exactly, I'll meet you in the Central bus station and we'll make the swap.”
He nodded.
I felt like a million dollars. I was half drunk with the excitement and the knowledge of my power, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing right in Stephen S. Calvart's fat face. Yes sir, this was one hell of a world!
I started to get up, but Calvart was up before me, surprisingly fast for a man his size. He came around his desk, and then, without a hint of warning, a ham-sized hand snapped out, grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me half out of the chair.
“You lissen to me!” he rasped. “You lissen to me, you cheap sonofabitch, and you lissen good!”
I was too startled to make a move. I hung there like some ridiculous scarecrow from the end of his huge arm. I felt an angry heat rush to my face, swell my throat, but there wasn't a thing I could do but hang there. Calvart's self-control had vanished in an explosion of rage. That smooth, professor-like speech of his had suddenly reverted to character.
“You lousy gutter rat!” he grated. “I ought to kill you right here, right where you're sittin', and if you say one word, make one sound, I'll do it! You just lissen to me and get one thing straight; I'm not goin' to be your goddamn patsy, O'Connor. You got me by the tenders this time, but don't think you can keep milkin' me; don't think you can gouge me again; I don't care what you dig up against me. You just keep one thing in mind, O'Connor. You try a thing like this again, and you're dead. I don't care if I burn for it, you're dead!”
Then he let go and I fell back in the chair.
I sat there, every muscle in my body quivering. It had been a long time since a man had talked to Roy Surratt like that—the last one had been Gorgan, the prison guard. And Gorgan was dead. I sat there rigid with anger, feeling rage claw at my guts like a tiger. If I had that .38 I would have killed him on the spot, I would have put three hard ones right in the middle of his fat gut.
But I didn't have the .38 with me and there was nothing I could do. Not now. He simply was too big to handle without a gun, so I had to take it, anything he wanted to dish out. Like he had said, I had him by the tenders, I had him where it hurt, but he couldn't afford to get too damn tough about it as long as I held on.
“All right,” he said tightly, in a voice that sounded like it was being squeezed through a needle's eye. “Get out of here.”
“... The bus station. You aren't going to forget our date, are you, Mr. Calvart?”
“I won't forget a thing, not a single, goddamn thing, O'Connor, and that is one thing in this world that you can depend on.” Then he put his foot on the chair, straightened his leg suddenly, with a kick, and the chair shot half across the room with me in it. “Now get out of my sight,” he said hoarsely, “before I really get mad and break your lousy neck!”
I got out. I saw everything through a red haze of rage; my bones felt brittle; my muscles ached; my nerves seemed to lay on the top of my skin. But I got out, somehow. “All right,” I kept thinking, “all right you fat sonofabitch, we'll see who's so tough before this day is over!” I walked out of Calvart's office and through the outer offices and past the pale faces and the curious faces of Calvart's underlings, and then I rode the crawling elevator down to the Lincoln. I sat there for a long time.
All I could do was sit there and try not to be sick, try to sweat it out until the poison rage had done its work. I tried to think of Gorgan and the way he had looked when I killed him, and that helped a little, but not much.
I don't know how much time it took, but finally I felt myself begin to relax, my nerves began to settle back beneath the skin, the red rage began to lift.
Maybe another ten minutes passed. I took out my handkerchief, wiped my face, my hands, then I switched on the Lincoln and got out of there.
Stephen S. Calvart's future was settled.
The first thing I did when I got back to the apartment was get the .38. I cleaned it carefully, checked the firing mechanism, oiled it, took the cartridges and wiped them carefully and replaced them.
Then the phone rang. It was Dorris Venci.
“Look, Dorris,” I said wearily, “I thought we had an understanding. No more phone calls, no more biology lessons. Now what the hell do I have to do to make you realize that we're through?”
“... Roy!” Her voice had that high pitched twang to it, like a violin string ready to snap. “Roy, I can't take it! I simply can't take it any longer!”
“Oh for Christ's sake!” I groaned.
“Roy, I mean it! I simply can't take it!”
I had no answer. What could you say to a crazy dame like that?
“... Roy!”
“What is it?”
“... Roy, won't you... I mean, can't I see you, talk to you....”
“Absolutely not,” I said, beginning to get mad, beginning to be sorry that our trails had ever crossed. “I told you we were through. I meant it.”
There was ringing silence on the line.
“Dorris.”
“... Yes.”
“Dorris, did you hear me?”
“... Yes, I heard you.”
And then she hung up. I stood there with the receiver to my ear, wondering what could be going on in that twisted brain of hers, and finally I shrugged and put the receiver on the hook. She was nuts, just plain nuts, and if I never heard from her again that was going to be fine with me.
The poison of my anger again spread through me like an overflow of adrenalin into my blood stream. I thought:
But not before I got the twenty thousand.
Pretty soon I'd have the world by the tail; I'd crack it like a muleskinner wielding a snakewhip. I'd wriggle my finger and Pat Kelso would jump through hoops.
That last thought pleased me. She was quite a girl, Pat. She was just the girl for me and no other would do.
She would be mine.
I went back to the front room and sat. I held the .38 in my hand and waited. But pretty soon I'd had all the sitting and waiting I could take. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. Pat was working, and the only other person I knew was Dorris, and I sure didn't want to see her.
At last I did what most lonely and lost people in a strange city do, I went to a movie. It was a double feature and I sat there dumbly, feeling the comfort of the .38 in my waistband and thinking with pleasure how Calvart would look when I pulled it on him.
Maybe this isn't going to be smart, I thought. Maybe I ought to forget my personal feelings and hold the hammer over Calvart for another twenty thousand or so. But the publisher was a tough nut—it would seem that most of Venci's enemies were tough nuts—and there is only one way to handle a tough nut—crack it.
For a while I thought maybe I'd go out and pick Pat up at the factory, but finally I dropped the idea. Don't let it get to be routine, Surratt. Don't let her take you for granted. Let her wonder what's going on for a while, and then knock her eye out with another brand new bankroll. That will bring her around. Yes sir, if I know the first thing about women, that will bring her around, all right.
I killed an hour after the film walking and thumbing through magazines at a news stand, and another hour over dinner, and by that time it was almost eight o'clock. I headed for the bus station.
Calvart was late. I was at the lunch counter having a cup of coffee and the clock over the ticket windows said five after eight; and still Calvart hadn't showed. But I wasn't worried. He would show. As he had said, I had him by the tenders, and he would come around because there was nothing else for him to do.
It was exactly seven minutes past eight when I saw him. He came in with a group of people unloading from a Chicago bus, looking bigger than life-size, and angry and mean. But he had the money—there was a scarred leather
