And one midnight, driving home alone from an evening’s business-sociability with a client, he felt cold scales coil about his throat.
Gilbert Iles did not have the stuff of a good sinner. His first reaction was to pull the car up to the curb; an automobile guided by a strangled corpse would be a frightful danger at large. And as he did so he managed with choking breath to gulp, “Sriberdegibit!”
The elastic shape of the demon wavered on the steering wheel as the car stopped, lies tried to shift away from it in the cabined limits of the coupe, but the silver tail held him fast. “Must talk!” he gasped. “One minute!”
Sriberdegibit hesitated, then let his tail relax ever so slightly. “O.K.,” he said. “I was starting in a minute earlier to make it slow and comfortable. I can do it faster at midnight, but you won’t like it.”
“Comfortable!” lies grunted. His hand slipped beneath the scaly coils and massaged his aching neck. “But listen.” He was thinking faster than he had ever thought in front of a jury “Our agreement—invalid under laws of this country—contract involving murder non-enforceable as contrary to general welfare.”
Sriberdegibit laughed and the tail twitched tighter. There was nothing plaintive or grotesque about him now. This was his moment; and he was terrible in his functional efficiency. “I’m not subject to the laws of this country, mortal. Our contract is by the laws of my kingdom!”
lies sighed relief, as best he could sigh under the circumstances. “Then you can’t strangle me for another hour.”
“And why?”
“Contract under your kingdom . . . you admit . . . midnight now but only by daylight saving . . . laws of this country . . . to your kingdom it is only 11 o’clock.”
Slowly the tail relaxed. “I would,” said Sriberdegibit mournfully, “draw a lawyer. But you’d better get busy before midnight.”
Giibert lies frowned. Then he started up the car. “Down here on the boulevard there’s a blind cripple sells newspapers. Works all night—I’ve often noticed him there. If I—”
“Now,” said the demon, “you’re getting the swing of it.”
Gilbert Iles waited until a late streetcar had picked up the little herd of people waiting by the cripple. Then he started across the street, but his feet would not guide him to the blind vender. They took him first into a bar. He had three rapid drinks, his eyes fixed on the clock whose hands moved steadily from twelve toward one.
“Don’t let the time get you, Mac,” the barkeep said consolingly after the third. “It ain’t closing time till two. You got all the time in the world.”
“It’s closing time at one,” said lies tautly, and felt his gullet tighten up at the memory of those scaly coils.
“You look kind of worried. Need some company?” This was from a girl with a red dress and a bad bleach. “Well, I do,” she went on when he didn’t answer. “You’ll buy me a drink, won’t you? Sure you will. The usual, Joe.”
The hands went steadily around. The drinks came regularly. The girl moved her stool closer, and the red skirt glowed warm against his thigh. This would be such a simple way. The choice was clear: To sin against a total stranger who would suffer deeply from it, or to sin against your wife who would never know it. The problem was simple, but Gilbert Iles knew the answer before he even considered it. He rose at last from his stool.
“It’s almost midnight,” he said. “Closing time.”
The barkeep and the girl in red stared after his lurching exit, and then stared wonderingly at each other. “You’re slipping, Verne,” said the barkeep.
“This time,” said Verne, “I’ll have a drink”
Gilbert Iles reached the corner. Another streetcar load was just leaving. Behind them they left the empty corner and the blind cripple. He sat on the sidewalk, his legs crumpled under him at implausible angles. His head with its black glasses moved slightly at each sound. Everything about him was very clear to Gilbert Iles. He could see that his left thumbnail was cracked, that he had a hairy mole high on his right cheekbone, that there was exactly $2.37 in the cash box.
lies shut his own eyes as he grabbed the cash box. He couldn’t have said why, unless it was from some unconscious desire to even the odds between himself and his adversary.
Self-blinded, he seized the box. It was a low, foul, damnable act, and he was doing it to save his neck. Neither his closed eyes nor his many whiskies could blind him to the baseness of the act. Sin is not fun.
And as he grabbed he felt a choking grip on his neck.
His mind whirled. He couldn’t be wrong. He had five minutes to spare. And this was certainly a— And then he realized that the grip was not of scales but of finger and thumb.
He opened his eyes. The vender towered over him. The dark glasses were gone, and the legs uncoiled from their double-jointed posture. The face with the hairy mole was transfigured by righteous wrath and the hand with the broken thumbnail was balled into a fist driving straight at Iles’s face. It connected beautifully.
“You low scum of a rat!” the vender murmured. “Rob a blind man, will you?” Thud. “Steal a cripple’s earnings, will you?” Wham. “Take advantage of a man’s helplessness, will you?” Crash.
The accurate legal mind of Gilbert Iles gave one last flicker. “But you’re not a—”
“You thought I was, didn’t you?”
Guilt and the whiskies combined to rob lies of any power to fight back. When
