They Walked Like Men

  I took the greater part of the money out of my pockets and hid it underneath the mattress on my bed. Not too imaginative or too good a place, but no one knew I had it and I wasn’t worried. I had to put it somewhere. I couldn’t leave it lying out where anyone could see it.

  I picked up the rifle and took it out and put it in the car.

  Then I did something I’d been intending to do ever since I’d left the Belmont place.

  I went over the car. I went over all of it. I lifted the hood and checked the motor. I crawled beneath it and checked it entirely out. There wasn’t a part of it I failed to examine.

  And when I had finished, there could be no doubt.

  It was what it was supposed to be. It was an expensive but entirely ordinary car. There was nothing different. There wasn’t a thing left out or a thing put on. There was no bomb, no malfunctioning that I could find. It wasn’t, I could swear, something fashioned by the artistry of a bunch of bowling balls that had clubbed together to simulate a car. It was honest steel and glass and chrome.

  I stood beside it and patted the fender and wondered what I should do next.

  And maybe the thing to do, I thought, was to put in another call for Senator Roger Hill. When you get sobered up, he’d said, call me back again. If you still have something to tell me, call me back tomorrow.

  And I was sober and I still had something to tell him.

  I was pretty sure what he would say, but still I had to call him.

  I headed for the little restaurant to call the senator.

  XXXII

  “Parker,” said the senator, “I am glad you called.” “Maybe,” I said, “you will listen to me now.” “Certainly,” said the senator in that oily way of his, “if you don’t insist on that cock and bull about invading aliens.” “But, Senator …”

  “I don’t mind telling you,” said the senator, “that there’ll be hell to pay—look, you know, of course, I’m talking off the record.”

  “I guessed that,” I told him. “When you come up with something interesting, it’s always off the record.”

  “Well, there’ll be hell to pay come Monday morning when the market opens. We don’t know what’s happened, but the banks are short of money. Not one bank, mind you, but damn near every bank. There’s not a one of them that can get its cash to balance. Every bank right now has its people in on overtime to find out where all that cash went to. But that is not the worst of it.”

  “What is the worst of it?”

  “That money,” said the senator. “There was too much of it to start with. A way too much of it. You take the cash on hand as of Friday morning and add it up and there is more of it, a good deal more of it, than there had any right to be. There isn’t that much money, I tell you, Parker, in the whole United States.”

  “But it’s not there any more.”

  “No,” said the senator, “it’s not there anymore. The money, so far as we can figure out, is back to somewhere near the figure one would expect to see.”

  I waited for him to go on, and in the little silence I heard him take a deep breath, as if he were strangling for air.

  “Something else,” he said. “There are rumors. Just all sorts of rumors. A new one every hour. And you can’t check them out.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  He hesitated; then he said: “Remember, off the record.” “Sure, it’s off the record.”

  “There’s one rumor that someone, no one knows quite who, has grabbed control of U. S. Steel and a slew of other corporations.”

  “Same people?”

  “God, Parker, I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything to any of it or not. You hear one rumor one minute and there’s another one the next.”

  He paused a moment; then he asked: “Parker, what do you know about this?”

  I could have told him what I knew, but I knew it wasn’t smart to do it. He’d just get sore and chew me out and that would be the end of it.

  “I can tell you what to do,” I said. “What you have to do.” “I hope it’s a good idea.” “Pass a law,” I said. “If we passed every law—”

  “A law,” I said, “outlawing private ownership. Every sort of private ownership. Make it so that no one can own a foot of ground, an industrial plant, an ounce of ore, a house—”

  “Are you crazy!” yelled the senator. “You can’t pass that kind of law. You can’t even think about it.”

  “And while you’re at it, dream up a substitute for money.”

  The senator sputtered without making any words^

  “Because,” I said, “the way it is, the aliens are buying up the Earth. If you leave it as it is, they will own the Earth.”

  The senator got his voice back.

  “Parker,” he yelled, “you are off your rocker. I have never heard such damn foolishness as this in all my life and I’ve heard a lot of it.”

  “If you don’t believe me, go and ask the Dog.”

  “What the hell has a dog got to do with this? What dog?”

  “The one down at the White House. Waiting to get in and see the President.”

  “Parker,” he snapped, “don’t call me again. I have enough on my mind without listening to you. I don’t know what you’re trying to do. But don’t call me again. If this is a joke—”

  “It’s not a joke,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Parker,” said the senator.

  “Good-bye, Senator,” I said.

  I hung up the receiver and stood in the little cubicle, trying to think.

  It all was utterly hopeless, I knew. The senator had been, from the start, the only hope I had. He was the only man I knew in public office who had imagination, but I guess not enough imagination to listen to what I had to tell him.

  I had done my best, I thought, and it had been no good. Perhaps if I’d done it differently, if I’d gone about it differently, it might have worked out better. But a man could say that about anything he did. And there was no way of knowing. It was done now and there was no way of knowing.

