozen leaks.

But the dough helped. You take a guy, he'll rat on you for two–three grand. Give him twenty or thirty, and he's yours. I'm not just talking syndicate, either. Because there was plenty guys in on it that weren't even in no mob—guys that never been mugged except maybe for these here college annual books where they show pictures of all the professors. I paid off guards and I paid off coppers and I paid off a bunch of curators, too. Not characters, curators. Guys that run museums.

I still don't know what this joker wanted with all that stuff. Only thing I can figure is maybe he was one of these here Indian rajahs or something. But he didn't look like no Hindu—he was a big, tall, youngish guy. Didn't talk like one, either. But who else wants to lay out all that lettuce for a bunch of dizzy paintings and stuff?

Anyways, he showed up Tuesday night with this pouch of his. How he got to me, how he ever got by Lefty downstairs I never figured out.

But there he was. He asked me if it was true, what he heard about me, and he asked me if I wanted to do a job. Said his name was Smith. You know the kind of con you get when they want to stay dummied up on you.

I didn't care if he dummied up or not. Because, like the fella says, money talks. And it sure hollered Tuesday night. He opens this pouch of his and spills two million bucks on the table.

So help me, two million bucks! Cash!

"I've brought this along for expenses," he said. "There's four million more in it if you can cooperate."

Let's skip the rest of it. We made a deal, and I went to work. Wednesday I had him on that yacht, and he stayed there all the way through. Every night I went down and reported.

I went to Washington myself and handled the New York and Philadelphia end, too. Also Boston, on Friday. The rest was by phone, mostly. I kept flying guys out with orders and cash to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis and the Coast. They had the lists and they knew what to look for. Every mob I contacted set up its own plans for the job. I paid whatever they asked, and that way nobody had any squawks coming. No good any of 'em holding out on me—where could they sell the stuff? Those things are too hot.

By the time Thursday come around, I was up to my damn neck in diagrams and room plans and getaway routes. There was six guys just checking on alarm systems and stuff in the joints I was supposed to cover. We had maybe fifty working in New York, not counting from the inside. You wouldn't believe it if I told you some of the guys who helped. Big professors and all, tipping us off on how to make a heist, or cutting wires and leaving doors unlocked. I hear a dozen up and lammed after it was over. That's what real dough can buy you.

Of course, I run into trouble. Lots of it. We never did get a haul out of L.A. The fix wasn't in the way it was supposed to be, and they lost the whole load trying for a getaway at the airport. Lucky thing the cops shot up all four of the guys, the ones who made the haul. So they couldn't trace anything.

All told, must of been seven or eight cashed in; the four in L.A., two in Philly, one guy in Detroit and one in Chicago. But no leaks. I kept the wires open, and I had my people out there, sort of supervising. Every bit of the stuff we did get came in by private plane, over in Jersey. Went right to the warehouse.

And I had the whole works, 143 pieces, on the truck when I went down for the payoff.

It took me three hours to cart that stuff onto the yacht. This guy, this Mr. Smith, he just sat and watched the whole time.

When I was done I said, "That's the works. You satisfied now or do you want a receipt?"

He didn't smile or anything. Just shook his head. "You'll have to open them," he said.

"Open 'em up? That'll take another couple hours," I told him.

"We've got time," he said.

"Hell we have! Mister, this stuff's hot and I'm hotter. There's maybe a hundred thousand honest johns looking for the loot—ain't you read the papers or heard the radio? Whole damn country's in an uproar. Worse than the war crisis or whatever you call it. I want out of here, fast."

But he wanted them crates and boxes open, so I opened 'em. What the hell, for four million bucks, a little flunkey work don't hurt. Not even when you're dead for sleep. It was a tough job, though, because everything was packed nice. So as not to have any damage, that is.

Nothing was in frames. He had these canvases and stuff all over the floor, and he checked them off in a notebook, every one. And when I got the last damn picture out and hauled all the wood and junk up on deck and put it over the side in the dark, I come back to find him in the forward cabin.

"What's the pitch?" I asked. "Where you going?"

"To transfer these to my ship," he told me. "After all, you didn't expect I'd merely sail off in this vessel, did you? And I'll need your assistance to get them on board. Don't worry, it's only a short distance away."

He started the engines. I came right up behind him and stuck my Special in his ribs.

"Where's the bundle?" I asked.

"In the other cabin, on the table." He didn't even look around.

"You're not pulling anything, are you?"

"See for yourself."

I went to see. And he was leveling.

Four million bucks on the table. Five- and ten-thousand dollar bills, and no phony geetus either. Wouldn't be too damn easy passing this stuff—the Feds would have the word out about big bills—but then, I didn't count on sticking around with the loot. There's plenty countries where they like them big bills and don't ask any questions. South America, such places. That part didn't worry me too much, as long as I knew I'd get there.

And I figured on getting there all right. I went back to the other cabin and showed him my Special again. "Keep going," I said. "I'll help you, but first time you get cute I'm set to remove your appendix with a slug."

He knew who I was. He knew I could just let him have it and skid out of any time I wanted. But he never even blinked at me—just kept right there on steering.

He must of gone about four–five miles. It was pitch-dark and he didn't carry spot, but he knew where he was going. Because all at once we stopped and he said, "Here we are."

I went up on deck with him and I couldn't seen nothing. Just the lights off on shore and the water all around. I sure as hell didn't see no boat anywheres.

"What the hell you got, a submarine or something?"

"Something." He leaned over the side. His hands was empty, he didn't do anything but lean. And so help me, all of a sudden up comes this damn thing. Like a big round silver ball, sort of, with a lid on top.

I didn't even notice the lid until it opened up. And it floated alongside, so's he could run the gangplank out to the rest on the lid.

"Come on," he said. "I'll help you. It won't take long this way."

"You think I'm gonna carry stuff across that lousy plank?" I asked him. "In the dark?"

"Don't worry, you can't fall. It's magnomeshed."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I'll show you."

He walked across that plank and climbed right down into the thing before I thought to try and stop him. The plank never moved an inch.

Then he was back out. "Come on, there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Who's afraid?"

But I was scared, plenty. Because now I knew what he was. I'd been reading the papers a lot these days, and I didn't miss none of the war talk. Them Commies with all their new weapons and stuff—well, this was one of them. It is no wonder he was tossing around millions of bucks like that.

So I figured on doing my patriotic duty. Sure, I'd haul these lousy pictures on board for him. I wanted to get a look inside that sub of his. But when I finished, I made up my mind he wasn't gonna streak out for Russia or someplace. I'd get him first.

That's the way I played it. I helped him cart the whole mess down into the sub.

Then I changed my mind again. He wasn't no Russian. He wasn't anything I ever heard of except an inventor, maybe. Because that thing he had was crazy.

It was all hollow inside. All hollow, with just a thin wall around. I could tell there wasn't space for an engine or anything. Just enough room to stack the stuff and leave space for maybe two or three guys to stand.

There wasn't any electric light in the place either, but it was light. And daylight. I know what I'm talking about—I know about neon and fluorescent lights too. This was something else. Something new.

Instruments? Well, he had some kind of little slots on one part, but they was down on the floor. You had to lay down next to them to see how they'd work. And he kept watching me, so I didn't want to take a chance on acting too nosy. I figured it wasn't healthy.

I was scared because he wasn't scared.

I was scared because he wasn't no Russian.

I was scared because there ain't any round balls that float in water, or come up from under water when you just look at 'em. And because he come from nowhere with his cash and he was going nowhere with the pictures. Nothing made any sense any more, except one thing. I wanted out! I wanted out bad.

Maybe you think I'm nuts, but that's because you never was inside a shiny ball floating in water, only not bobbing around or even moving when the waves hit it, and all daylight with nothing to light it with. You never saw this Mr. Smith who wasn't named Smith and maybe not even Mr.

But if you had, you would of understood why I was so glad to get back on that yacht and go down in the cabin and pick up the dough.

"All right," I said. "Let's go back."

"Leave whenever you like," he said. "I'm going now."

"Going yourself? Then how the hell do I get back?" I yelled.

"Take the yacht," he told me. "It's yours." Just like that he said it.

"But I can't run no yacht, I don't know how."

"It's very simple. Here, I'll explain—I picked it up myself in less than a minute. Come up to the cabin."

"Uh uh." I got the Special out. "You're taking me back to the dock right now."

"Sorry, there isn't time. I want to be on my way before—"

"You heard me," I said. "Get this boat moving."

"Please. You're making this difficult. I must leave now."

"First you take me back. Then you go off to Mars or wherever it is."

"Mars? Who said anything about—"

He sort of smiled and shook his head. And then he looked at me.

He looked—right—at—me. He looked—into—me. His eyes were like two of those big round silver balls, rolling down into slots behind my eyeballs and crashing right into my skull. They came toward me real slow and real heavy, and I couldn't duck. I felt them coming, and I knew if they ever hit I'd be a goner.

I was out on my feet. Everything was numb. He just smiled and stared and sent his eyes out to get me. They rolled and I could feel them hit. Then I was—gone.

The last thing I remember was pulling the trigger.

Statement of Elizabeth Rafferty, MD

At 9:30 Sunday morning, he rang the bell. I remember the time exactly, because I'd just finished breakfast and I was switching on the radio to get the war news. Apparently they'd found another Soviet boat, this one in Charleston harbor, with an atomic device aboard. The Coast Guard and the Air Force were both on emergency, and it—

The bell rang, and I opened the door.

There he stood. He must have been six-foot-four at the very least. I had to look up at him to see his smile, but it was worth it.

"Is the doctor in?" he asked.

"I'm Dr. Rafferty."

"Good. I was hoping I'd be lucky enough to find you here. I just came along the street, taking a chance on locating a physician. You see, it's rather an emergency—"

"I gathered that." I stepped back. "Won't you come inside? I dislike having my patients bleed all over the front stoop."

He glanced down at his left arm. He was bleeding, all right. And from the hole in his coat, and the powdermarks, I knew why.

"In here," I said. We went into the office. "Now, if you'll let me help you with your coat and shirt, Mr.—"

"Smith," he said.

"Of course. Up on the table. That's it. Now, easy—let me do it—there. Well! A nice neat perforation, upper triceps. In again, out again. It looks as if you were lucky, Mr. Smith. Hold still now. I'm going to probe .... This may hurt a bit .... Good! ... We'll just sterilize, now—"

All the while I kept watching him. He had a gambler's face, but not the mannerisms. I couldn't make up my mind about him. He went through the whole procedure without a sound or a change of expression.

Finally, I got him bandaged up. "Your arm will probably be stiff for several days. I wouldn't advise you to move around too much. How did it happen?"

"Accident."

"Come now, Mr. Smith." I got out the pen and looked for a form. "Let's not be children. You know as well as I do that a physician must make a full report on any gunshot wound."

"I didn't know." He swung off the table. "Who gets the report?"

"The police."

"No!"

"Please, Mr. Smith! I'm required by law to—"

"Take this."

He fished something out of his pocket with his right hand and threw it on the desk. I stared at it. I'd never seen a five-thousand dollar bill before, and it was worth staring at.

"I'm going now," he said. "As a matter of fact, I've never really been here."

I shrugged. "As you will," I told him. "Just one thing more, though."

I stooped, reached into the left-hand upper drawer of the desk, and showed him what I kept there.

"This is a .22, Mr. Smith," I said. "It's a lady's gun. I've never used it before, except on the target range. I would hate to use it now, but I warn you that if I do you're going to have trouble with your right arm. As a physician, my knowledge of anatomy combines with my ability as a marksman. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do. But you don't. Look, you've got to let me go. It's important. I'm not a criminal!"

"Nobody said you were. But you will be, if you attempt to evade the law by neglecting to answer my questions for this report. It must be in the hands of the authorities within the next twenty-four hours."

He chuckled. "They'll never read it."

I sighed. "Let's not argue. And don't reach into your pocket, either."

He smiled at me. "I have no weapon. I was just going to increase your fee."

Another bill fluttered to the table. Ten thousand dollars. Five thousand plus ten thousand makes fifteen. It added up.

"Sorry," I said. "This all looks very tempting to a struggling young doctor—but I happen to have old-fashioned ideas about such things. Besides, I doubt if I could get the change from anyone, because of all this excitement in the newspapers over—"

I stopped, suddenly, as I remembered. Five-thousand and ten-thousand dollar bills. They added up, all right. I smiled at him across the desk. "Where are the paintings, Mr. Smith?" I asked.

It was his turn to sigh. "Please, don't question me. I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to go, before it's too late. You were kind to me. I'm grateful. Take the money and forget it. This report is foolishness, believe me."

"Believe you? With the whole country in an uproar, looking for stolen art masterpieces, and Communists hiding under every bed? Maybe it's just feminine curiosity, but I'd like to know." I took careful aim. "This isn't conversation, Mr. Smith. Either you talk or I shoot."

"All right. But it won't do any good." He leaned forward. "You've got to believe that. It won't do any good. I could show you the paintings, yes. I could give them to you. And it wouldn't help a bit. Within twenty-four hours they'd be as useless as that report you wanted to fill out."

"Oh, yes, the report. We might as well get started with it," I said. "In spite of your rather pessimistic outlook. The way you talk, you'd think the bombs were going to fall here tomorrow."

"They will," he told me. "Here, and everywhere."

"Very interesting." I shifted the gun to my left hand and took up the fountain pen. "But now, to business. Your name, please. Your real name."

"Kim Logan."

"Date of birth?"

"November 25th, 2903."

I raised the gun. "The right arm," I said. "Medial head of the triceps. It will hurt, too."

"November 25th, 2903," he repeated. "I came here last Sunday at 10 P.M., your time. By the same chronology I leave tonight at nine. It's a 169-hour cycle."

"What are you talking about?"

"My instrument is out there in the bay. The paintings and manuscripts are there. I intended to remain submerged until the departure moment tonight, but a man shot me."

"You feel feverish?" I asked. "Does your head hurt?"

"No. I told you it was no use explaining things. You won't believe me, any more than you believed me about the bombs."

"Let's stick to facts," I suggested. "You admit you stole the paintings. Why?"

"Because of the bombs, of course. The war is coming, the big one. Before tomorrow morning your planes will be over the Russian border and their planes will retaliate. That's only the beginning. It will go on for months, years. In the end—shambles. But the masterpieces I take will be saved."

"How?"

"I told you. Tonight, at nine, I return to my own place in the time continuum." He raised his hand. "Don't tell me it's not possible. According to your present-day concepts of physics it would be. Even according to our science, only forward movement is demonstrable. When I suggested my project to the Institute they were skeptical. But they built the instrument according to my specifications, nevertheless. They permitted me to use the money from the Historical Foundation at Fort Knox. And I received an ironic blessing prior to my departure. I rather imagine my actual vanishment caused raised eyebrows. But that will be nothing compared to the reaction upon my return. My triumphant return, with a cargo of art masterpieces presumably destroyed nearly a thousand years in the past!"

"Let me get this straight," I said. "According to your story, you came here because you knew war was going to break out and you wanted to salvage some old masters from destruction. Is that it?"

"Precisely. It was a wild gamble, but I had the currency. I've studied the era as closely as any man can from the records available. I knew about the linguistic peculiarities of the age—you've had no trouble understanding me, have you? And I managed to work out a plan. Of course I haven't been entirely successful, but I've managed a great deal in less than a week's time. Perhaps I can return again—earlier—maybe a year or so beforehand, and procure more." His eyes grew bright. "Why not? We could build more instruments, come in a body. We could get everything we wanted, then."

I shook my head. "For the sake of argument, let's say for a minute that I believe you, which I don't. You've stolen some paintings, you say. You're taking them back to 29-something-or-other with you, tonight. You hope. Is that the story?"

"That's the truth."

"Very well. Now you suggest that you might repeat the experiment on a larger scale. Come back to a point a year before this in time and collect more masterpieces. Again, let's say you do it. What will happen to the paintings you took with you?"

"I don't follow you."

"Those paintings will be in your era, according to you. But a year ago they hung in various galleries. Will they be there when you come back? Surely they can't coexist."

He smiled. "A pretty paradox. I'm beginning to like you, Dr. Rafferty."

"Well, don't let the feeling grow on you. It's not reciprocal, I assure you. Even if you were telling the truth, I can't admire your motives."

"What's wrong with my motives?" He stood up, ignoring the gun. "Isn't it a worthwhile goal—to save immortal treasures from the senseless destruction of a tribal war? The world deserves the preservation of its artistic heritage. I've risked my existence for the sake of bringing beauty to my own time—where it can be properly appreciated and enjoyed by minds no longer obsessed with the greed and cruelty I find here."

"Big words," I said. "But the fact remains. You stole those paintings."

"Stole? I saved them! I tell you, before the year is out they'd be utterly destroyed. Your galleries, your museums, your libraries—everything will go. Is it stealing to carry precious articles from a burning temple?" He leaned over me. "Is that a crime?"

"Why not stop the fire, instead?" I countered. "You know—from historical records, I suppose—that war breaks out tonight or tomorrow. Why not take advantage of your foresight and try to prevent it?"

"I can't. The records are sketchy, incomplete. Events are jumbled. I've been unable to discover just how the war began—or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed. Nothing is clear on that point."

"But couldn't you warn the authorities?"

"And change history? Change the actual sequence of events, rather? Impossible!"

"Aren't you changing them by taking the paintings?"

"That's different."

"Is it?" I stared into his eyes. "I don't see how. But then, the whole thing is impossible. I've wasted too much time in arguing."

"Time!" He looked at the wall clock. "Almost noon. I've got just nine hours left. And so much to do. The instrument must be adjusted."

"Where is this precious mechanism of yours?"

"Out in the bay. Submerged, of course, I had that in mind when it was constructed. You can conceive of the hazards of attempting to move through time and alight on a solid surface; the face of the land alters. But the ocean is comparatively unchanging. I knew if I departed from a spot several miles offshore and arrived there, I'd eliminate most of the ordinary hazards. Besides, it offers a most excellent place of concealment. The principle, you see, is simple. By purely mechanical means, I shall raise the instrument above the stratospheric level tonight and then intercalculate dimensionally when I am free of Earth's orbit. The gantic-drive will be—"

No doubt about it. I didn't have to wait for the double-talk to know he was crazier than a codfish. A pity, too; he was really a handsome specimen.

"Sorry," I said. "Time's up. This is something I hate to do, but there's no other choice. No, don't move. I'm calling the police, and if you take one step I'll plug you."

"Stop! You mustn't call! I'll do anything. I'll even take you with me. That's it, I'll take you with me! Wouldn't you like to save your life? Wouldn't you like to escape?"

"No. Nobody escapes," I told him. "Especially not you. Now stand still, and no more funny business. I'm making that call."

He stopped. He stood still. I picked up the phone, with a sweet smile. He smiled back. He looked at me.

Something happened.

There has been a great dispute about the clinical aspects of hypnotic therapy. I remember, in school, an attempt being made to hypnotize me. I was entirely immune. I concluded that a certain degree of cooperation or conditioned suggestibility is required of an individual in order to render him susceptible to hypnosis.

I was wrong.

I was wrong, because I couldn't move now. No lights, no mirrors, no voices, no suggestion. It was just that I couldn't move. I sat there holding the gun. I sat there and watched him walk out, locking the door behind him. I could see and I could feel. I could even hear him say "Goodbye."

But I couldn't move. I could function, but only as a paralytic functions. I could, for example, watch the clock.

I watched the clock from noon until almost seven. Several patients came during the afternoon, couldn't get in, and went away. I watched the clock until its face was lost in darkness. I sat there and endured hysteric rigidity until—providentially—the phone rang.

That broke it. But it broke me. I couldn't answer that phone. I merely slumped over on the desk, my muscles tightening with pain as the gun fell from my numb fingers. I lay there, gasping and sobbing, for a long time. I tried to sit up. It was agony. I tried to walk. My limbs rejected sensation. It took me an hour to gain control again. And even then, it was merely a partial control—a physical control. My thoughts were another matter.

Seven hours of thinking. Seven hours of true or false? Seven hours of accepting and rejecting the impossibly possible.

It was after eight before I was on my feet again, and then I didn't know what to do.

Call the police? Yes—but what could I tell them? I had to be sure, I had to know.

And what did I know? He was out in the bay, and he'd leave at nine o'clock. There was an instrument which would rise above the stratosphere—

I got in the car and drove. The dock was deserted. I took the road over to the Point, where there's a good view. I had the binoculars. The stars were out, but no moon. Even so, I could see pretty clearly.

There was a small yacht bobbing on the water, but no lights shone. Could that be it?

No sense taking chances. I remembered the radio report about the Coast Guard patrols.

So I did it. I drove back to town and stopped at a drugstore and made my call. Just reported the presence of the yacht. Perhaps they'd investigate, because there were no lights. Yes, I'd stay there and wait for them if they wished.

I didn't stay, of course. I went back to the Point. I went back there and trained my binoculars on the yacht. It was almost nine when I saw the cutter come along, moving up behind the yacht with deadly swiftness.

It was exactly nine when they flashed their lights—and caught for an incredible instant, the gleaming reflection of the silver globe that rose from the water, rose straight up toward the sky.

Then came the explosion and I saw the shattering before I heard the echo of the report. They had portable anti-aircraft, something of the sort. It was effective.

One moment, the globe roared upward. The next moment, there was nothing. They blew it to bits.

