All or much of this was window dressing, as were the threadbare clothes that he wore and the servile manner that he exhibited whenever anyone amused himself by buying him a drink or standing him a hot dog smothered in hot mustard and raw onions. While not visibly a man of property in the usual sense, Archie was not nearly as close to the extremes of mere existence as he appeared. He was a collector of information, a beachcomber who gathered his findings on the fringes of society and then sorted them out, carefully evaluating who might buy what. It was remarkable that he had been able to continue for so long without having been exposed for what he was, but he had been endowed with a near genius for footwork of the kind that skillfully avoids trouble of any kind whenever it appears in the offing. Several times he had arranged to be clapped into jail during periods when he was most anxious not to be found at his usual haunts; this had provided him with unshakable alibis as well as the proper respectability of a minor police record.
One of his steady clients was the police department — not everyone within that organization, but one or two individuals who had demonstrated over a period of time that they could be both close-mouthed and liberal in the cash they handed out. This arrangement had worked out well on both sides because of Archie’s sometimes remarkable ability to appear to sink into the woodwork or to maintain a facade of simple stupidity so effectively that he was hardly regarded as a human being. Those who knew Archie, or saw him around, had put him down long since as rum dumb with the ability to go to the men’s room on his own about the limit of his capability.
Some of Archie’s clients did not even know who he was. They were aware only that if they inserted a certain ad in the classified section, they would receive a telephone call. By phone they made their wants known and agreed upon a price. Later, if all went well, they would be called again and the details of the transfer of funds and information would be arranged. Archie did not have a social security number and the Bureau of Internal Revenue took no notice of him. Somewhere, in some forgotten corner of the nation, there was probably a record of his birth which had not been consulted since the day that it had been filed. His police record, by very special private arrangement, did not exist at all since most of his arrests had been matters of mutual convenience. Where he kept his money only Archie knew, but it was suspected in one or two quarters that the amount might be quite substantial. As indeed it was.
Fortunately not handicapped by any feelings of sensitivity or requirements of conscience, Archie decided very promptly that the men who had come to his city from abroad would be just as anxious for his help as any of his other clients, and they should not be adverse to making the necessary payments. The way to obtaining their trade was simple: find out something that they would like to know and then open negotiations. It might even be necessary to give one or two tidbits away, but that investment could be recovered later by adding a suitable surcharge on to some more important item.
One of Archie’s outstanding talents was an almost unerring ability to evaluate properly the worth of his stock in trade; he seldom made a mistake. But the invaders from overseas represented something new entirely and he had had no experience with similar customers to draw on. It was therefore all but impossible for him to appraise the amount of interest that would be aroused by the simple and not very spectacular fact that out at the university a small group of students was meeting secretly and probing for possible ways of frustrating the occupying forces.
Students were not very important. And Archie’s common sense told him that their efforts, after all of the mighty military forces had been rendered impotent, were meaningless. More important and significant sabotage efforts, which were quite likely to come later when the general citizenry finally woke up to what they were up against, might well bring in some good fees. He decided, therefore, that in this instance it would be politic to give away a free sample. For this he resorted to his old ally, the telephone.
He had read the paper and knew whom to ask for. When he had the man himself on the line he indicated that he had some “valuable information” and used a well-tested formula to introduce his method of operation. He was very coldly received until he stated what it was that he had to tell. The reaction to that was positive, so much so that any idea of giving it away swiftly left Archie’s mind. He arranged terms for a modest amount, which was his come-on technique that had worked out so well in the past, and then at once delivered his merchandise. He hung up the phone with a welcome sense of well-being; he had already made the transition to the new management and he was probably the first businessman in the city to do so.
Most ordinary citizens were totally unaware of the long-range listening devices which were capable of picking up a conversation held in normal tones in the middle of a deserted football field. Highly directional microphones, sound mirrors, and similar equipment, some of it artfully miniaturized, had been developed through two or three generations of design without ever receiving very much publicity. The eight undergraduate students at the university, who were meeting under the leadership of Miss Sally Bloom, might have known that such things existed, but they had never expected to encounter any of them. They were, therefore, totally unprepared when a force of eleven very tough, uniformed men broke in on them. Under the direction of one other foreigner, this one in civilian clothes, they were literally yanked out of their meeting room and hurried outside behind the building.
There was a brief, very rough, interrogation. “Who is the leader here?” the civilian demanded in guttural, heavily accented English.
Sally bravely raised her hand. “I am,” she answered. “Why does it concern you?”
The man in charge did not bother to answer her question. “You are plotting against us,” he declared instead. “You will tell me at once who directs you — everything. Otherwise…” He stopped to let his words be understood.
“We are a college drama group,” Sally said, looking her accuser in the eye. “We have been working on the outlines of a new play. One that will be about what has been happening to the country.”
The civilian took two steps forward and smashed his open hand across her face.^As a brief spurt of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth he drew his arm across his body until his hand was behind his ear, then he whipped it out and hit her again, backhand. For just a moment he kept his attention on her; he did not see the look of desperate determination on the face of the slightly built young man who was at her right. He almost missed the young man’s lunge toward him; he was too late to block effectively the untrained fist that was aimed at his jaw. As the student tried to bring his left into his middle, he raised his knee; with his two hands he rammed the youth’s face hard against the solid bone of the kneecap and then, as he fell, kicked him viciously in the groin.
He seized the Bloom girl by the arm and expertly twisted it up sharply behind her back. As he did, the men under his command formed a quick cordon around the six other students, who still did not quite realize what was going on. “Who directs you? Talk!” the leader said, and then sharply increased the pressure on the thin arm he had trapped.
Sally Bloom could not help a tight, short scream of pain, but she said nothing. For three full minutes, the longest and most fearful of her life, she endured the questions, the blows on her body, the exqusite agony in the socket of her arm. Slowly the young man who had tried to help her got back onto his feet, still doubled over with the intense agony in his groin, a fearful burning that he did not think that he would be able to endure for another hundred seconds.