A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Dipped in Blood

How two men — Moylan, the Big Guy, and Hammond, his henchman — bought a fountain pen with three gold bands and a small gold monkey’s face at the top and bottom... a fountain pen that looked ordinary but carried death with it...

There were in a basement somewhere, just the three of them, and it was late at night. The place was full of shadows, and the shadows made six of them, one extra for each.

There was Moylan, better known as the Big Guy, and Hammond, one of his henchmen, and an individual known simply as the Screw, with that bull’s-eye appropriateness that underworld nicknames often have.

They had a dummy rigged up for the sales demonstration, on the order of a football-tackle dummy, swinging from a hook under the basement rafters. It had a patch pocket stitched to the upper left-hand side of it, about where the breast pocket would be in an ordinary suit of clothes.

The Big Guy was bending over a table, studying two objects under the light. They were two fountain pens, both identical, with marbleized casings, three gold bands of diminishing widths, and a small gold monkey’s face studding each end of both barrels, top and bottom.

“They’re mates to the one Keller carries around, with him,” Hammond assured the Big Guy. “I found out where his came from, ordered two more like it, and then brought them over for him to go to work on them.”

The Big Guy glanced sourly at the Screw. “It took you long enough,” he growled.

“I wanted to do it right,” the Screw protested in a high-pitched, quavering voice. “You sent word there was no hurry.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t want the party to die of old age in the meantime. That ain’t the idea at all.”

“He won’t die of old age,” the Screw promised. “Not after he’s tried using one of these. Let me have one and I’ll show you what they do.” Moylan quickly shifted his hands behind his back, one pen in each. “Wait a minute. I’m not taking any chances on them not being both alike. You pick one sight unseen.”

“They’re both alike,” the Screw said. He tapped Moylan’s right arm, and Moylan gave him the one in that hand, retained the other.

The Screw carried it over to the dummy, inserted it carefully into the patch pocket, so that it stood upright, as it would in a vest or breast pocket.

Then he carefully moved the worktable back against the far wall, out of harm’s way. “Stand back there against the wall yourselves,” he advised.

“What about the place here?” Moylan asked, glancing upward at the ceiling. “Anyone likely to hear it?”

“There’s no one else in the building but me — it’s vacant. That’s why I do my work down here. They rent out the basement to me.”

He held up something invisible in his hands. “This is a loop of horsehair,” he explained. “I’m going to slip it over the refill lever, like this. This is the dangerous part.” He took several moments doing it. “All right, don’t worry, it’s on now,” he assured them.

He then took out a long coil of string from his pocket. Unlike the horsehair, it was thick enough to be plainly seen from where they were.

“Then I tie the string onto the horsehair. That’s because it’s too thick to go around the refill lever itself, without starting it open. All right, I’ve got it hooked up now.”

He started to move away from the dummy backward, carefully paying out the string as he went, until he was at about the same distance they were, at the far end of the oblong basement.

“It’s very simple,” he said. “Works on the same principle as an ordinary cigarette lighter. I have a tiny wheel of flint attached to the lever, on the inside of the pen, where the stuff is. When you pull up the lever to feed ink into the pen, it strikes a spark. Boom. No more hands, no more face. No more torso much either, at least, not all in one piece. The lever is the only detonator. You can push down as hard as you want on the point, and nothing happens. You can even drop it, as long as it don’t land too hard, and still nothing happens. It’s when you flip the lever out of its groove—”

His high-pitched, gleeful cackle and the way he chafed his hands together were unmistakable stigmata of latent insanity. But that was no deterrent as far as the Big Guy was concerned, as long as he was getting what he was paying for. “Never mind the lecture,” he said gruffly. “Just does it work or doesn’t it?”

“Watch and see.” The Screw started to lift the string, so that the slack was taken up. “Take care of your eyes. The pen casing is liable to—”

Both men raised their bent arms as shields, pressed themselves flat against the wall. The Screw gave his arm a sudden, vicious jerk. There was a flash of unbearable brightness that lighted up the whole basement. There was a blast of concussive air that slapped their faces and sealed their eardrums for a minute.

Then, and only then, a dull throbbing roar followed, that seemed to last a surprisingly long time, like rolling thunder. The place was obscured with smoke for a few moments, that only gradually thinned to a point at which they could see each other once more.