And they blew me to bits with it. Because if there was a globe, perhaps he was inside. With the masterpieces, ready to return to another time. The story was true, then, and if that was true, then—

I guess I fainted. My watch showed 10:30 when I came to and stood up. It was 11:00 before I made it to the Coast Guard Station and told my story.

Of course, nobody believed me. Even Dr. Halvorsen from Emergency—he said he did, but he insisted on the injection and they took me here to the hospital.

It would have been too late, anyway. That globe did the trick. They must have contacted Washington immediately with their story of a new secret Soviet weapon destroyed offshore. Coming on the heels of finding those bomb-laden ships, it was the final straw. Somebody gave the orders and our planes were on their way.

I've been writing all night. Outside in the corridor they're getting radio reports. We've dropped bombs over there. And the alert has gone out, warning us of possible reprisals.

Maybe they'll believe me now. But it doesn't matter any more. It's going to be the way he said it was.

I keep thinking about the paradoxes of time travel. This notion of carrying objects from the present to the future—and this other notion, about altering the past. I'd like to work out the theory, only there's no need. The old masters aren't going into the future. Any more than he, returning to our present, could stop the war.

What had he said? "I've been unable to discover just how the war began—or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed."

Well, this was the trivial incident. His visit. If I hadn't made that phone call, if the globe hadn't risen—but I can't bear to think about it any more. It makes my head hurt. All that buzzing and droning noise ....

I've just made an important discovery. The buzzing and droning does not come from inside my head. I can hear the sirens sounding, too. If I had any doubts about the truth of his claims, they're gone now.

I wish I'd believed him. I wish the others would believe me now. But there just isn't any time ....

A GOOD IMAGINATION

Originally published in the Suspect, 1956

I may have my faults, but lack of imagination isn't one of them.

Take this matter of George Parker, for example. It finally came to a head today, and I flatter myself that I handled it very well. That's where imagination counts.

If it hadn't been for my imagination I probably never would have noticed George in the first place. And I certainly wouldn't have been prepared to deal with him properly. But as it was, I had everything worked out.

He showed up, right on schedule, just after lunch. I was down in the basement, mixing cement, when I heard him rap on the back door.

"Anybody home?" he called.

"Down here," I said. "All ready to go."

So he walked through the kitchen and came down the cellar stairs, clumping. George, the eternal dumper, banging his way through life; about as subtle as a steamroller. And with a steamroller's smug belief in its own power, in its ability to crush anything that didn't get out of its way.

He had to stoop a bit here in the basement because he was so tall. Tall and heavyset, with the thick neck and broad shoulders that are the common endowment of outdoor men, movie stars, and adult male gorillas.

Of course I'm being a bit uncharitable. George Parker couldn't be compared to a gorilla. Not with that boyish haircut and amiable grin of his. No self-respecting gorilla would affect either.

"All alone?" he asked. "Where's Mrs. Logan?"

"Louise?" I shrugged. "She's gone over to Dalton to close up the bank account."

The grin vanished. "Oh. I was sort of hoping I'd get a chance to say goodbye to her."

I'll bet he was. It almost killed him, realizing that he wasn't going to see her again. I knew. I knew why he'd come scratching on the door with his "Anybody home?" routine. What he really meant was, "Is the coast clear, darling?"

How many times had he come creeping around this summer? I wondered. How many times had he called her "darling"? How many times during the long weekdays when I wasn't home—when I was slaving away in town, and she was alone up here at the summer house?

Alone with George Parker. The steamroller. The gorilla. The ape in the t-shirt.

In June, when we first came up, I had thought we were lucky to find somebody like George to fix things around the place. The house needed repairs and carpentry work, and a fresh coat of paint. The lawn and garden demanded attention, too. And since I could only get away on weekends, I congratulated myself on finding a willing worker like George.

Louise had congratulated me too. "It was wonderful of you to discover such a jewel. This place needs a handyman."

Well, George must have been handy. All summer long, Louise kept finding new things for him to do. Putting in a walk to the pier. Setting up trellises. The neighbors got used to seeing him come in three or four days a week. I got used to it, too. For better than two months, you'd have thought I didn't have any imagination at all. Then I began to put two and two together. Or one and one, rather. George and Louise. Together up here, day after day. And night after night?

Even then, I couldn't be sure. It took a great deal of imagination to conceive of any woman allowing herself to become enamored of such an obvious ape. But then, perhaps some women like apes. Perhaps they have a secret craving for hairy bodies and crushing weight and panting animalism. Louise always told me she hated that sort of thing. She respected me because I was gentle and understanding and controlled myself. At least, that's what she said.

But I saw the way she looked at George. And I saw the way he looked at her. And I saw the way they both looked at me, when they thought I wasn't aware.

I was aware, of course. Increasingly aware, as the weeks went by. At first I contemplated getting rid of George, but that would have been too obvious. Firing him in midsummer, with work to be done, didn't make sense. Unless I wanted to force a showdown with Louise.

That wasn't the answer, either. All I'd have gotten from her would've been a tearful denial. And before she was through, she'd have twisted things around so that I was to blame. I'd be the brute who penned her up here in the country all summer long and left her alone to suffer. After all, I couldn't really prove anything.

So then I decided to sell. It wasn't difficult. Getting the place fixed up was a good idea; it added a couple of thousand to the value of the property. All I had to do was pass the word around to the realtor over at Dalton, and he did the rest. By the end of August there were three offers. I chose the best one, and it gave me a tidy profit.

Of course, Louise was heartbroken when she heard about the deal. She loved it here, she was just getting settled, she looked forward to coming back next year—why, she had even meant to talk to me about having a furnace put in so we could stay the year round.

She played the scene well, and I enjoyed it. All except the part about staying up here permanently. Did the little fool really think I was stupid enough to go for that? Staying in town alone all week, slaving away at the business, and then dragging up here weekends in the dead of winter to hear her excuses? "No, really, I'm just too bushed, honey. If you only knew how much work I've been doing around the place! I just want to sleep forever."

I wanted to shout at her, then. I wanted to curse her. I wanted to spit it all out, tell her that I knew, then take her in my arms and shake her until her silly head spun. But I couldn't. Louise was too delicate for such brutality. Or so she had always intimated to me. She demanded gentle treatment. Gentle George, the gorilla.

So I was gentle with her. I told her that selling the place was merely a matter of good business. We had a chance to realize a handsome profit. And next year we'd buy another. In fact, I had already arranged a little surprise for her. After Labor Day, on our way back to town, I'd show it to her, even though it was a day or so out of our way.

"Out of our way?" She gave me that wide-eyed stare. "You mean you've got another place picked out, not around here?"

"That's right."

"Where? Tell me. Is it far?"

I smiled. "Quite far."

"But I—I'd like to stay here, on the river."

"Wait until you see it before you decide," I said. "Let's not talk about it any more now. I imagine you're tired."

"Yes. I think I'll sleep on the day bed, if you don't mind."

I didn't mind. And we didn't talk about it any more. I just completed the sale and got Louise to start packing. There wasn't much to pack, because I'd sold the furniture, too.

Then I waited. Waited and watched. Louise didn't know about the watching, of course. Neither did George.

And now it was the last day, and George stood in the cellar with me and looked at the mixing .

"Say, you do a pretty good job," said. "Never knew you was so handy."

"I do anything if my mind to it." I gave him back his grin.

"Is this the hole you want me to plug up?" he asked. He pointed to the opening underneath the cellar steps. It was a black shelf about two feet high and three feet wide, between the top of the basement blocks and the ceiling beams.

"That's it," I told him. "Goes clear back to the shed, think. Always bothered me to see it, and I'd like to cement it up for the new owners before I go."

"Keep the mice out, eh?"

"And the rats," I said.

"Not many rats around here," George muttered.

"You're wrong, George." I stared at him. "There are rats everywhere. They creep in when you're not around to see them. They destroy your property. If you're not careful, they'll eat you out of house and home. And they're cunning. They try to work silently, unobserved. But a smart man knows when they're present. He can detect the signs of their handiwork. And a smart man gets rid of them. I wouldn't want to leave any opening for rats here, George. I'd hate to think of the new owner going through the same experience I did."

"You never told me about the rats," George said, looking at the hole in the wall. "Neither did Lou—Mrs. Logan."

"Perhaps she didn't know about them," answered. "Maybe I should have warned her."

"Yeah."

"Well, it doesn't matter now. The cement will take care of them." I stepped back. "By the way, George, this is some new stuff that I got in town. I don't know if you've ever worked with it before. It's called Fast-seal. Understand it dries hard in less than an hour."

"You got the instructions?" George stared at the coagulating mass.

"Nothing to it. You use it the same way as the regular cement." I handed him the trowel and the boards. "Here, might as well get started. I'm going to dismantle this target range."

He went to work then and I stepped over to the other side of the basement and took down my targets. Then I got the pistols out of their case and packed them. After that I took up the revolvers. I did a little cleaning before laid them away.

George worked fast. He had the energy for tasks like this; energy, coupled with lack of imagination. Physical labor never troubles people like George, because they're not plagued by thoughts while they work. They live almost entirely in the world of sensation, responding aggressively to every challenge. Show them a hole in the wall and they'll cement it, show them a woman and they'll—

I steered my thoughts away from that and concentrated on oiling the last revolver. It was a big Colt. One I'd never used down here. Odd, that I collected weapons and used them so seldom. I liked to handle them, handle them and speculate upon their potential power. See, here in this tiny hole lurks death; from this minute opening comes a force big enough to burst the brain of idiot and emperor alike, to shatter the skull of sinner and of saint. With such a weapon one could even kill a gorilla at close range.

I held the revolver and stared at George's broad back. He was working swiftly with the trowel, closing off the opening entirely and smoothing it over.

I loaded the revolver, cocked it, and stared again. Ten feet away from me was a perfect target. It was an easy shot. The fool would never know what hit him.

That was the whole trouble, of course. He'd never know what hit him.

And I wanted him to know. Somewhere, deep down inside, even an ape like George had the ability to think, to realize. The trick lay in finding a method that would stimulate his imagination.

So I put down the revolver and walked over to him.

"Looks like you're finished," I said.

He nodded and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. An animal odor came from his armpits.

"Yeah. This stuff sure does a swell job. It's getting hard already. I just got to smooth it off a little more."

"Never mind." I stepped back. "You look as if you could use a beer."

He grinned and followed me over to the portable refrigerator in the corner. I took out a bottle of beer and opened it for him. He gulped gratefully. The bottle was empty before he bothered to look up and remark, "Aren't you drinking?"

I shook my head.

"Not around firearms, George." I pointed to the cases on the table.

"Say, Mr. Logan, I always meant to ask you something. How come a fella like you collects guns?"

"Why not? It's a fairly common hobby."

"But I never seen you shoot one."

I walked over and fished out another beer, uncapped it and handed it to him.

"Perhaps I don't collect them to shoot, George," I told him. "Perhaps I just collect them as symbols. Take this Colt, for example." I held it up. "My admiration for the black barrel has nothing to do with ballistics. When I look at it, I see a thousand stories. A story for every bullet fired. Scenes of violence and danger, of high drama and low melodrama."

"Sort of appeals to your imagination, is that it?"

"Precisely." I handed him another beer. "Go ahead, George," I said. "I've got to clean out the refrigerator anyway. This is our last day, you know. Might as well celebrate."

He nodded. But he didn't look as though he was in a mood for celebrating our departure. The ice-cold beer, downed rapidly, was beginning to take effect. Just a few bottles on a hot day will do the trick—particularly after violent exertion. I saw to it that another was ready before he had finished this one. He drank quickly, noisily, his neck bulging, his thick lips greedily encircling the mouth of the bottle. On his face was the absorbed look of an animal oblivious to everything except the immediate satisfaction of his appetite.

I picked up the Colt again and walked over to the cemented portion of the wall. With my left hand I rubbed the solidifying surface. "Marvelous stuff," I said. "Why, it's hard already. And perfectly dry."

He grunted. He put down the empty bottle and reached for the full one, his fifth. I waited until he had taken a healthy swig. Then I bent down and put my head next to the wall.

"What's that sound?" I asked.

He looked up. "I don't hear no sound."

"Mice," I said. "Back in there."

"Or rats, like you told me." He nodded.

"No, I rather think this is a mouse. The squeaking is so shrill. Can't you hear it?"

"I don't hear nothing."

He came over and stooped. His hand brushed the Colt and I drew it away. "I still can't hear nothing."

"Well, it doesn't matter. This job is airtight, isn't it?"

"Sure."

"Then whatever's inside will suffocate in a few minutes or so." I smiled at him. "You must be deaf to the high tones, George. I heard that sound all during the time you were cementing the wall."

"What's the matter, it bother you, thinking about the mouse?"

"Not particularly, George."

"Anyways, there won't be no more getting through. This wall is really solid, now."

He thumped it with his fist.

"I done a pretty good job."

"Yes, you certainly did. And it's your last one, too." I went over to the refrigerator. "Which reminds me, it's time we settled up. But first, let's have another drink."

George glanced at his wristwatch. "Well, I dunno, Mr. Logan. Maybe I better be running along. I got some business over to Dalton .... "

Yes, he had business in Dalton, all right. He wanted to run over and see Louise. Maybe they'd have time to say goodbye again, the way they had last night before I'd arrived. Or before they knew I had arrived. But I saw them then, and I could see them now in my imagination.

It took a lot of effort for me to shut out the picture of what I had seen, but I did it. I even grinned back at George. And I held out the bottle and said, "Just one more, for old times' sake. And if you don't mind, I'll join you."

I took out a bottle for myself, opened it, raised it. With my left hand I picked up the Colt again.

He lifted his beer and belched. The sound echoed through the cellar like a revolver shot.

"A little toast might be in order," I said.

"Go ahead."

I smiled. "Here's to freedom."

He started to drink, then pulled the bottle away from his lips. I watched the crease form in his sweating forehead. "Freedom?"

I shrugged. "There's no sense trying to keep any secrets," I said. "After all, you're almost like one of the family, in a way."

"I don't get it."

"You will."

"What's this business about freedom?"

"Mrs. Logan," I said. "Louise."

He put the beer down on the table. "Yeah?"

"We've separated."

"Sep—"

"That's right, George." I turned my head. "Do you hear anything from behind the wall?"

"No. But what's all this about separating? You have a fight or something?"

"Nothing like that. It was all very sudden. You might say it was completely unexpected, at least as far as she was concerned. But I thought you might like to know."

"Isn't she over to Dalton, then?"

"I'm afraid not."

"You mean she went away already today?"

"You might say that."

"Look here, Logan, just what are you driving at? What's the big idea of—"

I cocked my head toward the wall. "Are you sure you don't hear anything, George?"

"What's there to hear?"

"I thought she might be telling you goodbye."

He got it, then.

"Jesus, no! Logan, you're kidding me!"

I smiled.

His eyes began to bulge. I watched his hand curl around the mouth of the beer bottle. And I brought the muzzle of the Colt up until he could see it.

"Put it down, George. It won't do you any good. I've killed a mouse. What makes you think I'd be afraid to kill a rat?"

He put the bottle down. The minute he let go, his hands started to tremble. "Logan, you couldn't've done it, not you. You wouldn't—"

I inched the revolver up higher, and he flinched back. "That's right," I said. "I couldn't have. You and Louise were so certain about me, weren't you? You decided I couldn't do anything. I couldn't suspect, couldn't see what was going on right under my eyes. And if I did find out, I couldn't do anything about it, because I'm a poor weak fool. Well, you were wrong, George. And Louise was wrong. I wonder if she can hear me now, eh?" I raised my voice. "Are you listening, Louise?"

George moved back against the wall, his mouth twitching. "You're lying," he said. "You didn't kill her."

"That's right. I didn't kill her. She was quite alive when I was finished. I merely saw to it that her arms and legs were bound tightly, so that she couldn't thresh around, and that the gag was firmly in place. Then I lifted her up into the hole and waited for you to come."

His face was whiter than the wall.

"You can understand why, can't you, George? Even an ape has enough imagination to appreciate the situation. Quite a joke, isn't it? You cementing up the wall, and all the while I knew you were killing her. And to make it even funnier, she knew it too, of course. She lay in that black hole, trying to cry out to you, while you sealed her up in a airless tomb, in a darkness that is worse than night, in the darkness of death—"

"You're crazy!"

I saw his muscles flex, his neck tighten. "Take one step," I said, "and I'll blow your face off."

He moved then, but away from me. He went to the wall and he began to pound on it. The cement held.

"No use," I said. "It's solid. You did a good job, George. Your last job, and your best. Besides, it wouldn't be any use now. The air couldn't have lasted this long. She's gone."

He turned, panting. He held up his hands, and they were red. "Crazy!" he gasped. "No wonder she was scared of you, hated you. No human being could think of a thing like that."

I smiled. "Yes they could, George. Haven't you ever read any books? Did you ever hear of Edgar Allan Poe? The Black Cat, or Cask of Amontillado? I guess not, George. You've always been too busy living, haven't you? And Louise was the same way. You believe in action, and you despise people like me. You say we've always got our noses buried in a book, while you're the practical ones, the go-getters. You're proud because you take what you want from life. And you laugh at us. I'll bet you and Louise laughed at me a lot. Now it's my turn."

"You—you can't get away with it!"

"Why not?"

"I'll tell. I'll get the sheriff on you!"

"No you won't. You're an accessory, George. Don't forget, you walled her up. And if you go to the sheriff I'll have my story. I'll tell him we were both in on it together, that I'd promised you half of her insurance. She has quite a lot of insurance, George. I'll tell the sheriff how you walled her up alive, while she writhed and kicked and tried to scream, knowing you were killing her. Not me, George. You!"

He almost rushed me, then. I took the first step forward and at the sight of the Colt he wilted. When I laughed, he put his hands over his ears.

"A pity she didn't listen to you last night, George, when you kept urging her not to wait until I came. You wanted her to drop everything and run away right then and there. You could get a ranger's job in Montana, wasn't that it? And nobody would ever know. Only she had to be practical. She wanted to stick around and draw the money out of the bank first. Wasn't that it?"

"You heard us?"

"Of course. I parked down the road and came up under the window. Then I went back and drove in, the way I always do. You didn't even have time to plan how you two would meet and arrange for your getaway, did you, George? You couldn't even say goodbye properly. Well, do it now. There's chance in a thousand that she can still hear you."

His eyes were glassy. It wasn't the heat and it wasn't the beer. He was shaking, whimpering.

"Hurry up, George. Tell the lady goodbye. Tell the lovely lady goodbye before she takes her last breath, before she gasps the last gulp of air into her lungs and feels them burn and shrivel. She'll die fast, George, if she isn't dead already. And then she'll crumble. She won't rot, because it's dry in there. There'll be no odor. She'll just mummify. Her limbs turn to brown leather, and her hair become brittle and drop out, and her skin will flake and her eyes will finally coagulate in their sockets. But on what's left of her face you'll still be able to see an expression. You'll be able to see how she was at the moment when she died—with that last silent scream for mercy. She's screaming at you now. Can't you hear her? She's screaming, 'George, help me! Get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out—' "

George made a sound deep in his chest. Then he blinked and ran for the stairs. I didn't try to stop him. I let him thud up the steps, listened as he thundered through the kitchen, slammed the door.

It was very quiet in the cellar after that. I put the Colt away in its case, but first I took the precaution of unloading it and wiping off the barrel and the butt.

Then took the empty bottles and stacked them neatly in the corner.

I finished George's beer and drank my own. And after that, I went upstairs.

There was nothing left to do now but wait.

I must have had two or three more beers while I was waiting. I got them from the big refrigerator in the kitchen and carried them into the front room so that they'd be handy while I read. I picked up my copy of Poe, and not by accident. I wondered if his treatment of the situation was as melodramatic as mine had been. Perhaps not, but then, I had my reasons. In retrospect, what I had said to George seemed a bit silly and overdrawn, but it served a purpose.

After a while, I got absorbed in my reading. Say what you will, Poe had a wonderful imagination, and I can appreciate that.

It was almost dusk when I heard a tapping on the door. I thought of Poe's raven, and put the book aside.

"Come in," I said.

It wasn't Poe's raven, of course.

"Hello, Louise." I smiled up at her. "Did you get everything accomplished?"

"Yes, darling." She sat down, and I noticed just the hint of a frown on her face.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. But something odd happened to me on the way back."

"So?"

"I was coming along the County Trunk, just about opposite the Beedsley place, when a state trooper pulled up alongside me."

"Speeding?"

"Of course not, silly. You know I never do over fifty. But he asked for my driver's license, and then he did a funny thing. He made me get out of the car and come over to the motorcycle. And he had me talk into the squawk-box. I think that's what he called it, anyway."

"What on earth for?"

"He didn't tell me. All I know is I had to give my name to the sheriff. And then he said he was sorry to trouble me, but I'd saved him a trip out here for nothing. And he let me go. I asked him what this was all about, and he just shrugged and said there'd been a little misunderstanding but this cleared everything up. Can you figure it out, darling?"

I smiled. "Perhaps," I said. "But maybe we'd better talk about it some other time. I don't want you getting all upset over nothing on our last night here."

"Darling, tell me. I insist!"

"Well, we had a little excitement around here, ," I told her. "Remember George Parker was supposed to come over and put in that cement?"

"Yes, that's right." She hesitated. I watched her. It was pleasant to watch her, to sense the way she was waiting for what I'd say next. If I could have, I'd been willing to prolong that particular moment forever. But finally I let it go.

