by Rod Serling
Augie let the silence settle over the room, fixing his eyes on the older man. "I wanna ask you something, Doc," he said in a very quiet tone. "What's in this for you? I mean—it's always something for something, isn't it?"
Glendon smiled again and nodded. "That's quite right, Mr. Kolodney. What's in it for me is simply your presence." He rose and came out from behind the desk. "You see, Mr. Kolodney, I love one-of-a-kinds. And you, sir, are one of a kind. You're the biggest, toughest, richest, and most powerful of your gentry. Unhappily, you also happen to be the most vulnerable." He moved across the room to a table and picked up a decanter of wine. "You are also, forgive me, the most patently doomed of your breed—simply by virtue of your status." He poured out a goblet of wine. "Which doesn't exactly leave you with a plethora of possibilities, Mr. Kolodney. You may either avail yourself of my services . . . or go along as you have—living minute by minute, so to speak."
He carried the goblet of wine over to Augie and handed it to him, then moved across the room to a large wooden chest, which he opened, revealing a file cabinet.
Augie sipped at the wine. "I'd like to think about it."
Glendon pulled out one of the file-cabinet drawers. "For how long?"
"A month"—Augie shrugged—"a week, a couple of days. It's not the kind of decision a guy makes between breakfast and dinner."
Glendon pulled out a manila folder. "Isn't it, Mr. Kolodney?" he asked. "I should think otherwise in your case." He opened up the folder. "You never can be sure whether or not at breakfast you'll be alive for dinner." He looked over his shoulder at Augie. "How right am I?"
"Even so. You're telling me I'm supposed to strip down to the skivvies. Give away everything."
Glendon carried the folder over to Augie. "You're giving away very little, compared to your life. Which is what others would take away. And which I can only assume is what brings you here." He opened up the folder and thumbed through sheets of paper. "There's a Mr. Pinelli—an entrepreneur of a rival faction. It seems he engineered an attempt on your life just a few nights ago in a Long Island restaurant."
Augie nodded. "And he came up zero. I walked away from it. Now Mr. Pinelli is gonna do some river swimming."
Glendon smiled—a soft, enigmatic smile—as he went behind his desk again, still reading from the papers. "And on Christmas Eve of last year, Mr. Kolodney, a bomb placed in your car which detonated precisely thirty-five seconds after you had left the rear seat. The year before that, there were three attempts on your life. From rivals, competitors, jealous gentlemen who had a collection of grievances against you."
Again Augie sipped at his wine. "Don't read me the crap, Doc. I know how many times I've been fingered. I know how many times my name has been pulled out of a hat. That's an occupational hazard."
But even as he spoke, he recognized his own skin-deep bravado. The recollection of those moments brought back the ice-cold feeling of fear, the frozen blanket of tension that came with the awareness of his desperate vulnerability. He half-closed his eyes, and the bravado left.
"It's just that . . . it's just that you reach a point when it becomes too much. You can't live with it anymore. You begin to . . . to cave in. The nerves don't hold anymore." Compulsively he took a large slug of the wine.
Glendon's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Are you enjoying the wine, Mr. Kolodney? It's quite rare." He pointed to the decanter on the table. "It's St. Emilion of a rather ancient vintage. It's a link of a sort between claret and Burgundy. And that bottle is the only one of its kind. The goblet in your hand happens to be an Etruscan silver—also unique. There are no others."
Augie drained the glass in a gulp, leaned across, and put the goblet on the desk; then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I want to think about this," he announced. "I think I'll need about a week at least."
Glendon settled back down in his chair and put his fingertips together. "That, of course, is your prerogative," he said, "but unfortunately, Mr. Kolodney, I may not have a week to give you." Augie looked up sharply.
"That is to say, at the end of a week's time . . . I may have to withdraw my offer." He made a little apologetic, shrugging gesture. "An unfortunate pressure on you, I know—but I'm afraid necessary." He waited for a moment. "So, Mr. Kolodney? Which shall it be?"
Augie took a step over toward the desk. "What the hell is the big rush?"
