He had not gone more than a couple of blocks before he discovered that this was probably a mistake. *People stopped to stare at him till he began to wonder whether he had all his clothes on, but it was not until he had passed the First National Bank and was close to the Nonpareil office that he learned the reason. A metallic voice, rising to tornado intensity, brought him to a halt. It came from a sound-truck, which bore down directly taward him, shouting: "Read Arthur Finch's new poems! Out October first! Read Arthur Finch's new ..." The whole flank of the vehicle was occupied by a billboard, with an atrocious, but he feared recognizable, sketch of himself, surrounded by monstrous captions: "THE POET LAUREATE OF MEMPHIS! SHAKESPEARE OF THE SOUTHERN CULTURAL RENAISSANCE!"
The Colonel was a fast worker.
His mouth opening like the mouth of a carp, Finch shrank back against the building as the truck came to a halt, nearly in front of him. Toward the curb he could see a good-looking girl in bright blue stockings who looked at the frightful poster, then at him, then started purposefully in his direction. But she never arrived.
BOOM!
A blast of air slammed him against the stonework amid a tinkling rain of glass. People screamed and ran, spreading from the entrance to the First National Bank, and out of it into the suddenly lonesome street came two men, each with a suitcase in one hand and a gun in the other. As Finch struggled to his feet, a portly cop in a gold-braided coat of many colors went past, tugging at his pocket. One of the gunmen fired; down went the officer, and the robbers climbed into a.getaway car, which moved off at a pace that seemed curiously languid.
A voice behind Finch said: "You're Finch, the poet, ain't you? Thought you'd show up."
He swung round to see, in front of a glass door that said "NO-PAR-IL" (with two letters missing) a figure tall but stooped, with long nose, thin vulpine face, ending in a tiny whisker—
"Terry!" cried Finch.
"Airedale!" retorted the tall man. "Come on in. Unless you're casing the joint for Lee's torpedoes. But I ain't got nothing he'd want."
Finch's arm was seized and he was steered into a hole-in-the-wall ground level office, where his guide dropped him in a chair and himself took another behind the desk with a plate that announced its owner as Theo. Harriman, Editor. Outside the clang of an ambulance was audible.
"There's a bank robbery!" Finch said wildly.
"Surprise," said Theo. Harriman, with an accent of heavy irony. "Never mind the act, though. I wouldn't turn in one of the old buzzard's lookouts for anything, and besides, he's got the fix on everything in this town."
Finch comprehended enough of this statement to realize he was being accused. "Good God, whatever gave you the idea that I was acting as a lookout for an affair like that?"
"Member of the Pegasus, ain't you? Pretty chummy with Basil Stewart and Impy Smith, who just tipped that box over?"
Finch pulled an ear-lobe. "I suppose I ought to have suspected that much. But look here—if I eat dinner with a minister, does that make me a missionary?"
The editor cocked his head on one side, and in the light across the angle of the jaw it was clear that his resemblance to Terry Armstrong was generalized rather than particular. There was a general air of age and dissipation about the face, culminating in faint pouches under the eyes; the mouth set itself naturally in a twist of wry humor that Terry had lacked. "Quotation," said Harriman, critically, "but fairly apt for an, impromptu. Deserves a jorum. Harem, the bottle."
He stretched an arm back toward the typewriter desk into which a secretary had apparently inserted herself with some difficulty, for she was a bull-blown blonde of at least two hundred pounds. "Now, Theodore—" she began.
"This is an Occasion. The bottle." She sighed reproachfully, unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk, and passed over a half-filled bottle of Bourbon with two dirty glasses. "How did you know who I was?" asked Finch, lifting one arm with the reflection that alcohol was, after all, an antiseptic.
"I listen at key-holes. Even when they're in inside rooms, the noise of that sound truck comes through." Then, catching Finch's shudder: "How's your magnum opus coming? Copy nearly ready for the print-shop?"
"Barely started. I need more material ..." Finch explained his process.
Harriman chuckled. "If I didn't know it couldn't be done, I'd say you slipped over a fast one on our mind-reading first citizen," he said. "However, all things work together for good unto them that love Eddie Guest. Harem! Fetch me a stack of anthologies. Here's a young man smart enough to know that the only method of becoming a poet is taking it in from the outside, and he needs encouragement."
Finch asked: "Are holdups like that a part of the regular program?"
"Only when the Colonel has financial difficulties," said Harriman, cheerfully. "It's his method of collecting taxes to pay for the good government he gives us. Now either the bank will go bust and the depositors will pay for the fun, or the insurance company, in which case the tax will come out of the stockholders. Depends on how he wants to rig the books this time; he owns both of them, anyway."
"Oh." Finch had seen enough of politics to realize the naiveté of asking why an aroused citizenry did not protest. "But if he owns everything, why does he have to use such sensational methods? I should think it would get people annoyed in the long run."
"Prob'ly will some day if he does it too often. Then we'll have a new boss. But he had to have a lot of cash money in a hurry for some reason and didn't make the cleaning he expected on that boat-race. Besides, it keeps people amused." The editor chuckled again, and poured a second round.
"But if he owns that much what did he need of cash in a hurry?"
"Prob'Iy lost a big bet somewhere. Don't kid yourself about our local grand duke. He's a mighty big frog, but Memphis is a small puddle, and if he didn't lay it on the line, the opposition might call in the FBI mob or maybe the Garment Workers' Union gang. Then the place would be crawling with dam yankees till you couldn't call your soul your own and we'd maybe get Someone down here from Nashville to run things, so we take a few stickups like this and hope Our Richard picks the right number on the little wheel next time."
"But wasn't there a man killed?"
"What of it? Everybody has to die some time. Anyway that cop was Jerry Burke—just a big dumb Mick. He's been making a play for one of Basil Stewart's women, and prob'ly figured he'd inherit her under rococo circumstances, in spite of the warning going around last night that the bank was going to be taken today. He should have laid off."
Harriman's secretary returned from the inner rooms with three or four chubby volumes which she deposited on the desk. "Well, thanks for the books and the drink," he said. "I'll be back with a manuscript as soon as I can."
"Don't mention it." The editor flipped a hand. "Anyway, there are plenty of others around here who figure to promote themselves through interest in so-called culture. You'll run into them. The motto is from Macchiavelli: 'Sequi il tuo corso, e lascia dir le gent', which as I figure it, means, 'Take your own road to hell, and let the dopes chatter.'"
Finch paused with the books under his arm. "Oh, you know that one, do you? Did you ever, by any chance, run into any of the works of Apollonios of Tyana?"