Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “The alley is narrow. Just room enough to squeeze the car past the garbage cans.”

  “The sidewalk leading from the alley to the house is narrow and rough.”

  “Very rough. A chunk of the cement is gone about halfway in.”

  “The building has four floors—or is it five?” Pat turned her eyes from the street ahead to Larry’s grim profile. “I’m not sure which it is.”

  “Five—definitely five.”

  “Yes—I’m sure you’re right.”

  They drove in silence—into Sheridan Square. The area was deserted except for the inevitable night birds prowling from tavern to tavern. Larry turned left and began prowling also—among the crazy, twisting streets and alleys east of Sheridan Square.

  “That looks like it,” Pat said.

  “No. There’s a street lamp at the entrance to the alley.”

  “That’s right. I forgot.”

  They turned and twisted for ten minutes in complete silence. Then Larry turned sharply off an arcing street into the mouth of a narrow alley. “This is it. The lamp post and the narrow entrance. The ash can with the lid off.”

  Pat did not reply.

  Larry drove slowly between the tight walls of looming buildings. This had to be it, he thought, grimly. If not—if not, what? A faint glimmering of the question tried to force through, but it was as though a hand had reached in to snatch it from his brain. This had to be it. That was all.

  “The garbage cans,” Larry said. He spoke with marked satisfaction and brought the car to a stop. “We found it. There’s the house.”

  Pat sat quietly beside him. He turned to look at her. He reached out and took her hand. It was cold. “Pat—Pat! What’s wrong?” Then he knew. Her eyes Were closed. She had fainted.

  Larry sat staring through the windshield. That strange weariness was again upon him. And the complete bewilderment as to his reasons for doing what he had done; being where he was.

  Pat Morley, recovered from her fainting spell sat huddled beside him. She said, “I feel so tired—so terribly tired. Yet—”

  “Yet it’s not the way you’ve ever been tired before?”

  “Yes. Impossible to explain somehow.”

  “I know what you mean. The question is—what kind of mad fools have we turned into. Sitting here in a Greenwich Village alley at three o’clock in the morning.”

  Pat turned her face toward him and passed a hand over her forehead. “It’s as though somebody keeps turning something on and off—inside me. A terrible feeling. It scares me.”

  “I’m not exactly happy about it myself,” Larry said, grimly. Absently, he took her cold hands in his. “Let’s go back—”

  “Back where? To the tavern?”

  “Back to where we’d found a mutual acquaintance. Johnny Simmons. You were saying something about him.” Weariness stood revealed in Pat’s eyes. “Oh yes. You were saying that you knew John.”

  “At one time we were very close—before he went into the diplomatic service. After that, he was pretty busy and we drifted apart.”

  “We were engaged at one time,” Pat said.

  “But you broke it off?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why?”

  She seemed uneasy—embarrassed. Larry said, “I know it’s personal, but I think you should tell me. It seems to be the only path. We have to follow. God knows if it will lead anywhere, but we can’t just sit here.”

  “You say you and John drifted apart. How long ago was that?”

  “About four years, roughly. He went to Europe then and—”

  “Not to Europe. India.”

  “I didn’t know that. Of course diplomats don’t advertise their comings and goings.”

  “Yes, it was India.” Pat turned sharply and looked into Larry’s face. “Larry, did you ever hear of Yoga?”

  “Certainly. It’s some kind of an Indian religion, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose you could call it a religion. It has to do with men in India—Masters, they call them—who can do miraculous things—walk on water—pass through solid walls.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it. A lot of foolishness of course—but what in the world did Yoga have to do with you and John Simmons?”

  “We were to be married when John returned to this country from India. I remember I met him at the airport here in New York that day. A—a blushing bride-to-be—”

  She stopped speaking and her eyes grew misty.

  “—And?”

  “It’s rather hard to explain. After he returned from India, John had changed. It was as though something new had come into his life. Something big—vital—”

  “Something more vital than marrying you?”

  She smiled, a little sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

  “He grew cold?”

  “No. If anything, he was more attentive and considerate than before. But, through no fault of his, I got the feeling his attention was impersonal, now—that he’d broadened and had a larger concept of life.” She glanced up quickly. “I suppose that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “It makes sense,” Larry returned, soberly. “I talked to John once after he returned from Europe—or, as I thought, Europe. He was tremendously enthused about something he’d found. He called it a new concept of life that beggared timid approaches so common in our day. Those were very close to his exact words.”

  “He was talking about Yoga, of course. As nearly as I could discover, the teaching advances the theory that the mind is all-powerful—that the average human uses only about ten percent of his mental powers.”

  “He didn’t get as specific as that with me. He talked in glowing terms of a world beyond possibility of war, where the universal mind had taken over—I think that was what he called it.”

  “The followers of Yoga believe we draw, or can draw, limitless power from the universal mind—I think that’s the way it goes.”

  “I asked John if he was going to leave the diplomatic service. He said that he would eventually—as long as the time spent didn’t interfere with his greater personal work, he would continue to serve. I gathered, though, that he felt he’d found something more important.”

