by Fritz Leiber
THERE WAS something so ludicrous about the costume of the four men and their unconcern, both for the shoppers and for the figure they were carrying, that it was all Carr could do not to burst out laughing. As it was, he was relieved that none of the four men happened to look his way and catch his huge grin.
He studied them delightedly, wondering what weird circumstances had caused this bit of behind-the-scenes department-store business to take place in front of everyone.
Oddly, no one else seemed aware of how amusing they looked. It was something for Carr’s funny-bone alone.
He watched until they were well past him. Almost regretfully, he turned away toward the tie counter. But just then the rigid right arm of the mannequin unfolded and dropped down slackly, and the head fell back, and the dark-lashed eyes flickered and fixed on him a sick, doomed stare.
Carr was not quite sure how he got out of the store without screaming or running. There was a blank space of panic in his memory. The next thing he remembered clearly was pushing his way through the ocean of unseeing faces on State Street. By then he had begun to rationalize the event. Perhaps the mannequin’s arm worked on a pivot, and its swinging down had startled him into imagining the rest. Of course the hand had looked soft and limp and helpless as it dragged along the floor, but that could have been imagination too.
After all, a world in which people could “turn off” other people like clockwork toys and cart them away just wasn’t possible—even if it would help to explain some of the hundreds of mysterious disappearances that occur every month.
No, it had all been his damnable imagination. Just the same, his mood of calm self-confidence was shattered and he was tormented by a sudden sense of guilt about his lateness. He must get back to the office as quickly as he could. Behind his desk he’d find security.
The five blocks to General Employment seemed fifty. More than once he looked back uneasily. He found himself searching the crowd for black snap-brim hats.
He hurried furtively through the lobby and up the stairs. After hesitating a moment outside, he gathered his courage and entered the applicants’ waiting room.
He looked through the glass panel. The big blonde who had slapped Jane was sitting in his swivel chair, rummaging through the drawers of his desk.
CHAPTER VIII
What’s a mean guy do when he finds out other guys and girls are as good as dead? He trots out all the nasty notions he’s been keeping warm inside his rotten little heart. Now I can get away with them, he figures . . .
CARR DIDN’T move. His first impulse was to confront the woman, but right on its heels came the realization that she’d hardly be acting this way without some sort of authorization—and hardly obtain an authorization without good cause.
His mind, instinctively preferring realistic fears to worse ones, jumped back to a fleeting suspicion that Jane was mixed up in some sort of crime. This woman might be a detective.
But detectives didn’t go around slapping people, at least not before they arrested them. Yet this woman had a distinctly professional look about her, bold as brass as she sat there going through his stuff.
On the other hand, she might have walked into the office without anyone’s permission, trusting to bluff to get away with it.
Carr studied her through the glass panel. She was more beautiful than he’d realized yesterday. With that lush figure, faultless blonde hair, and challenging lips, she might be a model for billboard advertisements. Even the slight out-of-focus look of her eyes didn’t spoil her attractiveness. And her gray sports outfit looked like five hundred dollars or so.
Yet there was something off-key about even her good looks and get-up. She carried the lush figure with a blank animal assurance. There was a startling and unashamed barbarousness in the two big silver pins piercing her mannish gray sports hat. And she seemed utterly unconcerned with the people around her. Carr felt strangely cowed.
But the situation was impossible, he told himself. You didn’t let someone search your desk without objecting. Tom Elvested, apparently busy with some papers at the next desk, must be wondering what the devil the woman was up to. So must the others.
Just then she dropped a folder back, shut a drawer, and stood up, Carr faded back into the men’s room. He waited perhaps fifteen seconds, then cautiously stepped out. The woman was no longer in sight. The outside corridor was empty. He ran to the head of the stairs and spotted the gray sports coat going through the revolving door. He hurried down the stairs, hesitated, then darted into the small tobacco and magazine store opening on the lobby. He could probably still catch a glimpse of her through the store’s show window. It would be less conspicuous than dashing right out on the sidewalk.
The store was empty except for the proprietor and a rather portly and well-dressed man whose back was turned. The latter instantly attracted Carr’s attention by a startlingly nervy action. Without a word or a glance at the proprietor, he leaned across the counter, selected a pack of cigarettes, tore it open from top to bottom with a twisting motion, selected one of the undamaged cigarettes and dropped the rest on the floor.
The proprietor didn’t say anything.
Carr’s snap-reaction was that at last he’d seen a big-shot racketeer following his true impulses. Then he followed the portly man’s gaze to the street door and saw a patch of familiar gray approaching.
THE LOBBY door was too far away. Carr sidled behind a magazine rack just as he heard the street door opening.
The first voice was the woman’s. It was as disagreeably brassy as her manner. “I searched his desk. There wasn’t anything suspicious.”
“And you did a good job?” The portly man’s voice was a jolly one. “Took your time? Didn’t miss anything?”
“Of course.”
“Hmm.” Carr heard the whir of a lighter and the faint crackle of a cigarette igniting. His face was inches away from a line of luridly covered magazines.
