Fear and Trembling

by Robert Bloch

  “No big deal. Just the usual.”

  The demon cringed. “Please—” He sighed loudly, and the dishes in the kitchen cupboard began to shake. “In case you don’t know it, I happen to be the last of my line. Nobody else does this sort of thing any more, and I’m all booked up. Fed up, too.” He sighed again, breaking several glasses on the sink-top. “If you only knew how sick I am of visiting all those little old ladies in the retirement homes—all those members of Women’s Lib—”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Dr. Degradian soothed.

  But the incubus ignored him. “You don’t know what I’ve been through,” he croaked. “In the good old days, before this damned permissiveness came in, everything was easy. I dated good-looking unmarried women, beautiful young wives with elderly husbands, even school-girls. A little loving went a long way and giving them what they wanted was a piece of cake, in a manner of speaking. But today—” The incubus shuddered. “Today they’ve all read those sex-manuals, they’ve watched too many X-rated movies.” He gestured towards his face. “I even have to keep changing my appearance to satisfy them. First it was Paul Newman, then Robert Redford. Now it’s this Burt Reynolds character, and next year I suppose I’ll have to do an entire rock-group. Look at me—I’m worn out, nothing but skin and bones! It’s getting so I’m not even good for a one-night stand any more. What I need is a leave of absence, a black sabbatical. And you expect me to take on a new job?”

  Dr. Degradian shrugged. “Calm yourself. It’s not a new job. All I want you to do is go back to an old one. There’s a girl named Angela—”

  “Angela?” The creature began to tremble. “Oh no—not Angela!”

  “You remember her?”

  “Remember her?” the incubus wailed. “Why do you think I’m in this condition? She’s the one who really wore me out. Another go-round with her and I’ll be wearing a truss!” He shook his head so emphatically that his horns rattled. “No way! Angela is a nympholept. An incubus can’t help her—what she needs is a psychiatrist.”

  “But you’re my last chance—”

  “Sorry.” The thing rose from his crouching position and yawned wearily, blowing out several candles in the process. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way. I’m calling it a night just as soon as I finish at the orphanage.”

  “Orphanage?”

  The incubus nodded. “It’s my duty,” he murmured. “You know the old saying—spare the rod and spoil the child.”

  Then, in a puff of smoke, he disappeared.

  Monday dawned. Dr. Degradian scrubbed the kitchen floor and aired the place out, then sank into bed and an uneasy slumber. He wouldn’t have gone to the office at all if it wasn’t for Angela’s afternoon appointment.

  He dragged himself in, carrying his load of guilt. He had failed the girl, failed himself, and now there was no hope to cling to.

  Instead he clung to his desk as she breezed in, buoyant and lovely as ever, her eyes bright with expectation.

  “How did you manage yesterday?” Dr. Degradian asked. “Were you able to cope?”

  Angela blushed prettily. “There was no one to cope with,” she said. “Finally I went for a walk to take my mind off you-know-what.”

  “Did that help?”

  “Yes, a little. I lucked out by finding a construction site where I could watch the erection of a tall building.”

  Dr. Degradian nodded, bracing himself for the inevitable question.

  The blue eyes turned to him, alive with anticipation. “And what about you, Doctor—did you get the incubus back?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The eyes began to brim with tears, and Dr. Degradian agonized at the sight of her despair. “He said you were a nympho, and no one could help you now but a psychiatrist.”

  Angela stared at him. Then, surprisingly she smiled. “You’re a psychiatrist.”

  Dr. Degradian shrugged. “But you refuse treatment. What can I do?”

  “Marry me.”

  “What—?”

  “Marry me!” Angela rose. “Don’t you see I’ve had a thing about you all along?” She nodded eagerly. “Who needs an incubus anyway—all those horns and that smelly sulphur and brimstone!”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’ve made up my mind. We’re going to get married!”

  And then the nympho leapt.

  The wedding took place the following week and Dr. Degradian stiffened himself for the ordeal ahead. That night, after Angela retired to bed, he was still undressing in the bathroom when she called to him.