  Patricia Morley shivered and the incongruity of the situation struck Larry. Two people sitting in an alley in Greenwich Village discussing the idiosyncrasies of a mutual friend while the city slept fitfully about them. But it was pleasant somehow, and restful. That odd vicarious weariness was again upon him and he had no urge to move.

  Patricia said, “anyhow, our marriage plans died from neglect for want of a better way to put it. We just didn’t talk about them—a sort of unspoken agreement.”

  “Then you came to know, in your heart, that you and John would never marry.”

  “Yes, I realized he had lost interest. In plain words, I felt his interest had switched over to this Yoga business.”

  “I’m sorry that—” Larry stopped suddenly. The weariness was gone. Gone too, was any interest in John Simmons, Patricia Morley, or anyone else. He said, “Why are we sitting here. The envelope is in the safe. We must get it.”

  “Of course. A blue envelope.”

  He helped her from the car, then said, “Perhaps you’d better wait here.”

  Patricia ignored the suggestion. “The combination,” she said, “is two turns right from zero to seven. One turn left to—to—”

  “Twenty-one,” Larry said with some sharpness. “Let’s get along.”

  “And right until the dial clicks.” Patricia followed him up the walk.

  “There’s the broken place,” Larry said.

  Patricia glanced down at it, as though it weren’t very important, and they went up the back stairs to the third floor. They went through a doorway that led into a long, musty hallway that ran to the front of the building. A small bulb in the ceiling at each end, threw dim, sickly light on dirty plaster and dirty green doors.

  They walked up the hall and stopped before one of the doors. Larry glanced at Patricia. “This is
it.” And she nodded, neither of them at all surprised by their ability to locate one door—exactly like seven others in the hall—and know it was the right one.

  Larry turned the knob slowly. “Locked,” he whispered. “I’ll have to break it down.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Let’s hope it gives on the first try. Otherwise we may be in for trouble.”

  “It doesn’t look very strong.”

  Larry backed across the narrow hall, turned sidewise, and pointed his shoulder at the door panel. “Here goes,” he whispered.

  Soberly, Patricia held up two crossed fingers. Larry hit the door with everything he had. The lock snapped like a piece of rotten string. The door flew open.

  A fat, formless monster of a man sat on a chair in front of a small table. He looked up in sudden fright and surprise. He had evidently been using the telephone and had been in the act of cradling the instrument. His hand came away from the phone and snaked toward his hip pocket. It moved with surprising speed for one so fat, but Larry moved fast also. He was across the room and upon the man as the gun came out of his pocket.

  Larry caught the huge wrist and twisted. It was a little like seizing upon the fatladen haunch of a prize hog. The fat turned under his hands and the man grinned as he brought the gun around. Larry twisted backwards, out of range and brought his knee up hard, into the fat man’s side. The latter winced in sudden pain.

  Taking advantage of the momentary laxness in the arm, Larry twisted with all his strength. This brought the man’s gun hand around and within reach of Larry’s foot. Larry kicked out viciously, once, and the gun skippered across the floor.

  Larry dropped the arm and stepped toward it, but the fat man was not as helpless as he appeared. He was up off the chair and diving toward Larry like an enraged bull. Larry had just time to turn and meet the savage attack head-on.

  He might just as well have met a locomotive in the same manner. He backpedalled and went down under the fat man, felt the sudden weight of the great bulk enfold him and hold him helpless. His struggles were useless.

  He felt the fat man’s hands settle on his throat. They squeezed down. There were muscles hidden beneath that fat and now they were going into action. The room swam before Larry’s eyes. A gray wave drifted in from somewhere, growing darker with each second.

  Then the pressure of the hands relaxed.

  As consciousness flooded back, Larry opened his eyes to see Patricia’s smooth ankles close to his face. He looked up to her white tense face—saw one hand extended, holding the gun with which she had hit the fat man at the base of his skull.

  “He—he was killing you,” she said.

  Larry pushed the dead weight off and got shakily to his feet. “You’re right. I guess he was. It was like fighting a mountain.”

  He pushed hair back out of his eyes as Patricia pointed.

  “There’s the safe—where the blue envelope is.”

  “Of course.” Larry crossed the room and knelt down by the small iron safe. He glanced back over his shoulder. “The combination was—?”

  “Start at zero. Two turns to—”

  “Wait! It’s—it’s open!”

  The discovery shocked Larry. “It shouldn’t be open,” he said, scowling. “It—” Patricia Morley was on her knees beside him. Her eyes were large and dark as she peered into the safe. Then her hands went inside—in a kind of frenzy. They came out empty and she turned to look at Larry.

  “The blue envelope isn’t here! The safe is empty!” Larry got slowly to his feet. He staggered as though from a blow. And his mind was stunned in the same manner it would have been from a savage drive to the chin. The room turned before him and he shook his head dully.

  Never in his life had he received such a shock as this—and for no reason he could fathom. A grim and genuine shock, yet, along with it, that same feeling that it wasn’t happening to him, but rather, to someone else and he was but an observer. It was as though he were experiencing the sensation vicariously, and yet he was obviously the principal involved. It was bewildering, confusing—and terrifying.

