“Good,” said the inspector.
“Huh,” said the captain in disgust.
Doughface watched Beardsley’s eyes follow them to the door. Inside, the tramp was shaking like jelly. He saw Beardsley get up and approach the door and he scurried back into the kitchen and out into the alley.
“Them guys,” said Doughface as he went over the back fence, “is just a bunch of stuffed shirts after all. They’re y’pals until y’get in trouble—Pellman and all the rest of ’em!”
Chapter Seven
SHERIFF Joe Bankhead raced, for all his bulk, into the office of Doctor Pellman. His mustaches were waving in the wind he made and so did the paper in his hand.
“doc! I just got . . .” he puffed for a moment. “I just got a long-distance telephone call from the chief of police of new york city!”
“Well,” said Pellman, leaning back in his swivel chair. “So you’re gettin’ famous, eh, Joe?”
“No. Listen. Y’know that Doughface that left here three months ago?”
“I ought to,” smiled Pellman.
“Now look, Doc, you got to go to New York or somethin’. It’s awful.”
“New York. Why? Miss Finch and I were thinking of getting married tomorrow—or hadn’t you heard by some strange coincidence?”
“Yeah, sure. But listen, Doc, that Doughface has gone crazy. He killed some cops and a truck driver and . . .”
“Whoa,” said Pellman. “Take it easy.”
“Well,” said Joe, taking a long breath, “the Chief of Police of New York told me that Doughface Jack got loose and the first thing he done was murder a desk sergeant. And then a flock of cops trailed him and tried to take him and he killed all of them. And then a detective tried to pot-shoot him from a window but Doughface seen the gun and looked up and the detective fell out the window, stone dead. And then Doughface walked into a restaurant—the Waldorf, I think it was—and when they wouldn’t serve him without some clothes on—I dunno if he’s goin’ naked or not—why, the headwaiter fell down dead and so did another guy behind him. And then this Doughface walked out and the hotel dick drew his gun and Doughface killed him. The whole town’s on its ear, Doc. Nobody knows what to do. Doughface Jack is walkin’ around and killin’ people just by lookin’ at them and the place is in an uproar! The chief remembered the case and he called me to see if I could make you grab a plane or train and get the hell to New York and stop this Doughface. But . . . but . . . Gosh, I never thought of that!”
“What?” said Pellman.
“Why, he’d probably kill you too!”
Pellman got up and lighted a cigarette. Musingly he looked into the sunlit street. “Poor fellow,” he said feelingly.
“Poor feller, be damned!” said Joe. “He’s killin’ guys right and left. First thing you know, he’ll get the idea of robbin’ banks and then maybe he’ll decide to run the country. And nobody can stand up to him. The governor ordered out the National Guard with machine guns but they won’t arrive until tonight!”
“what?”
“The governor . . .”
“I heard you! Miss Finch!”
She came swiftly.
“Pack a grip. Anything, you understand! Call the Cincinnati airport and tell them to send a ship, any ship, over here to land in that pasture south of town. I’ve got to get to New York. They’re going to kill Doughface.”
“But,” said the sheriff, “they’ll have to kill him! He’s . . .”
“I did that to him. I’m responsible. Quick, Miss Finch.”
Chapter Eight
DOUGHFACE tried to obliterate himself by merging with the crowd which poured into the subway at five. He hid his face and did the best he could to keep from being recognized, but it wasn’t any use.
A man was coming up the steps with a newspaper in his hand and the front page of that tabloid was given up wholly to Doughface Jack’s visage. The man glanced up as he bumped into somebody and stared straight into the tramp’s face.
The man turned white and a strangled shout left him, “IT'S THE MAN WITH THE EYE!”
A second later the only person on the subway steps was Doughface Jack. He sighed deeply and pushed his hat back from his round, pasty face. He picked up the paper which had betrayed him and read the sad story.
EVIL EYE STILL LOOSE
TRAMP TERRIFIES CITY
Doughface Jack, until lately renowned as the panacea for all human ills, is still at large after three devastating days.
