EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

Dead-Bang

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

Author’s Dedication:

This one isn’t dedicated to anybody.

1

When the chimes bonged I was watching Mmmm! commercials on television.

I had been relaxing, casually clad and shoeless in my three rooms and bath at Hollywood’s Spartan Apartment Hotel, during the early P.M. hours of Saturday, August 14, the night before the culmination of those events—joyous or catastrophic, depending on your point of view—which changed the world.

The minute-long hot-sell television dramas were accompanied by the latest segment of a family-situation series, but it was lousy, so I read a book while the play was on and at frequent intervals paid attention to the exciting commercials.

They were exciting, all right.

In them, impossibly handsome men—I was pretty sure that’s what they were—used Mmmm! shaving cream or aftershave or cologne, and got dumb looks on their faces. Then there were shots of beautiful gals with their eyes steaming and tongues going in and out, then all this dissolved into something you couldn’t be quite sure of, but looked like it was probably lots of fun, and illegal.

The message was clear that if there lived a man so reckless as to use all three of the products, one right after the other, he would be so dangerously scented he was certain to be raped by a gorgeous movie star, though whether male or female the manufacturer did not say.

So when the chimes went cling-clong, dreaming impossible dreams—I had never used the stuff, myself—I thumped to the door and pulled it open.

She was a luscious lovely of perhaps twenty-five years, give or take a warm summer or two, wearing a lightweight white linen coat open over a clinging pale green dress worn daringly high on sleek shapely legs, and plunging from her throat to what impressed me as a new high in lows. She weighed possibly fifteen pounds more than half my weight—I’m six-feet-two-inches tall and load the scales with two hundred and six pounds—and the top of her head, crowned with red-gold or maybe gold-red hair the shade of honey and hazy sunlight, came just about up to my chin. She had lazy gray eyes and lips that could cook biscuits, and a voice that buzzed like little bees stuck in hot molasses when she said:

“Mr. Scott?”

“What?”

She seemed puzzled by my reply.

Later I would understand why her smooth goldish or reddish brows lifted over those eyes, the color of soft gray cooing pigeons, and why her parted radioactive-red lips pursed slightly as if preparing to blow a kiss into atoms, and why the gentle intake of her breath lifted marvelous breasts higher, higher, and slowly still higher, as though in offering to gods eyeing Earth for pleasures not found on Olympus; but at that moment I was content merely to watch it happen.

You may take it as a fact, however, that never before in my thirty years, when a girl asked me my name, had I replied in a manner indicating either that I didn’t know, or that I didn’t understand the question.

She was speaking again. “Are you Mr. Scott? The private investigator—Sheldon Scott?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded. “I am. And you …?”

“You don’t know? You’ve never seen me before?”

“I’m positive.”

She went on in the lilting bee-buzzing-lovely voice, “I’m sure my father is in very serious trouble, Mr. Scott. But I’d rather not tell you any more unless you’re willing, and able, this very minute, to help me—and him. If it’s still possible. If you can’t, I’ll have to go somewhere else—”

“Don’t do anything rash like that. I’m available. Come in, please.”

I sat next to her on the chocolate-brown divan in my living room, and a minute later had convinced her, or at least felt reasonably confident I had convinced her, that I was not merely available, but should she seek from one end of Earth to the other for someone to get her out of whatever difficulty she was in, there was only faint hope that she would find anybody more capable of getting her out of it as quickly as I.

While I rattled on she gazed at the two tropical fish tanks in the living-room corner, but when I stopped and beamed at her expectantly, she let those soft gray eyes sort of drift lazily to my own eyes—also gray, but more of a “steely” or “thunderous” gray, I like to think—then lifted them to examine briefly my peaked white eyebrows and the short-cropped white, but very healthy white, hair sticking up atop my head, and finally let her eyes rest on mine again.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Nobody is that good. You don’t even look like a detective.”

“Isn’t that great? Just think of the advantage that gives me over dangerous hoodlums. If I looked like a detective, the moment they lamped me I’d lose the element of surprise which helps me to outwit the dummies. The fact that I resemble a vast wasteland puts them off guard instantly, which is one reason I am still alive and so many of them are dead, or doing ten to a hundred in various closely guarded places.” I paused. “Does this mean I’m fired?”

“No,” she said briskly. “You’re hired.” She had opened a large leather bag and pulled a sheet of paper from it. “Tell me what you think of this.”

It was a handwritten note, covering half the page in a queerly jagged and tiny script that was nonetheless easy to read, the strokes clean and sharp, almost like an etching. It said:

“Drusilla, dear—I’ll be involved in a very important project for several days, so don’t worry if I fail to drop in ‘unexpectedly’ before next weekend and let you force upon me your miraculous home-cooking (could you consider Teriyaki steak for Saturday?). Dear, the combination to the floor safe in my study is 85L 12R 51L. Please remove from it the sealed manila envelope (marked ERO) and bring it to the little white house on the corner of Pine and Fifty-seventh streets in Weilton. (I’d come and get it myself, but I’m held prisoner by a mad scientist—I’ve locked myself in the bathroom.) Seriously, I do need the papers tonight—as soon as you can get them to me here. Try to make it by nine at the latest? Until Teriyaki.…”

The note was signed, “Dad.”

I glanced back over it, then looked at the girl—Drusilla, I supposed. “Your father live in L.A.?”