They stared at one another dazedly for a moment through the haze. The dummy had vanished completely. Particles of it adhered to the walls. The hook that had supported it was swaying empty. Some of the plaster had come down from the ceiling directly over where the dummy had hung.

The Screw was the first to speak. “Satisfied?” he asked triumphantly. “It has about the same force as a hand grenade, only twice as compressed.”

Hammond was coughing strangledly, and wiping a bloody fleck from his cheek, where one of the fragments of the pen barrel had nicked him.

“Let’s get out of here,” Moylan choked. “Give him his five hundred dollars, and come on!”

“Sure the other one has just as much kick?” Hammond asked the Screw.

“I used the same proportion for both. You saw for yourself just now. And what’s the natural position to take when you stick a pen into the neck of a bottle of ink, for instance, and pull up the lever so it’ll drink up the ink? You hold your face down over it, close down over it, and watch it, to see if it’s taking in the ink. Well, the blast goes up. Like I told you, no more—”

“Come on,” Moylan urged impatiently. He had the door open already.

Hammond handed some money to the Screw. “It’s all there. Keep your mouth closed about this, now.” He closed the basement door and followed his chief up the stairs and outside into the night.

They strode across a vacant, rubble-filled lot to where a car stood waiting on the edge of a rutted, unpaved roadway. They got in. Hammond took out keys and made a motion to turn on the ignition.

Moylan stopped him with a chop of his hand. “Take your time. Let’s sit here a minute first.”

They sat in silent watchfulness for a moment or two, peering into the darkness around them.

“Guess nobody heard it.”

“Nobody around to hear it. Nothing but vacant lots and junk heaps all around here.”

They exchanged a look of perfect, unspoken understanding. Hammond unlatched the door and got out again.

“Use your own,” Moylan suggested quietly.

Hammond disappeared in the direction from which they had both just come. Moylan waited where he was, lightly tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

Once a muffled thud sounded, from some distance away. As if somebody had carelessly dropped a hefty box or packing case, nothing more.

Suddenly, Hammond reappeared beside the car, completely self-possessed.

“Hear it?” he asked, getting in once more.

“Not much. Nothing to speak of.”

“I closed the cellar door to keep it down all I could. Here’s your five hundred back.”

Moylan coolly put it away in his inside pocket.

“He didn’t die right away,” Hammond mentioned casually. “He fell down and he laughed. I asked him what he was laughing about. But he just laughed some more, and then finally he croaked.”

Hammond pressed down the accelerator and they glided off — two men who had just bought a fountain pen.

The car was motionless again. The same car, the same two men. It was daylight now. Sunlight slanted across the sidewalk alongside which the car stood parked.

“There he goes,” Hammond murmured.

Neither one moved. Their eyes were staring fixedly at the rear-sight mirror.

“I told you he’d go in there,” Moylan answered. “He goes in to get shaved every morning regular.”

“Wouldn’t you think he’d take a bodyguard in with him?”

“He’s forgotten about me. I don’t think he even knows I’ve been let out yet. More important still, he doesn’t know I’m wise to who turned State’s evidence. They kept that undercover you know. I only got tipped off through the grapevine after I was already up.”

They contemplated the little wedge of mirror with the patience of cats watching a mouse hole. A small barber pole was reflected on it, far back along the street, reduced to the scale of a stick of red-and-white peppermint candy.

“You’ll have to go in there after him. I can’t — he knows me. He’s never seen you.”

Hammond nodded. “I’ll take care of it for you, boss.” He reached for the door handle.

Moylan stopped him with a negligent pass of his hand. “Take your time. He goes for the works. Give him a chance to get under the hot towels first, so he can’t watch you too close.”

They waited in relaxed silence — two men killing time in a car.

Presently, Moylan asked, “Did you get a good look at him when he went in? You saw what he was wearing, now?”

“Dark-blue suit.”

“All right, hit it, Hammond. He ought to be ready for the towels about now.”

Hammond opened the door and got out. They exchanged a brief look through the car window, then Hammond struck out down the street at a pace that was neither too hurried nor yet too desultory — at a pace that was simply that of an ordinary man on his way to a barber shop.

He turned in at the pole and entered a small, neat-looking shop that had four chairs. There were two barbers and two customers in it. One was upright, getting a haircut. His legs, in gray slacks, were crossed underneath the voluminous bib that swathed him.

