I came down the back way, and that was a mistake. It led me right past the food department. Well, I don’t have to tell you what that was like, with all the exploded cans and the rats as big as poodles. But I found some cologne and soaked a handkerchief in it, and with that over my nose, and some fast footwork for the rats, I managed to get to one of the doors.
It wasn’t the one I had come in, but that was all right. I sized up the guard. He looked smart enough for a little bargaining, but not too smart; and if I didn’t like his price, I could always remember that I was supposed to go out the other door.
I said: “Psst!”
When he turned around, I said rapidly: “Listen, this isn’t the way I came in, but if you want to do business, it’ll be the way I come out.”
He thought for a second, and then he smiled craftily and said: “All right, come on.”
Well, we haggled. The gun was the big thing—he wanted five thousand for that and he wouldn’t come down. The wheelbarrow he was willing to let go for five hundred. And the typewriter—he scowled at the typewriter as though it were contagious.
“What you want that for?” he asked suspiciously. I shrugged.
“Well—” he scratched his head—“a thousand?”
I shook my head.
“Five hundred?”
I kept on shaking.
“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Look, you take the other things for six thousand—including what you got in your pockets that you don’t think I know about, see? And I’ll throw this in. How about it?”
That was fine as far as I was concerned, but just on principle I pushed him a little further. “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty bills for the lot, take it or leave it. Otherwise I’ll walk right down the street to Gimbel’s and—”
He guffawed.
“Whats the matter?” I demanded.
“Pal,” he said, “you kill me. Stranger in town, hey? You can’t go anyplace but here.”
“Why not?”
“Account of there ain’t anyplace else. See, the chief here don’t like competition. So we don’t have to worry about anybody taking their trade elsewhere, like—we burned all the other places down.”
That explained a couple of things. I counted out the money, loaded the stuff back in the wheelbarrow and headed for the Statler; but all the time I was counting and loading, I was talking to Big Brainless; and by the time I was actually on the way, I knew a little more about this “chief.”
And that was kind of important, because he was the man we were going to have to know very well.
II
I locked the door of the hotel room. Arthur was peeping out of the suitcase at me.
I said: “I’m back. I got your typewriter.” He waved his eye at me.
I took out the little kit of electricians’ tools I carried, tipped the typewriter on its back and began sorting out leads. I cut them free from the keyboard, soldered on a ground wire, and began taping the leads to the strands of a yard of forty-ply multiplex cable.
It was a slow and dull job. I didn’t have to worry about which solenoid lead went to which strand—Arthur could sort them out. But all the same it took an hour, pretty near, and I was getting hungry by the time I got the last connection taped. I shifted the typewriter so that both Arthur and I could see it, rolled in a sheet of paper and hooked the cable to Arthur’s receptors.
Nothing happened.
“Oh,” I said. “Excuse me, Arthur. I forgot to plug it in.”
I found a wall socket. The typewriter began to hum and then it started to rattle and type:
Dura auk ukoo rqk mws aqb
It stopped.
“Come on, Arthur,” I ordered impatiently. “Sort them out, will you?”
Laboriously it typed:
!!!
Then, for a time, there was a clacking and thumping as he typed random letters, peeping out of the suitcase to see what he had typed, until the sheet I had put in was used up.
I replaced it and waited, as patiently as I could, smoking one of the last of my cigarettes. After fifteen minutes or so, he had the hang of it pretty well. He typed:
You damqxxx damn fool Whuxxx why did you leaqnxxx leave me alone Q Q
“Aw, Arthur,” I said. “Use your head, will you? I couldn’t carry that old typewriter of yours all the way down through the Bronx. It was getting pretty beat-up. Anyway, I’ve only got two hands—”
You louse, it rattled, Are you tryonxxx trying to insult me because i dont have any Q Q
“Arthur!” I said, shocked. “You know better than that!”
The typewriter slammed its carriage back and forth ferociously a couple of times. Then he said: All right Sam you know youve got me by the throat so you can do anything you want to with me Who cares about my feelings anyhow
“Please don’t take that attitude,” I coaxed.
Well
“Please?”
He capitulated. All right Say heard anything from Engdahl Q Q
“No.”
Isnt that just like him Q Q Cant depend on that man He was the lousiest electricians mate on the Sea Sprite and he isnt much better now Say sam remember when we had to get him out of the jug in Newport News because
I settled back and relaxed. I might as well. That was the trouble with getting Arthur a new typewriter after a couple of days without one—he had so much garrulity stored up in his little brain, and the only person to spill it on was me.
Apparently I fell asleep. Well, I mean I must have, because I woke up. I had been dreaming I was on guard post outside the Yard at Portsmouth, and it was night, and I looked