“Monterey Park.”

“Well, it looks pretty much O.K.,” I said. “It’s a little odd he’d be so wrapped up in any kind of project he couldn’t go home and open his own safe. Particularly since Weilton’s only a few minutes up the Santa Ana Freeway, not far from Monterey Park. Usually people give addresses, not street corners. That’s all. The mad scientist line kind of gags me, but it doesn’t bug me.”

“Very good. That’s as much as I would have expected anybody else to notice.”

“O.K., so what’s really wrong with the note? I imagine it’s too much to assume the envelope is filled with thousand-dollar bills, and your father has been kidnapped and held for ransom, and … this is a ransom note that … isn’t supposed to look like a …”

I let it trail off, because her face gave me the answer.

“The envelope contains something a great deal more valuable than thousand-dollar bills.” She took the note from my hand. “Here are the things only I would know—certainly not whoever is holding my father against his will, whoever made him write this note. Dad did a brilliant job, really, considering the pressure he must have been under.” She glanced at me. “You see, there’s no question, they’ll kill him if they get the envelope. Perhaps even if they don’t.”

“They? Do you have some idea who—”

“No.” She shook her head rapidly. “But the note isn’t dated—that’s not like Dad. He’s very precise, dating it would be automatic. My name is Drusilla Bruno, but nobody, not even my father, ever calls me anything except Dru.”

The name “Bruno” tickled my mind, but she was going on. “Dad loves my cooking, but hates Teriyaki steak. He intimates he’ll see me when I deliver the envelope, but his last words are ‘Until Teriyaki,’ which of course would be next Saturday. The most important thing though, is that I already know the combination to Dad’s safe. And this isn’t it.”

I leaned over and looked at the paper in her hand, got out my notebook and pen, jotted down 85L 12R 51L, and underneath it letters of the alphabet corresponding to the numbers. I wound up with HE AB EA. Then I crossed out AB and replaced it with L, for the twelfth letter of the alphabet.

“I’ve done all that,” she said. “Every which way. Nothing made sense.”

“Could he have been trying to say ‘Help,’ or—”

“No, that’s not the way Dad’s mind works. He’d already said ‘Help’ by writing the wrong combination, and half a dozen other things. I’m sure he’s trying to tell me something, somewhere in that letter, but I just don’t know what it is. Probably I’m … too upset.” She was silent a moment, then she went on, “Don’t concentrate on the ‘mad scientist’ thing. He is a scientist, but he isn’t mad. Although lately enough people have been trying to say he is.”

I’d taken out a cigarette and was starting to put it between my lips when it hit me. I didn’t realize I had suddenly tightened my fingers until bits of tobacco fell from the broken cigarette onto my trousers.

I looked at her. “Drusilla … Bruno. And your father’s a scientist? He isn’t—”

“Yes. Emmanuel Bruno.”

I let the crumpled cigarette drop. Just let it drop onto my yellow-gold carpet. Then I got out another one, lit it, stood up, walked over to the fish tanks, and looked at the brightly colored Neons and Raspboras and Guppies and the cornflower-blue Betta I’d raised from an egg. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes after nine. And according to the note, Dru was supposed to “Try to make it by nine.” No way.

For about a minute, while I stood in front of the fish tanks, there was silence. Dru didn’t say anything as I reviewed part of the history, some of it extraordinary, of recent days.…

2

The name Emmanuel Bruno, only twelve months ago less widely known than that of Elvira Snull, who had lived alone growing beans in the Ozarks for forty-two years before being discovered by an Internal Revenue agent, was now a name almost as instantly recognizable to the man on the street as his own. At least it was if he read newspapers or listened to radio or watched television, or probably if he merely went to church once in a while.

For Emmanuel Bruno, an ex-MD who had been kicked out of the AMA but who in his lifetime had become many other kinds of “Doctor,” an infuriatingly opinionated yet paradoxically open-minded genius without enough sense to conceal his irreverence for orthodoxy, authority, dogma, and even reverence, was the developer—inventor, discoverer, formulator—of Erovite. And few experiments in the history of human trial and error have caused more unexpected comment and commotion, more hueing and crying, more praises for and inveighing against, since the day when Adam first whispered to Eve, “So who’s going to know about it?”

You would almost think Erovite had something to do with s-e-x, wouldn’t you? Well, there, as the old phrase goes, was the rub. It was known that Bruno had, during research occupying many years of his life, developed a liquid formula, apparently filled with all kinds of strange gunks, which had—for not quite twelve months—been marketed by a small local pharmaceutical company as a tonic, alleged to be a euphoriant, harmless but effective psychic energizer, and even a possible cure for, or at least alleviative of, many ills that afflict mankind.

During the first two or three months after the product went on sale across the country, it appeared that Erovite did indeed do most, or at least much, of what the manufacturer—and Emmanuel Bruno—claimed for it. If the stories that then began to appear could be believed, encouraging and occasionally remarkable, if not actually astonishing, results were reported by most of those who used Erovite for more than a few weeks.