The other customer was stretched out, his face a twisted mass of steaming toweling. A pair of dark-blue trousered legs were thrust full-length to the chair’s tilted footrest.

The head barber glanced negligently over as he came in. He gave him the professional, “You’re next,” and went on working.

Hammond doffed his own coat, hung it alongside the dark-blue one on the wall — so close that they were partly superimposed, one atop the other. Then he sat down on the chair directly underneath the two.

A short interval went by. The man under the towels spoke in blurred tones through the small orifice left for him to breathe through. “Don’t take too long, Angelo. I’ve got a heavy day ahead of me.”

“In hell,” concurred Hammond silently.

Both barbers had their backs to him. One customer was sightless under a second and final application of towels. The other was cut off from a view of him by the intervening form of the barber attending him. It was a quadruple play that was not likely to occur again for the rest of the day.

Hammond stood up inconspicuously and matter-of-factly, as if he had just decided he would like to smoke while waiting. He reached into his own inside coat pocket for a cigar. He extracted two objects with the one movement — a cigar and a fountain pen. They had been side by side in readiness.

He pinned the two coat lapels together with his free hand, so that while he seemed to be holding one back out of the way — his own — he was in reality holding the two. The adjoining dark-blue coat formed a sort of lining to his own. Its inside pocket was exposed in turn. The head of a fountain pen was revealed, held by its clip.

He withdrew that, replaced it with the one already in his hand, and let the under coat lapel fall back in place. Then he thrust the remaining pen into his own pocket, let that curl back, to the wall, and sat down again.

It was all deftly and quickly done. The positions of the other four had remained unchanged in that brief minute or two. None of them had looked over at him. The switch had escaped notice.

He bit off the end of his cigar, held a match to it. He allowed himself a single long-drawn puff.

Then he stood up again, as though he had just remembered something — an errand he had to attend to or a call he had to make. The head barber looked over and saw him shrugging into his coat.

“Right with you,” he promised.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Hammond answered. “Keep my turn.”

He walked out just a split second before the barber started unwinding the towels from the face of the man wearing the dark-blue trousers.

Outside, there was the faint sound of a car driving off from somewhere close at hand, unnoticed by the four within the shop. It must have been going in an opposite direction, for it never passed the place.

The junior barber was now holding a rear-view mirror up for the approval of the haircut customer. A moment later he had stepped down and begun leisurely to refasten his collar.

At almost the same time the other customer got through. The barber whisked the bib off him.

The two crossed one another’s paths, going toward their clothes on the wall. The man in dark-blue trousers went toward the seedy, faded sweater hanging limply from One of the middle hooks. The man in the gray slacks went toward the dark-blue coat.

He put it on and went out.

The barber flicked a whisk broom to the shoulders of the other customer. “Your clothes don’t match today, Mr. Keller,” he remarked with friendly interest. “How come?”

“I was in a hurry, so I didn’t bother. My wife must have put my coat where I couldn’t find it. I only came out to get shaved and I’m going right back again, so it don’t make any difference.”

He shrugged on the topcoat he had used to cover up his ill-matched attire, and he went out, too.

The man in the gray slacks and blue coat was nervous. Three times he passed the bank entrance, coming and going, before he summoned up enough courage to go in. It was Friday and he was supposed to go in.

Every Friday he came here to the bank like this, and cashed a small check for his employer — a personal check to cover his employer’s weekend expenses. He should have been used to it by now. But today was going to be different.

He went in finally and got on line. It was a pretty long line. That was good — better for him. The teller would be rushed, and he wouldn’t notice. All they did was take it over to the file cards and compare it with the master signature.

Nothing to worry about there — the signature was genuine. The whole thing was genuine — all but the two extra zeros on the end of the amount. And it’s awfully hard to tell about zeros — they all look alike.

They couldn’t even phone the office and check on it. His boss wouldn’t be there any more. His boss was over at the railroad station, waiting for him to bring the expense money to him right now. His boss went out of town every week-end, from Friday to Monday. That was the beauty of it, that was why it was so easy. And by Monday morning, he himself would be three days away. You can pack a lot of distance into three days.

The line crept forward. Whoever was on it behind him was in a big hurry. He kept shifting from foot to foot. He growled, “Come on, wake up, keep moving.”