"You are. Forgive me for saying this, Mr. Kolodney, but the odds for your survival shrink with each passing day. There is a law of diminishing returns. And a risk factor that grows proportionately larger. You say Friday of next week, and I say: Will you be a live client on Friday of next week? Or just a dead former prospect?" He took another sheet out of the folder. "Let me support my somehow negative thesis with this small bit of information. You have in your employ a young strong-arm named Tony—"
"Him I trust," Augie interrupted. "He'd be the last to get bought."
Glendon smiled at him with an upraised eyebrow. "We know differently, don't we? Anyone can be bought. Everyone has a price. As a matter of fact, after Tony delivered your car to you this morning, he had a meeting with a gentleman named Locacelli—a partner of the same Mr. Pinelli whose death you ordered. And he received from this Mr. Locacelli a sum of money as part payment. He's to receive the balance . . . when his assignment is finished." He looked across at Augie, unsmiling. "Suggest something?"
Augie's voice was choked. "Tony's selling me out!"
Glendon nodded. "Oh, yes—your staunchly loyal right-hand man . . . yes . . . he's selling you out. You see, Mr. Kolodney—it isn't just I who play the odds. A man who lives on borrowed time suffers a depreciation of value as that time runs out. If you were to return to your apartment this evening, you'd get in your elevator—and you'd never get out of it alive. The cable has been severed, so that once it reaches your floor . . . it will fall back down twenty-three stories, with you in it."
Augie took a step toward the desk. "How the hell did you know that? How do you know they got to Tony? How do you know any of that stuff—"
"I make it my business to find out. I have to know everything about a client—from the odds on his longevity, down to his collar size. I mean, everything, Mr. Kolodney. However"—he slipped the pages back into the folder—"if you choose to wait a week, that, of course, is your choice." He walked back to his desk, opened up a drawer, took out a piece of paper, placed it on the desk, then took a pen from a holder and held it out. "I wonder if I could impose upon you for one thing though, Mr. Kolodney. Call it a . . . an act of faith."
Augie's eyes narrowed. "Like what?" he asked.
"Like signing this power of attorney for me, so that, should you decide in the affirmative, I might be of some help to you in the dissolution of your various holdings. You'll note the date on the top of this paper. It's dated four weeks from now. So, should you decide negatively—you can simply take the paper back and destroy it."
"No hanky-panky," Augie Said through his teeth.
Glendon smiled. "No hanky-panky, Mr. Kolodney. I don't deal in hanky-panky."
Augie moved over to the desk, took the pen, looked briefly down at the neat typewritten lines, then hurriedly scrawled out his name. He threw the pen back down on the desk and looked up. "That about do it?"
Glendon looked down at the signature and nodded. "For the time being," he said, "until you come up with your decision." He looked into Augie's face, a thoughtful, studying look.
Augie felt uncomfortable, as if aware of being peeked at through the keyhole of a shower room. He threw back a searching look of his own. "But I'd still like to know what you get out of this."
"That shouldn't trouble you, Mr. Kolodney. If I hold up my end of the bargain. If I see to it that you're never in jeopardy again. If, from the second you put yourself in my hands, you know you'll survive and that you'll survive for a very long time—why should You care what I get out of it?"
He moved out from around the desk, and as Augie's eyes followed him, he suddenly
became aware of the fact that there were two Glendons. There were also two doors. And the room seemed to shimmer and wiggle; vases, statuary, paintings, seemed to come in and out of focus. And his head felt hot and heavy. He reached up and touched it. "I . . . I'm not feeling very well." And even as he said it, he knew that his voice sounded thick, his words fused together sluggishly.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Glendon said from the door. "Very likely nerves. Perhaps you'd like to rest for a bit."
Augie felt a massive fatigue wash over him. He couldn't remember ever having been so tired. "Yeah," he said, his voice still thick. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would."
Glendon opened the door. "I can let you use one of the guest rooms upstairs. And I'll have your car put in the garage."
Augie felt rubber-legged as he moved toward the double image of the doors. "I appreciate that," he managed to say.
He followed Glendon out into the front hall and then over to the foot of the circular staircase, holding onto the banister with one hand and feeling Glendon's supporting hand on his other arm.
They started up the stairs. Halfway up, Augie stopped, his breath short, the fatigue now almost totally enervating.