  There was nothing now that could stop what the aliens had begun. And it apparently was coming sooner than I thought. Monday morning would bring a panic in Wall Street and the economy would., start to fall apart. The first crack in our financial structure would begin on the trading floor and would go fast from there. In the space of one week’s time, the world would be in chaos.

  And more than likely, I thought, with a cold chill down my spine, the aliens knew what I had done. It was inconceivable that they’d not be somehow tied in with the communications systems. They would know I’d called the senator even as I was supposed to be considering their offer.

  It was something I’d not thought of. There were too many things to think of. But even if I’d thought of it, I still probably would have put in the call.

  Perhaps it would make no great difference to them. Maybe they had expected that I’d flounder around a bit before I agreed to take the job they’d offered. And thus the call, by once again demonstrating to me the impossibility of what I was trying to accomplish, might, to their way of thinking, bind me closer to them, convinced finally that there was no way in which one might resist them.

  Were there other things to do? Other approaches that a man might take? Was there anything a man could do at all?

  I could call the President, or I could try to call him. I didn’t kid myself. I knew how little chance there’d be for me to talk with him. Especially at a time like this, when the President had the greatest burden any man in office had faced since the beginning of the nation.

  See the Dog, I’d tell him, when and if I got him on the line. See the Dog that’s waiting out there for you.

  It wouldn’t work. There was no way to make it work.

  I was beat, hands down. I’d never had a chance. There’d be no one who had a chance.

  I found a dime and fed it into the slot.

  I dialed the office and asked for Joy.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.


  “Everything’s just fine. When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know,” she said angrily. “This damn Gavin, he finds more things to do.”

  “Just walk out on him.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Well, all right, then. Where do you want to eat tonight? Think of an expensive place. I’m loaded.”

  “How come you are loaded? I have your check right here. I picked it up for you.”

  “Joy, believe me, I have wads of cash. Where do you want to eat?”

  “Let’s not go out,” she said. “Let us cook a meal. The restaurants are so crowded.”

  “Steaks? What else? I’ll go out and get it.”

  She told me what else.

  I went out to get it

  XXXIII

  I came back to the car, packing one of those oversize grocery bags filled with all the stuff Joy had ticked off for me.

  The car was far down the line in the supermarket parking lot and the bag was heavy and packed rather sloppily and there were a couple of cans, one of corn and another one of peaches, that had started to tear a hole in the bottom of the bag and were trying to get out.

  I padded across the lot, walking carefully so as not to joggle the bag more than necessary, clutching it desperately with both hands in an earnest attempt to keep it from breaking up entirely.

  I reached the car without disaster but on the very verge of it. By a process of contortionist acrobatics I got the front door open and dumped the bag onto the seat. It came apart then, spilling all the groceries into a jumbled heap. I used both hands to shove the mess to the other side so I could get underneath the wheel.

  I suppose that if I’d not been having so much trouble with the bag of groceries, I’d have noticed it at once, but I didn’t see it until I had gotten in and was reaching out to insert the key in the ignition lock.

  And there it was, a sheet of paper, folded to make a tent and propped above the instrument panel and against the windshield. Across the sheet had been printed in large block letters the single word “STINKER!”

  I had leaned forward to put the key into the lock and I stayed leaning forward, staring at the paper and its one-word message.

  I didn’t even have to guess who might have put it there. There was no doubt in my mind. It was almost as if I knew, as if I’d seen them put it there—some pseudo-human, some agglomeration of the bowling balls that had made themselves into a.human form, telling me they knew I had called the senator, telling me they knew I would double-cross them if I had the chance. Not angry with me, perhaps, not particularly disturbed at what I’d done, but disgusted with me, perhaps—perhaps disappointed in me. Something just to let me know they were on to me and that I was not getting away with anything.

  I shoved the key into the lock and started the engine. I reached out and got the paper and crumpled it into a ball and tossed it out the window. If they were watching me, and I figured that they were, that would let them know what I thought of them.

  Childish? Sure, it was. I just didn’t give a damn. There was nothing left to give a damn about.

  Three blocks down the street, I noticed the car. It was just an ordinary car, black and medium-priced. I don’t know why I noticed it. There was nothing unusual about it. It was the kind of car, the age, the make, the color you saw a hundred times a day.

  Perhaps the answer is that I would have noticed any car that pulled in behind me.

  I went two more blocks and it still trailed along behind. I made a couple of turns and it still was there.

  There was little question that it was tailing me, and a clumsy job of tailing.

  I headed out of town and it followed still, half a block behind. Not caring, I thought, not even trying to hide the fact that it was following. Wanting me to know, perhaps, that I was being followed, just keeping on the pressure.

  I wondered, as I drove, whether I should even bother to shake this follower. There didn’t seem to be any particular reason that I should. Even if I shook him, it might make little difference. There wasn’t much, I told myself, to be gained by it. They had monitored my call to the senator. More than likely they knew my base of operations, if you could so dignify it. Without much question, they knew exactly where to find me if they ever wanted me.

