Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

The Star Salesman by Edward Y. Breese

Too much proficiency may get you places — though not always where you planned.

When Sam Burger kicked a panel out of the front door of Phil Smith’s house he broke two of the small bones in his right foot. It was unfortunate, because the door wasn’t locked. By that time, however, Sam was past caring.

He hobbled into the livingroom, took aim at Phil’s heart and pulled the trigger of his shiny new revolver. It failed to fire. He tried again with the same result. He had forgotten to load the gun.

Sam turned around then and ran for his car, only to discover he’d locked himself out, with the key still in the ignition. When the police, summoned by neighbors, finally showed up he was sitting on the curb sobbing into his silk handkerchief while Phil and his wife fussed over him with cold water and aspirin. He went downtown without any resistance and without saying a word.

Phil was just as puzzled by the whole affair as anyone else. “I can’t understand it,” he told the detectives when they questioned him. “That was my boss, Mr. Samuel Burger. I can’t imagine what he was so angry about. I’m one of his star salesmen. He said so himself. In only two days with his firm I’ve made the biggest sale in its history.”

That was all Phil could say and it certainly didn’t explain Sam’s attempt to murder him. Nothing about the case made sense. Phil hadn’t made an enemy in all of his forty-eight years. He was small and slight and soft-spoken and polite; not in the least the type to make enemies. He hadn’t had a fight in thirty years; he’d lost that one.

Even when the plant where he’d worked for twenty-five years had been sold and he’d lost his job, Phil had stayed cheerful and uncomplaining. Despite the strain this put him under, no one had ever heard a resentful word from him. He was a model husband and helpmate.

The incident baffled the police and neighbors. This is not the sort of man who’s normally in danger of being murdered or having his door kicked down.

Sam knew the answers, of course, but Sam wasn’t talking. He wept for a while and then he paced the cell and swore under his breath. He repeated the word “hoodoo” several times and then he wept some more. He wouldn’t or couldn’t stop weeping and cursing long enough to answer questions. None of this helped the authorities.

If the truth were only known, this was the first time in more than twenty years that Sam Burger had been at a loss for words. If ever there were a wordmaster, Sam was it. Words were his living, his profession, his pride and his joy. He used words to create for himself as a surgeon uses a scalpel or a sculptor a chisel. They were at once his delight and his stock-in-trade.

Unlike Phil Smith, Sam was neither a loyal employee nor a respectable family man. He loved other men’s wives and his own business, and the only thing on earth that could command his loyalty was cash money in large amounts. He called it by pet endearments like “government lettuce” and “green velvet” and pursued it with truly fanatic love.

As a result, and also unlike Phil, Sam always wore two-hundred-dollar silk suits and thirty-dollar silk neckties and a two-carat, moderately flawed diamond on his right hand. His breath normally smelled of cheap sour-mash bourbon and expensive cigars, and the sight of a blue uniform triggered a nervous tic under his left eye. However, he never lacked for words.

In the normal course of events fellows like Sam can be pretty impressive to the Phils of this world. When they’d met three days before, Sam had made a fine picture of efficiency and prosperity behind the oversized desk in his rented office.

“Well, well, Phil,” he’d said heartily. “So you feel you could be a salesman?” He paused to let the odor of a two-dollar cigar fill the room. “That’s fine, Phil. Just fine. I’m sure you can do it. You have the look of a born salesman to me and I’m seldom wrong about that. Yes, indeed. I can put you right to work.”

Phil didn’t know it, but Sam put all job applicants who answered his Help Wanted ads to work. He told them all that they looked like salesmen. What he meant was, they looked like pigeons ready for the plucking. The word Sam used was “mooches.” A real salesman wouldn’t have been caught dead working for Sam — but then real salesmen knew better than to answer his ads.

Phil was green. He was respectful and eager and painfully anxious for a job — any job. Since his old firm was sold he’d found out life wasn’t easy for a forty-eight-year-old unemployed general office worker. Phil and Janey were very cheerful with each other these days. Still, they were both beginning to panic a little as the savings account continued to melt away. Phil really was a prime pigeon for Sam’s style of plucking.