"Well, he never showed up," I said.

I could almost feel the way she sighed with relief.

"So finally I went ahead and did it myself."

"Poor dear. You must be tired."

"You don't understand. That isn't the excitement I was talking about."

"N-no?"

Again I let her wait, savoring the moment. Then I went on, knowing there was a better moment to come. "But along about four, Sheriff Taylor called up, wanting to know where you were. Of course I told him, and I imagine that's why the troopers were out trying to locate you."

"But whatever for?"

"Are you sure you want to hear the rest?"

"Please."

"It's a rather unpleasant situation, apparently. It seems our friend George has suffered some sort of nervous breakdown."

"George?"

"Rather incredible, isn't it? Always seemed like such a stolid, unimaginative fellow, too. You've seen a bit more of him than I did, and I'm sure you wouldn't say he was the sensitive type, would you?"

"Tell me what's wrong, what's happened—"

"If you wish. As I get it, friend George came bursting into the sheriff's office with an utterly fantastic story. At first they thought he'd been drinking, but apparently he was in a state of actual hysteria. It seems he was accusing me of murdering you and walling your body up in the cellar."

"You're joking!"

"That's what the sheriff told George, at first. Until he realized the poor fellow was almost out of his head with fear. Naturally, the sheriff called me and I told him to try and locate you. I'm glad he did. I'd hate to have us involved in any trouble just as we're ready to leave."

I couldn't see her face in the dusk, so I got up and went over to her. She tried to turn away, but I held her and patted her shoulder. "There, there," I murmured. "I didn't want to upset you. Nothing to worry about. It's all over."

"George!" Her voice started to break, but she controlled it. "How is he?"

I sighed. "Stark staring, according to the sheriff. They called Doc Silvers right away. Unless he snaps out of it, he'll be committed. A pity, too—somebody said he was planning to take a ranger's job in Montana."

Louise was shaking, but her voice was firm. "Did he say anything else?"

"No. What more is there to say?"

"Why did he think you'd try to kill me?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Funny about these strong, silent types. Once their imagination runs away with them, they can't seem to control it. They get keyed up to a certain pitch and then snap, all at once. I'm just it didn't happen when he was out here with you. There's no telling what he might have attempted." laughed. "It may sound far-fetched to you, darling, but he could even have tried to assault you. Can you imagine being made love to by a lunatic?"

She shuddered and buried her head against me.

"Let's talk about something more cheerful," I said. "Here, have a beer." could feel her sob.

"Don't cry," I told her. "We're going away tomorrow, remember? Back to town. Just you and I. You needn't worry about George—they'll take care of him. You'll never have to see him again. Why, in a little while you'll forget all about him."

"Y-yes ... "

"We're going to have a lot of fun together," murmured. "That's a promise. I've got it all planned."

* * * *

And I have, of course.

I wasn't lying to her.

I intend to have quite a lot of fun with Louise, tonight. She's in the bedroom right now as I write this, sleeping. I gave her quite a strong sedative, but it will wear off in another half hour or so. Then she'll be wide awake again. And I want her to be wide awake.

I want her to be wide awake when I take her in my arms, and I want her to be wide awake afterwards, when I hold her ever so gently, but ever so firmly, and tell her just what really happened. I want her to know how clever I am, and how strong, and how wise. I want her to know that I'm stronger and wiser than George could ever be.

She must realize the cleverness that brought everything to perfection. She must come to appreciate that I'm the better man after all. And of course I am.

It would have been stupid to confront them both with their guilt; what could I possibly have gained? And it would have been equally stupid for me to kill George and run the risk of discovery. As things worked out, as I planned to work out, George is disposed of forever. I've sealed him behind the walls of a madhouse for life. He'll live on and suffer, thinking Louise is dead and that he killed her. And of course the sheriff and the folks around here know differently. They know she's alive, and that there's nothing behind the cement wall. They'll remember talking to her and to me, and that she was to go away with me. Neither the new owners nor anyone else will ever tear down that wall.

I'm going to make all this very plain to Louise. I'm going to tell her exactly what happened. In fact, that's why I'm writing this. I don't trust myself to find the exact word to convey the meaning of the moment.

I'll let her read what I've written.

Have you read this far, Louise?

Do you understand now? Do you understand what I've done?

And do you understand what I'm going to do, in just another moment? That's right, Louise.

I'm going to bind and gag you. And I'm going to carry you down into the cellar, and tear the wall open once again. I'm going to thrust you into the darkness and let you scream away your life and your sanity while I wall you up again with fresh cement—wall you up forever, until your body rots to match your rotten soul.

I'll be standing right behind you when you've read this far, so you won't have a chance to scream. And you won't have a chance to beg, or plead, or try any of your stupid feminine tricks with me. Not that they would do any good. No use telling me I'll be caught, either. You know better than that.

The alibi is already set. I'll leave here alone in the morning. And you'll stay here forever.

That's because everything was planned, Louise. Because, you see, I am a better man than George. He was only an animal, really. And the difference between an animal and a man is really very simple.

It's all a matter of knowing how to use your imagination.

FOUNDING FATHERS

First published in Fantastic Universe, July 1956

1

Early on the morning July 4th, 1776, Thomas Jefferson poked his peruked head into the deserted chamber of what was to be known as Independence Hall and yelled, "Come on, you guys, the coast is clear!"

As he stepped into the big room he was followed by John Hancock, who puffed nervously on a cigarette.

"All right," Jefferson said. "Ditch the butt, will ya? You wanna louse us up, creep?"

"Sorry, boss." Hancock glanced around the place, then addressed a third man who entered behind him. "Dig this," he murmured. "Not an ashtray in the joint. What kind of a setup we got here anyway, Nunzio?"

The third man scowled. "Don't call me Nunzio," he growled. "The name's Charles Thomson, remember?"

"Okay, Chuck."

"Charles!" The third man dug John Hancock in the ribs. "Straighten that wig of yours. Ya look like somethin' out of a Boy Scout pageant yet."

John Hancock shrugged. "Well, whaddya expeck? Guy can't even smoke, and these here britches are so tight I'm scared to sit down in 'em"

Thomas Jefferson turned and confronted him. "You ain't gonna sit down," he said. "All you gotta do is sign and keep your yap shut. Let Ben do the talking, remember?"

"Ben?"

"Benjamin Franklin, schmoe," said Thomas Jefferson.

"Somebody mention my name?" The short, fat, balding man hurried into the room, carefully adjusting square-lensed spectacles to the bridge of his nose.

"What took you so long?" Thomas Jefferson demanded. "You run into trouble back there?"

"No trouble," Benjamin Franklin replied. "They're out cold, and the gags are holding. It's just these glasses—the lenses distort my vision. I'd forgotten I'd have to wear them."

"Can't you ditch 'em?"

"No. Somebody might get suspicious." Franklin peered at his companions over the tops of the spectacles. "They're likely to get suspicious anyway, if you don't do what I told you." He glanced around the room. "What time is it?"

Thomas Jefferson fumbled with the ruffles at his sleeves and gazed down at the face of his wristwatch. "Seven-thirty," he announced.

"You're sure?"

"Checked it with Western Union."

"Never mind that Western Union talk. And take off that thing—put it in your pocket. It's stuff like that can get us into trouble."

"Trouble." John Hancock groaned. "These here shoes are killin' me. They ain't nearly my size."

"Well, wear them and be quiet," Benjamin Franklin told him. "I wish to God you'd remembered to shave, too. Fine thing—the President of the Continental Congress on the most important day of our history, coming in without shaving."

"I forgot. Also they was no place to plug in an electric shaver."

"Well, never mind now. The main thing is just to be quiet and remember what you're supposed to do. Mr. Jefferson, do you have the Declaration?" Nobody answered. Franklin strode up to the tall man in the peruke.

"Jefferson, that's you I'm talking to."

"I forgot." The big man smiled sheepishly.

"You'd better not forget. Now, where is it?"

"Right here in my pocket."

"Well, get it out. We've got to sign right away, before anybody else shows up. I expect they'll start drifting in around eight at the latest."

"Eight?" Jefferson sighed. "Do you mean to tell me they go to work that early here?"

"Our friends in the back room looked as if they'd been working all night," Franklin reminded him.

"Ain't they never heard of union hours?"

"No, and don't you mention it, either." Franklin surveyed his companions earnestly. "That goes for all of you. Watch your tongues. We can't afford a slip-up."

"Telling me?" Charles Thomson took the parchment from Thomas Jefferson and unfolded it.

"Careful with that," Franklin warned.

"Pipe down, will ya? I just wanna take a look at it," Thomson replied. "I ain't never seen that there thing." He glanced at the manuscript curiously. "Hey, dig this crazy hanwriting. It's all lettering, like."

He spread the Declaration on a table and squinted down at it, mumbling aloud.

"When inna course a human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connecked them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate—hey, what kinda double-talk is this, anyway? Whyn't these guys write English, huh?"

"Never mind." Ben Franklin took the parchment from him and strode to a desk. "I'm going to revise it right now." He rummaged around in the drawer, finding fresh parchment and a quill pen. "I'm not up to copying the lettering style, I'm afraid, but I can explain that to the Congress easily enough. I'll tell them that Jefferson here made his last-minute changes in a hurry. The hurry part of it is no lie."

He bent over the blank parchment and studied the Declaration as it rested alongside. "Got to keep the style," he said. "Very important. But the main thing is to add the provisions at the end."

"Provisions?" John Hancock brightened. "We gonna have some grub, hey? I'm starved."

"That can wait," Jefferson snapped. "Now keep still and let the guy work. This is the most important part of the whole caper, understand?"

Then there was silence in the room—silence except for the busy scratching of the quill pen as Benjamin Franklin wrote.

Jefferson stood over his shoulder, nodding from time to time. "Don't forget to put in that part about me being temporary boss," he said. "And stick in that we need a treasurer."

Franklin nodded impatiently. "I've got it all down here," he answered. "Nothing to worry about."

"Think they'll sign?"

"Sure they'll sign. It's only logical. Right after the part about being free and independent states there should be a mention of a temporary governing arrangement. They can't object to that. Wonder why it was left out in the first place."

"Search me." Jefferson shrugged. "How would I know?"

"Well, you're supposed to have written it."

"Oh, yeah, that's right."

Franklin finished, sat back, and poked at Jefferson's chest with his quill. "Cough," he said.

Jefferson coughed.

"Again. Louder."

"What's the big idea?"

"You've got laryngitis," Franklin told him. "A bad case. That's why you're not talking. Anybody asks you any questions, you just cough. Right?"

"Okay. I didn't want to talk anyway."

Franklin gazed at Hancock and Thomson. "You two better sign and disappear. When the gang arrives, you go in the back room and keep an eye on our buddies there. I'll make up some excuse why you're not around—can't take the risk of having you cornered and questioned. Got it?"

The two men nodded. Franklin extended the quill pen. "Here. You two are supposed to sign first." As John Hancock reached for the pen, Franklin chuckled. "Just put your John Hancock right here."

Hancock signed with a flourish. He gave the pen to Charles Thomson.

"Remember, you're the secretary," Franklin said, as Thomson dipped the quill in the inkwell. "What's the matter, that quill too clumsy for you?"

"Sure it's clumsy," Thomson said. "And these clothes are murder, and none of us guys knows how to talk. We can't get away with this, Thinker. We're gonna make mistakes."

Benjamin Franklin stood up. "We're going to make history," he declared. "Just follow orders and everything will be all right." He paused and lifted his hand. "In the immortal words of myself—Benjamin Franklin—we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

2

They had hung together for a long time in Philly—Sammy, Nunzio, Mush and Thinker Tomaszewski. They shoved a little queer, peddled a few decks, but mostly they made book.

It was a nice setup for all of them, particularly since the Thinker came into the deal. The Thinker was a genuine shyster, with a degree and an office and everything, and he fronted for the outfit. The funny part of it was, Thinker Tomaszewski had a regular law practice too, and he could have made a pretty nice piece of change without cutting corners.

But he worked with them for kicks, at first.

"The only way I can explain it," he told them, "is that I don't seem to have a superego." Always with the two-dollar words, that was the Thinker.

And it was his two-dollar words that finally got them into trouble. In the beginning, everything was fine. Using his law office as a front, he had no difficulty in getting acquainted with a better class of mark—not the two-bucks-on-the-nose working stiff, but heavy bettors. He steered them to Sammy or Nunzio or Mush, and they made a big book.

They made a big buck, too. So big that they just had to place a few bets of their own, with some of the top wheels like Mickey Tarantino. Playing it smart, of course, and working only on inside tips, when they were sure of a horse getting the needle.

Came an afternoon when the needle stuck. And they were stuck for twenty grand. Mickey Tarantino held out his hand and smiled. But the smile vanished when Sammy went to him and said he needed time to pay up.

"Whaddya mean?" Mr. Tarantino had inquired. "You guys are loaded. Look at all the rich suckers you make book with."

"All we got to show for it is markers," Sammy confessed. "It's like your old man's delicatessen. The poor guys pay and the high-class trade puts it on the cuff. You know how those big operators work. Well it's the same in our line. You can't collect from them."

"You damn well better collect," Mr. Tarantino advised. "Because you got until tomorrow morning. Or else you wind up in Plotter's Field, or wherever."

So Sammy went away and called a meeting at Thinker Tomaszewski's office and broke the news.

Thinker had news for them too. "Tarantino isn't the only one who thinks we're rolling in the stuff," he announced. "Uncle Sam is looking down our throats for a little matter of back income taxes."

"Great!" Sammy groaned. "Tarantino's hoods in front of us and the Federal finks behind us. Which way do we turn?"

"I suggest you turn to our clients," Thinker answered. "Call on some of our investors and ask them to redeem their markers."

So Sammy and Nunzio and Mush called. And early that evening they assembled and pooled results.

"Three grand!" Sammy snorted. "Three lousy grand!"

"Is that all?" The Thinker was genuinely mystified. "I should have thought you'd get more than that."

"Sure we got more. Excuses we got, promises we got, brush-offs we got. But here's the moola. Three grand, period."

"How about Cobbett?" Thinker asked.

"Professor Cobbett? He's your baby, isn't he?"

The Thinker nodded. Professor Cobbett was indeed his baby. One of the upper crust.

"What's he into us for?" Sammy demanded.

"About eight, I think."

"Eight and three is eleven. Not so hot. But if we could get it fast, maybe Tarantino would hold off for a while."

"Let's get it fast," Mush suggested. "Let's go out and see old Cobbett right now."

So they all piled into Sammy's car and went out to see old Cobbett. The Professor had a country place—a nice layout for a man who lived all alone and he was cordial and pleasant when he greeted the Thinker on the front porch.

He was not quite so cordial or pleasant when he learned what the Thinker wanted, and he was downright inhospitable when the Thinker beckoned and his three companions appeared out of the darkness.

They had to stick their feet in the door and they had to stick their heaters in his ribs.

"No foolin'," Nunzio told him. "We want our loot."

"Oh dear!" said Professor Cobbett, as they marched him backwards into his own parlor. "But I have no money."

"Don't con us," Mush told him. "Look at this joint, all this fancy furniture."

"Mortgaged," the Professor sighed. "Mortgaged to the hilt, and past it."

"What about this here school where you teach at?" Mush asked. "You could maybe brace them for some advance dough on your salary, huh?"

"I am no longer connected with the university."

"What gives here?" Sammy wanted to know.

"Yes," Thinker added. "I thought you were a wealthy man."

The Professor shrugged and ran his hand through his graying hair. "Things are not always what they seem," he said. "For example, I considered you to be a reputable professional man. And when I innocently inquired about the possibilities of placing a small bet on the races, I never dreamed you were associated with these ruffians."

"Watch that talk," Sammy warned. "We ain't no more ruffians than eight grand is a small bet. Now whaddya mean about things ain't always what they seem?"

"Well, it's like this," the Professor answered. "I did have a certain sum of money set aside—yes. And I did have a position of some eminence at the university. The fact that both money and position are gone today can be attributed to one thing—my private research project.

"The cost of experimental models reduced my savings. The revelation of my theories cost me my faculty position. An attempt to raise funds to continue my work led me to the last resort—betting on the races, Now I have nothing."

"You can say that again," Sammy told him. "In about three minutes you're gonna have nothing with lace around it."

"Wait a moment," the Thinker interrupted. "Experimental models, you said. What have you been building?"

"I'll show you, if you like."

"Come on," Sammy ordered. "Boys, keep the heaters warm, in case he pulls a funny."

But the Professor didn't pull a funny. He led them downstairs to what had been the basement, and was now an ornate private laboratory. He led them up to the large rectangular metal structure, covered with coils and tubing. It had a vague resemblance to an outhouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

"Jeez," Nunzio commented. "Watchoo doin', buildin' one of them there Frankensteens?"

"I bet it's a spaceship," Mush hazarded. "Was you gonna make a getaway to Mars?"

"Please," the Professor sighed. "You're making sport of me."

"We're making hamburger of you in another minute," Sammy corrected him. "This doojigger ain't no use to us. Couldn't get twenty bucks for it, at a junkyard."

Thinker Tomaszewski shook his head. "Just what is this object, Professor?"

Professor Cobbett blushed. "I hesitate to designate it as such, after the rebuffs I received at the hands of supposed authorities, but there is no other intelligible term for it. It is a time machine."

"Oof!" Sammy put his hand to his forehead. "And this is what we let get into us for eight grand. A nutty scientist, yet!"

The Thinker frowned at him. "A time machine, you say? An instrument capable of transporting one forward or backwards in time?"

"Backwards only," the Professor answered. "Forward travel is manifestly impossible, since the future is nonexistent. And travel is not the best word. Transit more closely approximates the meaning, insofar as time possesses no material or spatial characteristics, being bound to a three-dimensional universe by the single observable phenomenon which manifests itself as duration. Now if duration is designated as X, and—"

"Shuddup!" Nunzio suggested. "Let's kiss off this joker and scram outta here. We're wastin' time."

"Wasting time." The Thinker nodded. "Professor Cobbett, is this a working model?"

"I'm practically positive. It has never been tested. But I can show you formulae which—"

"Never mind that now. Why haven't you tested it?"

"Because I'm not sure of the past. Or rather, our present relationship to it. If any person or object in present time were sent to the past, alterations would occur. What is here now would be absent, and something added to what was there, then. This addition would alter the past. And if the past were altered, then it would not be the same past we know." He frowned. "It's hard to state without recourse to symbolic logic."

"You mean you're afraid that by time travel you'd change the past? Or come out in a different past—a past made different because you traveled into it?"

"That's an oversimplification, but you have the general idea."

"Then what good is your work on this?"

"No good, I'm afraid. But I wanted to prove a point. It became an almost monomaniacal obsession. I have no excuses."

"So." Sammy stepped forward. "Thanks for the lecture, but like you say, you got no excuses. And we got no time. This here basement looks like a nice soundproof place for target practice—"

The Thinker grabbed Sammy's arm. "What's the sense?" he asked.

"The guy welshed."

"So he welshed. Will murder change that? Will murder help us now?"

"No." Sammy bit his lip. "But what we gonna do? We got no dough. We got Tarantino after us, and also the govmint. We can't go back to town."

The Thinker looked around. "Why not stay here, then? We're safe, isolated with a nice big roof over our heads. Let's enjoy the Professor's hospitality for a while."

"Yeah," Mush said. "But how long? We're gonna run out of dough, or food, or somethin'. We'd just be stallin' for time."

The Thinker smiled. "Stalling for time." He gazed intently at the complicated structure in the center of the cellar. "But here is the logical vehicle for a getaway."

"You mean jump in that dizzy outfit and beat it?" Sammy demanded. "You're kidding."

"I'm serious," the Thinker replied. "Some time in the near future we'll be safe in the past."

3

It took a lot of figuring. That was the Thinker's job, working with the Professor during the next few days.

"How do you set the controls up? Is this for steering?"

"You do not steer—you press the computers. Here, I'll show you again."

"And you can choose any time in the past, any time at all?" asked the Thinker.

"Theoretically. The main problem is accurate computation. Remember, we and our Earth are not static. We do not occupy the same position in space that we did an instant ago, let alone a longer period. We must consider the speed of light, planetary motion, inclination, and—"

"That's going to be your department. But you can establish past position mathematically and set up a guiding plan for the computers accordingly?"

"I'm reasonably certain of it."

"Then all that remains is to determine where—or rather, when we're going to."

Sammy and Nunzio and Mush tacked that problem on their own.

"Jeez, mebbe alls we gotta do is go back a couple weeks to before when the Professor made his bets. Then we ain't out no dough."

"Yeah? What about them there back taxes?"

"So we go to before when we owed 'em."

"That's when we went into business, stupid. We was broke."

"Well, if we can go anywheres we want in time, how's about way back, to the Egypians, like? I seen one of them there pitchers, they had all these hot broads runnin' around in their unnerwear —"

"You talk Egypian, stupid? Besides, we don't wanna stay back someplace forever. Way I figger, we go to some time where we can lay our mitts on some loot, real fast-like. And then come back."

"Now you got it. That's the angle. Hey, how about that there Gold Rush?"

The Professor interrupted them. "I'm afraid the Gold Rush wouldn't be of much use to you gentlemen. After all, it occurred in the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine."

"But you can send us to eighteen forty-nine, can't you?"

"Conceivably, if my theory is correct. But you would not be in California. You would still be right here in Philadelphia, in the field which stood here before this house was built."

