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

The other detective quietly closed the door after him and left. Terry went into the bedroom and stood just inside the doorway, at a sort of semi-attention.

The man sitting up in the bed was a large man, huge, in his sixties. One side of his face had been marked by a stroke, but it was not paralyzed, just distorted a little out of its normal contour. He could move it freely when he spoke, or used his jaw, or did anything with his eyes. It looked about as skin does when a barber pulls it back behind the ears so that he can get a tight surface on which to shave. His over-all color was a high-blooded maroon, that spoke of the stroke, and of pent-up hatred, and of whiskey. The hatred was in his eyes too. They were terrible to see. They were sick with it, worried with it, crazy with it. They were so loaded with it they seemed to hate everything they rested on — even a table, even a chair — but this was only because they were so saturated; actually they didn’t, they only hated one thing in the entire world. One thing: one man.

“You can lay off that,” he glowered, taking in the semi-attention. “I’m not on active duty any more, and you know it.”

“You always will be to me, Mike,” Terry said devoutly. “Always and always, no matter what the roster says. And always to the captain too.”

“Yeah,” Mike said drily, in one of his rare calms for a moment. “He sends you men over here, by turns, on regular shift-detail, all to make me feel good, I guess.” His voice roared up again, like the suddenly released flame of a blow-torch. “I don’t need that! I don’t need somebody to play nursemaid, sit by my bed and play gin-rummy with me! Give me what I want. Get that man in there!” He tangled on his own hot breath, and had to stop and wait for his throat- and mouth-passages to clear, and then go slower and lower, but only by sheer self-enforcement. “Down that hall outside — three doors, four doors away from where we’re talking—”

“I know,” Terry said patiently.

“Well then hear it once more!” Mike exploded. Behind that door, facing the one outside here, you can see it from here when you look out. is a man moving around, standing, sitting, free and easy, taking it free and easy, and laughing to himself, laughing all the while, not only at me, but at you, at every one of us!”

“He’s not taking it easy,” Terry said vengefully. “Every minute of his life is hell. Every breath he draws is fear. Never knowing, never knowing. I bet sometimes he wishes that he was already in, just so it would be over with. I bet sometimes he’d like to change places with the lousiest con in stir, just so he’d be safely past us on the other side.”

“That’s not enough,” Mike said, almost in anguish, throwing his head upward and back and clenching an aching fist at each side of his throbbing body. “I want to see him lying on the floor, beaten until he can’t feel it any more. Then brought back, and beaten some more, and some more, and some more. I want to stamp down on him with my foot, myself. I want to spit into his open, speechless mouth.”

They stopped, silent and spent. The fumes of their hate filled the air of the room, odorless but just as present, just as toxic as carbon monoxide.

“The try with the ghost-taxi fell through,” Terry remarked glumly after a minute or so.

“Frank called up and told me, while you were on the way over. Everything does, everything we try. It’s uncanny; he must have a sixth sense, he must be spooked.”