The Complete Stories, Vol. 1: Final Reckonings

  Barton Stone descended from the top of the crate, replaced it carefully in the corner, and tiptoed down the stairs. He moved carefully and silently, and it was an effort to do so, because he wanted all the while to run.

  His feeling was irrational, and he knew it, but he could not control himself. He had always experienced that sudden surge of fear in the presence of the demented. When he saw a drunk in a bar, he was afraid — because you never know what a drunk will do next, what will enter his mind and how he will act. He shied away from arguments, because of what happens to a man's reaction pattern when he sees red. He avoided the mumblers, the people who talk to themselves or to the empty air as they shuffle down the street.

  Right now he was afraid of a little fat man, a little fat man with a long, sharp, silver needle. The needle was crooked at one end, Stone remembered — and he could see that needle sinking into his own throat, right up to the crooked angle. The fat man was crazy and Stone wanted no part of him. He'd go back to the rental agency, see Mr. Freed, tell him. Freed could evict him, get him out of there in a hurry. That would be the sensible way.

  Before he knew it, Stone was back in his own walk-up flat, resting on the bed and staring at the wall. Although it wasn't the wall he was seeing. He was seeing the little fat man and studying him as he sat at his big table. He was seeing the books and the sheaves and the long rolls and scrolls of paper.

  He could group them in the background, so. Just sketch them in lightly, in order to place the figure. The khaki shirt hung thusly — and the open collar draped in this fashion. Now the outlines of the head and shoulders; be sure to catch the intent intensity, the concentrated concentration of the pose.

  Stone had his sketchpad out now, and his hands moved furiously. The sunlight would serve as a high light over the shoulder. It would strike the silver pin and the reflection would fleck the features of the face.

  The features — the face — most important. He began to rough it in. If he could only capture the instant before the sob, if he could only fathom the secret of the eyes as the pin stabbed down, he'd have a painting.

  What was that look? Stone had unconsciously catalogued and categorized the features. The proportions of nose to forehead, ears to head, chin to jaw; the relationship of brow and cheekbone to the eyes — he knew them and reproduced them. But the expression itself—particularly that look around the eyes — that was the key to it all.

  And he couldn't get it down. He drew, erased, drew again. He made a marginal sketch and rubbed it out. The charcoal smeared his palm.

  No, it was wrong, all wrong. He'd have to see him again. He was afraid to go, but he wanted that painting. He wanted to do it; he had to do it. There was a mystery here, and if he could only pin it down on canvas he'd be satisfied.

  Pin it down. The pin was what frightened him, he knew it now. It wasn't the man so much. Granted, he was probably insane — without the pin he'd be harmless, deprived of weapons.

  Stone stood up. He went out, down the stairs, walked. He should have gone to the rental agency first, he told himself, but the other need was greater. He wanted to see his subject once more. He wanted to stare into the face of the little fat man and read the secret behind the planes and angles.

  And he did. He climbed the stairs silently, mounted the crate quietly, directed his soundless gaze over the transom.

  The fat man was still at work. New books, new papers bulked high on the big table. But the left hand turned the pages, the right hand poised the pin. And the endless, enigmatic pantomime played on. Sigh, stab, sob. Stop and shudder, shuffle through fresh pages, scan and scrutinize again, and then — sigh, stab, sob.

  The silver pin glared and glistened. It glowed and glittered and grew.

  Barton Stone tried to study the face of the fat man, tried to impress the image of his eyes.

  Instead he saw the pin. The pin and only the pin. The pin that poised, the pin that pointed, the pin that pricked the page.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the little man's face, forced himself to focus on form and features. He saw sorrow, read resignation, recognized revulsion, found fear there. But there was neither sorrow nor resignation, revulsion nor fear in the hand that drove the pin down again and again, There was only a mechanical gesture, without pattern or meaning that Barton Stone could decipher. It was the action of a lunatic, the antic gesture of aberration.