  But there might be some small advantage, I told myself, if I could make them think that I didn’t know all this. It was a good, cheap way of playing dumb, for whatever that was worth.

  I reached the city limits and hit one of the west highways and let out the car a bit. I gained on my pursuer, but not by very much.

  Ahead the road curved up a hill, with a sharper curve starting at the top. Leading off the curve, I remembered, was a country road. There was little traffic, and maybe, if I were lucky, I could duck into the side road and be out of sight before the black car cleared the curve.

  I gained a little on him on the hill and put on a burst of speed when he was hidden by the curve. The road ahead was clear, and as I reached the side road I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard over. The car hugged the ground like a crouching animal. The rear wheels started to skid a bit, squealing on the pavement; then I was into the country road and straightened out and pouring on the gas.

  The road was hilly, one steep incline and then another, with sharp dips between them. And at the top of the third of them, glancing up at the rear-vision mirror, I saw the black car topping the second hill behind.

  It was a shock. Not that it meant so awfully much, but I had been so sure I had shaken him that it was a solid blow at my confidence.

  It angered me as well. If that little pip-squeak back there …

  Then I saw the trail. It was, I suppose, an old wagon road of some years ago, choked with weeds and with the branches of a grove of trees hanging down to shield it, as if the very branches were trying to hide the faint trace that was left.

  I turned the car’s wheel sharply and went bumping over the shallow ditch. The overhanging branches blotted out the windshield and screeched against the metal of the body.

  I drove blind, with the tires bouncing in the old, almost obliterated ruts. Finally I stopped and got out. The branches hung low on the track behind, and it was unlikely that the car could be seen by anyone passing on the road.

  I grinned in minor triumph.

  This time, I was sure, I had put one over.

  I waited, and the black car topped the hill and came roaring down the road. In the silence of the afternoon, it made a lot of noise. It didn’t have too far more to run before it would need a major overhaul.

  It went on down the hill; then there was a screech of brakes. They kept on screeching for some time before the car came to a halt.

  Licked again, I thought. Somehow or other, they knew that I was here.

  So they wanted to play rough. So if that was the way they wanted it, that was the way they’d have it.

  I opened the front door and reached into the back to pick up the rifle. I swung it in my hand, and the weight and heft of it had an assuring feel. For a moment I wondered just how much good the rifle might be against a thing like this; then I remembered how Atwood had come apart when I’d reached for the pistol in my pocket and how the car on the road up north had gone rolling down the hillside when I’d opened fire on it.

  Rifle in hand, I cat-footed down the trail. If the follower should come hunting me—and certainly he would—it would never do to let him find me where he thought I was.

  I moved through a hushed and silent world, redolent with the scent of autumn. Crimson-leafed vines looped above the trail, and there was a constant rain of frost-tinted leaves, falling gently and slowly, running a slow-paced maze through the branches of the grove. Except for a slight rustling as my feet scuffed against a dry leaf here and there, walking was quiet Years of fallen leaves and growing moss made a carpet that deadened every noise.

  I came to the edge of the grove and crept along it to reach the top of the hill. I found a flaming sumac bush
and squatted down behind it. The bush still held its full quota of glossy red leaves and I was in splendid ambush.

  Below me the hill swept down toward a tiny stream, no more than a trickle of water that ran down the fold between the hills. The grove curved in toward the road, and below it was a brown expanse of hillside covered by high, dry weeds, with here and there the flaming fire of another sumac cluster. The man came down the creek, then started up the long slope of hill, heading straight toward me, almost as if he knew I was hiding there behind the bush. He was an undistinguished-looking customer, a man walking with a slight stoop to his shoulders, with an old felt hat pulled down around his ears, and dressed in some sort of a black suit that even from that distance I could see was shabby.

  He came straight toward me, not looking up. As if he were pretending he didn’t see me, had no idea I was anywhere around. He moved at a shambling gait, and not very fast, plodding up the hill, with his eyes bent on the ground.

  I brought up the gun and poked the barrel through the scarlet leaves. I held it steady on my shoulder and put the sights on the bent-down head of the man who climbed the hill. He stopped. As if he knew the rifle had been pointed at him, he stopped and his head came up and swiveled on his neck. He straightened and he stiffened, and then he changed his course, angling across the hillside toward a little swale that was grown high with weeds.

  I lowered the rifle, and as I did I caught the first edge of the tainted air.

  I sniffed to be certain what I smelled, and there was no mistaking it. There was an irate skunk somewhere, down there on the hillside.

  I grinned. It served him right, I thought. It served the damn fool right.

  He was plunging, moving rapidly now, through the patch of waist-high weeds, down toward the swale, and then he disappeared.

  I rubbed my eyes and had another look and still he wasn’t there.

  He might have stumbled and fallen in the weeds, I told myself, but there was the haunting feeling I’d seen it all before. I had seen it in the basement of the Belmont house. Atwood had been there, sitting in the chair, and in an instant the chair had been empty and the bowling balls had been rolling on the floor.