Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  Crowley wasn't provoked. The strong can afford to laugh at the malcontented weak. "That's one of the things you never know," he said easily. "You sure you want out? Something the Doc said the other day had a lotta fact in it. The fewer people know about this secret of mine, the better off I'll be and the better off I am, the better off the whole country is going to be and I gotta think about that. I got responsibilities."

  "A combination of Engine Charley and Louis XIV, eh?" Ross muttered, running his beefy hand back over his crew cut. It was a relief to get out of his room and talk with the others, but he didn't want Crowley to see that.

  "What's that?" the other was impatient of conversation that went above his head.

  Dr. Braun explained gently. "One said, I am the State, and the other, anything that's good for my corporation is good for the United States—or something quite similar."

  Crowley sipped at his coffee royal. "Well, anyway, Pat, the day you're ready to leave that cell, you'd better start worrying cause that'll mean I don't need you any more."

  Ross growled, "You didn't answer my question. Robbed any banks lately, great man?"

  The other eyed him coldly. "Take it easy, Buster. Maybe in the early stages of the Common Man Movement we hafta take some strong-arm measures, but that stage's about finished."

  Patricia O'Gara was interested in spite of herself. She said. "You mean you already have all the money you need?"

  He was expansive. Obviously there was nothing to lose with these three and he liked a sounding board. In spite of his alleged contempt for eggheads there was an element in Crowley which wished to impress them, to grant him equal status in their own estimations.

  "There's a devil of a lot to know about big finance. You need a starter, but once you get it, the stuff just rolls in automatic." He grinned suddenly, almost boyishly. "Especially when you got a certain little advantage, like me."

  Braun said, interestedly, "How do you put your advantage to work?"

  "Well, now, I gotta admit we aren't quite out of the woods. We need more capital to work with, but after tonight we'll have it. Remember that Brinks job up in New England a long time ago? Well, we got something lined up even bigger. I work with Larry and his boys to pull it. Then there's another thing cooking that Whitely's been keeping tabs on. It looks like IBM is going to split its stock, three for one. I gotta attend their next secret executive meeting and find out. If they do, we buy in just before, see? We buy on margin, buy options, all that sort of jazz. Whitely knows all about it. Then we got another big deal in Washington. Looks like the government might devaluate the dollar. Whitely explained it to me, kind of. Anyway, I got to sit in on a conference the President's gonna have. If they really decide to devalue, then Whitely and me, we go ahead and put every cent we got into Swiss gold. Then the day after devaluation, we switch it all back into dollars again. Double our money. Oh, we got all sorts of angles, Doc."

  "By Caesar," Braun ejaculated. "You seem to have."

  ***

  Patricia had poured herself some coffee and was sipping it, black, even as she stared at him. "But, Don, what do you need all this money for? You already have more than plenty. Why not call it all off. Get out from under."

  Ross grunted, "Too late, Pat. Can't you see? He's got the power urge already."

  Crowley ignored him and turned to her, pouring more coffee and cognac for himself. "I'm not running up all this dough just for me. You think you're the only one's got ideals, like? Let me tell you, I might just be a country boy but I got ambitions to put some things right in this world."

  "Such as...." Patricia prodded, bitterness in her voice.

  "Aw, we went through all that the other day. The thing is, now it's really under way. If you was seeing the newspapers these days, you'd know about the Common Man Party."

  "Oh, oh," Ross muttered unhappily.

  "It's just getting under way," Crowley said modestly, "but we're hiring two of the top Madison Avenue outfits to handle publicity and we're recruiting some of the best practical politicians in the field."

  "Practical politicians!" Ross snorted. "Types like Huey Long, McCarthy, Pendergast, I suppose."

  The other misunderstood him. "Yeah, and even better. We're going in big for TV time, full-page ads in the newspapers and magazines. That sort of thing. The average man's getting tired of the same old talk from the Republicans and Democrats. Paul Teeter thinks we might have a chance in the next election, given enough dough to plow into it."