In virtually all cases a similar pattern was reported: a gradual increase of energy and sense of well-being, greater alertness, even what many insisted was a detectable improvement of memory and mental acuity. After more prolonged use, habitual catnappers required less sleep, while insomniacs began drifting to slumberland minutes after their heads hit the pillows. Such real or imagined troubles as “the nerves,” “low back pain,” “rheumatiz,” and “the blahs” diminished, for some disappeared entirely. All this at a time when Orthodox Medicine, despite its near success in eliminating disease, death, and decay entirely, found itself faced with millions of citizens sicker than dogs, many of whom perversely keeled over and died like flies dipped in medically safe DDT.

But worse was to come. For, finally, toward the end of the period when Erovite was available to all who could afford to pay forty dollars a bottle, the most dramatic and hard to believe—and apparently unforgivable and impermissible—developments occurred, or at least were reported. Not only did many imbibers of Erovite report complete recovery from various minor ailments and apparent immunity to common colds and the variously named and numbered “flus,” but here and there across the land isolated individuals began to claim improvement in their previously chronic or incurable illnesses.

This, of course, was an impossibility. An incurable illness is, according to no less an authority than the American Medical Association, incurable. It follows that nothing can cure such an illness, not quacks, herbalists, pharmacognosists, elves, faith healers, or even God, so certainly the incurable could not be cured by so simple a thing as a combination of various gunks named Erovite.

It is helpful to recognize that, in the lexicon of Organized Medicine, an incurable disease is any malaise, sickness, trauma, external or internal rash or disorder, or other condition unaccompanied by rigor mortis, which cannot be cast out by a duly licensed graduate of an AMA-approved medical school. Anyone not an MD, who by design or accident cures a chronic or incurable disease, is a quack or an elf, who therefore must be—in order to protect the sick and dying from his unethical and unlicensed greed—prevented from experimenting upon people, and if possible imprisoned, so that his illegal actions may be punished and the people may be safe. And may return to their MD’s, who have pronounced their diseases incurable, for proper treatment.

So, those individuals popping up across the land like human corks bobbing to the surface in a sea of misery, to claim among other things that long-stiff arthritic joints were loosening and pain was diminishing, that a skin cancer was visibly and unmistakably shrinking, that bone-deep weariness was lessening as energy returned, that approaching evidences of senility were in slow but sure retreat, could not be other than grievously mistaken.

In the official AMA view there existed only three possible explanations for the increasingly numerous reports of such improvement or cure. First, the individual, not being a trained diagnostician, was deluded and only imagined improvement, or else there had been nothing wrong with him in the first place. Second, if he’d really been sick and was now less sick, the improvement was due to “spontaneous remission,” which is a medical term meaning he’s-better-but-quit-bugging-me-about-it. Or, third, the improvement was due to the delayed but happy result of previous treatment by a medical doctor, perhaps in 1940.

Such a subversive and probably poisonous substance as Erovite, then, would have to be carefully tested and examined by medical doctors and researchers, possibly for as long as a hundred years. There was sudden and quite violent opposition to the unrestricted sale of Erovite. The possible dangers inherent in its continued use were discussed at great length via newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Increasingly it was denounced by experts and others who know about such things. Erovite, and Emmanuel Bruno, were in trouble.

But that trouble, emanating from Organized Medicine—from the AMA and the FDA and the Department of HEW and other concerned alphabets and individuals—was as nothing compared to the fury and denunciation and threats of damnation that, at first temperately but with gathering might and mania as the months wore on, were hurled against Bruno and Erovite by God Almighty. Or, rather, by the Almighty’s spokesmen on Earth, which is the same thing.

In sum, Bruno was being attacked not only by the leaders of Organized Medicine but by the leaders of Organized Religion as well. Could a man possibly have found himself in a more precarious position, unless tied to a stake with the faggots lit and pierced by a poisoned caduceus?

Well, there was a reason for this part of it, too. At the same time when rational doubt was weakening much medical dogma, the Church—not entirely, but primarily the Christian Church—was finding its Omniscience and Authority being increasingly questioned. And, interestingly, questioned for very similar reasons. To make matters worse, there was in progress what was alleged to be a sexual revolution.

In the official Church view, sexual revolutions are not good. The Church takes a very dim view of sexual revolutions. Some say it takes a very dim view of sexual anythings. Yet there was arising what many considered a saner, healthier view to replace the rack on which sex had been stretched for upward of sixteen centuries. More and more of the faithful were wondering why, if sex was taboo and sinful in so many terrible ways, as they had been solemnly assured by God’s spokesmen, God Himself had made it so stupendously delicious. Certainly it wasn’t painful. At least, not usually.

Then along came Erovite. And with it, catastrophe.

For one fact about Erovite soon became strikingly evident: whether or not it made people feel better or worse, whether or not it cured or killed them, it was, unquestionably, an astonishingly potent aphrodisiac.

As practically everybody knows, an aphrodisiac is a euphemism for “lots of fun,” but it is commonly thought of as a substance which, when ingested, gives rise to inner and even outer tumult, to lascivious thought, venery, tumescence, and palpitations, to thoughts of and desire for sexual downfall. Inevitably, when thumping and burning with such palpitations and desires, many so afflicted did, in their weakness, indulge in the act which temporarily obsessed them as a swell idea.

Long before this, long before, the Church had made it clear to all with ears to hear or eyes to see that it was strength to use those ears for hearing and eyes for seeing, even to joyously employ legs and arms and noses for functions natural to legs and arms and noses, but it was always carnal weakness and often an abomination to use the organs of sex for sex, they somehow being more carnal than carnal ears and eyes and noses, which may seem strange, but is all right, for the Church works in strange ways its wonders to perform.

