Fortune of Fear Read online

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  ANTINUCLEAR PROTEST

  MARCHERS HOLD RALLY

  AT EMPIRE UNIVERSITY

  Heller again! They had put that headline there just to nag me.

  Then the full import of it hit me. If that bill passed the Security Council now, Miss Simmons would be drooling all over Heller! Rather than flunk him out of Empire as she had promised, she would pass him! I would have lost a vital ally I had counted on to block his villainous rehabilitation of this planet, a plot that would ruin me, Lombar and Rockecenter.

  Oh, I knew an emergency when I saw one. What could I do?

  I stood on the corner, almost frantic with the urgency of the emergency. I stared up into the sky, beseeching the Gods for an omen. I got it! Right in my line of view was the Octopus Oil Company Building! Rockecenter was in his heaven and all would soon be right with the world. I realized that Bury could not possibly know that “Wister” was behind this women’s rights thing. Rockecenter, Bury and everyone who mattered knew how dangerous women were already. But completely aside from that, Rockecenter controlled the uranium supplies of the world, and the thermonuclear-bomb market would crash if there was no more war on the horizon! That bill, if passed, could bring about a devastating and disastrous peace! Rockecenter must be frantic!

  No sooner realized than activated. I strode with swift stride to the Octopus Building.

  I walked straight in through the Benevolent Association door. I was in luck! There sat Bury! His little snap-brim hat was sitting on top of a cage of white mice on his desk. He looked up and the sides of his mouth twitched, as close to a smile as ever appeared on that prune face.

  “Inkswitch!” he said. “Come in. Haven’t seen you for a day or two.” He waved a hand at the interview chair, “Take the stand. What have you been up to?”

  I sat down. “I have to keep up my cover as a Federal agent,” I said. “I just dropped in to see if you know about this Women’s Thermonuclear Rights Bill.”

  “Women,” he said. “I try to stay away from those. Without much luck, I must say: they are as hard to escape as subpoena servers.”

  “Well, I thought you might like to know that this Wister is behind that bill right up to the hilt. He’s a menace.”

  “Oh, Wister,” he said. And the look came in his eyes that can only possibly appear in the hard orbs of a Wall Street lawyer. Then he tented his hands and sat back. “But I think we’ve got that case pretty well into due process. Madison is on it. And from the bills we’re getting from FFBO, I’d say he was pretty busy.”

  “Wister has got to be stopped,” I said.

  The “smile” twitched the sides of his mouth. “Well, you just wait, Inkswitch. Anything a public relations man like J. Warbler Madman is onto is going to be stopped. You can count on it! By the time that maniac is through with Wister, the poor (bleep) will be absolutely begging for the electric chair and throwing anyone who tries to get a governor’s reprieve straight out of his cell. Madison you can count on, Inkswitch. He tops every snake I ever met! When you combine the Madisons of this world with the media we have, even the Four Horsemen would plead for an out-of-court settlement. Worry not, Inkswitch. You can count on Madison to absolutely ruin Wister’s life. The prosecution rests.”

  I saw I wasn’t getting anywhere with Bury. I rose to go.

  “Oh, by the way, Inkswitch,” he said, “I just remembered, I had a present to send you the other day and my secretary told me he didn’t have your current address.”

  “Snakes?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “They’re pretty valuable. I picked up a set of acupuncture needles over in China and I thought you might like to try them out on Miss Agnes. If you put them in the wrong place, they raise hell. So what’s your current address?”

  “I’m undercover,” I said.

  “Oh, hell, Inkswitch, I know that. This is just for my own notebook.”

  I couldn’t very well refuse and expose the fact that I’d never even met Miss Agnes. I gave him the basement-apartment address. He wrote it down in a little black book. Then he paused.

  “I know this address,” he said, prune wrinkles even more pronounced as he thought. “Yes, I was over there last month hushing up a murder. Somebody beaten to death. I have it! That’s Miss Pinch’s apartment!” He looked at me in real surprise. “Jesus,” he exclaimed, “you’re not living with Miss Pinch, are you?”

  I said, “I got her under control.”