  Ross leaned back disdainfully. "What a combination. Whitely, the broker who has been barred from activity on Wall Street; Teeter, the crooked politician, but with connections from top to bottom; and Larry, whatever his name is...."

  "Morazzoni," Crowley supplied. "You know where I first ran into his name? In one of them true crime magazines. He's a big operator."

  "I'll bet he is," the redhead growled. "Probably with good Mafia connections. I'm surprised you haven't attempted to take over that outfit."

  Crowley laughed abruptly. "We're working on that, pal. Just take it easy and all these things will work their way out. But meanwhile I didn't bring you jokers here to make snide remarks. I got work for you. I'm fresh out of that serum and you three are going to brew me up another batch."

  They looked at him, Dr. Braun, Ross Wooley, Patricia O'Gara, their faces registering stubbornness, revolt and dismay.

  He shook his head. "Larry and some of his boys have experience. I gotta admit, I wouldn't even want to watch."

  "I'm for standing firm," Braun said stiffly. "There are but three of us. The most they can do is kill us. But if this man's insanity is released on the world...."

  Crowley was shaking his head in deprecation. "Like when you say the worst we can do is kill you. Man, haven't you heard about the Nazis and commies and all? You oughta read some of the men's adventure magazines. How do you think Joe Stalin got all them early Bolsheviks to confess? You think they weren't tough buzzards? Why make us go to all the trouble, when you'd just cave in eventually anyway? Save yourself the grief."

  Patricia said impatiently, "He's right, I'm afraid. I would collapse rather quickly under physical coercion. You might last a bit longer, Ross possibly longer still. But in the end we would concede."

  Crowley said, as though in amazement, "You know, eggheads aren't as stupid as some would reckon. O.K., folks, I got a laboratory all fixed up with your things. Let's go. Ah, Ross, old pal, I'm carrying heat, as Larry would say, so let's don't have any trouble, eh?"

  He had been as good as his word in regards to the laboratory. It was obviously one of the rooms used by the staff when the place had been a sanitarium. Now, each of the three had all the equipment and supplies they required.

  Crowley took a seat at the far end of the room, facing them. There had been a guard outside the door when they entered and a call would bring him in seconds. Even so, Crowley sat in such wise that his right hand was ready to plunge inside his coat to the gun that evidently was holstered there. He said, "O.K., folks, let's get about it."

  ***

  It took them half an hour or so to sort out those materials each needed in his own contribution to the end product.

  Their captor looked at his watch impatiently. "Let's get a move on, here. I thought this was going to take a few minutes."

  Patricia said testily, "What's the hurry, Don?"

  He grinned at her. "Tonight's the big night. This evening, just before closing, I walk into.... Well, you don't have to know the name. Like I said, it'll make the Brinks job look like peanuts. They lock up the place and leave, see? O.K., about two o'clock in the morning, when the city's dead, Larry and the boys drive up into an alley, behind. I go around, one by one, and sock the four guards on the back of the head. Then I open up for Larry and they take their time and clear the place out. From then on, we got all the dough we need to start pyramiding it up on the Stock Exchange and like that."

  Patricia had drawn on rubber gloves, pulled a lab apron around her. She began reaching fo
r test tubes, measuring devices. She murmured softly, "What keeps you from telling yourself you're nothing but a crook, Don? When we first met you—it seems a terribly long time ago, back there in Far Cry—you didn't seem to be such a bad egg."

  "We didn't know, then, he was a cracked egg," Ross muttered. He looked to where Crowley slouched, his eyes narrow as though considering his chances of rushing the other. Crowley grinned and shook his head. "Don't try it, Buster."

  Crowley looked at Patricia. "You don't get it, sister. It's like somebody or other said. The ends, uh, justify the means. That means...."

  "I know what it means," Patricia said impatiently.

  Dr. Braun, who rather hopelessly was also beginning to work at the equipment their captor had provided, said reasonably, "Don, the greater number of the thinkers of the world have rejected that maxim. If you will, umah, analyze it, you will find that the end and the means are one."

