The pilot’s eyes jerked up to look at Wilson, then abruptly, he was pushing past the stewardess and lurching up the aisle.
“Hurry!” Wilson cried. He glanced out the window in time to see the man go leaping upward. That didn’t matter now. There would be evidence.
“What’s going on?” the pilot asked, stopping breathlessly beside his seat.
“He’s torn up one of the engine plates!” said Wilson in a shaking voice.
“He’s what?”
“The man outside!” said Wilson. “I tell you he’s—!”
“Mister Wilson, keep your voice down!” ordered the pilot.
Wilson’s jaw went slack.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” said the pilot, “But—”
Drawing in an agitated breath, the pilot bent over. In a moment, his gaze shifted coldly to Wilson’s. “Well?” he asked.
Wilson jerked his head around. The plates were in their normal position.
“Oh, now wait,” he said before the dread could come. “I saw him pry that plate up.”
“Mister Wilson, if you don’t—”
“I said I saw him pry it up,” said Wilson.
The pilot stood there looking at him in the same withdrawn, almost aghast way as the stewardess had. Wilson shuddered violently.
“Listen, I saw him!” he cried. The sudden break in his voice appalled him.
In a second, the pilot was down beside him. “Mister Wilson, please,” he said. “All right, you saw him. But remember there are other people aboard. We mustn’t alarm them.”
Wilson was too shaken to understand at first.
“You—mean you’ve seen him then?” he asked.
“Of course,” the pilot said, “but we don’t want to frighten the passengers. You can understand that.”
“Of course, of course. I don’t want to—”
Wilson felt a spastic coiling in his groin and lower stomach. Suddenly, he pressed his lips together and looked at the pilot with malevolent eyes.
“I understand,” he said.
“The thing we have to remember—” began the pilot.
“You can stop now,” Wilson said.
“Sir?”
Wilson shuddered. “Get out of here,” he said.
“Mister Wilson, what—?”
“Will you stop?” Face whitening, Wilson turned from the pilot and stared out at the wing, eyes like stone.
He glared back suddenly.
“Rest assured I’ll not say another word!” he snapped.
“Mr. Wilson, try to understand our—”
Wilson twisted away and stared out venomously at the engine. From a corner of his vision, he saw two passengers standing in the aisle looking at him. Idiots! his mind exploded. He felt his hands begin to tremble and, for a few seconds, was afraid that he was going to vomit. It’s the motion, he told himself. The plane was bucking in the air now like a storm-tossed boat.
He realized that the pilot was still talking to him and, refocusing his eyes, he looked at the man’s reflection in the window. Beside him, mutely somber, stood the stewardess. Blind idiots, both of them, thought Wilson. He did not indicate his notice of their departure. Reflected on the window, he saw them heading toward the rear of the cabin. They’ll be discussing me now, he thought. Setting up plans in case I grow violent.
He wished now that the man would reappear, pull off the cowling plate and ruin the engine. It gave him a sense of vengeful pleasure to know that only he stood between catastrophe and the more than thirty people aboard. If he chose, he could allow that catastrophe to take place. Wilson smiled without humor. There would be a royal suicide, he thought.
The little man dropped down again and Wilson saw that what he’d thought was correct—the man had pressed the plate back into place before jumping away. For, now, he was prying it up again and it was raising easily, peeling back like skin excised by some grotesque surgeon. The motion of the wing was very broken but the man seemed to have no difficulty staying balanced.
Once more Wilson felt panic. What was he to do? No one believed him. If he tried to convince them any more they’d probably restrain him by force. If he asked the stewardess to sit by him it would be, at best, only a momentary reprieve. The second she departed or, remaining, fell asleep, the man would return. Even if she stayed awake beside him, what was to keep the man from tampering with the engines on the other wing? Wilson shuddered, a coldness of dread misting along his bones.
Dear God, there was nothing to be done.