Thus when reports began to come in about men delighting—or occasionally terrifying—their wives, or vice-versa as sometimes occurred when a woman had been on Erovite for a few weeks and her hubby had not; and of individuals slowly waking to wide-eyed libidinousness after an apparently total sexual anesthesia of years; or of prodigious feats of evil which almost had to be lies; and of that now famous orgy in the old folks’ home, why, then, you can bet your boots, it became plain to those who care deeply about such things that something had to be done to stop this spreading evil lest the stiffs rise up in mortuaries and begin eyeing each other lustfully. Better that all the stiffs should stay dead; for why gain life only to lose it?

Some were taken in by this argument. Some were not. But if sheer volume of sound and words and fury could have carried the day, those who proposed the argument would surely have carried it well out of sight; for, although there were minor disagreements, once the truth about Erovite’s appalling ability to increase the power and strength and vigor of man’s sexual desires and abilities—apparently raising his lower nature higher than it had ever been before, maybe even raising it almost as high as his higher nature—all those opposed to, or fearful of, or even kind of suspicious of sex, spoke out against it as one.

Except for Festus Lemming—whose voice was the loudest of all, who volcanically damned sex of any kind, sex right-side-up or upside-down or sideways or back-to-back, with your clothes on, and who denounced at great and intimate length every conceivable nuance of sex, taking as his text and authority the Holy Bible—nobody suggested in public that Emmanuel Bruno should be stoned to death without delay.

Others in the holy chorus dwelled somewhat less on sex, but paid at least as much, if not more, attention to Bruno and Erovite. It was agreed that every atom of Erovite should be destroyed, but as for Bruno they could not, being good Christians mostly, go so far as to agree completely with Lemming’s suggestion. Something, of course, would have to be done about Bruno, but the mind of mere man could not think of anything sufficiently horrible. So, God would have to do it.

That, basically, was the message, and it came in loud and clear from first a hundred and then a thousand pulpits and ecclesiastical podiums. Priests and preachers and pastors and innumerable minor popes reared back and roared, at first in isolation, individually, and at last in one great booming mass. The Church spoke, and it spoke in a voice of thunder.

And the Church said, as usual: No!

Condensed—much condensed—the message was: as for sex, any kind of it was a dubious virtue; and it rampant and unrestricted by properly appointed restrictors was very bad; thus Erovite, which led to more of it when there should be less of it, was very bad; and Emmanuel Bruno was anathema, doubled and redoubled.

In the past four or five weeks, aside from the hullabaloo about Erovite itself, two names had been spoken and shouted and screeched and sung; perhaps more than any other two names in a similar span of time throughout history. One, of course, was Emmanuel Bruno. The other was his chief opponent, the now-number-one spokesman for the forces of decency and the angels, Festus Lemming—but we’ll get to Festus later.

I stood in front of the tropical fish tanks for a few more seconds, watching the guppies poking each other’s lower natures, then turned and walked back to my chocolate-brown divan and looked at Drusilla.

“Emmanuel Bruno, huh?” I said.

3

By nine-fifteen P.M. I had put on my shoes—I’d been lolling before the television set in canary yellow socks, and slacks, of course, and a loosely knitted short-sleeved white sports shirt—and strapped on my gun harness, fully loaded Colt .38 Special snug in its clamshell holster. Carrying a cashmere jacket that matched the slacks and socks, I walked from my bedroom into the living room, feeling dressed to watch a tennis match, but probably not for what I was going to do. Probably not, because I still hadn’t the faintest idea what I was going to do.

Dru and I had carried on a short question-and-answer session during the two or three minutes I spent in the bedroom—it did seem a shame that the first time I spoke to her in my bedroom she was in the living room—and I’d learned a little more not only about Erovite but of events immediately preceding her arrival at my door.

She lived in a suite at the Westchester Arms in Los Angeles, her father in Monterey Park just a hop outside of L.A. Earlier this evening she’d spent some time with her father at his home. Near sundown he had received a phone call from a Mr. Strang and soon afterward left to meet him. Dru drove to her suite, where perhaps an hour later a messenger delivered the note she’d shown me. By the time Dru read the message, the boy who’d brought it was long gone.

I sat by her on the divan, lit a cigarette, and said, “O.K., all we’ve got, so far, is the note and the call from this guy Strang. What did he want? He a friend of your father’s?”

“Not exactly a friend. And I only heard Dad’s part of the conversation, then Dad told me he had to go meet André, Mr. Strang, at the church. If he hadn’t told me—”

“At the what?”

“—I wouldn’t have known where he was going. You see, until the FDA banned Erovite it was produced by the Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceutical Company here in Los Angeles, and Dave Cassiday is an old friend of Dad’s. When opposition to the sale of Erovite reached such ghastly proportions—it got really awful by early June, you know, just before that ding-dong preacher launched his SOS Crusade—”

“That who? Ding-dong … wait. SOS, that’s Save Our Souls, isn’t it? Ye Gods, don’t tell me—”

My interruptions were ignored. But I was getting very suspicious.