"Then we gotta find our loot in Philly, huh? Somewheres in the past?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Jeez. And we can't show up in no vacant field with that machine, either."

Then the Thinker took over. "I am beginning to pinpoint our problem," he announced. "Professor, I am going to utilize your library for a day or so. Perhaps I can discover when gold was available in Philadelphia."

"There's always the Mint."

"Too well-guarded. We'd never be able to loot it, any more than it could have been looted by past efforts."

"Banks?" Sammy brightened. "With our heaters, we could knock over one of them big jugs easy—say, a hunnert years ago."

"And come out with what? Old-fashioned greenbacks? We wouldn't be able to use currency of that era today. Arouse suspicion. No, I'm looking for gold."

Finally, in a copy of Berkeley's OF THE REVOLUTION, the Thinker found it. He broke in upon the others as they sat guarding Professor Cobbett.

"Here's the answer!" he exulted. "Remember what happened in Philadelphia on July fourth, seventeen seventy-six?"

"That's a holiday, ain't it?" Nunzio brightened. "Must be the Phillies took on the Giants in a doubleheader."

"Seventeen seventy-six, stupid!" Sammy scowled. "Yeah, I remember. They made Washington the President."

"Nah. It was the Decoration of Independence," Mush corrected.

"Right. The Declaration of Independence was presented to the Continental Congress assembled at what is now Independence Hall. And so forth. But here's another little-known fact. At the same place, on the same day, the Revolutionary treasury was turned over to a small group for temporary storage. It consisted of upwards of thirty thousand pounds sterling in smelted ingots. That's about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold."

"Brother!" Sammy whistled. "What a way to celebrate the Fourth!" Then he frowned. "I'll bet they had plenny guards around."

"No, that's just the point. It was all a secret—few people know of it to this day. Troops brought it in a wagon, around noon. They thought they were hauling documents. It was carted upstairs, and no guards were posted lest suspicion be aroused. Its presence was known only to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and one or two others—probably John Hancock and maybe Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Congress. It was to be used to pay troops and buy supplies."

"It sure could help to pay off old Mickey Tarantino and the Feds. And leave us plenny to spare."

"That is exactly what I had in mind, gentlemen." The Thinker smiled. "Now all that remains is to work out the details. I shall concentrate on the historical aspect and the Professor here can work out the mathematical computations."

Professor Cobbett blanched. "Mathematical computations? But you're asking the impossible. Why, that was over a hundred and eighty light-years ago; we'll be faced with the problem of billionfold magnitudes, and the slightest error or variation can have serious consequences."

"Ain't gonna be no errors," Sammy told him. "Or consequences will be really serious. For you." He showed the Professor his heater. "Now get to work. We're going places."

"Going places." Mush looked at him. "All this here stuff was at Independence Hall. The machine's here in the cellar. We gonna come out on July fourth inna cow-pasture or somethin'?"

"That's your job," Sammy decided. "Case this joint. See how it's set up for guards at night. Alarm system, the works. Look it over like you would a bank job. I think we can take over. Nobody's gonna think a mob would break into a Hysterical Shrine or whatever. We get things set, we hire us a truck and cart the machine right down to the Hall and take off from there some night soon. Right?"

"Hey, that's a tough deal."

"Things are tough all over," Sammy said. "Now get going."

So Mush got going and the Professor got going and the Thinker got going too. And before the first week was up they were organized.

Mush made his report. The invasion of Independence Hall could be made without too much trouble. Of course, it would cost money for the truck, and there might be repercussions, but they could try to pull it off.

And in view of their present hopeless situation—and in view of the possible gain—it was worth the gamble, Sammy decided.

The Professor presented them with the working manual, based on his computations.

"Are you sure this gets us there?" Sammy demanded. "And back, too?"

"Look it over," the Professor said. "See for yourself."

"It's all right," the Thinker told him. "I've checked it. See, we have no set time for return. Our plans call for us to get the gold and come back as soon after the noon hour as possible. So the Professor has worked out return-variations based on five-minute intervals throughout the early afternoon. It's as foolproof as we can hope to make it."

"All right, if you say so." Sammy shrugged. "But what I want to know is, what do we do when we get there?"

"I've been working on that angle," the Thinker said. "Checking all the source books and references I could muster. History texts. Biographical data on Franklin and Jefferson in particular. And I've got a plan. Apparently the first ones to arrive that morning were Jefferson and Thomson. Franklin and John Hancock came in early, too.

"It's not quite clear whether any of them spent part of the night there. The important thing is that the four men conceivably held an early morning meeting, discussing the Declaration before Congress convened on the fourth. So if we arrive early enough we'll be dealing with just four men. The four men who knew about the gold, by the way."

"Got it," Sammy said. "We come in, flash our heaters, and take over."

"Not quite so simple," the Thinker answered. "Remember, Congress will be gathering that morning. We can't hope to hold our guns on these four key figures from that time until noon, any more than we can hope to pass unnoticed in the crowd for such a period."

He paused as Sammy started to open his mouth, then hastily continued. "I know what you're thinking, and that won't work either. We can't show up at noon and just hijack the shipment. Not in front of fifty or more men, with troops just outside the door."

"Then what do you figger on us doing?"

The Thinker took a deep breath, and then he told them.

"Oh no!" cried Sammy.

"Me, making like John Hancock?" Mush gasped.

"I should run around in one of them wigs like a big-shot politician?" Nunzio scoffed.

The Thinker was calm. "Don't you see, it's the only way? The wigs are perfect disguises. Look I've got pictures of all these men, and we can buy a makeup kit. I'm fortunately bald and approximately Franklin's build. Physically, we'll get by. And don't worry about playing the role of a politician."

"Yeah." Mush was thoughtful. "After all, what's a politician, anyhow? Just a crook that's learned how to kiss babies."

"But we won't be kissing no babies that morning," Sammy reminded him. "Me, I been reading up a little on that stuff, too. Them four guys did a lot of things on the fourth. Made speeches, tried to get the rest of the Congress to sign, all kinds of stuff. And they knew everybody, everybody knew them. We'd fluff it for sure, trying to do what they did."

"That's just the point." Thinker Tomaszewski was triumphant. "We don't have to do what they did! Because we're going back in time, we're changing what happened. I think I'm familiar enough with Franklin's personality. I can talk, if necessary. Sammy, I'll coach you. The other two boys can be absent, if need be—and it may well be necessary to guard our machine and our captives in the rear room. We're not going to merely reenact history. We're going to change it, to suit ourselves. Now do you get it?"

They got it, eventually, because the Thinker rammed it down their throats.

And so they got their coaching, got their truck, got their plan, and actually transported the machine bodily into the rear of the vehicle on the evening arranged for departure.

It wasn't until they stood for the last time in the now open expanse of the cellar that Professor Cobbett voiced a final, timid protest.

"I hesitate to bring this up," he said, "because you'll very likely suspect my motives. You'll think it's because you're preempting my property, and because you are unwittingly involving me as an accomplice to your crime. You'll think it's because I have patriotic objections to your plans for desecrating our history."

"Well, haven't you?" Sammy asked.

"Yes, I admit it."

Sammy glanced significantly at Nunzio, then back to the Professor as he continued.

"But what I have to say to you now, I say in my capacity as a scientist. In that capacity I warn you, as I did on the first evening here. Time travel is hazardous. The possibility of alteration of the past due to your invasion cannot be discounted. You may well find yourselves up against unforeseen factors, unexpected problems. That's why I never dared make the attempt myself; not even a journey of one minute, let alone almost two centuries. Should you fail, I must absolve myself of any responsibility. I shall await your return with the utmost trepidation."

"Don't bother," Sammy told him. "We got that all figgered, too. You plan on waiting for our return with a gang of coppers, don't you?"

The Professor turned pale. "Don't tell me you gentlemen expect me to come along?" he murmured. "I couldn't do that. I couldn't. I'd—I'd be afraid.

Frankly, the dangers of dislocation or alteration in the past frighten me worse than the prospect of death itself."

"I'm glad," Sammy said slowly. "On account of it's either-or. And you just made up our minds for us."

The Thinker was already out in the truck, but Mush and Nunzio stood beside Sammy in the cellar.

Nunzio took out his heater and Mush smiled. "Well," he said. "Looks like we're starting off our trip with a bang."

4

And a bang-up journey it was. There was a route to travel, and guards to knock out and bind, and a heavy machine to cart up into the rear chambers of Independence Hall. Then came the nerve-wracking business of setting it up, and the Thinker's frantic rescanning of the Professor's charts and directions as he set the computers. By the time they were ready to take off—1:45 .M. on the dot—the transition itself was almost an anticlimax.

Anticlimax it proved to be. They huddled in the machine, the vacuum-lock set and the vacuum-lined walls enclosing them, and a generator hummed and their fluorescent light above the dials dimmed and the Thinker pressed his finger down after endless adjustment of tab-buttons and then—

Nothing happened.

Or seemed to happen, until the moment—or century, or eternity—of darkness elapsed. None of them were conscious of a change at all. It was when they opened the compartment and stepped out that the change occurred, or they were aware of its prior occurrence.

"Thinker!" Nunzio said, blinking in the bright morning sunlight that streamed through the high windows. "We made it!"

Sammy and the Thinker and Mush didn't even look at him. They were staring at the four men on the other side of the room—four men who stared, in turn, at them.

Then things happened fast. Things happened with orders and heaters and ropes and gags. Things happened with wigs and shoes and clothing.

Four writhing figures squirmed on the floor, then calmed to quiescence as Mush used the butt of his heater.

"Fancy this!" he sighed. "Me knocking out old Ben Franklin hisself!"

"Never mind fancying it now," the Thinker told him. "We've got to get ready for more action."

And so they'd gone into their act.

Altering the text of the Declaration itself was an inspiration on the Thinker's part.

"Give em something to argue about all morning," he said. "Keep them talking, then we don't have to. And if they accept the business about temporary governing powers and a treasurer, there'll be no questions asked when the gold arrives and we take charge of it.'

He glanced at Mush and Nunzio. "You two go in the back room right now. Watch the machine, keep the Founding Fathers company. And don't forget to watch the windows—maybe the gold will arrive early. Professor Cobbett was no fool. I respect his judgment. If he said things might be a bit different in the past because our coming changed it, maybe he's right."

"Nothing different so far," Sammy said.

"Well, one never knows."

Mush and Nunzio vanished and the Thinker turned to his companion. "Remember your laryngitis. They call it quinsy in these times, and that's how I'll refer to it. And when I do, you cough."

"Got it," Sammy said. "But hey, when's the gang showing up?" He pulled his watch out of his pocket and studied. "Must be after eight by now." He frowned. "That's funny, it stopped. Still says seven-thirty."

"Let me take a look outside," the Thinker suggested. He strode to the window. "Crowd down there all right. But—wait a minute —" He tugged Sammy's arm. "Look at those soldiers!"

"I see 'em. You mean the ones in the tall hats, with the red uniforms?"

"Red uniforms mean British troops."

"British?"

The Thinker didn't answer. He rushed to the door of the hall, flung it open. Two grenadiers in scarlet coats confronted him. He stared at the white piping on the coats, stared at the silvery steel of their bayonets. "Haft!" cried the taller of the two. "In the name of His Majesty."

"His Majesty?"

"Yes, His Majesty, you pesky rebel."

"What kind of a gag is this?" Sammy muttered.

"No gag," the Thinker whispered. "Professor Cobbett knew. We changed the past by coming here. The British occupy Philadelphia."

"Enough of your blabbing, sirrah," the soldier shouted. "Save your protests for General Burgoyne. When he enters the city today you and your fellow traitors can explain at a drumhead court-martial."

The Thinker paled. "Changed history," he whispered. "Burgoyne the victor. The Congress scattered. The four men we came upon in the back room weren't waiting for it to meet today. They've been trapped here without warning. They're prisoners. Which means we're prisoners, too!"

"Oh no we ain't!" Sammy drew out his heater and pulled the trigger. There was an almost inaudible click. He tried to fire again, but the Thinker slammed the door.

"What good is that?" he murmured. "The place is surrounded."

"Gun jammed," Sammy was grumbling. "Can't figure how —" Then he blinked. "Surrounded. And we're stuck, huh? Now what?"

"Obviously we get back in the machine and get out of here."

"But don't you have to wait until noon, anyway?"

"I'll worry about that. Let's get the boys. And hurry. Those soldiers may decide to come in after us it any time."

So they retreated to the rear room and they got the boys and explained. And in a surprisingly short time they were huddled in the time machine once more; huddled in the incongruous flummery of their Colonial costumes; huddled and trembling and perspiring as the Thinker hastily checked his data and then reached for the computer levers.

Reached and pressed.

Or tried to press.

"What's happening?" Sammy shouted, the echo of his voice almost deafening them in the cramped confines of the metal chamber.

"Nothing," the Thinker groaned. "Nothing's happening. That's just the trouble."

"It don't work?" Nunzio wailed.

"No. And Sammy's watch doesn't work, and your guns don't work, because all of the principles are wrong, altered the way everything is altered."

"Let me try!" Mush pawed at the levers, the buttons, the dials. Then they were all clawing and scrabbling at once, and still nothing happened.

The Thinker stopped them. "Might as well give up," he muttered. "Professor Cobbett was right. We've changed the past."

"But even in seventeen seventy-six, guns and watches and machinery worked, didn't they?" Sammy demanded.

"In our seventeen seventy-six," the Thinker said. "In our past. But this isn't our past any more. It's our present. And by making the past the present we've violated a fundamental law. Or tried to. Actually, fundamental laws can't be violated."

"But we came here."

"Yes. Here. But here isn't our past. It couldn't be. It would have to be somewhere else."

"Where else could it be?" Mush wanted to know.

"A place where modern mechanisms don't work, not having been perfected yet. A place where the British defeated the forces of the Revolution and captured the Founding Fathers. And that could only be in an alternate universe."

"Alternate universe?"

The Thinker was still trying to explain the concept of an alternate universe to them when the soldiers finally came in to drag them away.

He had time only for a final warning as the troops seized them. They were very rough about it.

"Remember, like Franklin said, we must all hang together," he whispered.

Even there the Thinker was wrong.

They were hanged separately.

FANGS OF VENGEANCE

First published in Weird Tales 1937 as by Nathan Hindin

Captain Zaroff was not his real name. but then, of course, it did not happen at Stellar Brothers Circus, either. Both appellations are fictitious, though the facts—more the pity—are all too true. I know, for I was there to see the drama unfold; a drama of death and blood-stained vengeance, set against the glittering background of circus make-believe.

The affair occurred, fortunately, in winter quarters. That is the only reason it was fortunate enough to escape press notice. Despite its sensational aspects, I am very thankful that we were able to hush the whole thing up. It is not good for the common herd to know too much, and there are certain terrible questions in connection with it that are extremely difficult to answer. All that has ever leaked out is that Captain Zaroff met death in the big cage during a rehearsal of his act, and that his animals were shot in a vain effort to save him. Concerning the Ubangis, the press was informed that due to disagreements over salary, they severed their connection with the show.

There was something wrong from the very start that winter. We had had a bad season, and the old man decided that innovations were in order. Culper sent out an agent for the Ubangi troupe—six duck-billed and exceedingly ugly savages, only a year removed from their native jungles. But the old man didn't stop there, either. He decided to go back to wild animal acts—a policy we had discarded some eight years previous. He argued that the public wants excitement—the cracking of whips, the snarling of sullen cats, the roaring of restless lions.

Now for some unknown reason, the majority of the larger shows have abandoned the cat acts within the last ten years. The result is that good animal-trainers are mighty hard to find. Practically the only ones available are European and they're scarce enough. So the old man counted himself lucky when a German agency sent him Captain Zaroff.

He arrived early in January. I wasn't there at the time, but he was described as very distant, and very foreign. He had his own quarters, and special cages for the nine leopards in his troupe. He even insisted on keeping his personal assistant to clean the wagons and feed the animals. These affectations of exclusiveness, coupled with his extremely reserved manner, did not win him any friends. He, on his own part, seemed unmindful of the circus people; eating alone, sleeping in his own private wagon on the winter grounds, and devoting all his time and attention to his act.

There were many vague and conflicting rumors floating around concerning the man. For one thing, there were speculations as to his age and nationality. It was said that he was just back from Africa, and that he was breaking in these jungle leopards for the new act. Another version of the story represented him as being driven from the Continent in disgrace, following a scandal over a woman. By the time I returned to headquarters, the whole show was engaged in wild speculation. I disregarded it all.

Then I saw him work. It was the first time, and only the old man and I were present in the barn-like hippodrome which held the great steel cage. Zaroff had promised the old man something distinctively different. He got it.

Picture to yourself a vast wooden arena, with white, bare walls that reflect hideously all the glare of a hundred overhead lights. In the center, a steel cage. Two assistants stand beside it, tense and alert. Occasionally, they finger nervously with their guns—guns that are not loaded with blanks. The boss and I sat on chairs placed near the door, our eyes glued on the runway. The old man chewed viciously on the stub of his cigar. The atmosphere was charged with the static electricity of fearful expectation.

There are no bands playing in the winter quarters, no happy, cheering crowds. No clowns perform their antic drolleries to ease the tension with a laugh. Working with newly broken jungle beasts is by no means the same safe routine as a developed act. The real danger does not strike after the spectacular routine is perfected; it comes before, during the long, slow hours of winter training. It was with this thought in our minds that we waited in that silent, empty barn; waited, and worried.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a moan. From the wooden runway on the other side of the steel cage came the soft and purposeful padding of velvet feet—and the scrape of razored claws. Short, guttural coughs echoed in the air. At the same time our nostrils were filled with a warm, fetid odor of jungle musk—the wild-beast smell that makes the short hairs rise on the nape of one's neck. More coughs—amplified to a menacing roar in the vast silence of that looming atmosphere. They were coming!

Down the runway stalked a tawny shape—the spotted, sinister shape of a giant African leopard; graceful as a serpent and beautiful as death. Green eyes roved restlessly over the arena with an emerald glare. Yellow fangs parted, revealing a long, slavering tongue. The beast slunk stiff-legged around the arena, then turned to us with a roar. I suddenly realized that I was bathed in perspiration.

Another yellow body catapulted into the cage. Like a streak of amber lightning it leapt to the bars and clawed madly at the steel. Suddenly it subsided, and sank to the sawdust in a spasm of insanely hysterical laughter. A third spotted devil entered, suavely. Like an overgrown cat it purred, mincing its way as it made a circuit of the cage. Feline-like, it rolled over on its mottled back, exposing a sleek belly beneath which muscles played like bands of pliable steel. The other two animals growled deeper still. Then, like a golden avalanche, a horde of fanged furies raced down the runway—six snarling demons charged into the arena, and hell broke loose. In a moment the steel enclosure became a maelstrom of yellow shapes, tearing with frenzied talons at the iron barriers, and howling in fiendish chorus to the skies. There was death in their claws, hatred in their foam-flecked jowls, and blood-lust in their feral eyes. Beasts of the jungle, awaiting the coming of man.

They did not wait for long. Into the hippodrome stalked Captain Zaroff. A tall, thin, commanding figure of a man, his was the walk of a conqueror. Beneath his gorgeously-epauletted red coat I sensed the strength of supple sinews; the resiliency of his walk betrayed a perfection of muscular control. His face was immobile, but his eyes held a faint tinge of amusement. Slightly graying black hair worn in pompadour style, and a tiny waxed mustache—by these signs alone did he betray his foreign birth.

With a brief nod to the old man, he motioned the two assistants to unbar the cage. I gasped. For Zaroff had no chair! All he carried in his hand was a whip to face nine ravening wild beasts, mad with animal excitement!

Clang. Steel grated on steel. The cage door was open. Quickly, Zaroff stepped inside—into that maelstrom of bared fangs, raking claws, and supple bodies crouched to kill. A roar of animal ferocity greeted his appearance. I gasped. Zaroff, weaponless in that vast cage with a jungle cat! Every trainer carries both gun and chair during the breaking in of a new cat routine. With the points of the chair outthrust before him he can ward off the sudden charge of a nervous beast. The animal, confused by the underside of the chair presented before him, usually bruises his nose and paws on the four projecting legs. For many years this protection, slim as it is, has saved dozens of trainers' lives. But Zaroff had no chair. Nor was there a gun at his hip. Alone, he faced them—a sneer on his face and a whip in his hand; man's eternal defiance of the brute.

For an instant he stood there just inside the cage, while ten feet away jungle eyes roved restlessly, jungle bodies flexed stealthily, jungle throats roared fearsomely. Suddenly, a leopard detached itself from the rest and began, ever so slowly, to edge its way forward on its belly. It was the big cat that had entered first. Zaroff watched it, his face flushed. To all intents and purposes the beast's body appeared relaxed, but it was slinking forward nevertheless, and its yellow tail lashed in fury.

Without warning, the leopard sprang. Into the air it soared, straight for Zaroff's shoulders; red maw glistening, ferocious claws outspread to rend, and tear, kill and destroy. Swift as the attack was, Zaroff had anticipated it. His hand shot out, loosing the thongs of the whip. The lash hissed like a serpent as it wriggled through the air. The heavy, weighted end curled smoothly around the spotted murderer, imprisoning the tawny neck and jerking the feline's body to the ground, where it lay choking and gasping for several moments. The other cats, meanwhile, had retreated to the other side of the cage. Zaroff, drenched and panting, turned his head to us—and smiled!