He twitched as, across the window through which he watched the little man, the pilot’s reflection passed. The insanity of the moment almost broke him—the man and the pilot within feet of each other, both seen by him yet not aware of one another. No, that was wrong. The little man had glanced across his shoulder as the pilot passed. As if he knew there was no need to leap off any more, that Wilson’s capacity for interfering was at an end. Wilson suddenly trembled with mind-searing rage. I’ll kill you! he thought. You filthy little animal, I’ll kill you!
Outside, the engine faltered.
It lasted only for a second, but, in that second, it seemed to Wilson as if his heart had, also, stopped. He pressed against the window, staring. The man had bent the cowling plate far back and now was on his knees, poking a curious hand into the engine.
“Don’t.” Wilson heard the whimper of his own voice begging. “Don’t . . .”
Again, the engine failed. Wilson looked around in horror. Was everyone deaf? He raised his hand to press the button for the stewardess, then jerked it back. No, they’d lock him up, restrain him somehow. And he was the only one who knew what was happening, the only one who could help.
“God . . .” Wilson bit his lower lip until the pain made him whimper. He twisted around again and jolted. The stewardess was hurrying down the rocking aisle. She’d heard it! He watched her fixedly and saw her glance at him as she passed his seat.
She stopped three seats down the aisle. Someone else had heard! Wilson watched the stewardess as she leaned over, talking to the unseen passenger. Outside, the engine coughed again. Wilson jerked his head around and looked out with horror-pinched eyes.
“Damn you!” he whined.
He turned again and saw the stewardess coming back up the aisle. She didn’t look alarmed. Wilson stared at her with unbelieving eyes. It wasn’t possible. He twisted around to follow her swaying movement and saw her turn in at the kitchen.
“No.” Wilson was shaking so badly now he couldn’t stop. No one had heard.
No one knew.
Suddenly, Wilson bent over and slid his overnight bag out from under the seat. Unzipping it, he jerked out his briefcase and threw it on the carpeting. Then, reaching in again, he grabbed the oilskin envelope and straightened up. From the corners of his eyes, he saw the stewardess coming back and pushed the bag beneath the seat with his shoes, shoving the oilskin envelope beside himself. He sat there rigidly, breath quavering in his chest, as she went by.
Then he pulled the envelope into his lap and untied it. His movements were so feverish that he almost dropped the pistol. He caught it by the barrel, then clutched at the stock with white-knuckled fingers and pushed off the safety catch. He glanced outside and felt himself grow cold.
The man was looking at him.
Wilson pressed his shaking lips together. It was impossible that the man knew what he intended. He swallowed and tried to catch his breath. He shifted his gaze to where the stewardess was handing some pills to the passenger ahead, then looked back at the wing. The man was turning to the engine once again, reaching in. Wilson’s grip tightened on the pistol. He began to raise it.
Suddenly, he lowered it. The window was too thick. The bullet might be deflected and kill one of the passengers. He shuddered and stared out at the little man. Again the engine failed and Wilson saw
an eruption of sparks cast light across the man’s animal features. He braced himself. There was only one answer.
He looked down at the handle of the emergency door. There was a transparent cover over it. Wilson pulled it free and dropped it. He looked outside. The man was still there, crouched and probing at the engine with his hand. Wilson sucked in trembling breath. He put his left hand on the door handle and tested. It wouldn’t move downward. Upward there was play.
Abruptly, Wilson let go and put the pistol in his lap. No time for argument, he told himself. With shaking hands, he buckled the belt across his thighs. When the door was opened, there would be a tremendous rushing out of air. For the safety of the ship, he must not go with it.
Now. Wilson picked the pistol up again, his heartbeat staggering. He’d have to be sudden, accurate. If he missed, the man might jump onto the other wing—worse, onto the tail assembly where, inviolate, he could rupture wires, mangle flaps, destroy the balance of the ship. No, this was the only way. He’d fire low and try to hit the man in the chest or stomach. Wilson filled his lungs with air. Now, he thought. Now.