“What are you so worried about?” The woman sounded quarrelsome. “Can’t you take my word for it? I checked on them both yesterday. She didn’t blink when I slapped her.”
“Worry pays, Hackman.” The portly man sounded even pleasanter. “We have strong reason to suspect the girl. We’ve seen her—or a very similar girl—with the small dark man with glasses. I respect your intelligence, Hackman, but I’m not completely satisfied. We’ll do another check on the girl tonight.”
“Where?”
“At the apartment.”
“But we don’t even know if it’s the same girl.”
“Perhaps we can find out tonight. There may be photographs.”
“Pft!” Now the woman was getting really snappish. “I think it’s just your desire for her that keeps you doing these things. You hate to realize she’s no use to you. You want to keep alive a dream.”
The portly man chuckled. “Very often prudence and self-indulgence go hand in hand, Hackman. We’ll do another check on her.”
“But aren’t we supposed to have any time for fun?”
“Fun must be insured, Hackman. Hardly be fun at all, if you felt someone might spoil it. And then if some other crowd should catch on to us through this girl . . . No, we’ll do another check.”
“Oh, all right!” The woman’s voice expressed disgusted resignation. “Though I suppose it’ll mean prowling around for hours with the hound.”
“Hmm. No, I hardly think the hound will be necessary.”
Carr, staring sightlessly at the pulp and astrology magazines and the bosomy paper-bound books, felt his flesh crawl.
“Why not let Dris do it?” he heard the woman suggest. “He’s had the easy end lately.”
The portly man laughed dispassionately. “Do you think I’m going to let Dris work on the girl alone, when I’m the one who’s to have her if it turns out she’s a live one? And would you trust Dris in that situation?”
“Certainly! Dris wouldn’t look at anyone but me!”
“Really?” The portly man’s laughter was even
colder. “I seem to recall you saying something of the sort about the small dark man with glasses.” The woman’s answer was a cat-snarl that made Carr jerk. “Don’t ever mention that filthy traitor to me again, Wilson! I can’t sleep nights for thinking of giving him to the hound!”
“I respect your feelings, Hackman,” the portly man said placatingly, “and I certainly applaud your plans for the chap, if we ever find him. But look here, facts are facts. I had you—and a very pleasant experience it was, Hackman. You had . . . er . . . the chap and then Dris. So in a sense you’re one up on me—”
“I’ll say I am!”
“—and so I want to be very sure that I’m the one who gets the next girl. Dris will have to wait a while before he’s allowed a conquest.”
“Dris will have no one but me! Ever!”
“Of course, Hackman, of course,” the portly man buttered.
Just then there was a rush of footsteps outside. Carr heard the street door open fast.
“What the devil is it, Dris?” the portly man managed to say before a new, hard voice blurted, “We’ve got to get out of here fast. I just saw the four men with black hats!”
THERE WAS a scramble of footsteps. The door closed. Carr peered around the rack. Through the window he could see the big blonde and the portly man entering a long black convertible. The driver was a young man with a crew haircut. As he opened the front door for the others, Carr saw that his right arm ended in a hooking contrivance. He felt a thrill of recognition. These were the people Jane had mentioned in her note, all right. “. . . affable-seeming older man. . .”
Yes, it fitted.
The driver’s hand and hook clamped on the wheel. The blonde, scrambling into the front seat ahead of the portly man, dangled her hand momentarily above the back seat. Something gray flashed up at it. The blonde jerked back her hand and made what might have been a threatening gesture. Carr felt a shiver crawling along his back. Perhaps the blonde had merely flirted up the corner of a gray fur driving robe. But it was almost summer and the gray flash had been very quick.
The convertible began to move swiftly. Carr hurried to the window. He got there in time to see the convertible swinging around the next corner, too fast for sensible downtown driving.
Carr returned. The proprietor was still standing behind the counter, head bowed, busy—or pretending to be busy—with some printed forms.
Just then Carr’s mind got around to the phrase, “the four men with black hats.”
He didn’t go back to the window to look for them. He hurried out of the shop and up the stairs and got behind his desk as fast as he could. His mind was occupied by the two things he felt he must do. First, stick out the afternoon at the office. Second, get to Jane and warn her.
Just as he sat down at his desk, his phone rang.
It was Marcia. “Hello, darling,” she said, “I’m going to do something I make it a rule never to do to a man.”
“What’s that?” he asked automatically.
“Thank him. It really was a lovely evening, dear. I’ve never known the food at the Kungsholm to be better.”
“I don’t get it,” Carr said stupidly, remembering his flight from Marcia’s apartment. “We didn’t—”
“And then that charming fellow we met,” Marcia interrupted. “I mean Kirby Fisher. Darling, he seems to have oodles of money.”
“I don’t get it at all—” Carr persisted and then stopped, frozen by a vision of Marcia dining across the table from a man who wasn’t there, of Marcia and her invisible man meeting a certain Kirby Fisher and perhaps Kirby shaking hands with the invisible man and the three of them talking together, with gaps for the invisible man’s remarks. For if yesterday’s big fear were true and the world were a machine, and if he’d jumped out of his place in the machine when he ran away from Marcia last night to be with Jane—
“ ’Bye now, darling,” Marcia said. “Be properly grateful.”