Then began the most amazing animal routine in circus history. While the old man and I trembled and the assistants gasped in awe, Zaroff, with only a whip in his hand, put those animals through paces so amazing that they pass the bounds of credibility. The beasts did everything but fly. Balancing, juggling, jumping, group-posing—everything in the regular wild-animal show repertoire was used and improved on. At the sound of Zaroff's whip every cat was in its place. Despite snarls, growls, and obvious attempts to buffet the trainer from their perches, the creatures obeyed him perfectly. It was a great act—and I sighed with relief when it was finished.

The old man waxed enthusiastic. Surely Captain Zaroff would make show history! How he ever got new cats intelligent enough to build a routine like that was a mystery. Zaroff should be more careful, though. It was a bad business, going into the cage with only a whip.

After we left the hippodrome I went over to the front office for a quiet smoke. Somehow I couldn't agree with the old man. The act was good, no doubt, but there were some queer things to be explained.

To begin with, I know enough about the big cage to realize that no trainer could do what Zaroff had done when his animals hated him. An act is built very slowly, one animal at a time; for the tamer must instill trust and respect into the minds of his performers. Learning the tricks is a task founded on affection for the teacher.

Yet the leopards hated Zaroff—hated and feared him!

Then, too—Zaroff knew that they were dangerous and unfriendly. Even a well-trained leopard is never tame, as a lion or a bear can be. And despite that knowledge, the captain was foolish enough not to use a chair.

Surely there was some mystery here. New African leopards and a foreign trainer who dislikes strangers. Private cages for the beasts, and a special attendant. A wonderful act, beautifully performed by raw beasts who are openly antagonistic to their trainer.

I recalled some of the rumors floating around the lots concerning Zaroff and his cats. Something about queer adventures in Africa. Oh, well it was all nonsense—the man was merely a skilful trainer. But even a skilful trainer cannot make his animals work so intelligently. The whole thing was very strange. I decided to keep an eye on the man and wait for something to turn up. I didn't have to wait very long.

Three days later the Ubangis arrived. They had been signed for the act in New York, and were shipped south under the personal supervision of Culper himself. To me they proved a woeful disappointment. Six small, timid-looking blacks; three male and three female—their only exotic feature was the widely publicized lip deformity that gave them mouths projecting almost a foot from their faces. Even this barbaric feature looked sadly incongruous, since all six wore American clothes. Imagine a Harlem flapper with lips a foot long and eight inches wide and you will get some picture of what I saw.

But the old man was pleased. The Ubangis must have special quarters. Was their interpreter here? He trusted that none of them had suffered overmuch on the journey. He hoped they would find the accommodations sufficiently comfortable. In the face of all this effusiveness, the blacks remained nervously silent. Without a word they suffered themselves to be led off to their sleeping-quarters.

During the next few days the Ubangis kept us busy. Not only did we have our hands full trying to explain their part in the performance through an interpreter, but we also had to contend with a really profound ignorance. They obviously knew the meaning of money—dollars meant francs, and francs meant luxury back on the Ivory Coast. That was why they had signed up. But as to the meaning of their duties, they were completely in the dark. Personally, I was not able to work up any enthusiasm over the whole venture. The poor savages were unhappy, the old man was unhappy, and the prospects of box-office draw were uncertain. But the old man had to touch off the fireworks.

He decided to stage one of the preliminary rehearsals, and arranged for the Ubangis to attend. There they could actually see a circus, and perhaps their part would be easier to understand thereafter. I was not pleased with the idea, but it was carried out. The six blacks occupied one of the observation booths, and the show went on.

At first everything went smoothly enough. Even the savage can appreciate the instinctive appeal of clown humor, and realize the agility of the aerial performers. They beamed like carefree children and jabbered constantly among themselves.

I was waiting for Zaroff. I knew that for the past few days he had been rehearsing at great length, and was eager to observe the changes or improvements in his act. The rest of the show waited, too. They had never seen him work, and the rumors had only whetted their curiosity.

The act went on. For fifteen minutes all eyes were glued on that steel cage. Zaroff outdid himself that day. His whip forever cracking, he put the carnivores through their paces in a way to keep everyone's attention riveted to the arena.

At last, when the coughing, snarling leopards had bounded back down the runway into their cages, the boss and I turned to the Ubangis to get their reaction.

It was not slow in coming. The entire troupe were excitedly haranguing one another in their box. At length they approached us, headed by their interpreter.

Hesitatingly, he announced that the troupe would not play in the show; that it resigned. Nor would he give any further explanation, save that the Ubangis did not care for Captain Zaroff and his act.

The boss fumed, swore, threatened, entreated, and pleaded. It did not avail. The savages left the following day.

But before they departed I went around and had a talk with their interpreter myself. Somehow I sensed a mystery behind their reasons for departure, and I questioned the man very closely. At last he abandoned his reserve and told me the details as he had overheard them.

Briefly, the Ubangis did not like Zaroff's act, but their aversion did not have a natural cause. They were going because they thought Zaroff himself was a witchdoctor; because they had heard him talk to his animals.

Naturally I was inclined to scoff at this statement. But then I began to remember certain details. Zaroff lived alone, took care of his animals alone. He had his own cages, his own assistant keeper. He avoided company, and spent most of his time with the beasts. It was quite possible that he did talk to his leopards.

But when I told the interpreter, he laughed. The Ubangis knew of such men, and feared them. Zaroff was a wizard, for they could see that he talked to the animals and they answered him! They had seen Zaroff growl in the cage as if he himself were a beast, and they saw the leopards answer his commands. The man was an evil shaman.

That was the substance of the Ubangis' complaint, as I got it from the interpreter. I left him a puzzled man. There was something hidden away in my brain that was beginning to bother me as it tried to edge into consciousness. Something about leopards.

* * * *

The next day brought a train of events which further puzzled me.

I was walking through the menagerie quarters when the affair began. It was midafternoon, and the place was deserted, for the entire troupe was over in the arena for regular rehearsals. I rounded
the horseshoe bend where the regular cages stood, and passed by the partitioned section. Here Zaroff's leopards were quartered. Behind the canvas which screened the cages from the rest I caught a glimpse of booted feet. That would be Zaroff himself, feeding the beasts. Low moans and bestial laughter drifted over the canvas walls.

Then all at once I heard a sudden roar, louder than the rest, and a terrible clang of bars. Zaroff's voice rose in an angry curse, and it was answered by a terrible growl. Suddenly a streak of spotted lightning leapt through the side of the canvas, which shredded before saber claws. One of the leopards had escaped.

It landed on its feet and stood crouching there not a dozen feet before me; a great, tawny monster with flaming fury in its evil eyes. Slaver dripped from its wrinkled, furry snout as it glared at me with unmistakable menace. Its back stiffened, and I broke out into a cold sweat as the fanged horror edged toward me, tensing to spring. Quivering with fright I watched it, unable to move, or even breathe. Its feline gaze held me hypnotically rigid; for I knew that I was staring at the face of Death. The leopard gathered itself for a leap.

Crack! The sound of Zaroff's whip broke the tension. The tall figure stepped into view from behind the canvas, blazing fury in his face. At the sound of his master's approach the sullen carnivore turned. With a snarl it gazed up into the captain's face, but its body was still crouched and ready to hurtle in attack.

Then I heard with my own ears that which my mind told me could never be. I heard Zaroff talk to his leopard!

Low barks and growls issued from his throat. The voice of a beast came from human lips. And the leopard answered! Cringing, it fawningly approached its trainer, growling in return. And its growls and cries held a note that was dreadfully, unmistakably human!

It was hideous to hear a beast murmuring like a man and a man roaring like a beast. I trembled afresh as Zaroff, with cries of animal rage, brought his whip down over the leopard's shoulders; brought it down with full force again and again until the poor creature's dappled hide was streaked with crimson stains. And all the while it kept whining, purring, pleading in monstrously human tones, while Zaroff screamed like a great cat.

With never a look or word for me, he drove the leopard to its quarters. From behind the canvas I heard the bars grate into their place once more, and then Zaroff reappeared.

This time he was not alone. There was a woman with him—a beautiful woman.

She was tall and slim, like a Grecian Diana, with a body of ivory and hair like ebony. Jade-green eyes dominated her aquiline face, contrasted oddly with her vivid red-lipped mouth and tiny white teeth. She wore a regal velvet dress which stood out incongruously amidst the sawdust atmosphere surrounding her.

I prided myself on knowing the entire personnel of our show, but I had never seen the woman before.

Zaroff, after apologizing to me for the disturbance, introduced her as his wife, Camille. The woman bowed graciously, but remained silent, eyeing her husband with restrained anger. I was speechless.

I had never known that Zaroff was married. I was just beginning to realize that there were a lot of things about him that I didn't know; a lot of things requiring considerable explanation. The scene I had just witnessed, for example. He was explaining about that now.

With elaborate ostentation he again apologized for the accident. The beast had escaped as he was feeding it. He was very sorry, and he would see that it did not occur again. He would be extremely pleased if I would refrain from reporting the affair to the management; it would unnecessarily upset people, he explained.

Here the woman broke in.

"He's lying, M'sieu. It will happen again, I know. You must report it; it happened in Europe, and a little boy was killed. He did nothing to prevent it, M'sieu, even when it began to—feed. You must make him stop beating them—it frightens me. Please, tell them and make them stop him. Please!"

Zaroff's countenance, as he listened to this recital, turned red with rage. He raised his whip—the long, cruel whip, still red from the lashing of the leopard—and brought it down on the woman's back with full force. She screamed, once. Then he seized her, and without a backward glance, bore her behind the canvas.

I stood stunned at the rapidity of events, then stumbled off to my own quarters. I wanted to be alone and think.

Zaroff—a foreigner whom nobody knew; a man who beat his leopards and his wife. Zaroff—the most brilliant trainer I had ever seen; hated and feared by his animals, yet obeyed. Zaroff—the man who talked to his cats like a beast, while they answered with the cries of men; Zaroff, whom the Ubangi savages denounced as a witch-doctor and wizard. Who was this man? What was he? Why was he so furtive and unfriendly? What was he doing to his wife that made her hate and fear him as much as the leopards did?

Before the show opened that year I must find out. And Camille Zaroff, I decided, was the woman who could and would tell me.

Show business occupied my time heavily for the next few days, but the mystery of Zaroff still occupied my thoughts. Somehow, I was beginning to hate the man. I disliked his cruel, unsmiling features, his reticent, almost disdainful manner, and his pompous, arrogant walk. I did not care for the way he treated his feline charges, and I did not wonder that his wife was afraid.

His wife—there was another angle. When I saw her she had been afraid, but I could see that she wanted to speak. Perhaps that was why Zaroff had kept her away from the rest of the show people. Maybe she was his prisoner, because of what she knew. He had beaten her with the whip....

He beat her often. Several nights later, as I went through the menagerie quarters on my way to the main office, I saw a light behind the canvas partition where Zaroff's tent stood. I'm not by nature or inclination an eavesdropper, but no one could ignore the shouts that came from the other side. The voices were audible throughout the deserted menagerie, and I recognized the guttural tones of Zaroff blending with the thrilling, husky speech of his wife, Camille.

"I will tell them all," she was saying. "I can't stand it any longer, do you hear? Knowing what I know, and seeing what I see. Unless you stop this dreadful business, I will tell them all."

A cynical laugh, almost gloating in its sardonic cadence. That would be Zaroff.

"Oh, no you won't, my dear. I have been gentle with you in the past—too gentle. But if you persist in making these—ah—demonstrations, I can take harsher measures."

"I'm not afraid of you any more. Tomorrow I shall go to him who is the head of this show and tell him the truth. You will no longer keep me caged up here like one of your beasts."

Again that mocking cackle of laughter from the man.

"So—I shall no longer cage you as I do my beasts, eh? We shall see. You know about my leopards, and what happened on the Guinea Coast, eh? Well—how would you like it if I were to--"

The voice trailed off here into a loathsome whisper, then culminated again in peal after peal of demoniacal mirth.

"No!" the woman screamed. "You dare not do that. I will go now—do you hear me?—now! I'll tell them all! Oh!"

There was a low moan, and then the hateful sound of a striking whip. Again and again I heard the hiss of a lash.

Clenching my hands in a frenzy of fury, I bit my lips to keep from crying aloud and rushing into that tent. I wanted to tear the whip from that unnatural monster and flog him. Red anger surged and poured into my brain, but something held me back.

There was more to this than a domestic quarrel. That woman, with her half-heard hints of secret things, was being mistreated for a purpose. It would do no good to accost Zaroff himself for an explanation and it would be worse than useless to precipitate a scene before the entire company. No, diplomacy urged me to wait. Tomorrow I would seek an opportunity to speak to Camille Zaroff alone. She would gladly talk then. Perhaps things could be straightened out.

Meanwhile, the show went into its final rehearsal in two days, and Zaroff was a good animal-trainer. I decided to bide my time, and left the tent. But that night I dreamed of a man, a leopard, and a whip. And the dream was far from pleasant....

The next day brought with it an entirely unexpected surprise. At nine o'clock a man walked into my office and casually took a seat. Looking up, I gazed into the impassive face of Captain Zaroff.

I was astonished. The man had never come to me before; he habitually kept away from the rest of the company. Concealing both my surprise and distaste, I asked him his business.

"I am bringing in a new animal for my act," he said, calmly.

For a moment I was too startled to speak. The final dress rehearsal only two days away, and he was going to work a new cat! It was unheard of. I told him so. Besides, what did he need a new leopard for?

"Do not worry," he assured. "It is already broken in; I—I had it shipped here this morning. And it is not a leopard—it is a black panther."

A black panther! That was a novelty. A trifle mollified, I told him that he would have to take the matter up with the boss.

"I will rehearse tomorrow afternoon," he agreed, suavely. "Would you care to come over and look at the animal?"

Together we walked across the lot and entered the menagerie. There were ten cages behind the canvas partition now. In nine were the leopards; the other held the new beast. We approached the bars.

There is nothing more beautiful than a black panther. Sleek, sinuous grace is personified in its ebony body, and aristocratic poise blazes forth from its jade eyes. Its nervous pace is regal; it is a picture of dignified beauty even when enraged. Consequently I expected much of Zaroff's acquisition. But I was to be disappointed.

The animal crouched behind the bars, its body limply lolling on the floor of the cage. Its exquisite black coat was disheveled, and on its back I detected the marks of the whip. Had Zaroff already begun his usual practices? The animal's eyes were lusterless; they gazed on me with a sort of dazed, numb expression in their depths. It whined, piteously, and once again I was shocked at the almost human tones in the throat of a jungle beast. When Zaroff approached closer, the panther cringed, and crawled away from the bars.

"Is it sick?" I inquired.

Zaroff smiled. "No, my friend. Perhaps the journey has tired it—the change, shall we say? It will be all right."

The great black cat whined dolefully. It kept staring at me with those amber eyes—staring and staring, as if it were humanly aware of my presence. With a slight shudder, I turned away. In order to make conversation, I casually asked after the health of Zaroff's wife.

A queer look came into the man's face.

"She—she has gone away," he said. But his stolid features were averted. "She has been nervous and ill of late, so I thought it would be best if she went for a rest instead of going out with the show. We had an argument last night, and she took the train this morning."

The man is lying. Accuse him.

The words ate their way into my brain.

He may have beaten her to death.

But such thoughts were mad. My eyes searched wildly for something on which to rest; something to divert my thoughts. I looked at the leopard cages. The cats were all curled up somnolently near the bars, as if they had just eaten. As if they were sated with food, rather.

Maybe he fed her to the leopards.

Was I really going insane?

She was going to tell a secret. I heard him threaten her with something, and he spoke of leopards before she screamed.

Why not? No one would ever know.

My mind rocked with chaotic confusion. The woman was gone; as we passed the living-quarters I saw that the tent was empty and I knew he never allowed her to wander free. What had become of her?

Zaroff watched me with an enigmatic smile. Did he suspect? "I will see you at rehearsal tomorrow," he said. "Good day." I stumbled out into the menagerie. As I passed the last cage the panther raised its head and moaned.

* * * *

I often wonder how I got through the rest of that day. The morbid suspicions that preyed on my mind had come to a harrowing climax. I kept thinking of Zaroff, and the queer rumors I had heard about the man. His leopards were queer, his act was queer, his whole history was shrouded in a cloak of nebulous dread. His wife knew, and she had disappeared. I must find out the truth.

But perhaps I was wrong. Imagination, once unleashed, can distort facts immeasurably. Possibly his wife had left. True, he had beaten her, but they do such things on the Continent. The leopards were queerly trained, but Zaroff was an eccentric man. Was I unduly suspicious?

These two conflicting trains of thought ran riot through my brain. The afternoon was a dream. I performed my routine functions automatically, but I could not forget. I neglected to inform the boss that Captain Zaroff had a, new black panther, and I said nothing about the rehearsal on the following day.

That night was the beginning of the end.

What impelled me I cannot say, but I felt that I must learn the truth. So at midnight I rose from my restless cot and staggered off to Zaroff's quarters. The lot was black and deserted, save for the looming shadows that lurked and capered in the corners beneath a leering yellow moon.

There was a light in Zaroff's tent when I entered. How I meant to excuse myself or what I intended to say I did not know. But Zaroff took the situation into his own hands.

He was quite drunk. There was a bottle on the table before him, and another on the floor. He sat there sprawled back so that he resembled a seated corpse in the dim light, and his face was equally pale. He had discarded his uniform, but the ever-present whip still rested on the ground beside him.

"Sit down, my friend," he mumbled. His foreign accent became more noticeable under the influence of liquor.

I seated myself beside him and haltingly began to talk. But his libations had made him loquacious, and he interrupted.

I cannot say to this day what got him started, or whether he was too drunk to understand, but he told me plenty.

Somehow he launched out on the story of his career during the war. He had, it seems, been an officer in the "Belgische Congo." Later, he had become an animal trader in Senegal, and served as guide to several expeditions on the Sierra Leone coast.

I let him ramble, occasionally prompting him to refill his glass. Sooner or later, I believed, something would slip out. It did.

As the shadows about us deepened, his voice became lower and more confidential. He was speaking of the blacks now—the furtive, sinister blacks of Sierra Leone, who practiced voodoo and obeah rites in the hidden swamps. He told me of the witch-doctors who invoked the Crocodile God to the beat of jungle drums; spoke of the snake-gods of secret, inner Africa. And he whispered of the Leopard-men.

I had heard of them before—the human leopards of Sierra Leone, whose cult was dedicated to the beasts of the forest. They were said to be vampires, possessing the power of anthropomorphism; that is, they could, by means of secret spells, become leopards themselves. This they were reputed to do, at certain times. As leopards they lay in wait for their enemies and destroyed them, or else invoked their rites to transform their foes into animals. I had read newspaper stories about the British police and their futile efforts to stamp out the dreaded clan.

Zaroff, mumbling incoherently, told me of these things again; spoke of how he himself had been initiated into the Leopard Cult one night beneath the waning autumn moon that gloats over Africa when the devil drums boom in nighted swamps. He told me of the spells he had learned from the shriveled arch-priests, and of the powers he could invoke by chants and rituals.

"Remember the legend of Circe?" he whispered, and his eyes were alight with unnatural flame. "Man into beast. Man into beast."

Abruptly he recovered himself once more, and changed the subject. By now he was so drunk that his voice slurred unintelligibly as he droned on. All I could catch were occasional phrases, but that was enough.

"I decided to show the fools a real act ... knew the proper spells ... rest was easy ... nobody suspected.... Came to Europe with me.... Wish to God I'd never met and married that slut ... spying on me at night ... found out ... spoiled the act ... that damned child.... They wanted blood ... scandal.... Looked all right here, but those Ubangis knew ... her stubbornness ... had to do it ... was the only way...."

As his voice droned on, his body slid flaccidly to the floor. I left, but I had not found the satisfaction I sought. Instead, my heart was filled with a greater and more hideous unease.

The man's drunken tales had disturbed me. Of course all that rot about Leopard-men was childish, but still I felt afraid. There were those who believed it, and some of his furtive hints had smacked of the truth. Funny, what liquor will do to a man. But I could not dismiss the incident so easily. There was a strange and terrible mystery here.

As I stalked off to my quarters I saw the blazing eyes of the black panther staring silently at me in the darkness. A crazy thought assailed me—perhaps it knew the truth! With a shaky smile I turned away.

* * * *

Of course I should have reported all this to the boss. A drunken trainer who abuses his animals is never to be tolerated in a show. But something held me back. I would at least wait until the final rehearsal the following afternoon. Zaroff would work the new panther then, and there would be a showdown.

There was a showdown, but not the kind I expected.

I can see it now in my mind's eye—that bare arena, with the great steel cage in the center. The boss and I were sitting in the box, just as we had sat that first day. The clown number had just ended, and now four men took their places about the grim, barred barrier.

Zaroff's figure swaggered into view. Despite his debauchery of the previous evening he was as cool and erect as ever. As he entered the little green-grilled door, his hand clenched tightly about the butt of his whip.

The runway into the arena jerked into place between the bars. The wooden gates opened.

Claws and fangs clicking, growls and coughs rumbling, tongues lolling and tails lashing, the leopards entered. Tawny bodies and green eyes, red throats and white teeth.

Nine leopards, and then—the panther.

The leopards had raced in, roaring their defiance. The panther sidled down the runway with stealthy tread. It uttered no sound, but entered the arena like a silent black shadow.