Glendon solicitously felt of his pulse, and Augie tried to focus on the man's face. "You a doctor? I mean . . . you a medical doctor?"
Glendon nodded. "I was so trained, Mr. Kolodney. But as a very young man I went into research." His hand went to Augie's elbow and started to support him again as they started back up the stairs. "No rush, Mr. Kolodney," Glendon said comfortingly. "Rest every now and then if you want. Now, as to my history. I was considered a bit too unorthodox for my colleagues, so I never actually practiced."
His voice seemed to come from far off, and again Augie had to stop. "I feel . . . I feel so funny."
"It'll pass, Mr. Kolodney," Glendon said soothingly. "It's a normal reaction."
Augie turned his head, to focus once again on the other man. What was it he'd said? A "reaction"? "Wait just a Goddamned minute, Doc. What the hell do you mean—a normal reaction? A reaction to what?"
Glendon held tight to his arm as they started back up the stairs. "To the introduction of the medication, Mr. Kolodney," he said softly.
Augie felt heat, pressure, and a slow, sinking sensation, as if somehow he were being pulled down even as he walked up the stairs. "What medication?" he asked thickly. "What the hell you talking about?"
At this point they reached the top of the stairs. "It was in your wine, Mr. Kolodney," Glendon said. "Nothing terribly potent. Just a tranquilizer of a sort to relax you."
Augie kept blinking his eyes at Glendon as the man's face went in and out of focus. He tried to dredge up strength to go along with his fury. "You drugged me, you son of a bitch. You . . ." He tried to lift one arm to swing, but it felt as if there were a lead weight attached to his fingers. He could barely lift his hand an inch from his body, and then found himself slumping against Glendon.
"Mr. Kolodney"—Glendon's voice remained soft and placating—"anger should be the last thing on earth you feel now. You have also been the recipient of a drug I've been using for the past thirty-five years. It affects the glands. It revitalizes them. My dear Mr. Kolodney, it is the closest thing to the fountain of youth ever found by man, and can add up to forty years to the normal life span."
At this point Augie tried to speak but couldn't. Words and voice were mired down deep in his throat—a traffic jam of thoughts that banged together and bottlenecked. His mouth was open, and now the fatigue was forcing his eyes closed. What sound came was a small, spasmodic animal sob as he felt himself half-carried, half-lifted down a corridor, and it took what little strength he had left to stop and reach out to touch a wall.
Glendon gently removed his hand from a hanging tapestry. "Forgive me, Mr. Kolodney, but I wouldn't want you tearing that. That happens to be a Vauvais. Very rare. One of a kind."
Augie was conscious of standing in front of a door now. Glendon put his hand on the doorknob. "In point of fact, Mr. Kolodney, I only collect rare things. 'One-of-a-kind' things."
Words came out of Augie—just a few—a small residual sampling of all the rage, the fury, the sense of helplessness, the knowledge that he'd been conned; but the only words that could slip
through the barricade of the drug. "You son of a bitch," Augie said. "I'll get you . . . I swear to God . . . I'll get you . . ."
Glendon laughed very softly. "Not very likely, Mr. Kolodney. I've got you. I've got you whole, reasonably healthy, and in perpetuity. You see, what I do is the sum total of a lifelong dream—realized and lived. I have here the most incredible collection in the world. Sui generis. Precious . . . unequaled . . . incomparable. And you, Mr. Kolodney, have the honor of joining my collection." He pointed. "Right through the door, please."
Augie found himself standing in a doorway of a room—a room whose outlines he could just barely perceive. It was long and rectangular. And on either side there were cells—barred little cubicles, each housing . . . what? Augie could no longer discern faces; he saw things in undulating outlines. But the faces that looked at him through the bars looked distorted and imprecise, as if viewed on a defective television set. He tried to focus his eyes on little signs hanging by golden chains in front of each cell, but the letters swam back and forth like germs on a slide viewed through a microscope.
Glendon seemed to be pointing to one of the signs, and behind it, sitting on a cot, there appeared to be a man—or at least an ancient, withered manlike thing with a shock of snowwhite hair falling over one of his eyes.
"That's my prize." Glendon's voice came from far off. "I picked him up in Argentina in 1947 at an incredible expense. He speaks only German."