One murder and countless cases of assault have already been committed and police fear more.
Washington expressed the grave concern that the man might acquire delusions of power and seek to dictate governmental policies. . . .
Doughface threw the paper down in disgust. “Geez, them guys is dumb!”
He stepped back to the street, abandoning any idea of hiding in the subway. But an astonishing thing had occurred.
Here he was at Broadway and Forty-second Street and not a single human being was in sight. He saw an office window slam but that was all.
Miserably he plodded along. This was very different from his late affluence. Not one man could he talk with. Everybody knew his face by this time. Nobody would run the risk of being sent to the hospital. Even auto traffic would careen out of his way. That truck driver that had almost run him down had plowed through the Macy’s display window when Doughface had happened to glare.
If those cops would only leave him alone!
The one thing he did not feel bad about was the detective that had tried to pot-shoot him. Seeing that gun had almost killed Doughface with fright, but he had remembered to glare just in time. Of course the detective had fallen, but that was his hard luck.
Two or three times he had paused before jewelry store windows and now he paused again. He heard a door slam in the back of the shop and looked curiously inside. The dealer in diamonds had been putting away his trays and they still lay upon the counter. Doughface picked up a few and then let them trickle back. Of what use were diamonds? He couldn’t find anybody to spend them on and no dame would dare face him long enough to be offered one.
He plodded out of the store and back to the street. His appearance caused two men who had ventured forth to dart inside a building. Doughface looked glumly toward the spot.
No, they didn’t want to end up in the hospital. The newspapers said that all patients would recover but that one glance from Doughface would land a man in a hospital bed for two weeks.
He turned up deserted Seventh Avenue. He was very thirsty and he eyed the signs as he passed. Far behind him traffic was cautiously beginning to move once more.
Doughface stepped into a beer parlor and saw with relief that nobody there had heard the street commotion. He was almost to Fifty-fifth Street and maybe that accounted for it. The bartender came up with a professional smile. “What’ll ya have, buddy?”
Doughface felt like a dog feels when he wags his tail. “Gimme a beer,” said Doughface.
The bartender reached for a glass and the tap. But just then a man in a booth stood halfway up, a newspaper gripped in his fist, his eyes round as dinner plates as he stared at Doughface.
“It’s him!” screeched the traitor. “It’s him! The man with the Evil Eye!”
Chairs crashed and glasses splintered and feet thundered. And then everybody was gone except Doughface Jack and the man who had called him by name. The traitor lay in the sawdust, unconscious and pale.
“It’s him!” screeched the traitor. “It’s him!
The man with the Evil Eye!”
Doughface quietly tasted his beer but his melancholy was so deep that he could not enjoy it. He put a dime on the counter and wandered back to the walk. Again the news had spread and cars were stalled and abandoned in the street. Nothing in sight moved, though an El roared like surf in the far distance.
“Geez,” sighed Doughface, “I ain’t got a friend in the world. What wouldn’ I give to be in a jungle cookin’ up some rotten meat in a tin
can!”
Shoulders hunched, he plodded northward and into Central Park.
The lights were just coming on and the day was sadly faded and it is this period when it is the most difficult to see, having neither sun nor complete night. Pedestrians had lost sight of Doughface Jack. They had not expected him to walk this deeply into the park.
And it was with relief that he found himself trudging with a crowd again, his hat pulled down over his face and his eyes upon the ground. There was something very soothing in this mingling with humanity once more as it is very hard to be a pariah. Doughface was enjoying this association to the limit. He grinned a little to himself as he went and bit by bit he had begun to regain some of his spirit. He straightened up gradually and was finally walking fully erect.
Darker and darker it became and, by contrast, the more penetration did the park lights possess. Higher and higher rose the brim of his hat from his face.
He could not stand prosperity.
He was swaggering along at last and a man with half an eye could have recognized him—and so it was not so strange that a man with two eyes did.