  Stone stepped down from the crate, replaced it in the corner, then paused before the loft door. For a moment he hesitated. It would be so simple merely to walk into the loft, confront the little man, ask him his business. The little man would look up, and Stone could stare into his eyes, single out and scrutinize the secrets there.

  But the little man had his pin, and Stone was afraid. He was afraid of the pin that didn't sob or sigh but merely stabbed down. And made its point.

  The point — what was it?

  Well, there was another way of finding out, the sensible way. Stone sidled softly down the stairs, padded purposefully up the street.

  Here it was, ACME RENTALS. But the door was locked. Barton Stone glanced at his watch. Only four o'clock. Funny he'd be gone so early, unless he'd left with a client to show some property or office space.

  Stone sighed. Tomorrow, then. Time enough. He turned and strode back down the street. He intended to go to his flat and rest before supper, but as he rounded the corner he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

  It was only a brownish blur, moving very fast. His eye caught a glimpse of khaki, a suggestion of a bowed back, a white-thatched head disappearing into the doorway of a local restaurant. That was enough; he was sure now. His little fat man had taken time out to eat.

  And that meant. . .

  Stone ran the remaining blocks, clattered up the rickety stairs. He burst into the loft, raced over to the table. Then, and then only, he stopped. What was he doing here? What did he hope to find out? What was he looking for?

  That was it. He was looking for something. Some clue, some intimation of the little fat man's perverted purpose.

  The books and papers billowed balefully all about him. There were at least half a hundred presently on the table. Stone picked up the first one. It was a telephone directory, current edition, for Bangor, Maine. Beneath it was another — Yuma, Arizona. And below that, in a gaudy cover, the city directory of Montevideo. At one side a long list of names, sheet after sheet of them, in French. The town roll of Dijon. And over at one side the electoral rolls of Manila, RL Another city directory — Stone guessed it must be in Russian. And here was the phone book from Leeds, and the census sheets from Calgary, and a little photostat of the unofficial census of Mombasa.

  Stone paged through them, then directed his attention to another stack on the right-hand side of the table. Here were opened books aplenty, piled one upon the other in a baffling miscellany. Stone glanced at the bottom of the collection. Another phone book, from Seattle. City directory of Belfast. Voting list from Bloomington, Illinois. Precinct polling list, Melbourne, Australia. Page after page of Chinese ideographs. Military personnel, USAF, Tokyo base. A book in Swedish or Norwegian — Stone wasn't sure which, but he recognized that it contained nothing but names; and like all the others it was recent or currently published and in use.

  And here, right on top, was a Manhattan directory. It was open, like the others, and apparently the choice of page had been made on random impulse. Barton Stone glanced at the heading: FRE. Was there a pin mark? He stared, found it.

  Freed, George A. And the address.

  Wait a minute! Wasn't that his rental agency man? Something began to form and fashion, and then Stone pushed the book away and ran out of the room and down the stairs, and he rounded the corner and found the newsstand and bought his paper and clawed it open to the death notices, and then he read the name again.

  Freed, George A. And the address. And on another page — Stone's hands were trembling, and it took him a while to find it — was the story. It had happened this morning. Ac
cident. Hit by a truck crossing the street. Survived by blah, blah, blah.

  Yes, blah, blah, blah, and this morning (perhaps while Stone has been watching him the first time) the pin had pointed and stabbed and a name in the directory was marked for destruction. For death.

  For Death!

  Nobody'd ever bother looking up there. You could hide out there for years without being caught. Yes, you could gather together all the lists, all the sources, all the names in the world and put them into that deserted loft. You could sit there, day after day and night after night, and stick pins into them the way the legends said witches stuck pins into effigies of their victims. You'd sit there and choose book after book at random, and the pin would point. And wherever it struck somebody died. You could do that, and you would do that. If you were the little fat man. The little fat man whose name was Death.

  Stone almost laughed, although the sound didn't come out that way. He'd wondered why he couldn't get the little man's eyes right, wondered why he couldn't search out their secret. Now he knew. He'd encountered the final mystery — that of Death itself. Death himself.