The stewardess came up the aisle as Wilson started pulling at the handle. For a moment, frozen in her steps, she couldn’t speak. A look of stupefied horror distended her features and she raised one hand as if imploring him. Then, suddenly, her voice was shrilling above the noise of the engines.
“Mr. Wilson, no!”
“Get back!” cried Wilson and he wrenched the handle up.
The door seemed to disappear. One second it was by him, in his grip. The next, with a hissing roar, it was gone.
In the same instant, Wilson felt himself enveloped by a monstrous suction which tried to tear him from his seat. His head and shoulders left the cabin and, suddenly, he was breathing tenuous, freezing air. For a moment, eardrums almost bursting from the thunder of the engines, eyes blinded by the arctic winds, he forgot the man. It seemed he heard a prick of screaming in the maelstrom that surrounded him, a distant shout.
Then Wilson saw the man.
He was walking across the wing, gnarled from leaning forward, talon-twisted hands outstretched in eagerness. Wilson flung his arm up, fired. The explosion was like a popping in the roaring violence of the air. The man staggered, lashed out and Wilson felt a streak of pain across his head. He fired again at immediate range and saw the man go flailing backward—then, suddenly, disappear with no more solidity than a paper doll swept in a gale. Wilson felt a bursting numbness in his brain. He felt the pistol torn from failing fingers.
Then all was lost in winter darkness.
He stirred and mumbled. There was a warmness trickling in his veins, his limbs felt wooden. In the darkness, he could hear a shuffling sound, a delicate swirl of voices. He was lying, face up, on something—moving, joggling. A cold wind sprinkled on his face, he felt the surface tilt beneath him.
He sighed. The plane was landed and he was being carried off on a stretcher. His head wound, likely, plus an injection to quiet him.
“Nuttiest way of tryin’ to commit suicide I ever heard of,” said a voice somewhere.
Wilson felt the pleasure of amusement. Whoever spoke was wrong, of course. As would be established soon enough when the engine was examined and they checked his wound more closely. Then they’d realize that he’d saved them all.
Wilson slept without dreams.
THE FUNERAL
Morton Silkline was in his office musing over floral arrangements for the Fenton obsequies when the chiming strains of “I Am Crossing o’er the Bar to Join the Choir Invisible” announced an entrant into Clooney’s Cut-Rate Catafalque.
Blinking mediation from his liver-colored eyes, Silkline knit his fingers to a placid clasp, then settled back against the sable leather of his chair, a smile of funereal welcome on his lips. Out in the stillness of the hallways, footsteps sounded on the muffling carpet, moving with a leisured pace and, just before the tall man entered, the desk clock buzzed a curt acknowledgement to 7:30.
Rising as if caught in the midst of a tête-à-tête with death’s bright angel, Morton Silkline circled the glossy desk on whispering feet and extended one flaccid-fingered hand.
“Ah, good evening, sir,” he dulceted, his smile a precise compendium of sympathy and welcome, his voice a calculated drip of obeisance.
The man’s handshake was cool and bone-cracking but Silkline managed to repress reaction to a momentary flicker of agony in his cinnamon eyes.
“Won’t you be seated?” he murmured, fluttering his bruised hand toward The Grieved One’s chair.
“Thank you,” said the man, his voice a baritoned politeness as he seated himself, unbuttoning the front of his velvet-collared overcoat and placing his dark homburg on the glass top of the desk.
“My name is Morton Silkline,” Silkline offered as he recircled to his chair, settling on the cushion like a diffident butterfly.
“Asper,” said the man.
“May I say that I am proud to meet you, Mister Asper?” Silkline purred.
“Thank you,” said the man.
“Well, now,” Silkline said, getting down to the business of bereavement, “what can Clooney’s do to ease your sorrow?”
The man crossed his dark-trousered legs. “I should like,” he said, “to make arrangements for a funeral service.”