He was walking around a fountain and the light was very bright. There were many people here, out for an evening stroll. A beggar woman was selling pencils on a bench, sightless eyes cast down behind her black glasses. She was trying to look humble.
Doughface passed her without a glance the first time and marched straight into the glare of the park lights.
A man and woman were coming toward him in the crowd and the man was paying more attention to the woman than he was to his right-of-way. He bumped into Doughface and glanced up with a scowl.
The pasty complexion could not be missed; the round face and the peculiar glow in the eyes which, in this light were almost as luminous as a cat’s.
The man staggered as the recognition struck home. He opened his mouth to yell and strove to pull the woman away. Doughface knew what was coming. He tried to shout a warning himself and beat that warning scream. But all he did was glare.
“IT'S HIM! IT'S THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE!”
The man said no more. He collapsed on the gravel. There was a surge of the crowd and Doughface Jack was left in a swiftly widening circle. The woman was kneeling by the man, striving to pull him to his feet.
Doughface felt bad about it to see her braving death to get her man to safety. She was a worn looking woman. . . .
But suddenly she was stronger and just as suddenly her man got dizzily to his knees and, with her help, limped hurriedly away with fearful backward glances.
“Geez,” said Doughface, standing all alone. “It’s happened again. Damn the luck anyhow!”
There was no use going deeper into the park. The police might be around and he had better change his location with speed.
The beggar woman had been knocked from the bench in the rush. Her pencils were scattered in the gravel and a few dimes and nickels were lost beyond her blindness.
And Doughface was running. The old beggar was just getting up, her hands snatching at the pencils like claws. Doughface was not looking for anyone to be down on their knees. He kicked her solidly and fell over her. The jolt made lightning flash behind his eyes, stunning him for an instant.
She had screamed with pain and now she sat rocking back and forth in agony, clutching at her side. One hand went out to support her and she touched Doughface Jack’s shoe.
She knew he was still there. She caught her breath sharply and then, for all his years in the jungles, Doughface Jack felt the impact of real cursing which carried hate behind it with every foul gasp.
She called him everything a sergeant could think of; she tore his ancestry apart, blasted his possible progeny, accused him of all the diseases known, attacked his personal habits and withered him with sheer obscenity. And all in a shrill, awful whine which was blasphemy itself.
Doughface Jack was stunned. He did not know what he was doing. He heard the words, saw the source and anger flashed like powder burning in his eyes.
And she crumpled. She sank down like an empty sack dropped in the dirt. One hand was outstretched, fingers barely touching a pencil and the other still clutched her side. Her breathing was slow and laborious and loud; it took no second glance to see that in an instant she would be dead.
Doughface Jack sat up straighter. His brain was clearing and he understood what he had done. He looked at her.
The coat was colorless, dirty and torn. Half a neckpiece was clumsily sewed to it with burlap thread. One stocking was twisted and lumpy about her leg and the other was a man’s. Her shoes were all the way through and her dirty soles were bare. The hat was a pitiful attempt at jocularity with its bumptious feather still waving. Her skin was so tight across her bones that it seemed no skin at all but parchment.
Her face was little more than a skull with cheekbones like brassy doorknobs. Her nose was swollen with drink. And her glasses had fallen away to disclose those awful sightless eyes now staring inwardly at the gathering blackness of death. They were no more than holes in her face, those eyes, with great sooty shadows spreading out from them across the seamed flesh.
She was horrible.
But Doughface Jack saw the pencils and he saw the torn sign, “I am Blind.” Doughface Jack knew what it was to be cold and hungry and alone.
He hitched himself forward to her across the gravel. He glanced around to see if any police were coming. He tightened as he thought he caught a siren’s far-off moan.
He came closer and touched her shoulder. “Please,” he whimpered, misty-eyed. “Please, I didn’t mean it. I got knocked out too and I didn’t know what was the matter. Gee, I wouldn’t of killed you if I’d knowed. You got to believe that! I wouldn’t ’a’ hurt you.”