The man in the gray slacks didn’t look around to see who he was. He didn’t want to get into any arguments with anyone, not now of all times.

He was one down from the window now. He still had time to back out, drop off the line. Stay honest, stay safe. He knew he wouldn’t, not now. He was too close to the point of carrying it out. He was being drawn forward, as by a magnet. There was no turning back. Nothing could save him.

The man behind him gave him an impatient dig. He sure was in a hurry, whoever he was. But again he refrained from looking around.

His turn now — he was up to the window.

The teller nodded to him. The teller knew him by sight, from other Fridays. He handed the check over. It was done now.

The teller looked at it, surprised.

The two extra zeros. The word “hundred” that he’d put in on the second line, where there hadn’t been anything at all before — not even that long dash that’s supposed to be streaked across the face of a check to keep just such things from happening. When you’re in a hurry to make a train, when you have a dozen other things on your mind at once, you grow careless; you don’t take time to put in the hundredths symbol that stands for cents and should come right after the amount, nor the long dash that follows. When you keep on doing this Friday after Friday, that’s how ideas are born in other people’s minds.

The teller came back with it, after checking the signature. He couldn’t make up his mind. The man in the gray slacks was perspiring where it couldn’t be seen, down under his collar. The man behind him was shifting from foot to foot and swearing under his breath.

Suddenly, the teller shoved it back at him again, face down. “I suppose it’s all right,” he said, “but just initial it under your boss’s indorsement. The amount’s bigger than usual this time.”

They had pens and ink over against the wall. But he would have lost his place in line if he went over there. He knew if he ever did that, he wouldn’t have the courage to start all over again.

He reached into his pocket for his own fountain pen, tried to keep his hand from shaking. He brought out the pen, reversed the cap. Then he stopped and looked at it, astounded.

It was a strange pen he’d never seen before. How had it got into his pocket?

That was all the time he was given. The man behind him now suddenly moved in on him, jarred him out of the way with a heave of his shoulder and side, and took over his place at the window without waiting any longer for him to get through. Moreover, he blocked off the wicket by leaning close up to it, so that nothing could be seen any more except the very top of the teller’s head.

The unexpected shove sent the man in gray slacks staggering two or three paces away, off balance. He left the loosely grasped pen behind, ownerless, on the glass slab. As a matter of fact, it was now pinned down securely underneath the aggressor’s heavily planted forearm, without his noticing it. A fraction of it, the tip, no more, peered out from underneath his sleeve. He had both arms squared off possessively around the sill, in a sort of dog-in-the-manger attitude, that at the same time effectively concealed what he was doing.

The check, because it was lighter, paper weight, had stayed in its owner’s grasp when he was sent lurching aside. He was still holding it between two fingers.

But something occurred to take his mind off pen and check alike.

Something seemed to be going on all around him, right under his eyes, and yet he couldn’t be sure just what it was. It was being done very quietly, very unnoticeably, and he was hypnotized by it into a sort of frozen disbelief.

He could see a part of the teller’s face over the shoulder of the man standing there before him. The part that he could see looked strangely white, he thought. The teller’s eyes had a glassy look.

The people on line behind the man in question, accustomed to long waits in these flourishing times, were docilely uncomplaining, staring idly this way and that, with blank faces. Besides, the frosted glass paneling, along which they were strung out, obstructed their view to the inside. They couldn’t see the teller at all from where they were standing.

The man in the gray slacks had a slantwise view — he was up front and out a little from the orifice. They were in closer and standing one behind the other.

There was a bank guard across the floor, but instead of coming over to inquire what the hitch was, he was standing up against the wall, stiff and still. Somebody had stopped before him, as if to ask him a question. But the question seemed to continue indefinitely. Neither one of them moved. They just stood there like that, eye to eye.

The man in the gray slacks took an incautious step forward, to try to close in again on the wicket from which he’d just been ousted so brusquely. Instantly, there was a man standing at his elbow who hadn’t been there until now. He hadn’t been on line, either. Where he’d come from, the man in the gray slacks had no idea.

The newcomer was holding one hand negligently to his inner pocket, as if in the act of reaching for a cigarette. But the cigarette never came out. His hand just stayed that way.

“Wait your turn, buddy,” he said tonelessly. His lips hardly moved.