“—Dave and my father discussed the situation and concluded it would be at least helpful and possibly essential to have some idea of what that ding-dong was likely to do or say next. Both my father and Dave Cassiday were acquainted with Mr. Strang and knew he’d expressed dissatisfaction with conditions in the local Eden, even hinted that he was on the verge of breaking with the Church entirely. So Dave managed to enlist him as a sort of, well, I suppose you’d call him an ‘undercover’ man, someone who could keep them informed—”

“Hold it.”

I spoke rather sharply, and she managed to shut up. I didn’t really have to ask the question. My suspicions almost confirmed themselves.

“Church,” I said. “Ding-dong, SOS, Eden, I’ll bet a whole collection basket you’re referring to the Church of the Second—”

“Coming.”

“Yeah. And the ding-dong simply has to be Festus—”

“Lemming.”

“Yeah.”

Well, it is already later.

Festus Lemming was the founder, organizer, leader, and ding-dong—that was not his official title—of the Church of the Second Coming, a collection of ecclesiastical fruitcakes that had to be described as the major religious success story of the twentieth century.

Seven years ago there had been no Church of the Second Coming. Seven years ago nobody except possibly his mum and dad had heard of Festus Lemming. But seven years ago the Church—and Festus Lemming—had been born.

It was said that Festus Lemming had seen the light—quite literally. While out walking, he had fallen down, in what some later claimed was an epileptic seizure, on the road to Pasadena, and he was swept up into the Seventh Heaven where, among others, he met silent-screen stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, who told him they were swell; even more important, simultaneously the Holy Ghost descended upon him and he experienced a vision in which he saw and thus knew the Truth, whereupon he was transformed, informed, and born anew. From that moment it became Lemming’s duty, as well as almost maniacal desire, to lay the Truth upon a myriad of sinners enmeshed in the carnality and materialism of a suffering world, to share with all mankind that Message which he, and perhaps he alone, possessed in its entirety.

It was said of this transcendental experience that it had occurred to Festus Lemming seven years past, on the fifteenth day of August, on the road to Pasadena. It was said because Lemming said it. How else could it be? Who else could have said it? It had occurred only to Lemming, therefore, nobody else could have known about it; obviously, then, only he could inform the world of this wonder. And it was unquestionably a wonder, for when he had told others of it many of them believed in him and before you could say Hallelujah his followers had grown from one to two, then to twenty, then to ten thousand, and now in August on the very eve of the seventh anniversary of his Enlightenment they numbered three million or more. This in a period when membership in most other churches declined.

So today there were branches, or Edens, of the Church of the Second Coming in most major cities of the U.S.A., with the Los Angeles County Eden, or headquarters of the entire Church, centered in a soaring new four-million-dollar House of God in Weilton, Southern California. The founder’s correct title, rarely used except on formal occasions or in letters to backsliders, was “The Sainted Most-Holy Pastor” Festus Lemming. There was only one of those. All other officials of the Church—the important ones, anyway—were also termed “Sainted” but, in descending order, the lesser Pastors were designated as More-Holy, Holy, Less-Holy, and Least-Holy. But even the Least was Holy and Sainted. André Strang, for example, as I learned from Dru, was fairly high up the ladder, being, in the Los Angeles County Eden, the Sainted Less-Holy Pastor Strang.

I said to Dru, “The way Lemming’s been throwing everything but the altar candlesticks at your father, I wouldn’t have thought he’d go within ten miles of Weilton, much less the church.”

“Ordinarily he wouldn’t have. But with the climax of Lemming’s campaign against Erovite and Dad, his SOS Crusade—and even his big Announcement—all less than twenty-four hours away, this is no ordinary time. And anything Strang could tell Dad might be very important now.”

“Uh-huh. You sure it was Strang on the phone?”

“Well … no, not really. Dad said it was, and I hardly think he’d have been mistaken about the person he was talking to.”

“This envelope he mentions, marked ERO, I suppose that must have something to do with Erovite.”

“Just about everything to do with it. The essence of Dad’s notes, records, history of his experiments for over twenty years, everything—from the very beginning through all the steps in development and final formulation of Erovite—is in that envelope. I’m sure you realize, if the FDA ban is removed, and there’s some chance it may happen, the information in that envelope could be worth millions of dollars to whoever possesses it.” She paused. “Even billions, if you want my, and Dad’s, opinion.”

“I suppose so, maybe. If the stuff does what’s claimed for it.”

She looked at me with a slight smile curving those reckless-red lips. “Everything claimed for it, and more. You can’t judge the value of anything from the words of its detractors alone, or what’s said by those having no personal acquaintance with the thing. And that is especially true of Erovite, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

She nodded. “The early medical opposition caused much difficulty, but when it became known that Erovite was such a lovely sexual stimulant, it was the religious opposition, particularly the Fundamentalist-Christian opposition, that made the situation impossible.”

“Lovely?”

She blinked. “Of course. As I told you earlier, I certainly did not deliver the envelope. I’m convinced anyone who’d do this to get the formula would also kill Dad once they got it. But I did drive back to Dad’s home in Monterey Park, in case anyone was watching the house, spent a few minutes inside and came out carrying an envelope. Then I drove here.”

“Think you might have been followed?”

“I’m certain I wasn’t.”

“Well.… By the way, why here? I. mean, why me?”

“Dad once mentioned if he ever got into real trouble he’d like to have you around. He said you impressed him as a most ingenious and capable brute.”

“Brute?”

