“You’re the only man I ever expected to figure me out, Gaspipe,” said Tom-Tom. “And even you can’t do much about it, can you? Put away the gun. I’ve been shot at and shot at, and it does nothing but make little holes like this.”
He tapped the black rent in his jacket-front with a jointed forefinger.
“As a matter of fact, I was glad to see your notice in the agony column. I think I’d have hunted you up, anyway. You see, we make a fine team, Gaspipe. There are things we can still do for each other, but you must be reasonable.”
“I’m not here to let you make fun of me,” said Gascon. “You’re just a little freak, brought to life by the chance power evolved by a cracked old intelligence. Once I puzzled it out, I knew that I needn’t be afraid. You can’t do anything to me.”
“No?” said Tom-Tom, with what seemed a chuckle. “Let me show you something, Gaspipe.”
His wooden hand moved across the desktop and touched a button. A section of the wall slid back like a stage curtain, revealing an opening the size of a closet door. The opening was fenced in with a metal grating. Behind it stood Shannon Cole, her long black hair awry, her face pale, her cloth-of-gold pajamas rumpled.
“Ben!” she said, in a voice that choked. “Did he get you, too?”
Gascon exclaimed, and turned as if to spring toward the grating. But at the same instant, with a swiftness that was more than a cat’s, Tom-Tom also moved. He seemed to fly across his desk as though flung by a catapult. His hard head struck Gascon’s stomach, doubling him up, and then Tom-Tom’s arms whipped around Gascon’s ankles, dragging them sidewise. Down fell the ventriloquist, heavily and clumsily. The gun flew from his hand, bouncing on the floor like a ball. Tom-Tom caught it in mid-bounce, and lifted it with both hands.
“I won’t kill you, Gaspipe,” he announced, “but I’ll most emphatically shoot off your kneecap, if you try anything sudden again. Sit up. Put your back against that wall. And listen.”
“Do what he says, Ben! He means business!” Shannon Cole urged tremulously from behind her bars.
Gascon obeyed, trying to think of a way to grapple that imp of wood and fabric. Tom-Tom chuckled again, turned back to his desk and scrambled lightly upon it. As before he touched the button, and Shannon was instantly shut from sight.
“Good thing I kidnapped her,” he observed. “Not only is she worth thousands to her managers, but she brought you to me. Now we’ll have a dandy conference. Just like old times, isn’t it, Gaspipe?”
Gascon sat still, eyeing the gun. He might have risked its menace, but for the thought of Shannon behind those bars. Tom-Tom, so weirdly strong, might fight him off even if disarmed, then turn on his captive. The dummy that was no longer a dummy seemed to read his mind:
“No violence, Gaspipe. I tell you, it’s been tried before. When the Dilson mobsters were through laughing at the idea of my taking over, one or two thought that Digs Dilson should be avenged. But their guns didn’t even make me blink. I killed a couple, and impressed the others. I put into them the fear of Tom-Tom.” Again the chuckle. “I’m almost as hard to hurt as I am to fool, Gaspipe. And that’s very, very hard indeed.”
“What do you want of me?” blurted Gascon, scowling.
“Now that’s a question,” nodded Tom-Tom. “It might be extended a little. What do I want of life, Gaspipe? Life is here with me, but I never asked for it. It was thrust into me, and upon me. My first feeling was of crazy rage toward the life-giver—”
“And so you killed him?” interrupted Gascon.
“I did. And the killing gave me the answer. The only thing worth while in life is taking life.”
Tom-Tom spread his wooden hands, as though he felt that he had made a neat point. Gascon made a quick gesture of protest, then subsided as Tom-Tom picked up the gun again.
“You’re wrong, Tom-Tom,” he said earnestly.
“Am I? You’re going to give me a moral lecture, are you? But men invented morals, so as to protect their souls. I don’t have a soul, Gaspipe. I don’t have to worry about protecting it. I’m not human. I’m a thing.” Sitting on the desk, he crossed his legs and fiddled with the gun. “You’ve lived longer than I. What else, besides killing, is worth while in life?”
“Why—enjoyment—”
The marred head waggled. “Enjoyment of what? Food? I can’t eat. Companionship? I doubt it, where a freak like me is concerned. Possessions? But I can’t use clothes or houses or money or anything like that. They’re for men, not dummies. What else, Gaspipe?”
“Why—why—” This time Gascon fell silent.
“Love, you were going to say?” The chuckle was louder, and the glowing yellow eyes flickered aside toward the place behind the wall where Shannon was penned up. “You’re being stupid, Gaspipe. Because you know what love is, you think others do. Gaspipe, I’ll never know what love is. I’m not made for it.”
“I see you aren’t,” Gascon nodded solemnly. “All right, Tom-Tom. You can find life worth living if you try for supremacy in some line—leadership—”
“That,” said Tom-Tom, “is where killing comes in. And where you come in, too.”
He laid down the gun and put the tips of his jointed fingers together, in a pose grotesquely like that of a mild lecturer. “I’ve given my case a lot of time and thought, you see. I realize that I don’t fit in—humanity hasn’t ever considered making a place for me. I don’t have needs or reactions or wishes to fit those of humanity.”
“Is that why you turn to criminals? Because they don’t fit into normal human