“But it was my—”

“Don’t answer back, buddy. This is no time to be answering back. I mean it for your own good.” The hand bedded under his lapel stayed very still. Everything about him stayed very still.

The man in the gray slacks didn’t answer back. Something told him not to. He could feel thought waves of death all around him in the air, and wondered where they were coming from. No one seemed to be doing anything. It was a good time to stand very still, and not move your hands or your feet or your jaw, just stay in one place, not even breathe any more than was absolutely necessary.

Neither the teller’s hands nor the customer’s were visible — they were down too low. But their shoulders were moving busily, indicating surreptitious motion. The teller’s were flinching, as though he were shoving something forward through the opening down at hand level. The customer’s were contracting and expanding, as though he were sweeping something toward him, and coming back every minute for. more. Then there was a muffled slapping sound, as when something keeps falling into a canvas bag or sack held open to catch it.

The tip of the fountain pen suddenly disappeared from under the arm that had been clamped down on it, like something swept up and carried along in a flowing tide going by where it had been resting.

There was a strange stillness all over the bank. A sort of lull. Though there hadn’t been any noise before, there was even less now.

The customer who had hogged the wicket turned away, started toward the entrance, a small canvas bag with a double grip swinging low at his side.

Then, suddenly, all hell seemed to break loose.

An alarm bell started to jangle raucously, all over the place at once. A shot crashed out, another, a third. Then a hail of them.

The waiting line crumbled away like sand. People broke and ran, then changed directions and ran back the other way again, bumping into those who were still running the first way.

The man in gray slacks dropped down to a shoelace-tying level, knee to ground and head low, and stayed that way, but without tying his shoelaces.

Then it ended — just as suddenly as it had begun. Those on the floor picked themselves up and looked around dazedly. There was a thin haze of smoke all over the place. There were cops and more of them were coming in every minute.

The man who had been crowding the bank guard for so long now stood with his back to the wall in turn, very straight and very still, with a gun pointing out of a cop’s hand to keep him that way.

The man who had been reaching for his cigarettes for so long had finally brought his hand out. But no cigarettes were to be seen. And something red was running down all over his hand from under his sleeve.

The canvas sack stood quietly on the floor, not more than five yards from the entrance. The man who had been carrying it lay flat on his back beside it, in a neat ruler-straight line. One hand was still twisted through the double grip. Otherwise, he’d changed his mind completely about taking it outside with him.

The man in gray slacks was white and shaky when he finally came out of the bank about a quarter of an hour later. The fountain pen was still lying beside the canvas sack squatting inside there on the floor. He hadn’t even asked for it back. Let it stay there; he didn’t want it. It wasn’t his anyway.

He hadn’t cashed the check either. He’d brought it out with him; it was still in his hand.

He tore it into small pieces as soon as he was safely outside. Then he tore the small pieces into smaller ones. He’d tell his boss he’d lost it in the excitement. His boss wouldn’t mind so much. It had only been for twenty-five dollars — without the two extra zeros.

He went away from there in a hurry, without looking back. What was that old saying? “Crime doesn’t pay.” It sure didn’t. He was going to be honest the rest of his life.

The guard came in and put the fountain pen on the bank manager’s desk.

‘They found this next to the getaway bag, he said. “The inspector told me to bring it in to you.’

“It must belong to the teller.”

“No, sir, they’ve already asked him.”

“One of the customers dropped it in the excitement, then. Leave it here. I’ll hold it until someone claims it.”

The guard closed the door and went out. The manager hadn’t fully got over his fright yet. He gulped down an aspirin, mopped his forehead, then sat down and scanned some papers with a jittering hand. He took up one of his desk pens, dipped it to sign the papers.

It came up dry. His desk well hadn’t been filled.

He saw the fountain pen lying there, reached for it. But there was no ink in that either.

His nerves were taut. He put it down with considerable asperity and pressed a buzzer.

He was still uncomfortably warm under his collar. He swung around and snapped on a switch. An electric fan, facing his desk from over in the corner, whirred on.

All the papers on the desk reared up a little along one edge, shifted over an inch or two. One of them nudged the pen barrel. The pen rolled lazily over, just once. Then the clasp on the outside of it stopped it, acting as a brake.

A girl opened the door.

“After this, will you please see that there’s ink on my desk before I come in every day?”