  "Yeah, yeah, a lot of complicated egghead gas. What I'm saying, Pat, is that what I'm eventually heading for is good for everybody. At least it's good for all real hundred per cent Americans. Everybody's going to go to college and guaranteed to come out with what you three got, a doctor's degree. Everybody's going to get a guaranteed annual wage, like, whether or not they can do any work. It's not a guy's fault if he gets sick or unemployed or something. Everybody...."

  "Shades of all the social-reformers who ever lived," Ross muttered.

  "By Caesar," Braun said in despair, "I have an idea you'll get the vote of every halfwit in the country."

  Crowley came to his feet. "I don't like that kind of talk, Doc. Maybe I'm just a country boy, but I know what the common man wants and what I'm going to do is give it to him."

  Patricia looked up from her work long enough to frown at him. "What special are you going to get out of this, Don?"

  That took him back for a moment and he scowled at her.

  "Come, come," she said. "You've already admitted to we three just what you think and are going to do. Now, how do you picture yourself, after all this has been accomplished?"

  His face suddenly broke into its grin, a somewhat sly element in it now. "You know, when I get this all worked out, the folks are going to be pretty thankful."

  "I'll bet," Ross muttered. He, too, was working at his element of compounding the serum.

  "Yeah, they will, Buster," Crowley said truculently. "And they're going to want to show it. You ever seen one of those movies like 'Ben Hur' back in Roman days? Can you imagine everybody in the whole country thinking you were the best guy ever lived? You know, like an Emperor."

  "Like Caligula," Dr. Braun said softly.

  "I don't know any of their names, but they really had it made. Snap your fingers and there's a big banquet with the best floor show in the world. Snap your fingers and here comes the sexiest dames in Hollywood. Snap your fingers and some big entertainment like a chariot race, or something. Once I put this over, the Common Man Party, that's the way people are going to feel about me and want to treat me."

  "And if they don't, you'll make them?" Ross said sarcastically.

  "You're too smart for your own britches, egghead," Crowley snarled. He looked at his watch. "Let's get this rolling. I got to get on down to the city and start this caper going."

  Ross handed a test tube to Dr. Braun and began stripping the gloves from his hands. "That's my contribution," he said.

  Patricia had already delivered hers. Dr. Braun combined them, then heated the compound, adding a distillate of his own. He said, "When this cools...."

  Crowley crossed the room to the door and said something to the guard there. He returned in a moment with an anthropoid ape in a cage. He sat it on the table and looked at them.

  "O.K.," he said to Braun, his voice dangerous. "Let's see you inject the monk with this new batch of serum."

  Braun raised his eyebrows.

  The other watched him narrowly, saying nothing further.

  Dr. Braun shrugged, located a hypodermic needle and prepared it. In a matter of moments, the animal was injected.

  Ross Wooley said sourly, "Don't you trust your fellow man, Don?"

  "No, I don't, and stop calling me Don. It's Dan. Daniel Crowley."

  The three of them looked at him in bewilderment.

  The ape was beginning to shimmer as though he was being seen through a window wet with driving rain.

  "Don's my goody-goody brother. Used to live in the same house with me, but ever since we were kids and I got picked up on a juvenile delinquent rap for swiping a car, he's been snotty. Anyway, now he's moved out to Frisco."

  Patricia blurted, "But ... but you let us believe you were Donald...."

  He brushed it off with a flick of his hand. "You said you had some deal where I could make me some money. O.K., I was between jobs."

  The ape was invisible now. Crowley peered in at him. "Seems to work, all right."

  Dr. Braun sighed. "I am not a Borgia, Daniel Crowley."

  "You're not a what?"

  "Never mind. I wouldn't poison even you, if that is what you feared."

  Daniel Crowley took up the new container of serum and put a lid on it. He said, "I got to get going. The guy out in front will get you back to your rooms. No tricks with him, Buster"—he was talking directly to Ross—"he's already beat a couple of homicide raps."

  ***

  Back in their cell-rooms, they found that there was but one guard. Evidently, the all-out robbery attempt to be held this night involved practically all of Larry Morazzoni's forces. Beyond that, this guard did not seem particularly interested in keeping them from talking back and forth to each other through the peepholes that centered their doors.