“He also has an idea you’re his kind of man, as he put it, full of life and lusty, half-pagan, and you always seem to come out on top somehow, no matter what dumb things you do.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“That’s all of real importance I can tell you, Shell.” She leaned closer and put one hand over mine. I would have sworn I could feel the hot beat of the pulse in her palm, going thump-thump-thump on the back of my hand. “What do you plan to do?”

Thump-thump-thump it went. It was definitely hot.

“Dru,” I said, “the instant you appeared at the door of my cave—”

“I suppose first you’ll go to the corner of Fifty-seventh and Pine?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll run around the block—ah, in Weilton, of course, that’s what I’ll do. The corner there, which is mentioned in the note.” I took the note from my pocket. “I will, as well, also be trying to decipher these hieroglyphics. And while in Weilton, if as I expect, I fail to find Doctor Bruno standing on the corner, I shall visit the Church of the Second Coming, because that is where your father said he was going, and it is so far as we know the last place where he may have been seen—seen in public.”

“That’s what I would suggest.” Dru removed her hand from mine. “And you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”

I watched her hot hand as it moved through the air and came to rest in her lap, which was probably even hotter.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d better.”

4

Just a hop and a skip out of L.A. you take a right—toward the sea—at the Santa Ana Freeway, and a few miles farther along you’ll see a sign.

Yes, you’ll see it—none who have passed that way except the totally blind or unconscious have yet failed to see it—and even if you get only a glimpse you will be able to read the letters of flaming gold, a product of man’s genius with electricity and neon and various other appropriate gasses, which proclaim:

FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING

CHURCH OF THE SECOND COMING

REPENT YE SINNERS FOR THESE DAYS

ARE

THE LAST DAYS!

That is what it said. And it had given many people a chill when they considered, if the message were true, how many were the things for which they had better repent. Combined with the chill was a full measure of anxiety and suspense, for if these were the last days nobody knew how many of them might be left, nobody except Festus Lemming. He knew. But he had not told anybody else yet. He was going to, however. He was going to tell everybody about it on the seventh anniversary of his Enlightenment, on the evening of the fifteenth of August, or—tomorrow night.

Even without that interesting message, Lemming would have been assured of enormous attention, not merely from the approximately four thousand members of his own congregation and the three million souls in his Church, but from the citizenry at large as well. For tomorrow night would also mark the climax of his two-month-long campaign against Emmanuel Bruno, against Erovite, against sex, against sin, against filth and indecency and everything spiritually soiled or smudged.

Those not instantly informed by the name Festus had given to his Church, or by the flashing sign on the Santa Ana Freeway, had been informed of his message either by Lemming himself or reports in the press, radio, and television. Basically Lemming proclaimed—and vowed this was the very heart of the revelation he had experienced on the road to Pasadena—that these days were the “last days” prophesied in the Scriptures; that these were the days when predicted riots and upheavals and tumult and sin and evil did stalk the land; the days of wars and rumors of wars, of nation rising against nation, and famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places as foretold in Matthew and elsewhere. That, in sum, the time of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was now, or at least soon, was very soon, was almost now, and the Lord was about to come to Earth again in order to save it from otherwise inevitable and imminent destruction.

Whether Festus sincerely believed this or not, and there is no need to doubt that he did, it was undeniable that most members of his Church, and undoubtedly a great many more people who had heard of the message, did believe it. They believed because they feared these days of upheaval might be the real Last Days, and because Festus Lemming proclaimed it to be true, and because he was a most persuasive and convincing and devout vegetarian celibate who constantly spoke out against sin and evil, but mainly because he had experienced a vision on the road to Pasadena.

All this helped explain why Lemming and the members of his Church were so greatly exercised about Erovite and Emmanuel Bruno. The Sainted Most-Holy Pastor had for seven years made it abundantly clear that it was his duty and the duty of the Church and all of its members, in preparation for the Second Coming of the Lord, to sweep the Earth clean of sin. If this was not done and done speedily, the Earth would not be pure enough or clean enough, and the Lord would not come, and Earth would perish.

Sin was, however, in the view of Festus Lemming, almost entirely of the flesh, of the evil carnal body, and naturally the most doubly sinful sin of all was sexual sin, which usually required two evil carnal bodies for a single sinning. Consequently, along with his warnings and pronouncements of imminent doom, a doom which those so pure as to be without spot or blemish would escape through Divine intervention—though the rest of us, the ones with a little spot or blemish, would be condemned forever to the everlasting hots—there was much talk by Lemming of sin all over the place, this accompanied by many phrases like “fornicators and whoremongers” and “O ye accursed fornicators and whoremongers!” and “… into the flames of eternal Hell shall be cast the fornicators and whoremongers!” He really had it in for the fornicators and whoremongers.

One can easily understand, then, the dismay of Festus Lemming when, not long after the appearance of Erovite in drugstores, sources both medical and lay began to report and then confirm its astonishing effects upon human sexuality. At the precise moment when it was necessary that the world be clean, cleaner, cleanest, a flood of filth was inundating the land.

It came to Festus that if this monster was not killed while it was still little, it might soon become an adult that could not be slain; Earth would become lousy with fornicators; and the world would therefore end, not as he envisioned, with a whimper, but with a terrible bang. Further, since Erovite in large measure would be responsible for all of those fornicators, and Emmanuel Bruno was responsible for Erovite, it followed with rigid logic that Bruno was the greatest whoremonger of all time. It was a serious charge. But it was Lemming’s duty to make it, and he did not shrink from his duty.