The draft of the open door, added to the current coming from the fan, sent a spurt of tail wind playing over the desk.

The pen stirred, took another swing over, playing leapfrog over its own clasp. Again the clasp would have braked it — only this time there was no more desk top left for the clasp to snag on.

The pen went over. It landed in a yawning wastebasket, paper-choked and directly under with a very light impact that was drowned out by the hum of the fan.

She came in after everyone else had gone. She always did. She was a very tired-looking woman, painfully thin.

It was quiet and her footsteps echoed weirdly in the silence, but she wasn’t frightened. She was used to empty places. That was her job — empty places. Sometimes she was the only living thing in a whole building.

She took out her passkey, opened the door, and put on the lights. Then she brought in her pail and brush, got down on her knees, and went to work scrubbing the floor.

She went around the man’s desk, and under it. Her thoughts kept time with the endless swiveling of her tired arm. Tommy was graduating today. He was all she had. That was why she was doing this, for him. She ought to have a present for him. It didn’t seem right.

She picked up the wastebasket, to take it outside and empty it. Then she saw what was lying in it, right on top of all the papers. She reached for it and lifted it out. It looked almost brand-new.

A fountain pen. That was what you gave them; that made the best kind of graduation present.

She examined it, and she was no fool. She could tell right away its being in there like that was an accident. It must have fallen in by mistake. People didn’t throw anything like that away, with three gold bands on it. Even if it didn’t work quite right, they would have it repaired.

She oughtn’t to do it. It belonged to someone. She ought to put it back on the desk, or turn it in downstairs when she clocked out. She’d never done anything like this before.

But Tommy was graduating today. She didn’t have any present for him. The man who owned this office must be rich. What was a fountain pen to him? Besides, it was in the wastebasket, wasn’t it? She was entitled to whatever was in the wastebasket.

She fumbled underneath her apron, and the fountain pen disappeared.

Then she went ahead grimly, scrubbing. Ail right, so she’d taken something that didn’t belong to her. But Tommy was going to have a present today for his graduation. She hummed a little under her breath while she worked.

Hammond brought Moylan’s kid to the office with him right after the graduation was over.

“Well, here’s the young perfessor back,” he announced. “Graduated and all.”

Moylan was proud of him. “I bet he knows more than we both do now,” he said to Hammond. “I quit when I got up to 4A.”

“Why weren’t you there, Pop?” the kid wanted to know in a shrill voice. “All the other kids’ fathers were there.”

Moylan got sort of red in the face and tight around the collar. He couldn’t seem to find the right answer right away.

“Is it because you were up at that place, Pop?”

“Shut up,” Moylan said gruffly. He became very busy suddenly, rifling through papers on his desk. “Now clear out of here. I got work to do. Take him home with you, Hammond.”

“Hey, sign your name in my autograph book first, will you, Pop?” The kid opened a small autograph album someone had given him. “I got everyone’s name in here but yours — all the kids’ in my class and all the teachers’. Wait’ll I get some ink in this first.”

He leaned across the edge of Moylan’s desk from the outside, trying to reach the set-in inkwell with a fountain pen that had materialized from one of his pockets.

Moylan was sitting very still suddenly, unnaturally still. His color started to drain off as though he were hooked up to a transfusion tube. His eyes started to get bigger and to come out forward in his head. His lips parted over silence; the voice that was supposed to come through log-jammed somewhere down below. When it finally did make it all the way up and out, it was scratchy and full of sand.

“Where’d you get that pen? That’s the one! Three gold bands and a monkey’s face on the top and bottom. Put it down!”

The kid had it harpooned into the ink by now, but he’d had to raise his feet clear off the floor in order to reach it. The desk was the size of a pool table.

“I pinched it off a guy in school,” he said. “His old lady gave it to him for a graduation present. He never even felt me take it. What’re you so scared of, Pop?”

“Hammond!” his father screamed. “Take it away from him.”

Moylan couldn’t reach him across the desk from where he sat; and he couldn’t escape from the swivel chair on either side — the kid had him hemmed in. There was only one way to get farther away from it than he was already, and that was backward.

Hammond took one look. Then he cringed, shrank back. He was brave enough when it came to shooting down an unarmed crackpot in a basement, for instance. But he didn’t have nerve enough to take a chance on getting over to the kid before that refill lever went up.