Zaroff cracked his whip. But today the leopards did not move. Instead, they held their places, a note of menace rumbling low in their great throats. They gave the curious impression that they were waiting for something. Zaroff cracked his whip again, impatiently.

The black panther padded over to the group of giant cats, then turned and stared at Zaroff.

Captain Zaroff stared back. There was a strange look on his face; he actually appeared to be nervous. He cracked his whip again, and swore. The growling in the leopards' throats rose in a thundering crescendo, but they did not move. The panther lashed its tail and continued to stare hypnotically at the tamer with evil, lambent eyes.

Sweat broke out on Zaroff's brow. I could have sworn that I saw a look of positive hate on that black beast's face as it gazed at the man. The trainers, guns ready, moved closer to the bars outside. They sensed something. Why didn't the man do something?

The leopards roared louder. They were grouped behind the panther now, and the panther, step by step, was slowly inching forward. Its tail shot erect but it never took its eyes from Zaroff's tormented white face.

Suddenly, with a shriek of almost human fury, the black body of the beast rose in the air and sprang for Zaroff's neck. The leopards closed in and the man went down beneath the fangs of ten jungle cats. There were shrieks from crimson-dabbled lips, then all sound was blotted out, as the four trainers shot blindly, pumping lead into that knot of blazing yellow bodies, shooting and shooting and shooting....

* * * *

The end came quickly; and only dead bodies remained about the mangled ruins of the thing that had once been Captain Zaroff.

Nobody ever speaks of that scene any more, but the tragedy itself was not the greatest horror. For I found the truth in Zaroff's private papers, and learned those things that had been hidden.

Now I know why Zaroff left Africa, and what he had really learned about the Cult of the Leopard-men. I know now why he boasted that he was going to have the greatest animal act in the world, and why he took such unusual precautions to guard and care for the beasts himself. I know how he was able to train them so well, and why the Ubangis thought he was talking to the creatures.

And I know just how his wife went away, too, and what she would have tried to tell the boss. It's not pleasant knowledge—those things in the papers and diaries of the dead trainer.

But it is infinitely more endurable than the memory of that last terrible sight—that dreadful glimpse of what lay in the arena when Zaroff, the leopards and the panther died. I can never forget that, because it is the final proof of all I dreaded to believe.

Captain Zaroff's chewed and lacerated form lay in a great pool of blood. Around him were the bodies of what the men with the guns had slain—nine bodies, not of leopards, but of negro men. Negro Leopard-men, from Africa.

And the tenth—the dreadful thing that was tearing at Zaroff's throat; the new black panther with the human eyes—was his wife, Camille!

DEATH IS AN ELEPHANT

(Weird Tales February 1939) as Nathan Hindin

"Death is an elephant

Torch-eyed and horrible

Foam-flanked and terrible."

—Vachel Lindsay: The Congo.

It's not the easiest job in the world, this being press agent for a circus. The ordinary routine is bad enough, what with temperamental stars and equally temperamental newspaper men to deal with. There are a thousand angles to every story, and a thousand tricks to play in order to get that story printed.

But the very devil of it is, the best stories are those which can never be printed: fascinating, mysterious, incredible stories set against the background of circus glamour—stories which I can never write—that's the worst side of this business.

Of course, there's a way out, and I'm taking it. The queer business about the animal trainer, Captain Zaroff, has already seen publication; with radical changes in the names of the principals involved.

I have an itch to see the yarns in print; there's ink in my blood, as the boys say. Particularly when the tales are true; then there comes a time when I can no longer suppress the urge to reveal them to the world.

Such a story and such a time is here again. Hence this document, with names, dates, and slight details altered—but with a strange story, to the truth of which my eyes can testify; for I was there to see it all. I saw the horror when first it crept from its lair in the jungle hills; I saw it stalk and strike. Sometimes I wish I could forget that striking, but still I dream. I dream of an elephant with blazing eyes, and feet that are blood-red. Blood-red.... But this is the tale.

* * * *

In the fall of '36, Stellar Brothers Circus went into winter quarters and plans were begun for the following year, and a new show. The old man and I knew what we wanted and what the public always wants—novelty. But where to find that novelty? It's the perennial question which drives the entertainment world mad. Clowns, animals, acrobats—these are the eternal backbone of the circus's attraction; but novelty is the drawing-card.

Two weeks of planning, pondering, and bickering got us no place. The question of a novel star feature remained unsettled. To add to the confusion, the old man was in bad shape physically. As a result he left the whole situation in the balance, threw up the work, and sailed for a six-weeks' trip abroad.

Naturally, I accompanied him. I managed to see that the papers played it up in the right way; the boss was traveling to secure a mysterious foreign attraction for next year's show—an attraction so important that he personally would handle the affair.

This sounded pretty good, but it left us in a spot. We had to come back with something that lived up to expectations, and I swear neither of us had the faintest ideas as to what it could be. It was up to Fate to deal the aces.

A Pacific crossing took us to Honolulu; thence to the Philippines. Gradually the old man's temper improved, and my own spirits were raised. After all, we were heading for the Orient, and there's plenty of circus material there. The best jugglers, acrobats, tumblers and freaks are found in the East, and as for animals and natural oddities, the woods are full of them.

Acting on a hunch, I cabled George Gervis in Singapore. Gervis is an animal man; a trapper and collector of circus beasts who knows the tropics like a book. I felt confident that he'd have something new for us, and arranged to meet him.

And that's how we got the Sacred White Elephant of Jadhore.

Gervis explained the situation carefully that first afternoon as we sat in his hotel room. I've known George for a number of years, and never have I seen him so excited. He tried hard to speak casually of the matter, and emphasize the fact that we had only an outside chance, but enthusiasm fairly oozed from him.

Briefly, the situation as he outlined it was this. Jadhore is one of the smaller principalities of the Malay States, under British protectorate. The natives are ruled by their own hereditary rajah; for unlike the majority of the Straits Settlements, the inhabitants are more Hindoo than Moslem. They have their own priesthood, their own government—under British jurisdiction. For years it had been the custom of the English government to pay the rajah an annuity; this, in turn, maintained the dignity and splendor of his court.

At this time, however, the annuity had for some reason been discontinued, and the present rajah was in sore straits for money. If his splendor as a potentate diminished, he would lose face before the eyes of his own people and neighboring kingdoms. And this rajah, in accordance with the tenets of his faith, had a Sacred White Elephant. Now if we could tactfully broach the matter in such a way as not to offend the religious scruples of the rajah or his priests; well—there was our attraction!

It sounded like a natural to me. Evidently the old man felt the same way, for he immediately gave Gervis carte blanche in the matter and sent him off to Jadhore to negotiate the transaction.

It was nearly a week later that he returned—a very anxious and fretful week for the old man and myself, for we were fighting against time.

Gervis had not brought the Sacred Elephant with him, but he had come to terms. These he now outlined for us.

The rajah definitely refused to sell the animal. His religious principles absolutely forbade the sacrilege. After consultation with the priests, however, he offered to rent the beast to the show for one season, provided that certain stipulations be made.

The animal must not be trained nor molested in any way. It must not be decorated, nor allowed to mingle with common pachyderms. It could, however, be placed on exhibition, and take part in any parades or processionals that were a feature of the performance. Special food and quarters would have to be provided as a matter of course. In addition, the rajah himself must be allowed to travel with the show, as guarantor of the Sacred Elephant's safety to the priests. Native attendants would be provided by the priests as well, and certain religious ceremonials must not be interfered with.

Such were the terms Gervis had agreed to. He had inspected the animal, and pronounced it to be a splendid specimen of its kind—abnormally large for the Indian elephant, and quite handsome.

At the conclusion of this report the old man blew up.

"Animal be damned!" he shouted. "I can't buy it, I can't train it, can't use it in the regular show. Can't even handle it myself—got to let a two-bit rajah and a gang of nigger priests feed it and burn incense in front of its trunk! What's the use? Special quarters, too—a gold freight car, I suppose. How much did you say?—seventeen hundred a week rental and expenses? Of all the—"

Here the boss demonstrated his restored health by going off into one of the profane tirades for which he is justly famous. I waited for him to cool a bit before I stuck my oar in.

Then I quietly pointed out certain obvious facts. These terms—they sounded difficult, but really were just what we wanted. Novelty—we'd play up the restrictions ourselves. "The Sacred White Elephant of Jadhore—Accompanied by the Priests of Worshipping Millions! See the Sacred Rites of the Jungle Temples! Personally Accompanied by the Illustrious Char Dzang, Rajah of Jadhore!" And so on.

I recalled for his benefit the success of the old white elephant importation of other days, which resulted in the famous Barnum-Forepaugh feud. Barnum's white elephant was a great success, and Adam Forepaugh, a rival circus-owner, thereupon took an ordinary beast and whitewashed its hide. The subsequent exposure of this hoax and the resultant publicity attendant had made fortunes for both men.

I showed the old man how the religious angle would pack them in. We'd play up the sanctity, the restrictions, the priests and attendants. And imagine a circus with a real rajah! Why, this was an attraction that would sell itself—no other build-up was needed.

When I had finished I knew from the look on the old man's face that my case was won.

"How soon can you arrange to get the animal down here?"

"Within two days," the animal-man promptly replied.

"Get going," said the old man, lighting a fresh cigar. Then to me, "Come on. We're heading for the steamship office."

2

True to his promise, Gervis returned on the third morning. We were already on the dock, waiting, for the boat sailed at noon. Passage had been arranged, quarters for the beast made ready; cables had been sent ahead to winter quarters. And I had just released a story that met with instant success. It was therefore with an air of pleased anticipation that we greeted the arrival of our prize and regal guests.

Nor was our first glimpse disappointing. Today, in view of the sinister aftermath of the whole affair, it seems almost incredible that we so blithely accepted our acquisitions; that we did not realize even then the curious and disturbing features of the itinerary. But that morning, as the procession came down the dock, I felt quite proudly satisfied with our work.

Two swarthy Hindoos led the way—little, turbaned, bearded men, clad in robes of purple and gold. Their hands held silvered chains, for they were leading the Sacred Elephant.

The mighty beast lumbered into view—I gasped a bit, I confess. Never had I seen an elephant like this! Fully ten feet tall was the White Elephant of Jadhore; a giant among the East Indian pachyderms. It had long, gleaming white tusks that swept outward from its massive jaws like twin sabers. Its trunk and hooves were enameled in gold, and on its back rested a howdah of hammered brass. But the color!

I had expected, from what I'd read, that a white elephant was a sort of sickly gray-skinned creature. This beast was almost silver; a leprous silver. From its oiled body glinted little shafts of scintillating light. It looked unreal, unearthly, yet magnificent.

At a word of command the beast halted and surveyed us with smoldering little eyes that rested like red rubies in a silver skull.

The occupants of the howdad dismounted and came forward, and again I was astonished. The rajah of Jadhore wore an ordinary business suit, and his face was clean-shaven in contrast to the bushy beards of the attendants. He wore a green turban that seemed utterly incongruous in comparison to the modern attire. It seemed even more incongruous when he greeted us in perfect English.

"Are we ready, gentlemen?" he inquired. "Have arrangements been made to take this—er—sacred tub aboard ship? My men want to handle it, of course; there are certain religious restrictions against crossing water, y'know."

I stared at him, and I saw the old man's eyebrows rise in surprise as the rajah lit a cigarette and calmly tossed the match beneath the Sacred Elephant's gilded feet. He took charge of the situation.

"It was stipulated in the agreement, gentlemen, that the beast was to have a permanent religious attendant. Allow me to present her—the High Priestess of the Temple of Ganesha."

He beckoned the figure in the background to come forward. Out of the shadow cast by the elephant's body stepped a girl. And for the third time that morning I uttered a low murmur of surprise.

Now I understood the meaning of that beauty of which Oriental poets sing. For this woman was lovely past all understanding or describing. She was dressed in a robe of white, but the lissome curves of her perfectly molded body shone through her garments and caused all memory of them to be forgotten. He hair was ebon as the jungle night, but it was coiled like a crown above a face of such bewitching perfection as to render powerless even a press-agent's powers of portrayal.

Was it the ripe scarlet blossom of her mouth, the gem-like facets of her high bronze cheeks, the creamy marble of her sweeping brow that so blended into a blaze of indescribable beauty? Or was it her eyes—those great green jewels with tawny flecks glittering in a serpent stare? There was icy wisdom here as well as loveliness; the woman had the look of Lilith about her. Woman, girl, priestess; she was all three as she gazed at us, acknowledging all introductions in calm silence.

"Leela speaks no English," the rajah explained.

Leela! Lilith! Green eyes—priestess of mystery. For the first time I was aware of an inner disturbance. I sensed now the reality of what we were doing; we were dabbling in sacred spheres. And I knew that this woman did not like us; that she scorned and hated this prostitution of her religion. We had made a dangerous opponent, I mused.

The truth of my surmise was soon to be horribly revealed.

In due time the elephant was hoisted aboard the ship and deposited in special quarters within the hold. The attendants and Leela accompanied the animal; the rajah joined us. At noon, we sailed from Singapore.

The old man and I found the rajah a likable fellow. He was, as I suspected, educated in England; his present life frankly bored him. We found it easy to converse with him about our plans for the circus, and told him how we intended to use the elephant in the procession and build quarters in the menagerie tent. I even proposed that the High Priestess be a member of the Grand Entry number, riding in the howdah on the beast's back.

Here the rajah looked grave. No, he declared, the idea was out of the question. Leela was sacred; she would never consent. Besides, she had opposed the entire venture, and the priests had upheld her. It was best not to cross her, for she had mystic powers.

"Well," I interjected. "Surely you don't believe all that Oriental bosh."

For the first time the rajah of Jadhore lost his carefully-acquired British aplomb.

"I do," he said slowly. "If you were not ignorant of my people and their ways, you would also know that there are many things in my religion which you of the West cannot explain. Let me tell you, my friend, what the High-Priestess means to our faith.

"For thousands of years there has been a temple of Ganesha, the Elephant-God, in our land. The Sacred White Elephant holds His Divine Spirit, bred through generations of the animals. The White Elephant is not like others, my friends. You noticed that.

"The God of my people is more ancient than your Christian one, and master of darker forces which only the jungle peoples know and can invoke. Nature-demons and beast-men are recognized today by your scientists; but priests of my simple people have controlled strange forces before ever Christ or Buddha trod the earth. Ganesha is not a benevolent god, my friend. He has always been worshipped under many names—as Chaugnar Faugn, in the old places of Tibet; and as Lord Tsathoggua aforetime. And He is evil—that is why we treat His incarnation in the White Elephant as sacred. That is why there have always been High Priestesses in his temple; they are the holy brides and consorts of the Elephant One. And they are wise; bred from childhood in the black arts of worship, they commune with the beasts of the forest and serve to avert the wrath of the evil ones from their people."

"You believe that?" laughed the old man.

"Yes," said the rajah, and he was no longer smiling. "I believe. And I must warn you. This trip, as you must have heard, is against the wishes of my priesthood. Never has a Sacred Elephant crossed the great waters to another land, to be gaped at by unbelievers for a show. The priests feel that it is an insult to the Lord Ganesha. Leela was sent with the elephant by the priests for a purpose—she alone can guard it. And she hates you for what you're doing; hates me, too. I—I don't like to speak of what she can do. There are still human sacrifices in our temples at certain times, of which the Government knows nothing. And human sacrifices are made with a purpose—the old dark powers I spoke of can be invoked by blood. Leela has officiated at such rites, and she has learned much. I don't want to frighten you—it's really my fault for consenting to this—but you should be warned. Something may happen."

The old man hastened to reassure the rajah. He was smugly certain that the man was nothing but a savage beneath his veneer of superficial culture, and he spoke accordingly.

As for me, I wondered. I thought again of Leela's eery eyes, and imagined easily enough that they could gaze on bloody sacrifice without flinching. Leela could know evil, and she could hate. I remembered the rajah's final words, "Something may happen."

I went out on deck, entered the hold. The elephant stood in his stall, placidly munching hay. Leela stood stolidly beside him as I inspected the animal's chains. But I felt her eyes bore into my back when I turned away, and noticed that the Hindoo attendants carefully avoided me.

Other passengers had got wind of our prize, and they filed into the hold in a steady stream. As I left, a fellow named Canrobert strolled up. We chatted for several minutes, and when I went up on deck he was still standing there before the beast. I promised to meet him in the bar that evening for a chat.

At dinner a steward whispered to me the story. Canrobert had come up from the hold late in the afternoon, walked to the rail in plain view of several passengers, and jumped overboard. His body was not recovered.

I took part in the investigation which followed. During the course of it we ventured down into the hold. The elephant still stood there, and Leela was still keeping watch beside him. But now she was smiling.

3

I never did learn about the death of a man named Phelps on the third day out. But it was a hoodoo voyage for certain, and I was glad when we disembarked at last and headed for winter quarters.

I am a practical man, but I get occasional "hunches." That is why I avoided the rajah during the rest of our homeward journey. I fled when he approached, because I felt that he would have an explanation for the deaths of the two men—an explanation I did not care to hear. I didn't go near Leela nor the elephant either, and spent most of my time doping out the show with the old man.

It was good to see winter quarters again. A handsome stall had been built for the Sacred Elephant, and Ganesha (for so we had christened the beast) was quartered therein.

No greater compliment could have been paid to my advance publicity than the attention shown the beast by our hardened circus folk. Stars and supers alike, they crowded around the stall, eyed the mighty animal, gazed at the silent bearded attendants, and stared in speechless admiration at Leela. The rajah struck up an immediate acquaintance with Captain Dence, our regular elephant-keeper.

I immediately plunged into work with the old man, for the show opened shortly.

Therefore it wasn't until several weeks later that I began to hear the disquieting rumors that floated around the lot concerning our star attraction.

The restlessness of the other elephants, for example—how, in rehearsal for the Grand Entry, they shied away from the Sacred Ganesha, and trumpeted nightly in their picket line. The queer story of how the foreign woman lived in the stall with the animal; ate and slept there in stolid silence. The way in which one of the clowns had been frightened while passing through the animal barn one evening; how he had seen the two Hindoos and the girl bowing in worship before the silver beast, who stood amidst a circle of incense fires.

Even the old man mentioned a visit from the rajah and Captain Dence during which both men pleaded to break the contract and allow the animal and its attendants to return to Jadhore before the show opened. They spoke wildly of "trouble" to come. The proposal was of course rejected as being out of the question; our publicity was released, and both men were evidently under the influence of liquor at the time.

Two days later Captain Dence was found hanging from a beam behind the elephant-line. It was a case of suicide beyond question, and there was no investigation. We had a show funeral, and for a while a gloomy shadow overcast our lot. Everyone remarked about the shocking look of horror on poor Dence's death-distorted face.

About this time I began to wake up. I determined to find out a few things for myself. The rajah was almost always intoxicated now, and he seemed to avoid me purposely; staying in town and seldom visiting the lot. I know for a fact that he never again entered the menagerie barn.

But I learned that others did. Perhaps it was morbid curiosity; but the show-folk, even after their first trips of inspection, seemed to spend much of their time around the elephant lines. Shaw, our new keeper, told me that they were continually before the stall of the Sacred Elephant. In his own opinion many of the men performers were stuck on that "pretty foreign dame." They stared at her and at the elephant for hours on end; even the big stars came.

Corbot, the trapeze artist, was a frequent visitor. So was Jim Dolan, the acrobatic clown, and Rizzio, our equestrian director.

Another was Captain Blade, our knife-thrower in the sideshow. What they found in the woman he couldn't say, for she never spoke and they were silent.

I could make nothing of this report. But I determined to watch the beautiful High Priestess for myself.

I got into the habit of sauntering through the menagerie at odd hours and glancing at the Sacred Elephant. Whatever the time of day, there was Leela, her emerald eyes burning into my back. Once or twice I saw some of the performers gazing raptly at the stall. I noticed that they came singly at all times. Also I saw something which proved the keeper's theory to be wrong.

They were not infatuated with the woman, for they looked only at the elephant! The gigantic beast stood like some silver statue; impassive, inscrutable. Only its glistening oiled trunk moved to and fro; that, and its fiery eyes. It seemed to stare mockingly in return, as though contemptuous of attentions from the puny creatures before it.

Once, when the place was deserted, I saw Leela caressing its great body. She was whispering to it in some low and outlandish tongue, but her voice was ineffably sweet and her hands infinitely tender. I was struck by a curious and somewhat weird thought—this woman was acting toward the beast as a woman in love acts toward her lover! I remembered how the rajah spoke of her as the bride of Ganesha, and winced. When the animal's serpentine trunk embraced the lovely girl she purred in almost blissful satisfaction, and for the first time I heard the beast rumble in its massive throat. I left, quickly so as to be unobserved.

* * * *

Opening day loomed, and once again I was forced to turn my mind to other things. The cars were loaded for Savannah; the dress rehearsal was performed; I sent the advance men on the night before we left, and the regular routine got under way.

The old man was pleased with the show, and I must admit that it was the best we'd ever turned out. Corbot, the trapeze artist, was a good drawing card; we got him from the big show through sheer good fortune. Jim Dolan, the chief clown, was always a draw. We had some fine animal acts, and many novelty features as well. And the Sacred Elephant of Jadhore was bidding fair to become a household name before the public had ever seen it.