Silkline nodded once with an I-am-here-to-succor smile.
“Of course,” he said, “you’ve come to the right place, sir.” His gaze elevated a few inches beyond the pale. “When loved ones lie upon that lonely couch of everlasting sleep,” he recited, “let Clooney draw the coverlet.”
His gaze returned and he smiled with a modest subservience. “Mrs. Clooney,” he said, “made that up. We like to pass it along to those who come to us for comfort.”
“Very nice,” the man said. “Extremely poetic. But to details: I’d like to engage your largest parlor.”
“I see,” Silkline answered, restraining himself, only with effort, from the rubbing together of hands. “That would be our Eternal Rest Room.”
The man nodded affably. “Fine. And I would also like to buy your most expensive casket.”
Silkline could barely restrain a boyish grin. His cardiac muscle flexing vigorously, he forced back folds of sorrowful solicitude across his face.
“I’m sure,” he said, “that can be effected.”
“With gold trimmings?” the man said.
“Why . . . yes,” said Director Silkline, clicking audibly as he swallowed. “I’m certain that Clooney’s can satisfy your every need in this time of grievous loss. Naturally—” His voice slipped a jot from the condoling to the fiduciary “—it will entail a bit more expenditure than might, otherwise, be—”
“The cost is of no importance,” said the man, waving it away. “I want only the best of everything.”
“It will be so, sir, it will be so,” declared a fervent Morton Silkline.
“Capital,” said the man.
“Now,” Silkline went on, briskly, “will you be wishing our Mr. Mossmound to deliver his sermon On Crossing the Great Divide or have you a denominational ceremony in mind?”
“I think not,” said the man, shaking his head, thoughtfully. “A friend of mine will speak at the services.”
“Ah,” said Silkline, nodding, “I see.”
Reaching forward, he plucked the gold pen from its onyx holder, then with two fingers of his left hand, drew out an application form from the ivory box on his desk top. He looked up with the accredited expression for the Asking of Painful Questions.
“And,” he said, “what is the name of the deceased, may I ask?”
“Asper,” said the man.
Silkline glanced up, smiling politely. “A relative?” he inquired.
“Me,” said the man.
Silkline’s laugh was a faint coughing.
“I beg your pardon?” he said. “I thought you said—”
“Me,” the man repeated.
“But, I don’t—”
“You see,” the man explained, “I never had a proper going off. It was catch-as-catch-can, you might say; all improvised. Nothing—how shall I put it?—tasty.” The man shrugged his wide shoulders. “I always regretted that,” he said. “I always intended to make up for it.”
Morton Silkline had returned the pen to its holder with a decisive jabbing of the hand and was on his feet, pulsing with a harsh distemper.
“Indeed, sir,” he commented. “Indeed.”
The man looked surprised at the vexation of Morton Silkline.
“I—” he began.
“I am as fully prepared as the next fellow for a trifling badinage,” Silkline interrupted, “but not during work hours. I think you fail to realize, sir, just where you are. This is Clooney’s, a much respected ossuary; not a place for trivial joking or—”
He shrank back and stared, open-mouthed, at the black-garbed man who was suddenly on his feet, eyes glittering with a light most unseemly.
“This,” the man said, balefully, “is not a joke.”
“Is not—” Silkline could manage no more.
“I came here,” said the man, “with a most serious purpose in mind.” His eyes glowed now like cherry-bright coals. “And I expect this purpose to be gratified,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“I—”
“On Tuesday next,” the man continued, “at 8:30 p.m., my friends and I will arrive here for the service. You will have everything prepared by then. Full payment will be made directly following the exequies. Are there any questions?”
“I—”
“I need hardly remind you,” said the man, picking up his homburg, “that this affair is of the utmost importance to me.” He paused potently before allowing his voice to sink to a forbidding basso profundo. “I expect all to go well.”
Bowing a modicum from the waist, the man turned and moved in two regal strides across the office, pausing a moment at the door.