She snorted, trumpeted. And charged forward, jerking her stake out of the ground as though it had been embedded in butter.
Valenti dropped Pop Williams and ran. There’s a limit to what even a daredevil can face, and a red-eyed, charging elephant is past that limit. Way past.
Pop managed to gasp, “Atta girl,” as Lil ran on over him, with that uncanny ability of elephants to step over things they cannot see. “Atta girl. Go get him” — as Pop scrambled to his feet behind her and wobbled after.
Around the Dip-a-Whirl and alongside the Hawaiian-show top, and Valenti was only a few yards in front, toward the midway. Valenti ducking under the ropes and Lil walking through them as though they were cobwebs. She trumpeted again, a blast of sound that brought carneys running from all parts of the lot and from the cars back on the railroad siding behind it.
There was terror on Valenti’s face as he ran out into the open of the midway. Death’s hot breath was on the back of his neck as he reached the area in the center of the midway where stood the tank and the diving tower. He scrambled up the ladder of the tower, evading by inches the trunk that reached up to drag him down.
Then Tepperman was there, and the carney grounds cop with a drawn revolver in his hand. And Pop was explaining, the instant he had Lil quieted down. Somebody brought news that Bill Gruber was back of the Hawaiian-show top, out cold.
Running, he’d apparently taken a header over a tent stake and smacked into a prop trunk.
Doc Berg started that way, but by that time enough of Pop’s story was out and Tepperman sent him to Valenti’s trailer instead. No hurry about reviving a man who was going to burn anyway; the kid came first.
The cop yelled to Valenti to come down and surrender.
But Valenti had his nerve back now. Pop had a hunch what was going to happen next, and made the excuse of taking Lil back where she belonged. He did it while Valenti was thumbing his nose at the cop, and before Valenti poised himself on the diving platform — over the drained, empty tank eighty feet below.
Pop Williams’s voice, off-key and cracking, but plenty loud, preceded him along the path from the lot to the carnival cars. It was almost dawn, but what was that to a man who’d been told by the boss to sleep as late as he wanted to sleep.
And who’d been given a ten-buck advance on an increased wage and had spent it all. Scotch wasn’t bad stuff, after all, although it took a lot of it.
Whitey was with him, and Whitey had tried Scotch, too.
Whitey asked, “Who’s this P-Pally-achoo you’re yowling about, Pop?”
“A clown, like me, Whitey. Di’ I tell you Tepperman’s gonna let me ride Lil in th’ parade, in clown cos-coschume?”
“Only fifty times you told me.”
“Oh,” said Pop, and his voice boomed out again.
A beautiful sentiment, no doubt, but not quite true. He hadn’t been happier in fifty years.
Nothing Sinister
NO ONE who lives a reasonably sane, law-abiding life ever thinks seriously of murder in connection with himself.
Nemesis is a gal who follows somebody else, follows him and catches up with him somewhere, and you read about it over your morning coffee. The name of the victim is just a name you never heard of. It couldn’t be yours.
Or could it?
Take Carl Harlow. He was an ordinary-enough guy. And right up to the time the bullet hit him, he didn’t know Nemesis was after him. He didn’t guess it even then, until the second bullet — the one that missed — whined past his ear like a steel-jacketed hornet out of hell.
You couldn’t blame Carl Harlow for not knowing.
Certainly, there hadn’t been any buildup to murder. No warning note printed on cheap stationery. When he’d driven home from the poker game the night before, no specters had perched gibbering on his radiator cap. No black cats had crossed his path. Nothing sinister.
In fact, he’d won seventeen dollars. Doubly sweet because most of it was Doc Millard’s money and although he liked Doc a lot, it served him right for the outrageous bills he’d sent. And a couple of bucks had been Tom Pryor’s, and bank officers deserved robbing if anybody did.
True, he’d drunk too much. But he was used to that, and took it in his stride, now. He’d got up early this morning —Saturday morning — just as early as ever, and at breakfast he’d gone so far in righteousness as to split his winnings with Elsie, his wife. But maybe that was because Elsie would probably find out, from one of the other fellow’s wives, how much he had won. Wilshire Hills has a grapevine system that is second to none.
Nor did he see anything sinister in the fact that his boss— or rather, one of his two bosses — had assigned him to write copy for the Eternity Burial Vault account. Carl Harlow sat down and began to study the selling points of those vaults, and he waxed enthusiastic.
“Lookit, Bill,” he said, “these burial vaults really are something! When you come to think about it, an ordinary coffin must disintegrate pretty darned quick. But these things are made of concrete—”
“Like your head!” snapped Bill Owen. “Don’t sell me on the things; write it down— Oh, hell, Carl, I’m sorry I’m so irritable. But you know why. Have you told Elsie yet?” Carl Harlow nodded soberly. “Told her last week, Bill. She took it like a sport, of course. Said I’d get another job as good or better. Wish I was that confident myself. It’s hell to work for a place for twenty years and then have it fold up under you.
Course, I’ve got savings, but — I suppose it’s certain for the first of the month?”
“All too certain,” said Bill Owen.
Carl took the Eternity account folders over to his desk and sat down to make a rough layout. And to write a catch line, something about eternal peace, only you could not use the word “eternal” because that was too close to the name of the company. And you shouldn’t make any direct mention of corpses or death or decomposition. Nothing sinister.
It was tough copy to write. There was a dull throb in his head, too. A thump-thump-thump that Carl didn’t recognize as the footsteps of Nemesis. Few of us recognize those footsteps.
All they meant to Carl Harlow was: “I’ve been drinking too much. I’ve got to cut down.” Even though he knew he wouldn’t.
He knew that once you got the pick-me-up habit you were pretty near a goner. If, when you woke up after a bit of too much, your first thought was to reach for a drink, then the stuff had you. But otherwise you stayed in a fog. And things went thump-thump.
He’d had his eye-opener this morning, of course, the first minute out of bed — but apparently it hadn’t been enough. He took another now, from the bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk.
It cleared his head, and his hand became steadier. Hell, he had it already — an angle the Eternity account had never used! He thought it could be handled so they’d go for it in a big way. He started on the layout. Old English type for the catch line. His pencil went faster.
At ten-thirty he showed it to Bill Owen. “How’s this?”
“Mm-m-m! Pretty good, I’d say. I’ll send it around to them, in just that form.”