We had a private car for the animal and its three attendants; the two Hindoos smiled happily when they saw it, and even Leela was slightly taken aback with its splendor. On our arrival under canvas the beast was installed in a superb new station atop a platform in the center, and with its hide newly oiled and decorated it looked superb.

The menagerie crowd on the opening day was highly impressed. They stared at the impassive Hindoos and positively gaped at Leela in her white ceremonial gown. The rajah they did not see—he was shaking drunk in his own quarters, behind locked doors.

I didn't even have time to think of the superstitious coward. I'm like a kid when a new show opens each year, and the old man is no different. We sat in our box and positively beamed with joyous excitement as the trumpet blasts announced the Grand Entry.

Our procession was Oriental—Arabian riders, Egyptian seers on camels, harem beauties on elephants, califs and sultans in jeweled litters. At the very last came the Sacred White Elephant of Jadhore; the mightiest of them all. The great silver beast moved with a sort of monstrous beauty; in regal dignity Ganesha padded on to the beat of thundering drums. The two Hindoos led the way, but Leela was not present. The great spotlight followed every step; so did the eyes of the crowd. I can't explain it, but there was something about the animal which "clicked." It had beauty—and that unearthly majesty I had noticed. It was the Sacred Elephant indeed.

The procession vanished. The show was on. Sleek black ponies galloped into the rings, and whips cracked in merry rhythm with their hooves. The music altered its tempo; the clowns strutted in to do the first of their walk-arounds. Applause, laughter, and the ever-beating rhythm of the band. Excitement, as the jugglers vied with a troupe of seals in dextrous competition.

The star acts were coming up, and I nudged the old man to attract his special attention.

With a flurry of drums the big spot in the center ring blazed forth as the other lights dimmed. Alonzo Corbot, the trapeze star, raced in. His white body bounded across the ring to the ropes beneath the main pole where his partner waited.

The snare-drums snarled as the two performers mounted up—up—up—sixty feet in the air to the platform and the trapeze rings.

Out they swung now, silver bodies on silver rings; out into the cold clear light that bathed the utter emptiness of the tent-top. Swing—swoop—soar; rhythmically rise, unfalteringly fall. Tempo in every movement of the clutching hands; timing even in the feet that danced on empty air.

Corbot was a marvel; I'd seen him work in rehearsal many times and was never tired of watching the perfection of motion he displayed. He trained rigorously, knew; and he never slipped. He caught his partner by the hand, the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, the neck, the ankle. Feet suspended from the rings, he shot to and fro like a human pendulum while his partner somersaulted through space into his waiting hands. At precisely the exact fraction of a second they met in midair; an error in timing meant certain death. There were no nets—that was Corbot's boast.

I watched, the old man watched, the audience watched, as two men fluttered like tiny birds so far above. Birds? They were demons with invisible wings now in the red light that flashed on for the climax of the act. Now came the time when Corbot and his partner would both leave the rings, leap out into that dizzying space and turn a complete somersault in midair, then grasp the rings on the opposite side of their present position.

The drums went mad. The red light glared on that little hell of high space where two men waited, their nerves and muscles tense.

I almost feel it myself—that moment of dread expectancy. My eyes strained through the crimson haze, seeking Corbot's face so far above. He would be smiling now; he was preparing to leap....

Drums, cymbals crashed. The waiting figures sprang. Corbot's arms were ready to grasp his partner in whirling space—or were they? Good God, no—they were stiff at his side!

There was a streaking blur crossing that empty scarlet expanse of light, and then it was gone. Something struck the center ring with a heavy thud. Somebody screamed, the band blared a desperate march, and the lights went up. I saw that Corbot's partner Victoire had saved himself by catching a ring just in time, but my eyes did not linger above. They centered themselves on the ground; on the center ring where something lay in a pool of crimson that came from no light.

Then the old man and I were out of our box and running across the tent with attendants at our side. And we stared for a sickening second at that boneless pulpy red thing that had once been Alonzo Corbot the trapeze star. They took him away; fresh sawdust covered the spot where he had fallen, and the band, the lights, the music covered the audience's panic until their fears were forgotten. The clowns were out again as the old man and I left, and the crowd was laughing—a bit weakly, perhaps, but laughing nevertheless. Corbot's hail and farewell was typical; the show went on.

Victoire, the partner, staggered in as we gathered by the body in the dressing-room. Pale, limp, badly shaken, he wept convulsively when he saw—it—lying there.

"I knew it!" he gasped. "When he stood on the other platform just before he leaped, I saw his eyes. They were dead and far away. Dead.... No, I don't know how it happened. Of course he was all right before the show. I hadn't seen him much lately; between rehearsals he spent a lot of time some place.... His eyes were dead...."

We never learned anything more from Victoire. The boss and I hurried through the menagerie to the main office. As we passed the big platform where the Sacred Elephant was quartered, I noticed with a shock that it was empty of attendants. Something brushed against me in the dark as I hurried on. It was Leela, the High-Priestess, and she was smiling. I had never seen her smile before.

That night I dreamed of Leela's smile, and Corbot's redly ruined face....

4

There's only a little more to tell. For that I'm thankful, because the rest is even now a nightmare I would rather forget. We learned nothing of Corbot's death from anyone. It created a flurry, of course, and the performers' nerves were shattered. After all, an opening-day tragedy like that is disquieting.

The old man raved, but there was nothing to do. The show went on; the morbid public swarmed in that second day, for despite my efforts publicity was released.

Nor was the morbid public disappointed. For on the second night, our fourth show—Jim Dolan died.

Jim was our acrobatic clown, and a star in his own right. He'd been with us twelve seasons, always doing his regular routine of juggling and pantomime.

We all knew Jim and liked him as a friend. He was a great kidder; nothing of the pagliaccio about Dolan. But on that second evening he stopped for a moment in his routine before the center ring, put down his juggling-clubs, pulled out a razor, and calmly slit his throat.

How we got through that night is still a mystery to me. "Jinx" and "hoodoo" were the only two words I heard. The show went on, the boss raved, and the police quietly investigated.

The following afternoon Rizzio, our equestrian director, walked into the line of the bareback routine, and a horse's hoof broke his spine.

I'll never forget that twilight session after the show, in the old man's tent. Neither of us had slept for two days; we were sick with fear and nameless apprehension. I've never believed in "curses," but I did then. And so I looked at the official reports and the headlines in the papers, glanced at the old man's gray face, and buried my own in my arms. There was a curse on the show.

Death! I'd walked with it for weeks now. Those two chaps on the boat, then Captain Dence, the elephant man, then Corbot, Dolan, Rizzio. Death—ever since we had taken the Sacred White—

The rajah's words! His story about curses and queer rites; the vengeance of the god and his priests! The Priestess Leela, who smiled now! Hadn't I heard stories about the performers visiting the elephant's stall?—why, all three of the men who died here in the show had done that! The rajah knew—and I had thought him a drunken coward.

I sent a man off to find him. The old man, utterly collapsed, slept. I spent an anxious hour waiting.

The rajah entered. A glance at my face told him the story.

"You know now?" he said. "I thought you would never come to your senses. I could do nothing without your belief, for she knows I understand, and she hates me. I have tried very hard to forget; but now men die and this thing must be stopped. Ganesha may send me to a thousand hells for this, but it is better so. It is magic, my friend."

"How do you know?" I whispered.

"I know." He smiled wearily, but there was black despair in his eyes. "I watched from the beginning. She is cunning, that Leela, so very cunning. And she knows arts."

"What arts?"

"You of the West call it hypnotism. It is more than that. It is transference of will. Leela is an adept; she can do it easily with the elephant as medium."

I tried vainly to understand. Was the rajah crazed? No—his eyes burned not with derangement but with bitter hatred.

"Post-hypnotic suggestion," he breathed. "When the fools came to watch the Sacred Elephant, she was always there. Her eyes did it; and when they watched the gleaming trunk of the beast it acted as a focal point. They came back again and again, not knowing why. And all the while she was willing them to act; not then, but later.

That is how the two men died on the boat. She experimented there, told them to drown themselves. One went immediately, the other waited several days. All that was needed was for them to see her once at the time she willed for them to die. Thus it was. And here, in the menagerie, it has been the same way. They stare at the silver elephant. She willed them to die during the performance. At the proper time she stood in the entrance-way; I have seen her there. And the men died—you saw that.

"She hates the show, and will ruin it. To her the worship of Ganesha is sacred, and she is wreaking vengeance. The old priests that sent her must have instructed this, and there must be an end. That is why I dare not face her."

"What's to be done?" I found myself asking. "If your story is true, we can't touch her. And we can't give up the show."

"I will stop her," said the rajah slowly. "I must."

Suddenly, he was gone. And I realized with a start that the show was almost ready to begin. Quickly I roused the old man from his slumber. Then I dashed out. Collaring a roustabout, I ordered him to find the rajah at once. There would be a showdown tonight; there must be.

* * * *

I had two guards with guns secretly posted at the side entrance to the tent, where the performers came in. They had orders to stop anyone who loitered there during the show. There must be no Leela watching and commanding that night.

I dared not incarcerate her at once for fear of a row while the show was on. The woman was evidently capable of anything, and she must not suspect. Still, I wanted to see her for myself. A half-hour before the menagerie opened I hurried in. The elephant's stall was again untended!

I ran around to the side entrance. There was no one there. Out on the midway I raced, mingling with the crowd. Then it was that I noticed the excited throng before the side show. Elbowing through, I came upon two men and the barker as they emerged from the tent carrying a limp form in their arms. It was the girl assistant of Captain Blade, the knife-thrower. He had missed.

Leela passed me in the crowd, smiling. Her face was beautiful as Death.

When I rushed back to the boss tent, I found the roustabout and the rajah. The latter was trembling in every limb.

Hastily I collared the potentate and dragged him through the crowd toward the main tent.

"I believe you now," I whispered. "But you're not going to do anything rash. Give me your knife."

I'd guessed correctly. He slipped a dirk out of his sleeve and passed it to me unobserved.

"No more bloodshed," I muttered. "I have two men at the side entrance. She'll not watch this show and cast any spells. When the performance is over, I'll have her behind bars on your testimony. But no disturbance before the crowd."

I shouldered my way into my regular box and he followed after me.

The big tent was crowded. There was an air of grim waiting, as if the spectators were expecting something. I knew what they expected; hadn't the papers been full of "the Hoodoo Circus" for the past three days? There was a low murmur as of massed whispering voices. I thought of a Roman amphitheater and shuddered.

The big drums rolled. The parade swept into view, and I cast an anxious glance at the side entrance when it cleared. There were my two guards, armed with efficient-looking guns. No trouble tonight! And the rajah was safe, with me.

The Sacred Elephant swept into view; serene, majestic, lumbering gigantically on ivory hoofs. There was only one Hindoo leading him tonight and—the howdah was on his back!

In it sat—Leela, the High Priestess of Ganesha.

"She knows," breathed the rajah, his brown face suddenly animal-like with convulsed terror.

Leela was smiling ...

Then horror came.

The lights flickered, failed, blinked out. The vast tent plunged into nighted darkness and the band ceased. There was a rising wail of sound, and I rose in my seat with a scream on my lips.

There in the darkness glowed the silver elephant—the Sacred White Elephant of Jadhore. Like a leprous monster, its body gleamed with phosphorescent fire. And in the darkness I saw Leela's eyes.

The elephant had turned now, and left the parade. As shrieks rose in a thousand throats it thundered forward—straight for our box.

The rajah broke from my grasp and vaulted over the railing to the ground. My hand flew to my pocket and I cursed in dismay. The knife he had given me was gone. Then my eyes returned to the hideous tableau before me.

The elephant charged with lifted trunk, tusks glistening before it. There was a shrill trumpeting from its silver throat as it bore down on the slight figure of the man who raced toward it.

He ran to death, but his head was high. He was seeking that black figure in the howdah on the beast's back.

In a moment everything was over. A gleaming arc in the air as something long and thin and silver whizzed up to the elephant's back. A woman's shrill scream and gurgling sob. A mighty bellowing of brutish, berserk rage. A thud of massive feet as the silver giant trampled on. The crunching ... the screams, the shots, and the great shock as the great body turned and fell.

And then the audience rose and fled. When the lights went on once more, there was nobody in the tent but the performers and the roustabouts.

In the center of the areaway lay the gigantic Ganesha, silver sides streaked with scarlet in death. The crumpled howdah held all that remained of Leela the High Priestess. The rajah's knife had struck home, and her torn throat was not a pretty sight.

As for the rajah himself, there was only a slashed red horror dangling on the end of those ivory tusks; a mashed and pulpy thing.

* * * *

Thus ended the affair of the Sacred White Elephant. The police accepted our story of the animal's running amok during the show when the lights failed.

They never learned of the Hindoo who had so horribly short-circuited the connection with his own body, and we buried his seared remains in secret.

The show closed for two weeks and we re-routed it for the rest of the year. Gradually, the papers let the story die and we went on.

I never told the truth to the old man. They're all dead anyway, and I'd like to forget it myself. But I have never liked novelty acts since, nor visited the Orient; because I know the rajah's story was true, and Leela had killed those performers as he had explained it. Those priests and priestesses have secret powers, I am convinced.

I've figured it all out—Leela found out that the rajah had told me the facts; knew she'd be exposed, and acted accordingly.

She sent the Hindoo to fix the lights, then arranged to have Ganesha the elephant charge our box and kill the rajah as she'd planned.

I have it all figured out, but I'd never tell the old man. There's one other fact I know which I must not reveal.

The rajah's knife did not kill Leela as she rode on the elephant's back. It could not, for she was already dead; dead before she entered the tent.

One of the two guards I stationed had shot her two minutes before at the side entrance as she rode past in the howdah of Ganesha, the Sacred White Elephant.

It seems that she must have hypnotized the beast, too—or did she? The Soul of Ganesha inhabits the body of the Sacred Elephant, the rajah said. And Ganesha wreaks a vengeance of his own.

PHILTRE TIP

Published in Rogue, March 1961

Mark Thornwald had an obsession.

Now there is nothing wrong with having an obsession in our society, provided one chooses it wisely. The man who is obsessed with the desire to make money often becomes wealthy. Those who dedicate an entire existence to the pursuit of fame frequently are rewarded, and can deduct the clipping bureau's fee from their income tax. Men who devote a lifetime to excel in athletic pursuits often wind up with a sizable collection of trophies, plus an occasional hernia.

But Mark Thornwald chose the wrong obsession.

Her name was Adrienne.

It is easy to deal with this particular obsession in terms of labels—mother-fixation, chemical attraction, love object, and the like.

Unfortunately, Thornwald wasn't satisfied with labeling his obsession. He had other plans for Adrienne. With the sorry result that he wasn't satisfied, period.

The first time he attempted to put his plans into action, Adrienne laughed at him. The second time, she slapped his face. The third time she threatened to call her husband and have Thornwald thrown out of the house.

Thornwald elected to leave quietly, hugging his obsession to his breast, nursing it on the juices of hatred and frustration. As a result, it grew enormously.

Since Adrienne's husband, Charles, happened to be an associate professor of medieval history and since Thornwald was one of the regents of the university, it was no great trick to see that his contract was not renewed. After assuring himself that attrition had set in, Thornwald again approached Adrienne and made what he considered a handsome offer.

Adrienne thought both the offer and Thornwald quite ugly, and told him so. Again he retired to defeat, comforted only by the knowledge that she would never stoop to telling her husband.

Thornwald took stock of the situation. Of course, being obsessed, he did not consider matters realistically. When one is obsessed with avarice, one does not reflect upon the widows and orphans who may purchase the phony uranium stock; the seeker of fame at any price is quite willing to propel his pelvis in public or even run for Congress if needs be. And the man whose obsession takes a delectable, feminine form is equally lacking in ethics and scruples. To him, love laughs at locksmiths and goes into positive hysteria over the spectacle of a faithful wife.

"The end justifies the means," Thornwald told himself, and when he spoke of "the end" in connection with Adrienne it is to be feared he had a very tangible image in mind.

But there were no means available until Adrienne's husband provided them.

They came to Thornwald in the shape of a bulky manuscript, delivered by Charles himself.

"Aphrodisia," Thornwald murmured. "A Study of Erotic Stimuli Through the Ages."

"Don't let the title deceive you," Charles told him. "It's a scholarly work. I've been doing research on it now for almost a year—ever since I lost my position at the university. See what you think. Maybe it could stand a chance with Harker House."

"Ah yes, Harker House." Thornwald happened to be on the board of editors of the publishing firm.

"Read it as a professional," Charles urged. "Not as a friend."

This wasn't difficult for Thornwald, since by no stretch of the imagination did he consider himself to be Charles' friend. Rival, or deadly enemy—that was much more to Thornwald's taste, and the nourishment of his obsession.

Still, after Charles went away, he did read it professionally. And found the answer.

"Why did you cross out this formula for a love philtre?" he asked Charles, upon a subsequent visit. Thornwald indicated the page. "Here—the one from Ludvig Prinn's Grimoire, in the English edition." He read the ingredients listed and the description of effects.

"The meerest droppe, if placed in a posset of wine or sack, will transforme ye beloved into a veritable bitche in heate."

Charles smiled and shrugged. "You've just answered your own question," he said. "Most of the spells and incantations I've set down are mere curiosa. I doubt if there's any amorous incitement in owl dung, and calling a tomato a love apple is just sympathetic magic. But a few items come from sources I respect. Ludvig Prinn, for example, was a considerable sorcerer in his day."

Thornwald elevated his eyebrows. "In other words, you decided to omit this particular formula because you're afraid it might work?"

Charles nodded. "Look at the ingredients," he said. "Some of them I never heard of, and heaven only knows what their reaction might be in combination. The ones I do know—yohimbine and cantharadin, for example—are in themselves powerful aphrodisiacs. Added to this other stuff, the result could be trouble."

"Just what I was thinking," Thornwald said. And made a mental note, which he at once underlined in big black encephalographs.

"Interesting material," he told Charles. "Let me pop this in to the editorial staff and we'll see what we can do."

He took the manuscript away and, three weeks later, called Charles. "It's practically set," he said. "You've an afterdinner appointment with the board tonight. Get into town and come back with a contract."

That part was easy. The difficult matter had been to trace down all of the obscure ingredients for the love philtre. Some of them were only approximated in the pharmacopia and others had to be illegally obtained, but Thornwald's obsession brooked no obstacles. And now he was ready.

As soon as he made certain that Charles had indeed departed for the city he made his final preparations. Promptly at eight he knocked on the door of Charles' flat and Adrienne admitted him.

"Charles isn't here," she said.

"I know, but he'll be back before midnight. And then we'll celebrate his new book contract." Thornwald waved the two bottles. "Champagne, my dear, and already iced. One bottle for when Charles returns. One to share between us while we're waiting."

Adrienne eyed the bottles dubiously, but before she could object, Thornwald took over. "Glasses," he demanded. "And a corkscrew, if you please."

"But—"

"It's to be a surprise," Thornwald assured her. And he meant it.

Adrienne, he knew, could never resist surprises. And this particular one she could resist least of all. He didn't tell her about the third bottle—the tiny one—which he carried concealed in his pocket. He waited until she brought in the glasses and the corkscrew and an ice bucket.

"I'll open the bottle," he said. "Man's work." He winked at her. "Meanwhile, why don't you slip into that party dress of yours, so that we can give Charles a proper welcome?"

Adrienne nodded and left the room. It was then that Thornwald opened the champagne, poured it, and added just the merest drop of the love philtre to the contents of her glass.

He finished just in time, dropping the little vial back into his pocket just as Adrienne blossomed into the room. His hand trembled, not with apprehension but with anticipation.

Obsession or no, Adrienne was a beautiful woman in her own right; slim, shapely, and quite probably a natural redhead. Thornwald determined to satisfy himself on this latter point the moment Adrienne downed her drink.

She swept over to him, proffering his glass and raising her own as he turned away until he could control his shaking fingers. Now was the time for self-control. In a moment, he felt certain, it could be abandoned.

Thornwald raised his champagne glass.

"To tonight," he said. And sipped tentatively.

Adrienne nodded, bent her shapely wrist, brought the edge of the glass to her lips, and hesitated.

"Now that we seem to be friends again," she murmured, "suppose we seal our relationship in a friendly gesture?"

"Such as?"

"Let us take each other's glasses."

Thornwald gulped. "Oh no!" he exclaimed. "Believe it or not, I have a cold."

"Very well." Again, Adrienne paused.

"Drink up, my dear," Thornwald urged. "Here's to surprises."

"Surprises," Adrienne echoed. And drank.

Thornwald tossed off the champagne. His hands were trembling again. How long would he have to wait?

Not very long, apparently. For it seemed but a moment before the change came.

Adrienne moved quite close and her voice, like her smile, was soft and caressing.

"I don't know what you put in my drink," she murmured. "But you did put something in. That's why you wouldn't switch glasses with me, isn't it?"

Thornwald noted the warmth in her voice and felt it was now safe to nod.

"Good," Adrienne said. "I thought as much. Which is why I switched glasses before I made the suggestion—when I handed you your drink."

Thornwald blinked. And then the philtre took effect and he knew it worked, knew that if the merest drop would transform a woman into a bitch in heat, it was equally potent when administered to a male.

All he could do was tremble and watch the room swirl and listen to Adrienne's laughter. If only she could understand his motivations, if only she realized he'd acted out of genuine affection! Thornwald knew he had to tell her, so he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

"I love you," he barked.