  After a couple of hours during which time they largely held silence, immersed in their own thoughts, Dr. Braun called out, "Patricia, Ross, I should tender my apologies. It was my less than brilliant idea to find the average man and use him as a guinea pig."

  "No apology necessary," Patricia said impatiently. "We all went into it with open eyes."

  "But you were correct, Pat," the doctor said unhappily. "Our common man turned out to be a Frankenstein monster."

  Ross growled, "That's the trouble. It turned out he wasn't our common man but his brother, whose petty criminal record evidently goes back to juvenile days."

  "Even that doesn't matter," Patricia said testily. "I've about come to the conclusion that it wouldn't have made any difference who we'd put in Don's ... I mean Daniel Crowley's position. Man is too near the animal, as yet at least, to be trusted with such power. Any man."

  "Why, Pat," Dr. Braun said doggedly, "I don't quite believe you correct. For instance, do you feel the same about me? Would I have reacted like our friend Dan?" He chuckled in deprecation.

  "That's my point," she said. "I think you would ... ultimately. Once again look at the Caesars, they held godlike power."

  "You're thinking of such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Commodus...."

  "I'm also thinking of such as Claudius, the scholar who was practically forced to take the Imperial mantle. And Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher who although bound up in learning himself allowed his family free rein in their vices and finally turned the Empire over to his son Commodus, one of the most vicious men of all time. But take Caligula and Nero if you will. Both of them stepped into power comparatively clean and with the best of prospects. Well approved, well loved. What happened to them when given power without restraint?"

  Ross grumbled, "I admit I missed the boat, but not for the reasons Pat presents. In a sane society, our serum would be a valuable contribution. But in a dog eat dog world, where it's each man for himself, then it becomes a criminal tool."

  Patricia said sarcastically, "And can you point out a sane society?"

  Ross grunted. "No," he said. After a moment he added, "You know, in a way Crowley was right. We three eggheads didn't do so well up against what he called his common sense. I tried to slug him, with negative results. Dr. Braun, you tried sweet reason on him. Forgive
me if I laugh. Pat, you tried your womanly wiles, but he saw through that, too."

  "The chickens have not all come home to roost," Patricia said mysteriously. "What time is it?"

  Ross told her.

  She called to the guard, "See here, you."

  "Shut up. You ain't supposed to be talking at all. Go to sleep."

  "I want to speak to Mr. Morazzoni. It's very important and you are going to be dreadfully sorry if you don't bring him."

  "Larry can't be bothered. He's getting ready to go on down to the city."

  "I know what he's doing, but if he doesn't listen to me, he's going to be very unhappy and probably full of bullet holes."

  The guard came over to her door and stared at her for a long moment. He checked the lock on her door and then those of Dr. Braun and Ross Wooley. "We'll see who's going to be sorry," he grunted. He turned and left.

  ***

  When he returned it was with both Larry Morazzoni and Paul Teeter, Dan Crowley's political adviser. Morazzoni growled, "What goes on? You squares looking for trouble?"

  Patricia said testily, "I suggest you let us out of here, Mr. Morazzoni. If you do, we pledge not to press kidnaping charges against you. I believe you are aware of the penalty in this State."

  "You trying to be funny?"

  "Definitely not, Mr. Morazzoni," Patricia said icily. "Daniel Crowley bragged to us of your plans for tonight."

  The hoodlum muttered a contemptuous obscenity under his breath.

  Paul Teeter, the heavy-set southerner said jovially, "But what has this to do with releasing you, Miss O'Gara? Admittedly Dan is a bit indiscreet but...." He let the sentence fade away.

  "Yes," Patricia said. "I realize that he is a nonprofessional in your ranks, and have little doubt that eventually you would have surmounted whatever precautions he has taken to keep you in underling positions. That's beside the point. The point is that by this time Daniel Crowley has, ah, infiltrated the institution you expected to burglarize tonight. He is inside, and you are still outside. There are four guards also inside, whom he is expected to eliminate before you can join him."