It made a coughing sound and something metallic fell out of its innards into the bucket in the middle of it. “Go ahead,” said the machine. “Pick it up.” Lansing picked it up. It resembled a motel key. Two keys, one larger than the other, were attached to an oblong piece of plastic with a number and an address printed on it.
“I don’t understand,” said Lansing. “Then attend most closely. Pay close attention to what I say. Are you listening?”
Lansing tried to speak, but stammered, then he said, “I am listening.”
“Good. Now close attention, please. You go to the address. If you go during normal business hours, the front door will be unlocked. If you go at another time, the larger of the two keys will open it. The smaller key will open the door of room one thirty-six. Do you follow me so far?”
Lansing gulped. “Yes, I do.”
“When you open the door of one thirty-six, you will find a dozen slot machines lined along a wall. Starting at the left, go to the fifth one — the fifth one: one, two, three, four, five — and insert a dollar in it. It will complete a certain transaction, and when that is done, you go to number seven and put another dollar in it…” “I put a dollar in,” said Lansing. “Do I pull the lever?” “Of course you pull the lever. Have you never played a slot machine?”
“Yes, of course I have. How could I avoid it?” “Precisely,” replied the slot machine. “Have you all of it in mind?”
“Yes, I think I have.”
“Repeat it, then, to be sure you have.”
Lansing repeated what the machine had told him.
“Fine,” said the machine. “Keep it well in mind. I’d suggest you go very soon, so there’s no chance of forgetting the instructions. You’ll need two silver dollars. Do you have them by any chance?”
“I am sure I haven’t.”
“Well, then,” said the slot machine, “here you are. We have no wish to place any roadblock in doing what we’ve asked of you. We are very anxious that you carry out the procedure as precisely as you’re able.”
Something plinked in the machine’s bucket.
“Go on,” urged the machine. “Go on and pick them up.”
Lansing bent and picked up the two silver dollars. He put them in his pocket.
“You’re sure that you have it well in mind?” asked the slot machine. “You have no questions?”
“Yes, I suppose one question. What is this all about?”
“I cannot tell you specifically,” said the machine. “That would be against the rules. But I can assure you that whatever happens will be to your great advantage.”
“And what would that be? What to my advantage?”
“That is all, Professor Lansing. That is all that I can tell you.”
“How come you know my name? I didn’t tell you who I was.”
“I can assure you,” said the machine, “that there was no need for you to tell me. I already knew you.”
With that the machine clanked off, became dark and silent.
Lansing hauled off and kicked the machine. Not perhaps a kick at this machine alone, but at all the other machines that, through the years, had gulped down his quarters and then sat sneering at him.
The machine kicked back and caught him in the ankle. He did not see how it kicked him, but it did. He backed away from it. It was still sitting dark and silent.
Then Lansing turned about and went limping from the room.
4
At home Lansing built himself a drink and sat by a window, watching the dying of the day. The entire thing, he assured himself, was ridiculous. It could not have happened and yet he knew it had. To confirm it, he put a hand in his pocket and jingled the two silver dollars. It had been years since he had possessed a silver dollar, let alone two of them. He took them from his pocket and examined them. Both, he saw, were of recent date. Years before all the ones with an appreciable amount of silver in them had been grabbed up by speculators or coin collectors. The two keys, attached to the plastic tab, lay on a tabletop where he had tossed them. He put out a hand to pick them up, then drew it back without touching them.
Sitting quietly, with the drink in hand, not having tasted it yet, he ran all of it through his mind again and was amazed to find that he felt slightly dirty and ashamed, as if he had committed a certain kind of foulness. He tried to figure out why he felt that way, and there seemed no reason for it other than that his action in going to the room off the Rathskeller had been an action not quite normal. In all his life he had never slunk before and he had not this time, not physically at least, but in opening the door to that forgotten storeroom, he had had the sense of slinking, of performing an act that did not fit the dignity of his position as a member of the faculty of a small but well thought of — perhaps in some areas, a distinguished — college.
But that, he told himself, was not all of it. The matter of slinking, of feeling slightly dirty, was not all of it. Thinking of that, he knew that he had been holding back some factor even from himself. There was something that he didn’t want to face, that he shrank from facing. The factor, he forced himself to admit, was the suspicion that he’d been had — although that was not exactly it. If it had been nothing but a joke, an infantile student prank, it would have extended no further than his slinking into the room to locate the slot machine. But the machine had talked to him — though even that, if well arranged, could have been made to come about as well by a tape, perhaps, that could have been activated when he pulled the lever.
It hadn’t been that way, however. Not only had the machine talked with him, he had talked with it, had carried on a conversation with it. No student could engineer a tape that would carry on a logical conversation. And it had been logical; he had asked questions and the machine had answered; it had given him involved instructions.
So he had not imagined what had happened, and it had not been a student prank. The machine had even kicked back when he had kicked it: his ankle was still a little tender, although he no longer limped. And if it had not been a prank, no matter how ingeniously planned, then, for the love of God, what had it been?
He lifted the glass and drank down the whiskey, a thing he had never done before. He sipped at whiskey; he never drank it down. For one thing, he had no great tolerance for alcohol.
He rose from the chair and paced back and forth across the room. But pacing did nothing for him; it did not help him think. He put the empty glass on the sideboard, went back to the chair and sat down again.
So all right, he told himself, let’s stop playing games, leave us quit the business of trying to protect ourself, let us drop the idea that we cannot allow ourself to look silly. Let’s take it from the top and dig down to the bottom of it.
It had started with the student Jackson. None of it would have happened had it not been for Jackson. And even before Jackson, it had been Jackson’s paper, a good paper, an unusually well-written paper, especially for a student such as Jackson — if it had not been for the phony sources cited. It had been the citing of the sources that had made him write the note and shove it in Jackson’s mailbox. Or might he have called in the man in any case, obliquely hinting, perhaps, that he must have had some expert help to write so fine a paper? Lansing thought about that for a moment and decided that more than likely he wouldn’t have. If Jackson wanted to cheat, that was not up to Lansing; Jackson would have been doing no more than cheating himself. Even if he had called him in on such grounds, the scene would have been an embarrassing and nonproductive confrontation, for there was no way in the world that cheating could be proved. The conclusion, he told himself, was that he had been set up, most expertly set up, either by Jackson himself or by someone acting through Jackson. Jackson, it seemed to him, could not be astute enough, perhaps not energetic enough, to have set it up alone. Although there was no way to be sure. With a man like Jackson, one could never know.
And if he had been set up, no matter by whomever, what was the purpose of it?
There seemed to be no answer. Nothing that made sense. Nothing in any of it made sense.
Perhaps the way to handle it would be to forget about the entire thing, carry it no further. But could he do that, could he force himself to that course of nonaction? For the rest of his life he would wonder what it had been about; all his life he would wonder what might have happened if he had gone to the address upon the key tab and had done what the slot machine had told him.