  And where was Death now? Sitting in a cheap restaurant, a local hash house, taking a breather. Death was dining out. Simple enough, wasn't it? All Stone need do now was find a policeman and take him into the joint.

  "See that little fat guy over there, Officer? I want you to arrest him for murder. He's Death, you know. And I can prove it. I'll show you the pin point."

  Simple. Insanely simple.

  Maybe he was wrong. He had to be wrong. Stone riffled back to the death notices again. Kooley, Leventhaler, Mautz. He had to make sure.

  Kooley, Leventhaler, Mautz.

  Question: How long does it take for Death to dine?

  Question: Does Death care to linger over a second cup of coffee?

  Question: Does one dare go back and search that directory to find the pin points opposite the names of Kooley, Leventhaler, and Mautz?

  The first two questions couldn't be answered. They constituted a calculated risk. The third question could be solved only by action.

  Barton Stone acted. His legs didn't want to move; his feet rebelled every step of the way, and his hands shook as he climbed the stairs once more.

  Stone almost fell as he peered over the transom. The loft was still empty. And it was shrouded now in twilight. The dusk filtering through the skylight provided just enough illumination for him to read the directory. To find the names of Kooley, Leventhaler, and Mautz. And the pin points penetrating each, puncturing the o, the v, the u. Puncturing their names, puncturing their lives, providing punctuation. The final punctuation — period.

  How many others had died today, in how many cities, towns, hamlets, crossroads, culverts, prisons, hospitals, huts, kraals, trenches, tents, igloos? How many times had the silver pin descended, force by fatal fancy?

  Yes, and how many times would it descend tonight? And tomorrow, and the next day, and forever and ever, time without end, amen?

  They always pictured Death wielding a scythe, didn't they? And to think that it was really just a pin — a pin with a curve or a hook in it. A long, sharp, silver pin, like that one there.

  The last rays of the dying sunset found it, set its length ablaze in a rainbow glow. Stone gasped sharply. It was here, right here on the table, where the little fat man had left it when he went out to eat — the silver pin!

  Stone eyed the sparkling instrument, noted the hooked end, and gasped again. It was a scythe after all! A little miniature scythe of silver. The weapon of Death which cut down all mankind. Cut down mankind without rhyme or reason, stabbed senselessly to deprive men forever of sensation. Stone could picture it moving in frantic rhythm over the names of military personnel, pick, pick, picking away at lives; point, point, pointing at people; stick, stick, sticking into human hearts. The fatal instrument, the lethal weapon, smaller than any sword and bigger than any bomb.

  It was here, on the table.

  He had only to reach out and take it. . . .

  For a moment the sun stood still and his heart stopped beating and there was nothing but silence in the whole wide world. Stone picked up the pin.

  He put it in his shirt pocket and stumbled out of the room, stumbled through darkness and tumbled down the flights of the night.

  Then he was out on the street again and safe. He was safe, and the pin was safe in his pocket, and the world was safe forever.

  Or was it? He couldn't be sure.

  He couldn't be sure, and he wouldn't be sure, and he sat there in his room all night long, wondering if he'd gone completely mad.

  For the pin was only a pin. True, it was shaped like a miniature scythe. True, it was cold and did not warm to the touch, and its point was sharper than any tool could ever grind.

  But he couldn't be sure. Even the next morning there was nothing to show. He wondered if Death read the papers. He couldn't read all the papers. He couldn't attend all the funerals. He was too busy. Or, rather, he had been too busy. Now he could only wait, as Stone was waiting.

  The afternoon editions would begin to provide proof. The home editions. Stone waited, because he couldn't be sure. And then he went down to the corner and bought four papers and he knew.

  There were death notices still; of course there would be. Death notices from yesterday. Only from yesterday.

  And the front pages carried further confirmation. The subject matter of the stories was serious enough, but the treatment was still humorous, quizzical, or, at best, speculative and aloof. Lots of smart boys on the wire services and the city desks; too hard-boiled to be taken in or commit themselves until they were certain. So there was no editorial comment yet, just story after story, each with its own "slant."