“We’ve got the best product package in town for selling door-to-door,” Sam said. “Look at them: as pretty a little combination TV and radio as you ever saw, and a portable sewing machine. Look at the labels: U.S. made, they say; one year guarantee. Nobody else in this city can offer a deal like our magic combo.”

Sam was right. Nobody could — and neither could he. The machines he sold had American brand names but they were made behind the Bamboo Curtain where any label can be used. They cost him $37.95 each at the dock. By the time they fell apart or blew up, Sam would be long gone. Phil would still be around.

“Yes, sir, Phil,” Sam said. “With these twins the world is your oyster. You sell two for the price of one. Why, some of my best men knock off an easy five hundred dollars every week in commissions. The buyers will snatch ’em out of your hands.

“These cost me $50 each. I got a friend who gets them for me. You sell the pair for $299.95, and everything over $200 is your commission. You collect that for down payment and put it right in your pocket every day. No waiting and no expense. We drop-ship, supply your sales literature, cards and printed guarantees. All you do is get out and sell. Nobody can beat that deal. Of course if you cut price to make a deal, that’s strictly your business. The cut comes out of your end.”

“It sounds all right,” Phil said.

“All right? It’s the chance of your life, Phil boy. It’s old Opportunity knocking with a satchel full of C-notes. The best ever.

“Just one more thing,” Sam continued. “Your demonstrator kit. These are special, high-grade machines I sell you at my cost of $175 for the whole kit, including supplies. That’s my cost and I let you have it for that because I’m sure you’re gonna be a star salesman.”

The demonstrators actually were specially made and of good quality. He wouldn’t have dared trust his real product to a salesman. In untrained hands they’d have gone bad the first day.

“I don’t know about $175 all at once,” Phil had to say.

Sam noted the threadbare suit. “Okay, then, just gimme fifty bucks now and pay the rest outta your commissions.”

“I’m too softhearted for my own good,” Sam told his current heart-throb, Daisy, that night in a bar. “Besides, some of them mooches really don’t have the whole ante in one bite. They’re honest, though. I can trust ’em to get it up later.”

“What good will a little creep like that do you anyway?” the practical-minded Daisy asked.

“On the average they’re good for about six deals apiece with friends and neighbors,” Sam said. “Also the profit on the demonstrators. I got twenty on the streets now. In two months they give up and I hire twenty more.”

For Sam the whole thing was strictly routine. He had no illusions about Phil having real sales ability. He had no illusions about anything at all. The people he preyed upon kept him in smooth silk suits and smoother women. The only problem was, the tic under his eye kept getting worse. It was the closest thing he’d ever have to a conscience.

Phil took things more seriously than most of those Sam hired. Sam should have foreseen that sooner or later somebody would, but he hadn’t. The bourbon and the women took up too much of his attention.

Phil had read somewhere that real salesmen “thought big,” and that’s what he started to do — which is why Sam tried to kill him.

What Phil did was forget his relatives and go look for a volume buyer. After all, he had a whale of a price for a radio-TV-sewing machine combo.

He went on thinking big while he took his briefcase, demonstrators and sincerity to see the purchasing agent at Leopold’s Department Store. The demonstrators sold themselves. Phil came out with an order for five hundred “guaranteed, American name-brand combos” at $225 each.

In the morning Phil was first in line at the bank to deposit the down payment before he went to tell Sam the good news.

Sam would rather have been handed a live grenade with the pin out than that contract. As soon as he read it he knew he had to deliver 500 sets of good machines or go to jail. He couldn’t palm off his junk on Leopold’s. They’d put him behind bars if he tried to back out — or Phil would. If he tried to run, there’d be warrants out.

He didn’t even have the money to buy good machines and fill the order at a loss. His credit wasn’t good anywhere at all. He’d have taken the loss to stay out of jail if he could.

No matter which way he looked Sam was face-to-face and eyeball-to-eyeball with disaster. He was so stunned he even let Phil get away without throwing him out the window of the eleventh floor office.

Eight hours and seventeen sour-mash bourbons later, Sam bought a gun — which he forgot to load — and went looking for Phil. When he tried to kick the door down he broke two of the bones in his right foot.

“I can’t understand it,” Phil told Janey and the cops.

It was all right, though. Inside of a week Leopold’s hired him, and he went right on thinking big till they made him a department head.