Never Say No To A Killer

myself that everything was going to be all right, because that was what I wanted to believe.

But not Pat. I hadn't fooled her for a minute. She was just as sure as she had ever been that I had killed Alex Burton. When would I ever learn that it didn't pay to underrate women!

Maybe I would never get a chance to learn—for Pat meant to kill me. There was no doubt about it. She didn't mean for the electric chair to do it; she was going to do it herself.

Strangely, I was not afraid. I simply did not believe that a girl like Pat had the kind of guts it took to pull the trigger on another human being.

I made myself smile. I made myself think that it was some kind of fantastic joke. I made myself say quite calmly, “All right, you've got something on your mind. You might as well tell me about it now.”

For one tense moment I thought she actually was going to shoot. I shifted my glance quickly from the gun to her face and was shocked to see that she was no longer beautiful. The hand of hate had strained and drawn her face almost beyond recognition—oh, there was plenty of hate there, mere than enough to kill. But somehow I had the feeling that she was not going to pull the trigger.

I said, “Why don't you give me that automatic? You look pretty silly, and you know you're not going to use it.”

“... You killed him.” A voice without tone. A defeated voice, I thought. “The kindest, gentlest man I ever knew. The only man I ever loved. You killed him.”

“But I explained all that,” I said patiently. “When I talked to you. This crazy woman, this Dorris Venci, she wrote you that letter because she was mad at me. She knew how it was with you and Burton, a lot of people did. She knew that she could make you hate me if she could convince you that I had something to do with the Burton murder. That's exactly the reason she wrote the letter. You're much too sensible a girl to swallow a story like that.”

“Mrs. Venci didn't even mention Alex Burton in her letter,” Pat said flatly.

That stunned me.

“What did you say!”

“Mrs. Venci made no mention of Alex Burton. She identified you as Roy Surratt, an escaped convict, and warned me to have nothing to do with you.”

“That was all she put in that letter!”

“That was all.”

Jesus! I thought, what an idiot I've been! “Look... You've got this figured all wrong. I can explain it; believe me, I can!”

“Can you, Mr. Surratt?”

No, I couldn't. There was no way in the world to explain my way around a blunder as momentous as this one.

“Roy Surratt!” she said, staring right through me. “You actually believe, don't you, that you are some kind of superior being on this earth. You don't consider it necessary to answer to all us underlings for your actions, no matter what they may be. Roy Surratt! Master criminal! Philosopher!”

She laughed then, and it was not a pretty sound. “The gall of you! The audacity! How dare you behave as though you were the only person on earth possessed of the ability to think, to analyze, to define! Your enormous ego is your greatest weakness; did you know that? How could you have believed that you could kill a man like Alex Burton and get away with it?”

“Take it easy,” I said soothingly, watching that automatic. “Just take it easy, won't you, and please remember that in this country a person, is innocent until proven guilty.”

“I know you are guilty,” she said tightly. “I think I've known it from the first moment I saw you.”

“That doesn't make much sense, does it? After all, you did go out with me. You did accept that coat, and you did enjoy my company. Does that sound as though you suspected me of killing your friend.”

Suddenly she smiled, and it was like no smile I had ever seen before. “That incredible ego! You believe what you want to believe and nothing else. Couldn't you see that the very sight of you made me sick!”

Just keep her talking, I thought. Sooner or later she will relax and I'll grab that gun. Then we'll see whether my ego's a weakness! I said, “How about the night I gave you the coat. Are you telling me that was an act too?”

I'd hit her with something that time. The color drained from her face and for an instant I thought she was going to collapse. But she didn't, and the automatic didn't waver.

“... Yes,” she said quietly, almost whispered, ”... I wanted that coat. It represented something to me, it brought back memories of elegance, a way of life that I had once known.”

I kept pushing. “And you still maintain that you suspected me all along of killing Burton?”

“... I'm thinking of the first time we met outside the apartment,” she breathed, almost to herself. “In front of the factory office building, you were waiting there.”

“I remember.”

“You mentioned the night that Alex was killed. You noted the fact that Alex and I had been to the University Club and later the Crestview.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“It was the first time I had been with Alex to either of those places. We... weren't together much in public.”

“I'll bet,” I said, still with a bit of bitterness, remembering a certain chafing dish, a certain bedroom and photograph that I had hated, even before I had known that it was of Alex Burton.

“How did you know,” she asked, “that Alex had taken me to those particular places on that particular night?”

“I don't know. Maybe I read it in the paper.”

“It wasn't in the paper. No one knew, just a few club members and the police—not the kind of people you would associate with. You followed us that night, that's how you knew. You followed us, and after Alex left me at my apartment you killed him.”

She didn't have to draw it any plainer than that. She had me pegged. She'd had me pegged from the very first. She had stuck to me, played, up to me, waiting for me to make a mistake!

Well, I'd made the mistake.

It was strange—but I didn't seem to care. I didn't feel smart any more. I didn't feel like a Master Criminal. I didn't feel like a wise guy, either, who knew all the answers. All I felt was the emptiness. ”... All right,” I said finally, “I killed him. Is that what you want to hear? He was a lousy, thieving, no-good bastard, and I killed him.”

That was when she shot me.

It was strange, but I didn't hear the explosion. That little automatic was no more than a foot away and I didn't even hear it. It was the shock, I suppose. The bullet went through me like a beam of light opening a path in the darkness. A very small piece of lead, not as large as your little finger. The impact knocked the breath out of me. I couldn't move my head. The entire lower part of my body was numb. My spinal column must be shattered, I thought. I wonder what's keeping me alive?

That was the last I remembered for a long, long while. Darkness closed in, and when I opened my eyes again it was in the white glare of a hospital room with cops standing around like angry statues, glaring down at me.

“What do you think?” someone asked.

And another voice said, “We can patch him up well enough to walk to the chair.”

And that was when I stopped worrying about myself; my end was certain. I was aboard a slow freight bound for oblivion, my body half dead, only my brain fully alive. It's really too bad, I kept thinking. It's really quite a shame that it has to end this way because we'd have made a hell of a pair, Pat and I.

I didn't hate her. I no longer had the strength to support an emotion as violent as hate. The only thing left was a feeling of emptiness, a vague sort of incompleteness, a whispered fear that I had missed something somewhere along the line....

But it didn't matter now.