The Collection (154 page)

That left enough for only one more drink, and he'd want it
the minute he waked up, if he dropped off. He poured it carefully into the
glass and put the glass on the little table near the chair.

He looked around the room, feeling there was something else
he'd ought to do. He stared at the typewriter a while. He almost had an impulse
to sit down at it and write out how it felt to be shot at. Maybe sell it
somewhere, to a magazine. Oh, to hell with it!

Sleepy, and the Morris chair was too comfortable. His head
went back and his eyelids weighed a stone apiece, and there was a gentle glow
in the room and in the whole house.

He could see it through his closed eyelids. He could — or
thought he could — hear the cat walking in the back yard —so plainly that he
almost got up and went down to call it again at the back door.

Then, of course, it came to him that he was dreaming.

One damn thing after another. The cat was on the roof. It
came down the chimney and mewed in the grate, and pointed a rifle at him and
said, in Doc Millard's voice, “Now this isn't going to hurt much,” and pulled
the trigger and the gun seemed to shoot backward and shot the cat back up the
chimney.

And Bill Owen was there, and saying, “Carl, Tommy Pryor
tells me the bank is out of money and can't give you your five million dollars,
and so Roger Keefe and I have decided to give you the agency free. All yours,
Carl, and I'll work for you if you want me to, and there are new orders coming
in like wildfire and you'll be able to sell out for a billion in a year.”

And then Bill Owen's friendly smile seemed gradually to
freeze into a gargoyle grimace, and he pulled a rifle out of his pocket, a toy
rifle, and said, “Twenty-three, skiddoo,” and it was Keefe who had the rifle,
grinning like a fiend, and he told Carl he was going to use it for a mashie to
make a hole in one, and wanted Carl to guess in one what. And then he wasn't
there any more.

It was all very strange and confusing. Elsie was there, too,
and she said, “Why do you drink so much, Carl?” and he looked at her owlishly
and wanted to say that he was sorry, but that she just didn't understand, and
that he loved her and was sorry. And she told him that she loved him, anyway,
and she danced around the room.

And sat down at his typewriter and wrote something on it,
with the keys going
clickety-click
like a twenty-two but faster. Just
like when she'd been a stenographer at the agency so long ago, and he couldn't
move out of the chair and take her in his arms and tell her what an awful fool
he was. And she said, “Good-by, Carl, and don't forget your eye-opener when you
wake up.”

And then there was Doc Millard again, pointing to the
fireplace and explaining that “eternal” was an overworked word and that the
Eternity Burial Vault Company was now making their vaults disguised as
fireplaces, so the worms wouldn't know — and would he change the copy to
explain that, but to be very careful not to let it out to the worms.

“It's just a scratch,” he added. . . . But then it was
different. It seemed later, a long time later, because there was a two-o'clock
feeling in the air, and the door was opening, and a man was walking into the
room, and this was real.

The man was standing there, and Carl Harlow opened his eyes
and looked at him without having to look through his eyelids this time, and it
was Tom Pryor. His friend. Really there, with a pistol in his hand.

Carl said thickly, “T-Tom! What—?”

Yes, the man with the revolver was
really
there,
really Tom Pryor. Tom said, “Damn!” And then, “Why didn't you stay asleep? God,
I hate to—”

Carl said, “The golf course? You?” and Tom nodded. He said,
“I ... I had to. I mean
have
to. I was six thousand short, and when you
tore up the wrong check and didn't notice—”

“When I — what?”

Tom's face was whiter than paper, his voice strange.

“Carl, it wasn't planned. I picked up the wrong check, one
of my own. You took it and tore it up and didn't look, and you walked out and
left me your own check for ten thousand dollars. And with the examiners nearly
due — I put it through.

“With you dead, Carl, nobody'll ever know you didn't take
the money today. I'm sorry, Carl, but . . . it's me or you.”

“My friend,” said Carl Harlow, surprised that he was
grinning just a little. Because he was still more than a little drunk, and all of
this was still less than completely real.

The gun muzzle lifted. It shook. Tom was saying, almost
plaintively, “You want to ... to pray or anything, Carl? I...there isn't any
hurry—”

It was like a scene in a play. Any minute the audience would
start applauding. It wasn't really happening, Carl knew.

Murder happens to John Smith, and you read about it in the
paper. Nemesis is a gal who follows somebody else—

But he stared owlishly at Tom Pryor. Tom was waiting there
to see if he was going to say something. Had to say something.

He grinned a little again. He said, “Give Elsie my love,
Tom. Tell her I'm sorry I—”

Tom said, “Your wife? She wants you out of the way —dead —
as much as I do! We're going away together with the balance of this money! I
thought you knew! Oh, hell, why am I telling you now? Here goes. Good luck!”

What a damn silly thing to say! — that last part. But the
first part of what Tom had said was sinking in slowly and Harlow was going
rigid with anger, only he couldn't move.

Now he wanted to kill Tom Pryor, and the gun muzzle yawned
in his face, but out of reach. Tom's hand held the gun, and his pudgy fingers
were white at the knuckles.

The trigger hadn't pulled yet, and there was sweat beaded on
Tom's forehead. Tom said, “Hell, I—” and his free hand reached out for the
glass of whiskey on the little table near the Morris chair. Dutch courage.

He tossed it down neat.

Or started to. The whiskey spilled, and Tom made a horrible
strangling sound and the gun went off wild — with a roar in the confined space
of the room that sounded like the end of the world.

A cannonlike roar that brought Carl Harlow to his feet out
of the Morris chair. Watching Tom on the carpet.

Standing there looking down at Tom, and wishing in that
awful moment that Tom had killed him.

For Carl Harlow was cold sober now. And going cold, cold,
all over — as the hideous pieces fell into place. As he bent over dead Tom
Pryor and caught the strong scent of bitter almonds. And then, like a man
hypnotized, turned and saw the white sheet of paper in the typewriter, and knew
before he read it what it was.

The typewriter that had gone
clickety-click
while he
had slept and had typed out a farewell note from Carl Harlow to the world. The
typewriter that had gone
clickety-click
while he had slept, and while
Elsie had really been here and had typed that note and put the prussic acid in
the waiting pick-me-up shot of whiskey!

The stories contained within this eBook were culled from the
following sources:

Before She Kills

Daymares & Other Tales

Homicide
Sanitarium

Mostly Murder

Space on My Hands

The Shaggy Dog & Other
Mysteries

The Best of Fredric Brown

Astounding Science Fiction,
June 1944

Galaxy Science Fiction,
December 1953