Mr. X

together. 'Every town the size of Edgerton has a Mr. Inside. He can tell you where to go if you want something, and the name of the guy who can help you get it and who to see afterward.'

    'Valuable guy,' I said.

    'Mr. Inside is like the post office. His lines goout. Back and forth down those lines movesinformation. Take on that role, you better keep the wheels greased. Outside you and your circle, other people are taking a steady interest.'

    'The police?'

    He shook his head. 'The force gets taken care of way down the line. They don't want you in jail, they want you out on the street where you can do some good.'

    'Then who are these other people?' Laurie said.

    Edison flattened his hands on the table and tilted his head to look up at the great beeches. 'About a year after I started part-timing for Toby, a fool named Clothard Spelvin came through from the office. They called him Clothhead because his brainpower could just about hold its own against a dishtowel. Light-skinned black man, but an ugly son of a bitch. Excuse me, Mrs. Hatch.'

    'No problem.'

    'Thank you. Clothhead said, 'Max, you don't work here no more. A man wants to see you.' I went in and asked Toby, 'Who does that dumbbell work for? I'm supposed to go with him.' Toby said, 'You'll be all right, it's all set up.' He took us through the storage room and slid open the back door. A big Cadillac was out in the alley. Dark blue. Enough wax on the chassis to shine at the stroke of midnight during an eclipse of the moon. Clothhead gave me the keys and told me, Drive north on old Highway 4. Just past the town line, he pointed at a roadhouse. The place was empty except for a goon up front at the bar and one man sitting way at the back. That man was my new boss, Mr. Edward Rinehart. For the next seven years, all hours of the day and night, I drove Mr. Rinehart wherever he wanted to go.'

    'Honest to God,' I said. Laurie put her hands in her lap and looked back and forth between us like a spectator at a tennis match. When my astonishment let me speak again, I uttered, no less idiotically, 'Really.'

    Edison could not entirely conceal his pleasure in my reaction to his story. 'Why did you think Toby gave you my name?'

    Unable to contain herself any longer, Laurie burst out with, 'Well, what was helike?'

    Max Edison waited for me to clear my head.

    'He was a gangster?' I said at last.

    'Maybe there is no organized crime. Maybe the newspapers made the whole thing up. But if it exists, does it seem like you can join up unless you're Italian? Even better, Sicilian? Mr. Rinehart was a man who worked by himself.'

    'So what did he do?' I asked.

    'Where you find a Mr. Inside, eventually you will learn there is also a Mr. Outside. Mr. Outside is more important than Mr. Inside, but not many know about him. If you happen to be a professional criminal, one night you are invited to a hotel room. Shrimp, roast beef, chicken, whatever food you like, is laid out. All kinds of bottles and plenty of ice. The lights are turned down. Three, four guys similar to you are already there. Way back in the room where you can't see his face, Mr. Outside is sitting in a big, comfortable chair. At least one or two of the other guys seem to know him.

    'When everybody's relaxed, Mr. Outside explains from now on, you won't do anything unless he tells you so. One-third of all your profits go straight to him. You want to walk out, but he starts to explain the benefits. He's covering all the expenses. There will be enough work to cover the missing third a couple times over. Then he lays out a couple jobs so nice and neat, you could only mess up by having a heart attack when you saw the money. There's more work on the come. Besides, you'll never go to the trouble of breaking into a place and discover it was already stripped clean. What do you say?'

    ' 'Show me the dotted line,' ' I said.

    'Edward Rinehart was Mr. Outside?' Laurie asked.

    Edison pulled down his sunglasses and leaned forward. His eyes were surprisingly light, an unusual sandy brown flecked with green. The whites were the immaculate white of fresh bedsheets. 'Did you hear me say that?' He turned his disingenuous gaze upon me. 'Did you hear me say that?'

    'You allowed us to form our own conclusions,' I said.

    He pushed the sunglasses up over his eyes.

    'Mr. Rinehart doesn't sound like the sort of man who would write a book,' I said.

    Edisonlowered his chin and peered at me. I thought he was going to do the sunglasses trick again.

    'What book?' Laurie asked. 'You didn't say anything about a book.'

    “It was in the box my mother sent to herself, the one with the envelope and the key.'

    'Did you read that book?'Edisonasked.

    'Not yet. Did you?'

    'Mr. Rinehart gave me a copy, but it got lost along the way. You're right, he didn't seem like a man who would sit down to write a book. But Mr. Rinehart didn't do anythingordinary. For one thing, around the time he came out with his book, he retired. Every now and then he had me drive him somewhere, but basically, the man walked away. He told me he had a mission. What Mr. Rinehart used to say was, he wanted his stories to show people the real truth about the world.'

    'He talked to you in the car?' Laurie said.

    Edison grinned. “I spent seven years driving Mr. Rinehart all over Hell's Half-Acre in the dead of night, him in the back of that Cadillac talking a blue streak. If Mr. Rinehart had been a preacher, his sermons would have rolled on for two days and nights.'

    Edison's laughter sounded as though he still disbelieved what he had heard coming from the back seat of the Cadillac.

    'What did he talk about?' I asked.

    'The true nature of the universe. And his book. If every book writer goes through the kind of misery Mr. Rinehart did, I'm glad I was a driver.'

 • After rejection from a well-known New York house, Rinehart had decided to publish the book himself. Regent Press & Bindery, a Chicago print shop with a subsidiary specializing in rebinding library books, shipped two hundred copies to Edgerton, where Rinehart stored them in a Hatchtown warehouse. For six weeks, Max Edison had loaded cartons into the Cadillac's trunk and ferried his employer to bookstores as far north as Springfield. Most of the stores had taken two or three copies ofFrom Beyond. Rinehart never invoiced them or requested sales figures. He had no interest in making money from his book; he wanted these copies available for purchase upon publication of the dazzled reviews it was certain to receive. When praise flooded in, he would once again submit the book to the firm in New York.

    Out went the review copies. A three-page letter accompanied the first twenty, sent to the newspapers and magazines Rinehart judged most crucial to literary success. Fifty publications occupying the second rung received a single-page statement. A simple card went out with the copies sent to pulp magazines.

    Three months passed without acknowledgment from the significant and semi-significant publications. The pulps, from which Rinehart anticipated cries of rapture, were silent. Two months later, the irate author sent out letters reminding seventy editors of their obligations to literature. None responded.

    Nine months later,Weird Tales proppedFrom Beyond against a brick wall and dispatched it in a public execution. Eight parallel columns spread over four pages condemned Rinehart's book for being formulaic, cliche-ridden, and self-parodying. A corrosive laughter washed through the review.

     Weird Talessent Rinehart into orbit.

    'He carried that review with him all the time. When we were alone in the car, he used to read it out loud. I must have heard different parts a hundred times over. Mr. Rinehart thought that magazine was going tolove him. Whole weeks went by when he tried to talk himself into believing they really did love him, and what they said looked bad only if you didn't understand it. Then he'd give up on that and go back to telling me how the man who wrote the piece was so stupid, anybody who knew anything would see the book had