And a real prayer was on his lips. Once, a lipreader in the audience had detected a fugitive pretending to pray, but actually just reciting multiplication tables. No help for that man!
Raeder finished his prayer. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had nearly two hours to go.
And he didn’t want to die. It wasn’t worth it, no matter how much they paid! He must have been crazy, absolutely insane to agree to such a thing …
But he knew that wasn’t true. And he remembered just how sane he had been.
One week ago, he had been on the Prize of Peril stage, blinking in the spotlight, and Mike Terry had shaken his hand.
“Now, Mr. Raeder,” Terry had said solemnly, “do you understand the rules of the game you are about to play?”
Raeder nodded.
“If you accept, Jim Raeder, you will be a hunted man for a week. Killers will follow you, Jim. Trained killers, men wanted by the law for other crimes, granted immunity for this single killing under the Voluntary Suicide Act. They will be trying to kill you, Jim. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Raeder said. He also understood the two hundred thousand dollars he would receive if he could live out the week.
“I ask you again, Jim Raeder. We force no man to play for stakes of death.”
“I want to play,” Raeder said.
Mike Terry turned to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have here a copy of an exhaustive psychological test which an impartial psychological testing firm made on Jim Raeder at our request. Copies will be sent to anyone who desires them for twenty-five cents to cover the cost of mailing. The test shows that Jim Raeder is sane, well-balanced and fully responsible in every way.” He turned to Raeder.
“Do you still want to enter the contest, Jim?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Very well!” cried Mike Terry. “Jim Raeder, meet your would-be killers!”
The Thompson gang moved on stage, booed by the audience.
“Look at them, folks,” said Mike Terry, with undisguised contempt. “Just look at them! Antisocial, thoroughly vicious, completely amoral. These men have no code but the criminal’s warped code, no honor but the honor of the cowardly hired killer. They are doomed men, doomed by our society, which will not sanction their activities for long, fated to an early and unglamorous death.”
The audience shouted enthusiastically.
“What have you to say, Claude Thompson?” Terry asked.
Claude, the spokesman of the Thompsons, stepped up to the microphone. He was a thin, clean-shaved man, conservatively dressed.
“I figure,” Claude Thompson said hoarsely, “I figure we’re no worse than anybody. I mean, like soldiers in a war: they kill. And look at the graft in government, and the unions. Everybody’s got their graft.”
That was Thompson’s tenuous code. But how quickly, with what precision, Mike Terry destroyed the killer’s rationalizations! Terry’s questions pierced straight to the filthy soul of the man.
At the end of the interview, Claude Thompson was perspiring, mopping his face with a silk handkerchief and casting quick glances at his men.
Mike Terry put a hand on Raeder’s shoulder. “Here is the man who has agreed to become your victim—if you can catch him.”
“We’ll catch him,” Thompson said, his confidence returning.
“Don’t be too sure,” said Terry. “Jim Raeder has fought wild bulls—now he battles jackals. He’s an average man. He’s the people—who mean ultimate doom to you and your kind.”
“We’ll get him,” Thompson said.
“And one thing more,” Terry said, very softly. “Jim Raeder does not stand alone. The folks of America are for him. Good Samaritans from all corners of our great nation stand ready to assist him. Unarmed, defenseless, Jim Raeder can count on the aid and goodheartedness of the people, whose representative he is. So don’t be too sure, Claude Thompson! The average men are for Jim Raeder—and there are a lot of average men!”
Raeder thought about it, lying motionless in the underbrush. Yes, the people had helped him. But they had helped the killers, too.
A tremor ran through him. He had chosen, he reminded himself. He alone was responsible. The psychological test had proved that.
And yet, how responsible were the psychologists who had given him the test? How responsible was Mike Terry for offering a poor man so much money? Society had woven the noose and put it around his neck, and he was hanging himself with it and calling it free will.
Whose fault?
“Aha!” someone cried.
Raeder looked up and saw a portly man standing near him.
The man wore a loud tweed jacket. He had binoculars around his neck and a cane in his hand.
“Mister,” Raeder whispered, “please don’t tell!”
“Hi!” shouted the portly man, pointing at Raeder with his cane. “Here he is!”
A madman thought Raeder. The damned fool must think he’s playing Hare and Hounds.
“Right over here!” the man screamed.
Cursing, Raeder sprang to his feet and began running. He came out of the ravine and saw a white building in the distance. He turned toward it. Behind him he could still hear the man.
“That way, over there. Look, you fools, can’t you see him yet?”
The killers were shooting again. Raeder ran, stumbling over uneven ground, past three children playing in a tree house.
“Here he is!” the children screamed. “Here he is!”
Raeder groaned and ran on. He reached the steps of the building and saw that it was a church.
As he opened the door, a bullet struck him behind the right kneecap.
He fell, and crawled inside the church.
The television set in his pocket was saying, “What a finish, folks, what a finish! Raeder’s been hit! He’s been hit, folks, he’s crawling now, he’s in pain, but he hasn’t given up! NOT Jim Raeder!”
Raeder lay in the aisle near the altar. He could hear a child’s eager voice saying, “He went in there, Mr. Thompson. Hurry, you can still catch him!”
Wasn’t a church considered a sanctuary? Raeder wondered.
Then the door was flung open, and Raeder realized that the custom was no longer observed. He gathered himself together and crawled past the altar, out of the back door of the church.
He was in an old graveyard. He crawled past crosses and stars, past slabs of marble and granite, past stone tombs and rude wooden markers. A bullet exploded on a tombstone near his head, showering him with fragments. He crawled to the edge of an open grave.
They had deceived him, he thought. All of those nice, average, normal people. Hadn’t they said he was their representative? Hadn’t they sworn to protect their own? But no, they loathed him. Why hadn’t he seen it? Their hero was the cold, blank-eyed gunman, Thompson, Capone, Billy the Kid, Young Lochinvar, El Cid, Cuchulain, the man without human hopes or fears. They worshipped him, that dead, implacable robot gunman, and lusted to feel his foot in their face.
Raeder tried to move, and slid helplessly into the open grave.
He lay on his back, looking at the blue sky. Presently a black silhouette loomed above him, blotting out the sky. Metal twinkled. The silhouette slowly took aim.
And Raeder gave up all hope forever.
“Wait, Thompson!” roared the amplified voice of Mike Terry. The revolver wavered.
“It is one second past five o’clock! The week is up! JIM RAEDER HAS WON!”
There was pandemonium of cheering from the studio audience.