  “Coming,” he said.

  The prediction proved correct. And much to his astonishment his new bride was completely satisfied. Snuggling against the pillows she offered him a happy smile. “So that’s what an orgasm is,” she murmured. “I always wondered.”

  “You mean you never—?”

  “Not until now.” Angela put her arms around him. “Darling, do you think you could possibly—?”

  “It seems highly probable,” Dr. Degradian told her.

  And so it turned out to be a happy marriage after all. As a matter of fact, she didn’t really become frigid until almost three months later . . .

  A Killing in the Market

  I may not have much time to set this down.

  To make things worse, the pen leaks, and there isn’t very much paper. You’d think that for forty dollars a day, the hotel would furnish a decent pen. At least they could replace the supply of stationery once in a while. Of course, I suppose I could call room service and ask for more, but I don’t dare to have anyone nosing around.

  It’s just that I want to write this out while I still have the chance. Maybe it will help explain a few things. At least it might be of interest to a few eager beavers—the kind of people who’ve always dreamed of a chance to make a big killing in the stock market.

  That was my idea. I wanted to make a killing. And now I have, only—

  I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning. And say that my name is Albert Kessler, and up until a little over three months ago I worked in Wall Street. I was a clerk in a brokerage house. Maybe I’d better not mention the name of the firm. It isn’t important, anyway.

  Up until then, nothing was important. Including myself. I was just another guy, holding down just another job. My idea of a big deal was to get out fifteen minutes early and catch a seat in the subway, instead of having to stand up all the way home. That’s another laugh—home. One furnished room, in the Bronx. A small order of nothing. But that’s all I had. That, and the big dream.

  I guess everybody who ever worked in the Street has had the same dream. It’s one of those things you think about when you bounce around in the subway, or on the mattress in your crummy room. You can’t help but think about it, and hope that tomorrow it’s going to come true.

  Tomorrow, that’s always when you’re going to get the break—when you’ll just happen to run into this character with the golden touch. He’s a plunger, and every time he plunges he comes up smelling like a rose. Somehow you manage to make friends with him, and pretty soon he’s giving you the word on a good thing, and before you know it you’re a character yourself. A real big operator.

  Sure, I know what it sounds like. But after you spend a little time working in the Street, you can’t help but think that way. Because you occasionally see the dream come true. Bernard Baruch isn’t the only one who ever made a killing. You hear stories about guys who started out as runners and ended up buying their own seats on the Exchange. Sometimes they made all their money on the Big Board, and sometimes they branched off into investing in their own firms. The oil men, those Greek shipping magnates, people like that; they prove it happens.

  But it doesn’t happen to everyone; not to guys who just moon around and wish. You’ve got to do more than dream. You’ve got to keep your eyes open and figure the angles. And you’ve got to wait.

  That’s what I did. For over two years I waited. And I planned. I saved my dough, too.
Not much—a pitiful three thousand. But at least I held onto it. A lot of the other dreamers aren’t willing to save and wait. They’re suckers for every crazy rumor on the Street, and they use the Dow-Jones like a scratch-sheet. It’s five bucks on Steel to win, or ten bucks on Industrials to place or Utilities to show. The Journal is their racing form, and they make graphs and charts and follow stock performance records back for years. They play systems or they play hunches—but all of them go for broke.

  That two-dollar window stuff wasn’t for me. I didn’t believe in tips or theories. Sure, the Market is a gamble, but gamblers aren’t always winners. The winner, in the long run, is the man who has a sure thing from the start.

  I kept my eyes open trying to spot that winner. Instead of studying the Market, I studied the customers.

  And that’s how I found Lon Mariner.

  There’s no sense going into all the details of how I made up my mind. Half a dozen times beforehand, I thought I’d located my man—a big investor, who consistently moved in at the right time, then moved out again after a quick profit. But each time, sooner or later, the customer I had my eye on pulled a goof, or started hedging with gilt-edge stuff at a small profit. Over the years I kept track of several investors; in New York, or in our branch offices.