Augie's head was like Humpty Dumpty on a wall. Rocking back and forth. Dead weight. His eyes opened and closed, and the sign over the cell came in and out of view. At one given and brief moment he recognized a word. "AdoIf." And then a hazy, gray darkness started to enfold him.
Glendon's voice was even farther away, but he could feel a hand on his arm, and he sensed being propelled slowly down the corridor. "Now, over here, Mr. Kolodney—Judge Crater. One of the classic disappearances of our time. And that he survives at age well over a hundred—think what this promises for you!"
A vague, distorted image of another figure crossed Augie's eyes. And then, on the opposite side, he seemed to recognize the figure of a woman.
"Amelia Earhart," Glendon's voice said in a hollow, distant tone. "Crashed in the Pacific many years ago. You have no idea what I spent on an expedition to find her."
Augie tried to open his eyes and focus on the cell, but the gray cloudiness was growing thicker.
"Now her neighbor," he heard Glendon's voice say, "one Martin Borman. An aide to Hitler. A real find, this one. Led me quite a chase. All the way across South America. And that young chap, asleep, farther down. We have to keep him under sedation much of the time. Makes considerable noise. Name is Rockefeller. Had to get him in a New Guinea jungle. The younger ones, you see, Mr. Kolodney . . . and almost invariably the newcomers . . . they bring with them a natural reluctance."
Glendon's voice seemed to fade off now, until the words were no longer words. They were small, pulsating items of sound that punctuated the grayness.
Only vaguely did Augie hear the sound of a cell door open, and only vaguely did he feel his head being placed on a pillow. Then he surrendered to the black design of things, not hearing Glendon's footsteps move out of the room and not hearing Glendon say, "I think you'll find all the comforts available to you, as per our agreement. No jeopardy, no tensions, no more need to be afraid. And further than that, Mr. Kolodney, you shall live a very long time. A very long time. I'll look in on you later."
Glendon closed the door to the "room," then moved to the top landing of the stairs. His butler stood at the foot in the foyer.
"Yes, Joseph?" Glendon smiled down at him. "The gentleman's car, sir," Joseph said.
"Year and make?" Glendo
n asked.
"Cadillac, sir. Current model. Eldorado."
"Pity," Glendon said thoughtfully. "I guess it would have been too much to expect that the gentleman drove a Duesenberg like his 1920's predecessors." He touched a vase on a table near the landing, stroking it reflectivelY. "Dismantle the car, Joseph, if you will, and let me know when the news reports start coming in on his disappearance. They'll be interesting to listen to."
"Immediately, sir," Joseph said. "Was there anything else?"
Glendon let his eyes wander slowly and satfsfiedly around the walls, looking at the tapestries, the vases, the paintings. "No, Joseph, I think that should be enough for one day. And it's been a very good one. An exceptionally good one. Today, Joseph, we really acquired another collector's item!" Then he started a slow, cheerful stroll down the stairs, thinking of the entry he would make in the giant ledger in his office. "Kolodney, August. American racketeer. Acquired November, 1972."
His collection was growing, he noted further in his mind. Really growing. And it was a dandy collection.
The Messiah on Mott Street
Dr. Morris Levine, who was thirty-four, looked forty-four, and felt fifty-four, let his tired eyes wander from old Mr. Goldman's wrist to the window of the bedroom. Snow had captured the twilight sky, and outside, the momentary whiteness had changed the look of the tenements. Garbage cans became snowmen. The sound of truck wheels was muted. Even the fire escapes—usually gaunt, twisting, skeletal rib cages that protruded from sagging buildings—looked like white-carpeted staircases. It would not stay white—this gossamer cloak that fell like billions of tiny parachutes from the sky; soon it would turn to soot-colored slush, pockmarked by garbage and the dirty galoshes of homeward-bound residents of the East Side of Manhattan. But for just that one moment, Dr. Levine noted, Mott Street looked strangely beautiful, as befitted the Christmas Eve of the coming night.
He felt Mr. Goldman stir, and again he listened to the pulse beat. First quick, then slow, but always weak. Much too weak. "I don't like the pulse," he said to Mr. Goldman.