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

Steve got me into the chair. Sweat broke out on his face after he’d taken one look at Carter’s work, but he tried to reassure me. “All right, all right now, boy,” he said soothingly, “You know I won’t go back on you, don’t you?”

He looked around at them. The chief had his usual rank cigar in his mouth, which had gone out in the excitement. One of the others held a pipe between his clenched teeth.

“Where’s your tobacco pouch?” ordered Steve hoarsely. “Let me have it, I’ll get you a new one.”

The lining was thin rubber. He tore that out, scattered tobacco all over the floor. Then he held it up toward the light and stretched it to see if there were any holes or cracks. Then, with a tiny pair of curved scissors, he cut a small wedge-shaped hole in it. “Now hold your mouth open,” he said to me, “and whatever you do, don’t move!” He lined the inside of my mouth with the rubber, carefully working the tooth Carter had just treated through the hole he had cut, so that it was inside the pouch. The ends of the rubber sack he left protruding through my lips. I felt a little as though I were choking. “Can you breathe?” he said. I batted my eyes to show him he could go ahead.

He thrust wedges into my cheeks, so that I couldn’t close my jaws whether I wanted to or not. Then he came out with a tiny mallet and a little chisel, about the size of a nail. “I may be able to get it out whole,” he explained to the chief. “It’s been in less than half an hour. Drilling is too risky.”

His face, as he bent over me, was white as plaster. I shut my eyes and thought, “Well, here I go — or here I stay!” I felt a number of dull blows on my jawbone. Then suddenly something seemed to crumble and a puff of ice-cold air went way up inside my head. I lay there rigid and — nothing happened.

“Got it!” Steve breathed hotly into my face. He started to work the rubber lining carefully out past my lips and I felt a little sick. When it was clear he passed it over to the detectives without even a look at its contents, and kept his attention focused on me. “Now, watch yourself, don’t move yet!” he commanded nervously. He took a spray and rinsed out the inside of my mouth with water, every comer and crevice of it, about eighteen times. “Don’t swallow,” he kept warning me. “Keep from swallowing!” Keenan, his chief, and the others had their heads together over the spread-out contents of the little rubber sack, meanwhile.

Steve turned off the water and took the pads away from my gums finally. He sat down with a groan; I sat up with a shudder. “I wouldn’t want to live the past five minutes over again for all the rice in China!” he admitted, mopping his brow. “Maybe I would!” I shivered.

“Packed with cyanide crystals,” the chief said, “enough to kill a horse! Go up there and make the pinch. Two counts, murder and attempted murder.” Two men started for the door.

“Top drawer left for the caps, bottom drawer right for the cy,” I called after them weakly and rather needlessly. They’d find it, all right.

But I was very weary all at once and very much disinterested. I stumbled out of the chair and slouched toward the door, muttering something about going home and resting up. Steve pulled himself together and motioned me back again.

“Don’t forget the nerve is still exposed in that tooth of yours. I’ll plug it for you right, this time.” I sat down again, too limp to resist. He attached a new drill to the pulley and started it whirring. As he brought it toward me I couldn’t help edging away from it. “Can you beat it?” He turned to Keenan, who had stayed behind to watch, and shook his head in hopeless amazement. “Takes his life in his hands for a friend, but when it comes to a little everyday drilling he can’t face it!”

Walls That Hear You

I

When the policeman came to the door and asked if Eddie Mason lived there I knew right away something had happened to him. They always break it to you that way.

“Yeah. I’m his brother.”

“Better come down and see him,” he said. I got my hat and went with him.

Eddie was in the emergency ward of the Mount Eden Hospital, he told me. He’d been found lying on his back on a lonely stretch of road out toward White Plains, slowly bleeding away.

“What is it, hit and run?” I cried, grabbing him by the sleeve.

He didn’t want to tell me at first. Then, just before we got there he said, “Well, you may sis well know now as later, I guess.” Eddie’s tongue had been tom out by the roots and all ten of his fingers had been cut off at the base, leaving just the stumps of both hands.

I went all weak at the pit of my stomach when I heard it. And then when I got the full implication of the thing, it was even worse. That poor kid. Just turned twenty. Yesterday with his life all before him. And now he’d never be able to speak another word as long as he lived, never be able to feed himself or dress himself or earn a decent living after this.

“He’d have been better off dead!” I groaned. “What did it?” I kept saying. “What was it?”