Instead Hammond threw up his arm to shield his face, and backed away, cowering. He retreated to the threshold, on across it, and out into the hallway beyond the office. He kept backing until the far wall out there stopped him.

The kid had a perverse streak in him. Maybe it was a trait that had come from Moylan himself. He saw that something about the pen scared the wits out of his father. He’d never seen his father scared before.

He lifted the pen from the ink and lunged at his father with it, point foremost.

Moylan reared up against the back of the chair, his arms a flurried frenzy, his voice a howl now. The chair was swivel-topped. When weight went to the back, the chair went to the back. It gave a sudden crazy lurch, as though its stem had broken.

There was a window behind him. It was closed, but it was glass.

There was a shattering explosion — not from the pen, but an explosion of window glass. Particles snapped all over the place, like hailstones.

There was no more window. There was just a frame, rough-edged with a lot of jagged glass splinters studding the inner sides of it. The chair teetered empty, tilted all the way back.

A scream went winging down somewhere outside, burning itself out with the velocity of its own descent long before it had hit anything to stop it.

The office was on the twenty-second floor.

Keller and his junta were sitting around their usual table at Dinty’s Restaurant, late that same night, when the news first came in. It was their regular nightly gathering place. They were always to be found there, from midnight until two or three in the morning.

There was a new member present tonight, someone who was being broken into the group. He was very anxious to please his new boss and show himself worthy of the privilege of being admitted to the inner circle.

Frankie, the blind newsman who peddled at Dinty’s, came in with a batch of the early-morning edition under his arm. Frankie was Keller’s pet charity. He always bought as many papers as there were members of his crowd seated around the table. He always gave Frankie a five-dollar bill in payment, and then refused change.

There were six of them at the table tonight besides himself. “Six, Frankie,” he said, and gave him the usual bill.

“Thanks, Mr. Keller! Gee, thanks!” the newsman babbled, and after going around the table and dealing out six papers, he trudged on his way.

Everyone began to read — everyone, that is, except Keller himself. He sat back comfortably puffing on a cigar, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Hey, boss, here’s something you’re going to like,” somebody exclaimed.

“Yeah? What?” asked Keller benevolently.

“Remember Moylan? It says here he isn’t with us any more.”

Keller brought his eyes down to table level, chuckled contemptuously. “No kidding? Read it to me. That’s the kind of an obituary I enjoy listening to.”

“It says he took a fast freight out of an office window twenty-two stories up.”

The new member thought he saw a chance of ingratiating himself with his chief. He’d been watching for something like this all evening. Quick as a flash he stood up in his seat and offered his own paper across the table to Keller. “Here y’are, boss, take mine,” he said eagerly.

Keller didn’t seem to hear him at first. In fact, he didn’t even seem to see the paper, although it was pointed straight out toward his chest.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a minute. No one seemed to know what to say. Somebody coughed uneasily.

The neophyte, however, was not sensitive to nuances. He repeated his offer. “Go ahead, boss, help yourself,” he urged. “Read mine. I don’t need it.”

This time he got results. A thunderous scowl darkened Keller’s recently jovial face. “Shut up,” he growled, “you young squirt!”

Somebody kicked the offender’s shin under the table, and he sat down as abruptly as he’d risen.

The strained pause in the conversation continued. Keller got up finally, his face still flushed with displeasure. “Be right back, fellows,” he said tersely. “Think I’ll go over and get a fresh light for my cigar.”

The moment he was gone, the question that had been sticking in the novice’s throat burst out unchecked. “What’d I do?”

“You dope,” was the scathing answer. “Don’t never go offering him a newspaper or a magazine in front of everybody, like you just did. Didn’t anybody wise you up? He can’t read or write! Not even his own name. And he hates for anyone to catch on.”

The culprit’s mouth dropped open and stayed that way.

“But... but he carries a fountain pen around in his pocket. I saw it with my own eyes only a minute ago, when he was sitting here.”

“Oh, sure,” was the reply. “He’s been carrying that around for years. But he’s never once used it yet, and he never will. It’s just a bluff. Like I told you, he don’t like anyone to catch on. He’s sensitive about it, see? People that don’t know him very well — it fools them.”

“He didn’t die right away,” Hammond had said to Moylan. “He fell down and he laughed. I asked him what he was laughing about. But he just laughed some more.”