“Very well!” cried Mike Terry. “Jim Raeder, meet your would-be killers!”
The Thompson gang moved onstage, 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:
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
“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
RAEDER thought about it, lying motionless in the underbrush. Yes,
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,
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.
There was pandemonium of cheering from the studio audience.
The Thompson gang, gathered around the grave, looked sullen.
There was a short silence.
There was a silence. Mike Terry wiped his forehead and smiled.
Mike Terry glanced at the studio clock.
Mike Terry smiled, and winked at the audience.