Atop the sign an arrow flamed and flickered, much larger but much like those that Indians used to light and shoot into forts, and as I turned in the direction indicated, right off the freeway onto Filbert Street, it occurred to me—oddly enough, for the first time—that a greedy man enmeshed in the carnal and material life might kidnap and hold Bruno in the hope of acquiring his formula for Erovite and from it making a great many millions of dollars; but it was also possible that a man less greedy and not enmeshed in the carnal and material life, a man more spiritual, a man more humble, meek, long-suffering, and righteous, would kidnap Bruno and attempt thus to acquire his formula in order that both it and Bruno might then be destroyed and the world saved from sin. Certainly saving the world was a finer thing to do than making lots of money.

I passed the two-lane asphalt road, lined with tall poplars and bearing the wonderful name “Heavenly Lane,” gently rising toward the Church of the Second Coming two or three hundred yards away on my right, and drove on into Weilton. It took only a couple of minutes to reach Pine and Fifty-seventh and then park around the corner a block away. Another five minutes to walk silently back to the house—it was a small white house—on the northwest corner. And two minutes at most to become certain I was entirely alone. Nobody was there at all, either outside the house or inside.

Nearby I found a For Sale sign, and in the front lawn a hole from which, probably earlier this evening, the sign had been pulled. So there was little doubt someone had waited here, in the near darkness, not long before.

In the Cad, I read Bruno’s note to his daughter once again, played with numbers and letters, looked for clues in words and phrases and found not a clue. So I drove back down Filbert to Heavenly Lane and up the poplar-lined road. Soon on my left were visible row upon row of cars, hundreds of them, parked in a spacious lot. The road veered right, swung left—and there it was.

The Church of the Second Coming appeared with surprising and impressive suddenness, dead ahead and well above me. Green lawn sloped upward to flower beds, and then, stark in the glare of a dozen floodlights, the white face of the church loomed. It rose toward the sky for a hundred and fifty feet, its width no more than half that, a solid white wall without ornament or interruption other than the almost fragile-looking cross of gold one hundred feet from top to bottom with a thin horizontal bar thirty-feet wide toward its top. Beneath the base of the cross the great doors of the church were open wide in welcome.

I parked my Cad in the lot, and as I walked back toward the lights, while still fifty yards from those open doors, I could hear the familiar voice booming and roaring. Familiar, though I had not met Festus Lemming, because I had heard parts of messages he regularly delivered on television, not merely on Sunday morn but—during the past month—in evening prime time. It was a quite distinctive voice, anyhow. Once heard, like once hit on the ear with a claw hammer, it was an experience impossible to dismiss lightly.

I walked up a dozen pebbled cement steps and through the doors, then stepped a few feet to my right and leaned against the wall, taking a few moments to adjust to my first view of the church’s interior, and of Lemming and his flock in the flesh.

The interior of the church was much larger than I had expected. It was not so very wide, but it was very deep, which is, I suppose, the way a church should be. Its approximately seventy-five-foot width, except for an open eight-foot-wide aisle slanting downward and bisecting the building and a narrower aisle at each wall, was filled with worshippers seated shoulder to shoulder, crammed together on backless benches.

From where I stood, in the rear of the church, I could of course see none of the smiling faces, only row upon row of massed and rapt Christians, clad mostly, if not entirely, in black or dark blue or gray; row upon row of motionless backs and expressionless heads. Motionless, yes; and rapt, yes; for all heads were aimed at and all eyes fixed on the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor as he gladdened their eyes and ruined their ears, and heads, with his message.

I heard him before I saw him—of course, I’d heard him while still in the parking lot—and I let my eyes find the source of that marvelous sound. My gaze went down the middle aisle, down and down and far, to a wall of pearly-gate gray—a wall not of wood but of cloth, hanging gray curtains or draperies—and then up. There he was, way down there at the other end of the church, but elevated on a podium high enough so that even those of us in back had to lift up our eyes to see him. Whether or not this was designed to induce eyestrain in all, it almost surely produced a lot of stiff necks among those seated in the front rows, from where it appeared likely they would have to look straight up in order to see his nostrils.

Festus Lemming wore no robe, no gown of black or white or scarlet, no symbol-covered apron or even impressive mitre. No such folderol for him. He wore a simple business suit made of hammered gold with ruby crosses for buttons. Lights from spots focused upon him bounced and glittered from his golden threads, sparkled as he moved and waved his arms and mouth, as the sun might have glinted from the chain mail of a Crusader setting forth to chop up infidels for God, an infidel being one who rejected the Christian faith, particularly that part of it which required the chopping-up of infidels.

Even with the vast quantity of light bathing him, so that he appeared to be throwing little sunspots into his corona, Lemming resembled a golden icicle, gradually melting away. I had seen him on television, and on one other occasion in person at fairly close range. He was very short, only three or four inches over five feet, and so thin that upon first lamping him I’d thought it at least possible if he stepped on a scale and its needle did not move he wouldn’t be certain the scale was busted. Even then he’d given me the impression of being a wraith, an icy shade that might in a dim light—or a strong light, any kind of light—melt away entirely.