  “Jesus!” he said, admiringly. “Maybe I ought to turn you loose on my wife!”

  Hastily, I shifted the subject on him. I was busy enough without another stud assignment. And I vividly remembered his wife’s voice. Traumatic! “Please don’t tell Miss Agnes I’m living with Miss Pinch,” I said.

  Bury shook his head. “Oh, no. You got a low opinion of me, Inkswitch, if you think I’d talk to Miss Agnes. I’m not crazy. At least, I’m not committed yet, in spite of this job.”

  “That’s two of us,” I said. But it was a lie. Being a Wall Street lawyer could not be anywhere near as tough as the job of an Apparatus officer. I left.

  I was convinced that Bury didn’t realize how serious this UN thing really was. I needed to get busy stopping Heller before he stopped everybody.

  I found a cab and very soon was across town at 42 Mess Street.

  Madison’s Excalibur car was in the alley in front of the place, and an enterprising new reporter was polishing up its square yards of chrome.

  I went upstairs into the loft pressroom. Just as I suspected, the place had gone slack. There were hardly any reporters there. Only half a dozen phones were ringing at once and over half of the fifty teletype machines were idle.

  Madison was in his cluttered office, his feet on his desk, a complacent smile upon his youthful, sincere and earnest face.

  “Smith!” he said. “Come in. Sit down. I haven’t seen you all day.”

  It offended me. Wasn’t anybody ever going to notice, when I’d been gone for weeks, months even?

  I suddenly remembered I had a bone to pick with him. “You certainly weren’t very smart sending Dr. Crobe away,” I said sourly.

  “Phetus P. Crobe?” he said, laughing.

  “The doctor you had put away.”

  “Put away?” he said. “Why, where’d you get that idea, Smith?”

  “You sent for the wagon,” I said.

  “Oh, I get it. Your men didn’t come back and see me. Right after they carted him off, I was on the phone to the chief psychiatrist at Bellevue. Crobe seemed anxious to cut things, as all psychiatrists are, so they gave him his own laboratory and a top job on staff. You didn’t think I’d overlook a valuable asset like that, did you? Heaven forbid. What would the media do for horror if it weren’t for psychiatrists? But I’ve got to build him up before I can use him. You should keep track of things better, Smith. And I do wish you knew more about public relations than you do. It’s hard to work with amateurs. That loony (bleep) could have killed me. You apparently don’t know much about psychiatrists or you would have sent him directly to the hospital and not let him run around loose, slashing away at your colleagues. Psychiatry is for the public, Smith. Not for people who matter.”

  I saw I was in danger of being hectored. I said, “Don’t land on me with all four feet. You’re in no position to. There’s a grave threat growing up around Wister and what are you doing about him? Next to nothing. The Atlantic City thing was weeks ago and by now has run its course. . . .”

  Madison’s feet came down off the desk. He sat forward in amazement. “Run its course? God deliver me from amateurs! It’s been getting front page for weeks and weeks. It’s setting an all-time record! The bulk of my staff is down at Trenton, New Jersey, stirring it up again!”

  He grabbed a huge fistful of clippings. “Look! The New Jersey governor is having an absolute fit about the theft of Atlantic City still! He’s continued to maintain that it is part of New Jersey even yet. But look at this, the riots we st
irred up: the citizens there are refusing now to pay state taxes. We got a dreadful row going in the New Jersey legislature and the Whiz Kid was arrested by state police for stealing the town. And look at this: The Whiz Kid hauled before the legislature and the whole body throwing whiskey bottles at him, trying to get him to promise he won’t sell Atlantic City to Nevada.”

  He grabbed another sheet, “And look at tomorrow’s headlines!”

  I stared at the layout for the New York Grimes. It said:

  WHIZ KID DECLARED

  AN ORIGINAL OWNER

  OF ALL NEW JERSEY

  A shocked governor today was brutally brought face to face with the reality that not just Atlantic City but the entire state of New Jersey may belong to J. T. Wister, otherwise known as the “Whiz Kid” of recent notoriety.