  And, in the middle of the mental maelstrom whirling in his mind—in the midst of the pure panic brought on by the terrible revelation of the empty safe, there came strange new visions.

  He was on a cold bleak plain in the middle of a snow storm. Sleet whined across the land cutting his face, numbing him with cold. The scene changed instantly and he was in a huge cave high in the side of a mountain. There was a fire burning in the middle of the cave and several calm beautiful men seated in a circle thereabout. “The Himalayas,” he muttered as he stood transfixed.

  Then the scene changed to one of madness. He and Pat were tiny creatures on the top of a desk. He was chasing her, trying to stab her with the pen that lay, even now, on the fat man’s desk.

  Larry was jerked back to reality and saw Patricia Morley standing beside him, her face white and tense. “Larry, what’s the matter. What’s happened to us, Larry?”

  “You felt it too?”

  “I—I don’t know. Suddenly I was terribly afraid. And it was so cold in here. I don’t know why.”

  He took her hand. “It wasn’t cold in here, Pat. That frigid blast you felt came from halfway across the world. Let’s get out of here.”

  She obeyed without question.

  As they went through the door into the hall, the fat man still remained motionless on the floor.

  Pat looked drawn and tired. She said, “Larry—in heaven’s name, what kind of madness have we become involved in?”

  “I think I’m beginning to get a faint idea,” Larry said.

  “Then tell me.”

  “You’d think I was crazy.”

  She smiled thinly. “Who am I to call anybody crazy after what I’ve done tonight?”

  He helped her into the car and put an arm around her. She leaned close to him and seemed grateful for the warmth of his body. He said, “I think we were sent here, tonight, Pat. I think John Simmons sent us here after something—after the blue envelope.”

  “I guess that’s as good an explanation as any. I’ve had the feeling all along that I had nothing to do with it myself.”

  “When we found the envelope gone, I had a strange vision. I was in a cave and I knew the cave was in India. There were some men there and I knew they were Masters.”

  She looked up into his face. “Maybe that was—”

  “Let me finish. I’ve had an idea all evening—all night—that another mind was guiding us; that we were sent on this mission by a mind capable of doing such a thing.”

  “But this dream you had—of the cave—”

  “I don’t think it was a dream. I think that up to the point where we reached the safe, John. Simmons was in command of our minds—was directing us. Then, when the envelope wasn’t there, he lost control momentarily—or perhaps for good—and for a while I was in his mind—seeing what he saw—knowing what he knows.”

  “I can’t grant any of this, Larry. I’ve got to refuse to believe it. One of us has to stay sane—one of us has to stay on the hard ground of reality.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “I’ll grant, for a moment, that what you said is true. All right then, what was the sense to it. Say John did bring us here. If he did he’d have to be a far smarter individual than either of us. Would anyone that smart send us off on a midnight trip like this that makes absolutely no sense?”

  “We can’t be sure it didn’t make sense. One thing I’m certain of—John expected the envelope to be in that safe. It wasn’t there, so I’ve got a hunch he won’t be sending us anyplace else.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think he knows where the blue envelope is. He wouldn’t know where else to send us.”

  “Then we can go home and forget about this nightmare?”

  “I guess so. I guess that’s the only thing to do.”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry.” Larr
y started the motor. “I don’t think you told me where you live,” he said.

  She did not answer. He turned and found her looking at him thoughtfully. “If we could only find the blond man with the scar. He was there by the safe when—”

  Larry held the wheel rigidly. “Of course. The fat man had lost his glasses. Craig—that was his name—he—” Larry jammed down on the gas and the car hurtled out of the alley. “A blond man with a scar. It could be the same one. It has to be. Hold on Pat. We’re going back to the tavern where I met you.”

  “Why, Larry?”

  “I saw a man when I went in. A blond man with a scar on his face. There can’t be too many like that, even in Greenwich Village. Let’s hope he’s still there.”

  They traveled in silence after that and were fortunate in not bumping into any roaming prowl cars. In silence until Pat looked at her watch and said, “We’re too late, Larry. There won’t be anyone there. It’s just after hours.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Two—three minutes after four.”

  “There may still be time. They don’t serve drinks after four, but it takes people a little while to get out.”

  As they pulled up beside Robb’s Tavern, the customers were leaving in one, twos, and in groups. “There,” Pat said. “Two men—one of them is blond.” She pointed to where two men, their arms on each other’s shoulders, were staggering along the street.

  “That’s him,” Larry said, grimly. “I hope.”

  “He looks familiar to me,” Pat said, slowly, “but I don’t remember seeing him before.”

  “You probably didn’t. But John Simmons did.”

  They watched the two men move along the sidewalk. Half a block east, they crossed in the middle of the street and came over to the side on which Larry was driving. The car crept along behind them, turned the corner where they turned—pulled up, four blocks on, when the two men stopped, apparently to say good night.

  They took quite a time at this, slapping each other on the back and evidently swearing undying loyalty. Then the shorter man turned into an apartment entrance and the tall blond man staggered on his way.

  He turned in a block further on, and by the time he was through the foyer door, Larry was out of the car and close behind him. The man turned and grinned. Larry grinned back. The blond man said, “Hi, neighbor.”