  But it wasn’t until three months ago that I made my discovery. Lon Mariner, who always pulled a sure thing out of the hat. He put fifteen thousand into a small aircraft company three days before they landed a big Navy contract. He pulled out with fifty thousand and bought into some electronics outfit I never heard of—until they declared a split, then a dividend, and bounced up eighteen points. He took his profits and went into oil, dumping his stock the morning before a nose-dive. Next there was a flier in a Texas railroad that was gobbled up by a bigger combine within a week. By this time I was really following his orders, which came in through our Frisco office. And I was surprised to find that after a month or so he was operating out of Cleveland. But the pattern continued. What he bought didn’t make sense; the important thing was that everything he touched turned to gold. Copper, radar, TV in Cleveland; then a big utilities deal out of Boston. He never missed on timing. In eleven weeks he was in on every spectacular rise, every major split across the Board. I figured he’d run his fifteen thousand up to several million. Then he placed his next whopping order out of our Chicago office.

  That’s when I quit my job and went to Chicago.

  All I had was three thousand dollars and this wild idea of mine. At least I thought it was a wild idea, after I actually got on the plane. Here I was, chasing halfway across the country to locate a perfect stranger—or maybe a stranger who wasn’t so perfect—in hopes that I’d get him to cut me in on his big deal.

  I did some sweating on that flight when I really took stock of the situation. After all, what did I know about this Lon Mariner, anyway? He wasn’t in Who’s Who. And he didn’t have a D&B rating, either. I hadn’t dared to make any direct inquiries through any of our branch offices. All I really knew about him was that he was the guy I was looking for—the guy with the golden touch. From now on, I’d have to play it by ear.

  The minute I got off the airport limousine at the Palmer House, I took a cab over to our Chicago office on LaSalle Street. I still had my company ID card—so I forgot to turn it in, is that a crime?—and I flashed it. I said I’d been sent out here to contact one of our clients, and had Mr. Mariner been in today?

  Well, it turned out Mr. Mariner hadn’t been in—today or any day. His orders came by phone and his bank drafts by mail. I went clear up to the Vice-President in Charge Of, but nobody could tell me anything more about the man.

  But I did find out he was staying at a hotel on the Gold Coast. This hotel.

  I hotfooted it over yesterday afternoon, and plunked down my forty bucks for this room—complete with air conditioning, television, and a lousy pen.

  Forty bucks was only the start of my investment. Ten bucks more made sure that the Room Clerk put me on the same floor—he even showed me Mariner’s name on the register, and his suite number. It was 701, right down the corridor from my room. He didn’t remember much about Mariner’s appearance, because he hadn’t seen him since. Said he’d come in alone, without very much luggage, and that he was “average-looking.” Medium height, brown hair, middle-aged.

  I spent another ten bucks on the bellboy. All he could tell me was that Mariner ordered all his meals sent up to him, and that he didn’t go out much except in the mornings when the maid-service cleaned up.

  By this time it was almost seven o’clock, and the maids were off duty. I had to settle for a talk with the waiter who served him his meals, a guy named Joe Franscetti.

  For the usual ten, Franscetti said yes, he’d just come down from Mr. Mariner’s room after clearing away the supper dishes. Apparently, Mariner hadn’t made any impression on him at all; I got the same vague description of an “average-looking” guy. The waiter couldn’t remember anything he’d ever said to him, or even how he usually dressed.

  “But I can tell you what he had for dinner,” he said. “Shrimp cocktail, the prime rib—medium rare, I think it was—baked potato, Waldorf salad, coffee, apple pie. And you know what he tipped? A lousy buck!”

  I thanked him and went away. It was a little discouraging. I hadn’t come all this way to find out that Lon Mariner liked his meat medium rare. And even the fact that a guy on a five-million-dollar winning streak is a poor tipper didn’t mean very much to me.