  No less an authority than Professor Stringer himself, the world’s leading authority on genealogy and family history, has issued an authoritative warning that Wister is a direct descendant of Chief Rancocas, head of the Lenni Lenape branch of the Delaware tribe, the original owners of New Jersey.

  The Indian name Lenni Lenape means “Original People.” From this, according to Dr. Egghead, the State Historian, “it can be clearly seen that the word original, occurring in both instances, proves the claim.”

  “No deed of transfer or record of sale from Chief Rancocas or the Lenni Lenape Indians can be found in the Trenton Courthouse files or archives,” said the State Recorder of Deeds at this fateful meeting last night. “Therefore it must be concluded that the entire state of New Jersey still belongs to the original owners.”

  Before I could finish reading, Madison slapped it on the desk. His eyes glowed. “The next day after that story, the Whiz Kid is going to order the original settlers out. After that we can get the Indian Bureau, Department of the Interior, on it and we can have another Battle of Wounded Knee and get a headline for every Federal marshal killed. And next week the Whiz Kid will escape by robbing a train. . . .”

  That startled me. I said, “Where does this train come from? What’s it doing here?”

  Madison sat back with a superior smile. Rather pitying. “Please see somebody about your memory, Smith. I distinctly told you a long time ago that I am trying to create the Jesse James image. Don’t you recall? It’s the best immortal one handy. You just don’t understand public relations work, Smith.”

  He had needled me too much. I said, “Listen, Madison. I came down to tell you that the Whiz Kid is behind this women’s—right-to-not-be-thermonuclear-bombed bill. It’s coming right up before the UN Security Council. He got it through the General Assembly using whores to lobby for it.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Madison, idly.

  I put a bite in my voice. “Yes, it is! And you better get to work on it!”

  “Nope,” said Madison. “It doesn’t fit the image.”

  “But my Gods!” I said. “It’s the TRUTH!”

  Madison gave an amused laugh. “Truth? What does PR have to do with truth, Smith? News today is entertainment. Ask NBC, CBS, ABC, ask all the major papers. They’ll tell you. News is the biggest entertainment draw in the world. Now let me ask you, how can you entertain anybody by telling the truth? Preposterous! No, Smith, you just don’t understand the modern media at all. Let’s leave this sort of thing up to me, shall we? And then we’ll have 18-point MADISON SCORES AGAIN exclamation point unquote.”

  Acidly, I said, “You forgot the front quote.”

  He said, “So I did. Rewrite: 18-point quote get the hell out of here, Smith, and let me do my job!”

  It was no wonder they called him J. Warbler Madman. I left before he started frothing at the mouth. Even rabies was tame compared to the bite of PR men and the media.

  But I was worried. None of them really seemed to get the danger in that UN bill. If the Security Council passed it, Rockecenter would lose all his thermonuclear profit. The Octopus Oil monopoly on uranium claims would be worthless. Lombar would be raving. And even worse, that Miss Simmons would be slobbering all over Heller as a prize hero.

  I was worried!

  I paced.

  Then INSPIRATION!

  I would go and see Miss Simmons!

  PART FORTY-TWO

  Chapter 1

  I leaped aboard an AA train and soon was speeding north. My rendezvous with destiny would set off a chain reaction even Heller would be powerless to stop.

  The roar, roar, roar of the pounding wheels carried me relentlessly forward, oblivious of the churning crowd. At last I was in action. My mission of vengeance would be fulfilled. Blood, red blood, would pay the awful price of putting me through the agonies which had spent my energies and lacerated my soul.

  At 116th Street I sprang off. With stern and unrelenting face I made my way to Empire University.

  I found Miss Simmons in the Puppet Building of the Teachers College. She was sitting at a classroom desk. She had a wild look in her eyes—as well she might, haunted and destroyed by that villain Heller.

  She didn’t have her glasses on and I knew very well she couldn’t see without them. They lay upon her desk and I covertly laid a book upon them as I sat down.

  “I’m from the Morning Press,” I said. “I’ve come to interview you about the Antinuclear Protest Marchers’ reaction to the UN bill on women’s thermonuclear rights.”

