A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She grabs for the gun and her eyes light up. “I am going, but you are coming with me!” she pants.

She levels my rod at me. Four times she pulls the trigger and four times it clicks harmlessly. The first chamber and the last must have been the loaded ones, and the ones in between were empty.

Now, she has no more time to waste on getting even. The twitching has already set in. She turns the gun on herself.

“Once more will get you out of it,” I say, and I turn away.

This time, there’s a shattering explosion behind me and something heavy falls like a log. I don’t bother looking. I wrap my handkerchief around my throbbing hand and go downstairs to the front door to wait for the men from L.A. to show up. I don’t smoke while I’m waiting, either.

Dark Melody of Madness

At four in the morning, a scarecrow of a man staggers dazedly into the New Orleans Police Headquarters building. Behind him at the curb, a lacquered Bugatti purrs like a drowsy cat, the swellest thing that ever parked out there. He weaves his way through the anteroom, deserted at that early hour, and goes in through the open doorway beyond. The sleepy desk-sergeant looks up; an idle detective scanning yesterday’s Times-Picayune tipped back on the two hind legs of a chair against the wall raises his head; and as the funnel of light from the cone overhead plays up their visitor like a flashlight-powder, their mouths drop open and their eyes bat a couple of times. The two front legs of the detective’s chair come down with a thump. The sergeant braces himself, eager, friendly, with the heels of both hands on his desk-top and his elbows up in the air. A patrolman comes in from the back room, wiping a drink of water from his mouth. His jaw also hangs when he sees who’s there. He sidles nearer the detective and says behind the back of his hand, “That’s Eddie Bloch, ain’t it?”

The detective doesn’t even take time off to answer. It’s like telling him what his own name is. The three stare at the figure under the conelight, interested, respectful, almost admiring. There’s nothing professional in their scrutiny, they’re not the police studying a suspect; they’re nobodies getting a look at a celebrity. They take in the rumpled tuxedo, the twig of gardenia that’s shed its petals, the tie hanging open in two loose ends. His topcoat was slung across his arm originally; now it trails along the dusty station-house floor behind him. He gives his hat the final, tortured push that dislodges it. It drops and rolls away behind him. The cop picks it up and brushes it off — he never was a bootlicker in his life, but this guy is Eddie Bloch.

Still it’s his face, more than who he is or how he’s dressed, that would draw stares anywhere. It’s the face of a dead man — the face of a dead man on a living body. The shadowy shape of the skull seems to peer through the transparent skin; you can make out its bone-structure as though an X-ray were playing it up. The eyes are stunned, shocked, haunted gleams, set in a vast hollow that bisects the face like a mask. No amount of drink or dissipation could do this to anyone, only long illness and the foreknowledge of death. You see faces like that looking up at you from hospital cots when all hope has been abandoned — when the grave is already waiting.

Yet strangely enough, they knew who he was just now. Instant recognition of who he had been came first — realization of the shape he’s in comes after that — more slowly. Possibly it’s because all three of them have been called to identify corpses in the morgue in their day. Their minds are trained along those lines. And this man’s face is known to hundreds of people. Not that he has ever broken or even fractured the most trivial law, but he has spread happiness around him — set a million feet to dancing in his time.

The desk sergeant’s expression changes. The patrolman mutters under his breath to the detective. “Looks like he just came out of a bad smash-up with his car.”

“More like a binge to me,” answers the detective. They’re simple men, capable, but those are the only explanations they can find for what they now see before them.

The desk sergeant speaks.

“Mr. Eddie Bloch, am I right?” He extends his hand across the desk in greeting.

The man can hardly seem to stand up. He nods, he doesn’t take the hand.

“Is there anything wrong, Mr. Bloch? Is there anything we can do for you?” The detective and the patrolman come over. “Run in and get him a drink of water, La tour,” the sergeant says anxiously. “Have an accident, Mr. Bloch? Been held up?”