  The prisoner up at Sing Sing who went to the chair last night — and was still alive. They'd given him plenty of juice, and the power worked all right. The man had fried in the hot seat. Fried, literally, but lived. Authorities were investigating. . . .

  Freak accident up in Buffalo — cables snapped and a two-ton safe landed squarely on the head and shoulders of Frank Nelson, forty-two. Broken back, neck, arms, legs, pelvis, skull completely crushed. But in Emergency Hospital, Frank Nelson was still breathing and doctors could not account for . . .

  Plane crash in Chile. Eighteen passengers, all severely injured and many badly burned when engines caught fire, but no fatalities were reported and further reports . . .

  City hospitals could not explain the sudden cessation of deaths throughout Greater New York and environs. . . .

  Gas-main explosions, automobile accidents, fires and natural disasters; each item isolated and treated as a freak, a separate phenomenon.

  That's the way it would be until perhaps tomorrow, when the hard-boiled editors and the hard-headed medical men and the hard-shelled Baptists and the hard-nosed military leaders and the hard-pressed scientists all woke up, pooled their information, and realized that Death had died.

  Meanwhile, the torn and the twisted, the burned and the maimed, the tortured and the broken ones writhed in their beds — but breathed and lived, in a fashion.

  Stone breathed and lived in a fashion too. He was beginning to see the seared body of the convict, the mangled torso of the mover, the agonized forms that prayed for the mercy of oblivion all over the world.

  Conscience doth make cowards of us all and no man is an island. But on the other hand, Stone breathed and lived after a fashion. And as long as he had the pin, he'd breathe and live forever. Forever!

  So would they all. And more would be born, and the earth would teem with their multitude — what then? Very well, let the editors and the doctors and the preachers and the soldiers and the scientists figure out solutions. Stone had done his part. He'd destroyed Death. Or at the least, disarmed him.

  Barton Stone wondered what Death was doing right now. Death, in the afternoon. Was he sitting in the loft, pondering over his piles of useless papers, lingering over his lethal ledgers? Or was he out, looking f
or another job? Couldn't very well expect to get unemployment compensation, and he had no social security.

  That was his problem. Stone didn't care. He had other worries.

  The tingling, for example. It had started late that morning, around noon. At first Stone ascribed it to the fact that he hadn't eaten or slept for over twenty-four hours. It was fatigue. But fatigue gnaws. Fatigue does not bite. It doesn't sink its sharp little tooth into your chest.

  Sharp. Chest. Stone reached up, grabbed the silver pin from his pocket. The little scythe was cold. Its sharp, icy point had cut through his shirt, pricked against his heart.

  Stone laid the pin down very carefully on the table, and he even turned the point away from himself. Then he sat back and sighed as the pain went away.

  But it came back again, stronger. And Stone looked down and saw that the pin pointed at him again. He hadn't moved it. He hadn't touched it. He hadn't even looked at it. But it swung around like the needle of a compass. And he was its magnetic pole. He was due north. North, cold and icy like the pains that shot through his chest.

  Death's weapon had power — the power to stab him, stab his chest and heart. It couldn't kill him, for there was no longer any dying in the world. It would just stab him now, forever and ever, night and day for all eternity. He was a magnet, attracting pain. Unendurable, endless pain.

  The realization transfixed him, just as the point of the pin itself transfixed him.

  Had his own hand reached out and picked up the pin, driven it into his chest? Or had the pin itself risen from the table and sought its magnetic target? Did the pin have its own powers?

  Yes. That was the answer, and he knew it now. Knew that the little fat man was just a man and nothing more. A poor devil who had to go out and eat, who slept and dozed as best he could while he still stabbed ceaselessly away. He was only a tool. The pin itself was Death.

  Had the little man once looked over a transom or peered through a window in New York or Baghdad or Durban or Rangoon? Had he stolen the silver pin from yet another poor devil and then been driven by it, driven out into the street by the pin that pricked and pricked at his heart? Had he returned to the place where all the names in the world awaited their final sentencing?