He shook her roughly. “Look, don’t kick off. Don’t make me know I killed you. Gee, I been on my uppers myself, I know . . .” He sank back. “God, I wish I was dead. Nobody can look at me, nobody can be near me. . . .”
But she had stirred. She was struggling to rise a little, pain still gnawing at her skeleton face.
Doughface sat up too. With a surge of hope he leaned toward her. “Gee,” he cried excitedly, “maybe you ain’t gonna die! Gosh! Look, it’s all right. If y’wanna, I’ll go getcha a hamburger. I’ll getcha a steak and . . . an . . . an . . .”
The impacts of the shocks hitting her were enough to make her shiver like a machine-gunned soldier. But she straightened more and more. She left off propping herself up.
“That’s swell!” cried Doughface gleefully. “Look, I’ll getcha anything you want. I can have anything I want. All I gotta do . . . Come on, thata girl!”
He jumped up and helped her to her feet and then he stooped to get her glasses and pencils. He handed them to her and she looked at them wonderingly.
“For God’s sake,” cried Doughface with great joy. “You can see!”
“Yes,” she said dazedly. “I . . . I can see!”
Stupidly she gazed all around her. “Why . . . why, it’s night and I thought it was still day.”
“C’mon, I’ll see you home,” said Doughface, jumping like a puppy at the thought of being able to talk to somebody, anybody.
“And that . . . that’s the fountain I’ve been hearing for years,” she said wonderingly.
“Y’been blind that long?” said Doughface.
“Since I was twenty-three. I’m sixty-one now.” She laughed a little shakily. “Something must be terribly wrong—or right. Why is it that I can see?”
“It’s me,” said Doughface. “I used to do that all the time before . . . before a dumb cop got mad and chased me on his horse. And for days and days I been walkin’ around and every time . . .”
“Oh,” she said in sudden understanding. “I heard somebody say something about you. They said I ought to go see you but I thought it was just another one of those bunko schemes. They’re all bunko schemes.”
“I ain’t,” defended Doughface stoutly.
She glanced around he
r again and saw that a popcorn vendor had deserted his post. There was candy there and popcorn and she was starved. Swiftly she moved toward the cart and into the bright light of the park lamps beside the splashing fountain. With eager hands she snatched up the bags and then, with another sly glance about her, she emptied the till into her pocket.
“Hey,” said Doughface, catching up with her. “Nix on that put-together, sister. Stealin’ ain’t goin’ to go. I’d get blamed for it.”
“And why not?” she said defiantly, whirling on him.
He caught his breath and stopped dead.
Suspiciously she stared at him. “Well, what’s the matter now? I know I ain’t no lily to look at.”
“No-N-No!” stuttered Doughface protestingly. “No—geez—it ain’t that. It’s . . .”
She had changed. How radically she had changed!
Her eyes were black and fiery like those of a Spanish dancer. Her face was a perfect oval and the skin was fresh and delicate of color. Her teeth were white and flashing and her hair was glossy and ebon. Her hands were smooth and each nail upon them was perfect.
She followed his gaze to her hands and looked at them herself. She gave a start. “Why . . . why, I thought they were . . . rough!”
Doughface Jack didn’t know just why but he couldn’t swallow. He could feel the blood throbbing in his veins and he was lightheaded and wanted to shout but there was still something worshipful about the way he felt.
She was the loveliest thing he had ever seen anywhere. She was a wondrous, vibrant girl as soft and pliant as silk and yet there was steel in her too. He was awed.
She took a quick step to the fountain and looked down at her reflection. She glanced at Doughface Jack.
And her voice was hushed.
“You did this to me. I heard but . . . but I didn’t believe. And now, now I’m as I was the day the fire made me blind!”
“Gee,” whispered Doughface, “you’re swell!”
In a sudden ferocity of distaste she looked at her rags of clothes. She ripped at the coat with offended hands and cast it from her.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 61