“Wait a minute, Marcia,” he said, speaking rapidly. “Do you actually mean—”
But the phone clicked and started to buzz, and Tom Elvested came gallumphing over.
“Look,” Tom said, “I know it was too short notice when I asked you to go out with me and Midge and Jane Gregg last night. But now you’ve seen what a charming girl she is, how about the four of us getting together Saturday?”
“Well . . .” Carr said confusedly, hardly knowing what Tom had been saying.
“Swell,” Tom told him. “It’s a date.”
“Wait a minute, Tom,” Carr said rapidly. “Is this Jane Gregg a slim girl with long untidy dark hair?”
But Tom had returned to his own desk, and an applicant was approaching Carr’s.
SOMEHOW CARR got through the afternoon. His mind kept jumping around in a funny way. He kept seeing the pulp magazines in the rack downstairs. For several minutes he was bothered by something gray poking around the end of one of the benches in the waiting room, until he realized it was a woman’s handbag. And there was the constant fear that he’d lose contact with the people he was interviewing, that the questions and answers would stop agreeing.
With a skimp of relief he watched the last applicant depart. It was a minute past quitting time and the other interviewers were already hurrying for their hats and wraps. His glance lit on a scrap of pencil by the wire basket on his desk. He rolled it toward him with one finger. It was fiercely chewed, making him think of nails bitten to the quick. He recognized it as Jane’s. He rolled it back and forth.
He stood up. The office had emptied itself while he’d been sitting there. The cleaning woman, dry mop over her shoulder, was pushing in a cart for the wastepaper. She ignored him. He grabbed his hat and walked out past her, tramped down the stairs.
Outside the day had stayed sparklingly fair, so that the streets were flooded with a soft white light that imparted a subdued carnival atmosphere to the eager hurry of the rush hour. Carr felt a touch of dancing, adventurous excitement add itself to his tension. Instead of heading over to Michigan Boulevard, he took a more direct route north, crossing the sluggish river by one of the blacker, more nakedly-girdered bridges.
Beyond the river, the street slanted downward into a region of beaneries, secondhand magazine stores, small saloons, drugstores with screaming displays laid out six months ago. This kept up for some eight or ten blocks without much change except an increasing number of cramped nightclubs with tautly smiling photographs of the nearly naked girls who presumably dispensed the “continuous entertainment.”
Then in one block, by the stern sorcery of zoning laws, the squalid neighborhood was transformed into a wealthy residential section of heavy-set houses with thickly curtained windows and untrod lawns suggesting the cleared areas around forts.
If memory served him right, Jane’s house lay just a block and a left turn ahead. He quickened his step. He rounded the corner.
He came to a high iron fence with brick pillars, to a tall iron gate. There was a yellow chalk-mark high on one pillar—a cross with dots between the arms.
He stopped dead, stared, took a backward step.
This couldn’t be. He must have made a mistake.
But his memory of the gate—and especially of the chalk-mark—made that impossible.
The sinking sun suddenly sent a spectral yellow afterglow, illuminating everything clearly.
A gravel drive led up to just the sort of big stone mansion he had imagined—turreted, slate-roofed, heavy-eaved, in the style of the 1890’s.
But the gate and fence were rusty, tall weeds encroached on the drive, lawn and flowerbeds were a wilderness, the upper windows were blank and curtainless, most of them broken, those on the first floor were boarded up, pigeon droppings whitened the somber brown stone, and in the center of the lawn, half hidden by the weeds, was a weather-bleached sign:
FOR SALE
CHAPTER IX
It doesn’t do for too many people to come alive, brother. The big engine gets out of whack. And the mean guys don’t want any
competition. They get busy and rub it out . . .
CARR PUSHED doubtfully at the iron gate. It opened a couple of feet, then squidged to a stop against gravel still damp from yesterday morning’s rain. He stepped inside, frowning. He was bothered by a vague and dreamlike sense of recognition.
Suddenly he recalled the reason for it. He had seen pictures of this place in popular magazines, even read an article about it. It was the old Beddoes house, home of one of Chicago’s most fabulous millionaires of the 1890’s. John Claire Beddoes had been a pillar of society, but there were many persistent traditions about his secret vices. He was even supposed to have kept a young mistress in this very house for ten years under the eyes of his wife—though by what trickery or concealment, or sheer brazenness, was never explained.
But the house had been empty for the past twenty-five years. The magazine article had been very definite on that point. Its huge size and the fact that it was owned by an eccentric old maid, last of the Beddoes line, who lived on the Italian Riviera, had combined to make its sale impossible.
All this while Carr’s feet were carrying him up the drive, which led back of the house, passing under a porte-cochere. He had almost reached it when he noticed the footprints.
They were a woman’s, they were quite fresh, and yet they were sunk more deeply than his own. They must have been made since the rain. There were two sets, one leading toward the porte-cochere, the other back from it.
Looking at the black ruined flowerbeds, inhaling their dank odor, Carr was relieved that there were footprints.