  There didn’t seem to be anything I could do at the moment. No sense going to the house dick. It had been risky enough asking the questions I’d asked, because the last thing I wanted was to call attention to myself. I suppose everyone figured I was a private eye, and that was bad enough, but at least it was some kind of an excuse.

  Anyway, I’d learned nothing useful, and from now on I was on my own. So about seven-thirty I ended up back in my room, with the door open. If I sat in a chair at a certain angle I could keep my eye on 701. Just in case Mariner did go out.

  Of course, there was nothing to prevent me from just marching down the hall and knocking on his door. Except that I wasn’t ready for that yet. Before talking to Mariner, I had to make up my mind about him. When I did speak to him, my conversation was going to be mighty important. I couldn’t afford to muff the deal, and I had to decide what I intended to say. And that would depend on sizing up my man, first.

  There was just one thing running through my mind right now. Mariner must be some kind of a nut.

  On the face of it, there wasn’t anything particularly screwy about what I’d heard concerning him; lots of quiet, middle-aged guys are a little on the timid side, and prefer to keep to themselves if they live alone. But under the circumstances, the pattern didn’t make sense. If I’d cleaned up millions in the market in three months, I wouldn’t be hiding out by myself in a hotel room, and that’s for darn sure.

  So he was probably a psycho, like all those eccentric recluses you hear about who end up dying in a basement with a fortune in cash stuck under the mattress.

  I sat there for a long time, thinking about it. And the more I thought, the worse I felt. Because it’s pretty hard to get close to that kind of a nut. They’re the suspicious type, delusions of persecution and everything. They don’t trust strangers, and nobody’s their friend.

  On the other hand, there was something wrong with the picture. I was paying forty bucks a day. And Mariner, even if he was a stingy tipper, must be shelling out close to a hundred for his suite. Besides, during the last few months, he’d moved from Frisco to Cleveland to Boston to Chicago—and trips like that cost dough. Even if he was making millions, he wouldn’t be inclined to spend an extra dime if he was just another eccentric. Those guys hole up in the slums and stay put, and they eat stale crackers instead of shrimp cocktails.

  So there must be some other reason why Mariner was keeping himself under wraps. I got a sudden hunch.

  Could it be that he was the stooge or f
ront-man for some syndicate?

  That made a little better sense to me. Sure, it could explain a lot of things. Including why he stuck to his room. Probably he got his information or his orders by phone. It was a cinch one or the other came from someplace, unless he just got tips on the market out of dreams.

  I was beginning to get a terrible yen to visit his room and see if I could spy on him while he was under the influence of H, or operating his Ouija board, or whatever he did. Maybe he kept a collection of shrunken heads, and they talked to him.

  On the other hand, it might be a lot smarter to check the switchboard girl tomorrow and see if she’d just keep track of any phone calls coming in or going out of his suite, and slip me the word.

  I looked at my watch. Almost ten o’clock, and nothing had happened. I was tired. Better turn in and sleep on it. In the morning I’d decide what to do.

  So I got up and went over to the door to close it.

  Just as his door opened, and he came out.

  I knew it was Mariner the minute I saw him. Middle-aged, middle-sized, brown-haired; he wore a plain blue suit and a white shirt, and the face above the collar was the kind you could forget even while you were looking at it.

  I guess I’ve seen ten thousand such faces in my time—crowded into elevators, jammed into subways, bobbing along the street. Looking at them had never made me sweat, but I was sweating now. Because this face was worth five million bucks. Lon Mariner, the man with the golden touch.

  Now I got a look at his back. He was trying his door, making sure it was locked. Maybe he kept a lot of cash inside. Maybe I could stick around and pick the lock. No, that was too dangerous. What I had to do was follow him and pick his brains.

  I put on my coat while he walked over to the elevator. I figured I could dash out and make it just in time, but I figured wrong. Because the car stopped before I reached my door, and he got in.

  Then I was swearing, and running down the stairs. I hit the lobby in one minute flat, but he wasn’t there and the elevator was already going up again. I could see the lights flickering on the numerals—two, then three, then four.