METHOD FOR MURDER

Alice went into the study when Charles called her.

It wasn't really a study, just his workroom. The place where he wrote all his silly mysteries and suspense novels, or whatever they were called.

Alice didn't like the study because it was filled with books, and because it was filled with Charles.

With a contract to deliver four novels a year, he spent most of his time in here. And when he wasn't working, all he could talk about was his writing. It was like an obsession with him; his characters were more real to Charles than she was.

Right now he was showing her some little pen-and-ink sketches of the people in his next book; he had written capsule biographies of each character, too, and described each one in great detail. Charles explained everything very carefully and Alice nodded her head just as though she were listening, though she never listened to him any more.

Then she saw Dominick.

Dominick had a long, thin face, matted hair, and a scraggly beard. And there was something strange about the way his mouth twisted.

"That's because he's giggling," Charles said. "Remember that picture Richard Widmark played in years ago? He giggled when he killed. It's a good tag, that giggle. Helps to make a character come alive."

Alice stared at the picture, and now she listened to him.

"Funny thing," Charles was saying. "Somehow, the villains are always more real to me than the heroes. I suppose that's why I write the sort of things I do. Perhaps it's a subconscious identification with the monster role. Dr. Jekyll, playing Hyde-and-seek." Charles giggled, a bit, himself.

Alice stared at the picture.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"Dominick?" Charles was flattered by her interest, that was obvious. And he was quite taken with Dominick; that was obvious, too. "Dominick is a strangler who has escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. He takes refuge in this—"

He went on and on. When he'd finished, Alice knew all there was to know about Dominick. And all she needed to know about everything else. She made sure of it by asking questions.

"Just one thing more, darling," she concluded. "Is it a high or a low giggle?"

Charles blinked, like a partially animated stuffed owl. "Why, a high giggle, I suppose." He squinted. "Yes, of course, it would be a high giggle. Quite hysterical, in fact."

Alice nodded and went away, and her husband started to type. Aside from meal-times and odd moments, devoted to catnaps, Charles typed steadily the next three days.

He came out of the study just once during the third day to tell her he'd lost his sketch of Dominick.

Alice looked up from her knitting. "Then draw another," she said.

Charles went into his blinking routine again. "Good idea," he said. "You know something, my dear? Dominick is taking over. That's always a good sign—when the villain takes over the book. Lends a certain three-dimensional quality to the menace."

He went back to his work and Alice resumed her knitting. In a few hours he burst out of the study again. This time he wasn't blinking. He was staring.

"Alice!" he cried. "Something's happened!"

"So I gather." Alice put her knitting aside. "But what?"

Charles shook his head. "I don't know," he said, in an unsteady voice. "It's Dominick. He's alive!"

"I'm so glad, dear."

"You don't understand. I'm not talking about the book. He's actually alive, there in my study. He peered in at me through the window about five minutes ago—I thought it must be an hallucination. Then he opened the window and came inside." He faltered. "I know it sounds crazy, but—"

Alice stood up.

"Where are you going?" Charles murmured.

"Into your study, of course."

"But you can't—he's dangerous—"

Alice sniffed and marched into the study. She stared around the room while Charles cowered in the doorway behind her.

"I don't see anything," Alice said. "Where is he?"

"Right over there," Charles pointed a none-too-firm finger. "Right over there, in that chair."

"Nothing in that chair," Alice told him. She walked over to the chair and pressed the seat-cushion down with her hand. "See?"

"But he moved—he got up and walked over to the corner, there, when you came close. Don't you see him?" Alice gazed at the corner and shook her head.

"Can't you even hear what he's saying?" Charles was almost begging her now. "Listen, he's explaining it all. He says he's a creature of my creative force, born of my psychic energy. He is a materialization of my imaginative faculties—"

Alice went over to Charles and put her hand on his forehead. "You have a fever, darling," she said. "Come up to bed."

She led him from the room, ignoring his backward glances. By the time he reached the bedroom he was trembling. She helped him undress and pulled the covers over him.

"You'll be all right in the morning," she nodded.

"No!" Suddenly Charles sat bolt upright in bed. "Don't leave me! He's here—here in the room—listen to him giggle! He's going to kill me—"

Charles tugged at her arm. "You can't leave me alone with him—"

"I must," Alice answered. "I have to call the doctor."

Dr. Anderson came right over, but he found nothing wrong. "That's because he left when he heard you come in," Charles explained. Dr. Anderson nodded understandingly, administered a sedative, then drew Alice aside out in the hall. She told him what had happened and he gave her the name of this Dr. Richter.

In the morning she passed the name along to Charles. "But I have no intention of consulting a psychiatrist!" he snapped. "It was just temporary exhaustion. I'd been pressing too hard. Now let me get up; I've got work to do."

That afternoon, when she heard the sudden outcry from the study, Alice didn't even wait for the door to open. She put down her knitting and called Dr. Richter.

This time Charles offered no objections. He got ready to keep his appointment for late afternoon, and at Alice's suggestion he took a cab down to the psychiatrist's office. Obviously he was in no condition to drive.

After he left, Alice made another phone-call and in a short while another cab pulled up in front of the house. Van Thornton came in. Nobody saw him, because of the wooded grounds all around the house—Charles' books really brought in a great deal of money, Alice told herself.

And then she stopped reflecting, and just reacted, in Van's arms. It was he, and not she, who finally pulled away.

"What did I tell you?" he said. "I'm doing great—absolutely great!"

"The moment I saw that picture, I knew," she giggled. "It all seemed to come to me in a flash—I said to myself, that's just the way Van would look if he wore a beard. And then everything fell into place, the whole plan, all at once. Maybe I've learned something about plotting from listening to that fat slug all these years."

"Well you won't have to listen much longer, baby!" Thornton squeezed her arm. "Not the way I'm playing."

"Remember how they used to kid me down at the Troupers—all that jazz about being a Method actor? Well, now you're seeing how it pays off when you play for real." He chuckled, low and throaty—the sound was quite different, Alice noted, from the hysterical giggling of last night. Thornton was a good actor; he'd picked up everything she told him.

"It's going to work, doll," he muttered. "I know that, now. You and me, the perfect team!" Then he sobered. "So what's next on the program?"

Alice sat down and picked up her knitting. "Here's the way I thought it should go," she began ...

* * * *

And that's the way it went. Charles had an appointment with Dr. Richter every afternoon, now. In between times he just sat around in the living room. He wouldn't go near the study any more, because he was afraid. Several times he saw Dominick staring in at him through the windows, and after that he avoided work. Sometimes, at night, he'd wake up with a scream, claiming he heard giggling in the hall.

Dr. Richter had it all down in his notes. But that didn't help Charles any. "The man's an idiot!" he snapped. "You know what he had the nerve to hint to me? Oh, he didn't dare come right out and say it, but I know what he was driving at. Schizophrenia. That's his diagnosis. I'm indulging in an imaginary projection of my own character. Writing is like acting, in a way, he says. A certain role takes hold, captures the imagination—"

Alice sighed. "I thought we agreed not to talk about that any more. You're just overtired. Stretch out on the sofa and relax."

"I can't relax," Charles whined. "Could you, knowing that at any moment you might look around and see—"

"There, there, darling." She made all the right sounds and all the right gestures and he lay down. Within a few minutes he dozed off, because he was really very tired.

Charles was sound asleep when she started to scream. He blinked, sat up, jerked to his feet, his eyes bulging and rolling as he stared at Dominick's hands around her throat. By the time he was halfway across the room, Dominick was gone, and Alice shrank away from him as he approached.

"Don't!" she whimpered. "Don't touch me! You've already done enough!"

"I? What do you mean—?"

"Look!" She gestured towards her throat. The livid marks were plainly visible in the lamplight.

"Dominick," he whispered. "He tried to strangle you."

She began to sob. "There is no Dominick. You did that." He could only blink at her.

"You got up off the couch and grabbed me. And then you started to choke me, and you giggled and giggled—"

Charles wasn't giggling. He was shaking. Shaking all over. Both his chins wobbled.

Alice went to the phone. "I'm going to call Dr. Richter," she said.

"But it's eight o'clock—he's not in his office—"

"This is an emergency," she told him. "He'll see you."

"Couldn't he come out here?"

Alice shook her head and her lips formed a grim line before she spoke. "I don't want him to see me," she said.

Charles sat down on the sofa. "I don't want to go," he whispered. "I don't want to go."

But in the end, he went.

He went, and Alice waited. She didn't knit now; just sat very quietly, glancing at her wristwatch from time to time.

Now Charles would be reaching the office. Now he would be talking to Dr. Richter telling him what happened. She could see it now—like a scene from a play. And the psychiatrist calming Charles, explaining the workings of his imagination, how a character can become real when you live with it day after day, how a part of you begins to believe that you are that character. Oh, it was all very convincing and it was all a lot of nonsense. Dr. Richter must be a very stupid man, even for a psychiatrist.

Alice wondered if he was realizing his own stupidity, now. For now must be the time when it was happening. The time when Dominick would appear. He would walk down the deserted corridor and into the psychiatrist's office, opening the door very quietly as he tiptoed in. He would creep up behind Dr. Richter while Charles lay on the couch, and then his hands would swoop down and he would strangle him. Strangle him very swiftly and very expertly, using his thumbs to crush the windpipe. And Charles would watch, paralyzed with fear; too paralyzed to even scream. The screaming would come later, after Dominick left. With luck, Charles would keep right on screaming—even after they found him there with Dr. Richter's body. Even after they read Dr. Richter's notes about the schizophrenia, and came to question her, and put Charles away. They had places for people who couldn't stop screaming.

But Alice caught herself; she was thinking too far ahead, and she must concentrate on now. Now was when Thornton should be driving out. Now was when she ought to turn on the radio and wait for the ten o'clock news. Now was when she should hear Thornton's key turning in the door. He had his key, of course.

And here he was, right on schedule. Still wearing that nasty beard and those black gloves she'd had the good sense to insist on. He looked positively horrible.

Alice had the radio turned up, and she had to almost shout at him over it, but he heard her and immediately went to the desk in the corner where she'd laid out the alcohol and the cold-cream. He peeled off his gloves and started to remove the beard. Then he got rid of the makeup.

It was good to see his own face again. Alice wanted to see his face before she asked him how things had gone. Somehow it would ease the situation—make things seem a little less awkward. She and Thornton would really be talking about another person; a person who no longer existed. Just as Dr. Richter no longer existed

Alice started over to the radio, to turn it down so that she could speak, and he stood up and made a restraining gesture with his hand. Then she realized what the voice on the radio was saying.

"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin—"

And here it was, she didn't have to ask Thornton after all, because the radio was telling her. Brutal slaying ... prominent psychiatrist and his patient found strangled ...

And his patient?

Alice snapped the switch and faced Thornton. "Charles is dead, too?"

Thornton nodded. "Both of them are quite dead. Richter first, then Charles. It was very easy. Much easier than I'd imagined."

Alice felt the anger rise. "But that wasn't the plan—don't you understand? The whole point was to establish Charles as a schizophrenic. So they'd convict him of Dr. Richter's murder and put him away."

"It's better this way. Much better."

Alice was almost ready to hit him. "How can you say that? Don't you see—now they'll be looking for a killer. We haven't got a madman any more. Thornton, what if they come looking for you?"

He stared at her for a moment and he seemed quite bewildered. Then, "Thornton?" he said. "I don't know anyone named Thornton."

She wanted to scream at him then, scream that they still had their madman and there was a Method in his madness. But there was no time, because his hands came up around her throat, and he started giggling.

UNTOUCHABLE

Race was bored with India.

"Nothing moves here, you know?" he griped. "Where's all the action?"

He gave everybody a hard time on location, and finally Simon took him on. Simon had always been able to handle him, and maybe that's why he was directing the picture; a lot of people just wouldn't work on a Race Harmon production any more.

"Look, sweetheart," he said. "I know it's been a drag. First the heat, then the rains, and then everybody coming down with the trots. Miller called me last night about the budget figures—the way he screamed, I could have heard him loud and clear from Malibu without a phone."

"Let him suffer," Race muttered, then took a gulp of his drink. "I should bleed for him, shacked up in that airconditioned office with the blonde throw-rug and a chick to match? Why doesn't he get off his butt and fly over here? We'll see how he likes being cooped up with a bunch of dumb niggers—"

"Please!" Simon frowned. "That's one of the things I wanted to warn you about. They're not niggers. Why, some of those technical people we hired out of the studios down in Bombay could run rings around any crew in Hollywood. The trouble is, they hear you talking on the set and they resent your attitude. Just remember, you're not home now."

"You can say that again! Where I come from, we call a spade a spade, whether he wears shoes or not. And that's the way it's gonna be, so kindly lay off the jive, huh?"

Race poured himself another drink.

"Another thing," Simon said. "Aren't you hitting the sauce a little hard lately?"

"Got to get my kicks somewhere, Pops. This is a nothing unit here, you know? When we came out, I thought I had it made with Gladys, only she's got eyes for that Method swish, that Parker. So I gave a little play to this script-girl of yours, Edna what's-her-name—"

"Messy." Simon sighed. "You didn't have to break into her trailer."

"All right, she made a federal case out of it." Race emptied his glass and thumped it down. "What am I supposed to do for some action? I'm hurting bad."

"Control yourself. We'll wrap up our location shots and be out of here in two weeks."

"Two weeks? Look, Dad, this is Race Harmon you're talking to, not Ralph Richardson. I may have to make the scene with some of that dark meat. Noticed all these chicks in the sarongs, or saris, whatever you call 'em, parading down by the river. Why I spotted one yesterday, she couldn't be a day over fifteen, but she had a pair of—"

"Race, that's murder!" Simon shook his head. "I saw you talking to that girl, and so did everyone else. You're lucky you left it at that—one false move and there'd have been a riot. I only hope they didn't hear about it up at the palace."

"So what?"

"Can't you understand? These people are not ignorant savages. You've met the Nizam; he's an intelligent man. If you want me to lay it on the line, I think he's a damned sight more civilized than you are."

"He's a nigger."

"Well, you'd better not make any such statements tonight," Simon said. "Don't forget, we're invited to the palace for dinner."

"I'll eat here."

"You'll come to the palace." Simon's voice was firm. "It's important, Race. We're guests here in the Nizam's territory. We've rented his land, hired his people. We can't afford to offend him. I want you to show up sober and on your best behavior. Is that clear?"

"I dig you, Pops." Race waved his glass. "Okle-dokle, it's a take. Who knows? Maybe he'll give us a little of that old Southern hospitality—"

* * * *

The Nizam's hospitality was lavish and unmistakable. There were twenty at table, including Race, Simon, and the principals of the cast. The only representative of the Nizam's household was a bearded Sikh whom he introduced as his major-domo.

"Actually, Rass Singh commanded the palace guard," the Nizam explained. "But since I am no longer the official ruler of this territory, he too has been deposed. We have bowed to progress, or at least, to governmental decree."

"They took away your title, huh?" Race paused and emptied his champagne-glass for the fourth time since starting dinner. "I suppose they got to your harem, too."

"Harem? But I am not a Moslem, my dear fellow."

The Nizam was plump, middle-aged, bespectacled, and he wore a conservative gray tweed suit. But his complexion was unmistakably swarthy, and people with unmistakably swarthy complexions didn't go around calling Race Harmon "my dear fellow." Even if they did serve damned good champagne.

"Come off it!" he said, holding out his glass for a refill. "Everybody knows you rajahs have a ball. I'll bet the joint is full of—whaddya call 'em?—concubines. Yeah, concubines. That's the bit."

"Sorry," the Nizam answered. "I'm afraid I can't oblige you, Mr. Harmon."

"Never mind the double-talk." Race told him. "Bring on the dancing-girls!"

"Devi-dasi? they are confined to their temples."

"So take me to your temple!" Race laughed, then broke off as he realized none of the others were joining in.

The Nizam stared at an imaginary spot on the table-linen before him. "Perhaps it would be wise, Mr. Harmon, if I explained the customs of my country. Nonbelievers are not welcomed in our places of worship. There is a certain—prejudice, shall we say? You see, there is still ignorance amongst my people. They even resent the notion of a stranger approaching a pariah, such as the water-carriers in the village. It would be most embarrassing if an outsider were to exhibit any—any—"

"So you heard about that, eh?" Race waved his glass. "I get the message. Hands off, is that it? Yankee, go home!"

"Please, Mr. Harmon—"

"Never mind. You heard about old Race, huh? That's why you locked up the harem."

"I assure you, I have only one wife. At the moment she happens to be in purdah. She is untouchable."

"Untouchable?" Race grinned. "Sure they're all untouchable, aren't they? Well let me tell you something. Nobody upstages me. And if I want a little poontang, I'm gonna get it, understand?"

"Poontang?"

"What's the matter, don't you niggers understand plain English?" Race stood up, ignoring Simon's frantic gestures. "Ah, forget it. Where's the head?"

The Nizam glanced at his major-domo. Race watched them, fuzzily alert for any indication of anger. That's what he was waiting for; just let the nigger blow his top and he'd really let him have it.

But there was no anger, merely a quiet exchange of glances and a nod. Then the bearded Sikh rose and gestured politely, and Race followed him out of the room and down a long, dim corridor.

For a moment there was silence in the dining-hall behind; then everybody started talking at the same time.

Covering up, Race thought. The civilized bit. Well, if they wanted to be polite to niggers, that was their business. He knew what he wanted to do. What had that snotty spade said about his wife? She was in purdah, whatever the hell that was. And damned lucky, too, because right now, if he could find her

"Here we are, sir." The bearded man bowed and stepped aside. Race entered a modern bathroom.

Three minutes later he stood before the mirror, shaking the cold water out of his eyes and toweling off his face. He'd sobered somewhat, just enough to feel a sneaking distaste about rejoining the others in the banquet hall. Maybe the best idea was to just cut out of here.

He stepped into the deserted hall, moving slowly past a row of closed doors. That is, they had all been closed when he'd followed the major-domo. Now one of them was slightly ajar. As he passed he was aware of a heavy, musky scent drifting into the corridor.

Race halted and peered into a darkened room. Moonlight filtered from barred windows. Beneath the windows was a couch. On the couch was a girl. Her sole garment was a sari and she wore no ornaments, but such artifices were unnecessary. She was young and lovely, and when she rose in wide-eyed wonder the sari's transparency disclosed an undulating outline in the moonlight.

"Hot damn!" Race muttered, as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Sir—"

The girl moved back towards the couch.

"Sir—"

Race grinned and reached for her.

"Please, sir—it is not permitted. I am untouchable—"

Her knees pressed against the couch and she fell. Race held her there, his hands ripping the soft silk, feeling the incredible warmth of the body beneath. For a moment she writhed in resistance, until his lips found the fiery crater of her mouth, its tongue erupting like molten lava.

"Untouchable, huh, baby?" Race whispered. "Well, we'll see about that—"

* * * *

He left her sobbing, without a word. What the hell was there to say? He knew she wouldn't talk, and neither would he. If anybody back at the banquet hall asked where he'd been so long, he'd tell them he got sick, heaved his cookies. Nobody would ask any questions.

But sometime, just before they pulled out of here for good, he'd find a way of letting the Nizam know what happened. That uppity nigger thought he was so damned smart, handing out a line of jazz about keeping his hands off all the chicks. It would be a real gasser to see his face when he found out somebody had scored with his wife.

Well, he'd played it cute, but Race had the last laugh. It was all he could do to keep from busting out right now when he walked back into the banquet scene.

He got a real break because nobody even seemed to notice when he came in. They were all standing around some guy in a white suit at the head of the table.

Then the Nizam looked up and saw him.

"Feeling better, Mr. Harmon?" he asked.

Race nodded, trying to hold back the grin.

"That is good. But if you felt ill, you could consult with Dr. Ghopura, here."

Race blinked. "You called a doctor for me?"

"No—it just so happened that he arrived a few moments ago. I asked him to fly in from Bombay."

"It is useless, of course," the little doctor said. "If what you told me is true, the patient will surely die. All I can hope to do is ease the suffering in the terminal phase. I only pray you have kept her isolated."

"Wait a minute!" Race's throat was dry. "Your wife—she's sick—?"

"My wife is in purdah, Mr. Harmon, in Bombay. We are speaking about a poor untouchable from the village whom I discovered the other day. I brought her here immediately to avoid panic and the spread of contagion, for the disease is invariably fatal."

"What disease?"

"Cholera."

The Nizam shrugged and turned away. "Doctor, if you will come with me, please? Her room is right down the hall—"

Everything started to whirl. Just before he fell, Race thought he saw the Nizam exchange a smile with his major-domo, but he could not be sure. All he was sure of was the pain flooding his head and throat. It was a hot pain—hot and throbbing, like the mouth and tongue of the untouchable.

THE END

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Table of Contents

THE OLD COLLEGE TRY

BLACK BARGAIN

DAYBROKE

THE PAST MASTER

A GOOD

FOUNDING

FANGS OF VENGEANCE

DEATH IS AN ELEPHANT

PHILTRE TIP

METHOD FOR MURDER

UNTOUCHABLE

Table of Contents

THE OLD COLLEGE TRY

BLACK BARGAIN

DAYBROKE

THE PAST MASTER

A GOOD

FOUNDING

FANGS OF VENGEANCE

DEATH IS AN ELEPHANT

PHILTRE TIP

METHOD FOR MURDER

UNTOUCHABLE