I passed a counter with pencils and ball-point pens in a case. Most of them were gone - somebody hadn’t bothered to go around in back and had simply knocked the glass out - but I found one that worked and an old order pad to write on. Over by the elevators there was a store directory, so I went over and checked it, making a list of the departments worth visiting.
Office Supplies would be the typewriter. Garden & Home was a good bet - maybe I could find a little wheelbarrow to save carrying the typewriter in my arms. What I wanted was one of the big ones where all the keys are solenoid-operated instead of the cam-and-roller arrangement - that was all Arthur could operate. And those things were heavy, as I knew. That was why we had ditched the old one in the Bronx.
Sporting Goods - that would be for a gun, if there were any left. Naturally, they were about the first to go after it happened, when everybody wanted a gun. I mean, everybody who lived through it. I thought about clothes - it was pretty hot in New York - and decided I might as well take a look.
Typewriter, clothes, gun, wheelbarrow. I made one more note on the pad - try the tobacco counter, but I didn’t have much hope for that. They had used cigarettes for currency around this area for a while, until they got enough bank vaults open to supply big bills. It made cigarettes scarce.
I turned away and noticed for the first time that one of the elevators was stopped on the main floor. The doors were closed, but they were glass doors, and although there wasn’t any light inside, I could see the elevator was full. There must have been thirty or forty people in the car when it happened.
I’d been thinking that, if nothing else, these New Yorkers were pretty neat - I mean if you don’t count the Bronx. But here were thirty or forty skeletons that nobody had even bothered to clear away.
You call that neat? Right in plain view on the ground floor, where everybody who came into the place would be sure to go - I mean if it had been on one of the upper floors, what difference would it have made?
I began to wish we were out of the city. But naturally that would have to wait until we finished what we came here to do - otherwise, what was the point of coming all the way here in the first place?
The tobacco counter was bare. I got the wheelbarrow easily enough - there were plenty of those, all sizes; I picked out a nice light red-and-yellow one with rubber-tyred wheel. I rolled it over to Sporting Goods on the same floor, but that didn’t work out too well. I found a 30-30 with telescopic sights, only there weren’t any cartridges to fit it - or anything else. I took the gun anyway; Engdahl would probably have some extra ammunition.
Men’s Clothing was a waste of time, too - I guess these New Yorkers were too lazy to do laundry. But I found the typewriter I wanted.
I put the whole load into the wheelbarrow, along with a couple of odds and ends that caught my eye as I passed through Housewares, and I bumped as gently as I could down the shallow steps of the motionless escalator to the ground floor.
I came down the back way, and that was a mistake. It led me right past the food department. Well, I don’t have to tell you what that was like, with all the exploded cans and the rats as big as poodles. But I found some cologne and soaked a handkerchief in it, and with that over my nose, and some fast footwork for the rats, I managed to get to one of the doors.
It wasn’t the one I had come in, but that was all right. I sized up the guard. He looked smart enough for a little bargaining, but not too smart; and if I didn’t like his price I could always remember that I was supposed to go out the other door.
I said ‘Psst!’
When he turned around, I said rapidly: “Listen, this isn’t the way I came in, but if you want to do business, it’ll be the way I come out.’
He thought for a second, and then he smiled craftily and said: ‘All right, come on.’
Well, we haggled. The gun was the big thing - he wanted five thousand for that and he wouldn’t come down. The wheelbarrow he was willing to let go for five hundred. And the typewriter - he scowled at the typewriter as though it were contagious.
‘What you want that for?’ he asked suspiciously. I shrugged.
‘Well -’ he scratched his head - ‘a thousand?’
I shook my head.
‘Five hundred?’
I kept on shaking.
‘All right, all right,’ he grumbled. ‘Look, you take the other things for six thousand - including what you got in your pockets that you don’t think I know about, see? And I’ll throw this in. How about it?’
That was fine as far as I was concerned, but just on principle I pushed him a little further. ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you fifty bills for the lot, take it or leave it. Otherwise I’ll walk right down the street to Gimbel’s and -’
He guffawed.
‘What’s the matter?’ I demanded.
‘Pal,’ he said, ‘you kill me. Stranger in town, hey? You can’t go any place but here.’
‘Why not?’
‘Account of there ain’t any place else. See, the chief here don’t like competition. So we don’t have to worry about anybody taking their trade elsewhere, like - we burned all the other places down.’
That explained a couple of things. I counted out the money, loaded the stuff back in the wheelbarrow and headed for the Statler; but all the time I was counting and loading, I was talking to Big Brainless; and by the time I was actually on the way, I knew a little more about this ‘chief.’
And that was kind of important, because he was the man we were going to have to know very well.
I locked the door of the hotel room. Arthur was peeping out of the suitcase at me.
I said: I’m back. I got your typewriter.’ He waved his eye at me.
I took out the little kit of electricians’ tools I carried, tipped the typewriter on its back and began sorting out leads. I cut them free from the keyboard, soldered on a ground wire, and began taping the leads to the strands of a yard of fortyply multiplex cable.
It was a slow and dull job. I didn’t have to worry about which solenoid lead went to which strand - Arthur could sort them out. But all the same it took an hour, pretty near, and I was getting hungry by the time I got the last connection taped. I shifted the typewriter so that both Arthur and I could see it, rolled in a sheet of paper and hooked the cable to Arthur’s receptors.
Nothing happened.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Excuse me, Arthur. I forgot to plug it in.’
I found a wall socket. The typewriter began to hum and then it started to rattle and type:
DURA AUK UKOO RQK MWS AQB
It stopped.
‘Come on, Arthur,’ I ordered impatiently. ‘Sort them out, will you?’
Laboriously it typed:
! ! !
Then, for a time, there was a clacking and thumping as he typed random letters, peeping out of the suitcase to see what he had typed, until the sheet I had put in was used up.
I replaced it and waited, as patiently as I could, smoking one of the last of my cigarettes. After fifteen minutes or so, he had the hang of it pretty well. He typed:
YOU DAMQXXX DAMN FOOL WHUXXX WHY DID YOU LEAQNXXX LEAVE ME ALONE Q Q
‘Aw, Arthur,’ I said. ‘Use your head, will you? I couldn’t carry that old typewriter of yours all the way down through the Bronx. It was getting pretty beat-up. Anyway, I’ve only got two hands -’
YOU LOUSE, it rattled, ARE YOU TRYONXXX TRYING TO INSULT ME BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ANY QQ
‘Arthur!’ I said, shocked. ‘You know better than that!’
The typewriter slammed its carriage back and forth ferociously a couple of times. Then he said: ALL RIGHT SAM YOU KNOW YOUVE GOT ME BY THE THROAT SO YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT WITH ME WHO CARES ABOUT MY FEELINGS ANYHOW