  She peered at me. She said, “If they don’t pass it, we’re going to blow the UN up, New York Police Tactical Police Force or no New York Police Tactical Police Force. I am president of the marchers now and what I say GOES!” She looked for her glasses, couldn’t find them. Then she added, “And you can quote me.”

  “There are black forces at work behind that bill,” I said.

  “I’ll hear no talk against minority groups,” she said. “The Harlem ‘I-Will-Arise’ Burial Society is right behind us to the grave.” She patted around, still looking for her glasses. “Haven’t I seen you someplace before? In the psychiatric ward, maybe?”

  “You have indeed,” I said. “We’re fellow revolutionaries. I am from the PLO, actually. The Morning Press is just my agent cover.”

  “Then we can talk freely,” said Miss Simmons. “Thermonuclear bombing has got to stop even if we destroy the whole world to do it. Didn’t I meet you in Psychology 13?”

  “You did indeed,” I said. “I sat right behind you and cheered you on all the way.”

  “Then your name is Throgapple,” she said. “I always remember my classmates.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  She was patting around trying to find her glasses again, so I thought I had better distract her. “What are you teaching here?” I said, pretending to indicate the book, but actually moving it so her glasses dropped off the desk into my hand.

  “Postgraduate deportment,” she said. “These young teachers go out into secondary schools and foul up. So we preindoctrinate them to be calm and controlled, even cold, at all times. Spare the child and spoil the rod is never used today. Hysterical conduct by the teacher is frowned upon, even when she finds a can of worms in her purse. Where the hell did I put my glasses? Do you see my glasses around anywhere, Throgapple?”

  “No,” I said, which was true, as they were now in my pocket. “But to get back to the Antinuclear Protest Marchers, what will be your statement if that UN bill does not pass the Security Council?”

  I recoiled. She had leaped up and began to pound on her desk and rave and rant in four-letter words that even I had never heard. “And you can quote me!” she screamed. She sat back down pretty spent. “But, of course, their failure to pass it is unthinkable. All the women of the world would tear them into little bits with their fingernails, laughing all the while!”

  I don’t like to see women get upset. It recoils on one. I decided I had better calm her down, put her mind on gentle hills and chuckling brooks. I had to dim down that insane glare which still made caldrons of her eyes. I said, “I understand you also teach Nature Appreciation.”

  The glare got w
orse! “Throgapple, there was once a time when I enjoyed those little Sunday rambles in the woods. I could cheerily chatter to the rabbits and smile upon the daffodils. But last year, Throgapple, an awful thing happened. It changed my life!”

  “Tell,” I said.

  “Throgapple, in a moment when my poor motherly heart swelled chokingly up in my breast with pity, I took into my class that vilest, that most awful, that most vicious species of malignant fauna ever devised by the devil. . . .” She was breaking down. Her lips were twitching to disclose clenched teeth. Her breath was coming faster.

  “I understand,” I said gently. “A nuclear physicist named Wister.”

  She leaped out of her seat. She grabbed student chair after student chair, stacked them in a high tower and agilely scrambled to the top and sat there teetering. She was glaring blindly all about.

  “He isn’t here,” I said reassuringly.

  “Thank God for that!” she cried.

  Two students, probably for her next class, were standing in the door with their mouths open.

  “I take it,” I said, “that you do not like him.”

  She began to scream. It hurt my ears.

  The two students thought I must be baiting her. One of them ran off. The other, a brawny youth, stood there glaring at me.

  Miss Simmons, apparently having run out of breath, stopped screaming.

  More students were gathering at the door. The original one was whispering to the others and pointing first at me and then at Miss Simmons, sitting clear up to the ceiling on the rickety tower of chairs.

  “Miss Simmons,” I said, speaking upward, “please let’s get on with the interview. Incontrovertible evidence has come into our office that there is a mammoth, elephantine cabal on the prowl to defeat that UN bill, and the editor ordered me to come and get your reaction.”

  She was looking way down at me. I was probably just a gray blur below.

  I had her attention so I continued. I had worked it all out after that original flash. I knew exactly what to say. “You can understand completely, I am sure, that certain parties would give their very lives to stop that bill from passing.”