This impression did not, however, apply to his voice. Festus Lemming’s was a voice that might never fade away, that might, though getting gradually weaker, keep on going to the ends of the Earth and continue as at least a faint whisper among the farthest stars. It was as though he spoke not with the mouth of an ordinary mortal but with a flesh cannon made from lungs, lips, teeth, tongue, tonsils, and musical buzz-saws.

From that anatomical marvel he shot forth balls and volleys of phrases and sentences, shrapnel of biblical quotes and misquotes, cannonades of verses and chapters and possibly whole testaments, all of it mixed with revivalist humdingers that seemed to bounce from the walls and ceiling and floor and, even slowed down by all that, to pierce eardrums and occasionally stun whole people.

For a few seconds, instead of listening to the almost symphonic tones and chords and arpeggios of Lemming’s voice, I concentrated upon what he was saying, thinking perhaps even I, by putting skepticism aside and paying close attention, might learn something of infinite value.

“You, Mary, ever Virgin,” he was crescendoing—and that kind of put me off right there—“make us understand the paradoxical essence of this state of celibacy.… Yes! We know it is … a SUPERHUMAN VIRTUE which needs supernatural support! Make us also understand its worth, its heroism, beauty, joy, and strength … the strength and honor of a ministry without reservation—Yes! THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE FLESH.… The unconditional SOLDIERING of the Kingdom of God. Help us … to love … like this! YES!”

As often before, when I’d chanced to hear top-forty songs, I wished I’d continued to concentrate on the music instead of the lyrics. And not merely because the message failed to make me feel all good and warm inside, but because Lemming was not delivering an original sermon but quoting, with minor embellishments, God’s remarks on Sacred Celibacy which had, years before, been delivered for Him by Pope Paul VI.

So much for learning something of infinite value, I thought, and glanced at my watch. It was three minutes till ten P.M. With any luck, Lemming would take a break at ten. In both outer aisles, three-quarters of the way down toward the front, stood a man—or maybe woman; from this distance it was difficult to be sure—wearing what looked like an official outfit or uniform. I checked the individual on my right more closely. The outfit was an ankle-length robe or curtain of pearly-gate gray, snug around the neck, and with an insignia or design on the sleeves. On the person’s head was a covering, something like a large shower cap.

It seemed possible that one did not easily gain an interview with the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor, perhaps not at all without the intercession of an intermediary. And I, not a member of the Church by a long shot, would probably need all the help I could get. So I walked to the aisle on my right and started moving slowly down it, as unobtrusively as I could.

I made the halfway mark with no trouble, and paused there to take my first good look at the assembled congregation of the Church of the Second Coming—or, rather, my first look, for to me there was nothing good about it. I could clearly see some hundreds of the approximately four thousand members present, and it was a sight to sore eyes. It may be that I looked upon them with already biased and prejudiced glimmers, and thus saw not only what was actually there but what I expected to see as well. Still, I think even a totally unbiased and unprejudiced observer would have concluded they were a sad-looking lot.

As for me, there was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I had never before beheld such a joyless, juiceless, loveless and lifeless gang of withered, weary, and dried-up ding-a-lings. Knocking off ninety percent for the possibility of my personal warps, there were still very few of them who looked fully alive, and some who appeared to have been deceased for a number of years.

Most stared upward, rigid and unmoving, as though absorbing through every pore the love of life or lust for death—take your pick, for Festus was still instructing them in the virtues and joys of virginity and celibacy, suffering and denial—being unleashed upon them from the elevated pulpit. But a few became aware of me and turned their heads lazily to look. And oddly, each and every one of those who looked continued to look at me, or stare, becoming—when such a thing was possible—even more sour and suspicious, thinner of lip and colder of eye.

Turning, I started creeping down the aisle again, and stopped right behind the individual I presumed was standing watch, or at station, doing something official. His, her, or its—even from this close I couldn’t tell, because of that loose outfit—back was toward me, so I reached up and tapped the nearer shoulder and whispered, “I beg your pardon sir, or ma’am. Or Miss.”

She—yeah, it was a she—and how it was a she—turned quickly. She wasn’t a very tall gal, and for a moment she stared from about a foot away, at my chin, or rather at a point slightly below it, which must have been my Adam’s apple. Maybe it was being reminded here, of all places, of Adam’s apple. Or maybe it was what I—automatically, without thinking the least bit about it—said to her. Whatever—something shook her up a bit.

As she turned and eyeballed my Adam’s apple, then sort of jerked her head back as though to keep an eagle from landing on it, and stared up into my face with her eyes widening, I noted the depth of those huge purple-blue-almost-lavender eyes and the soft smoothness of her skin and the sweet curve of her lips and—approaching a mild state of shock induced by suddenly seeing this so soon after looking at so much of that—blurted, “Sweet Jesus in Jerusalem, how did a live one like you get mixed up with this bunch of that—”

She let out a small noise, a sort of amusing little wheeuk like you’ve heard people make when they suck in their breath too fast and it sticks, and it wasn’t loud at all. But it bothered me. Because it seemed loud. And with all that roaring from the pulpit, all the thundering and booming and cannonading going on, it should not have seemed so loud.… All the thundering and booming? All the thund …

In thick silence I moved my head a little and rolled my eyes left so I could see some of the congregation, and then wished I hadn’t done it. Because a whole lot of them were looking at me, and they were looking darkly. Moreover, a heavyset man nearby in a dark gray suit with a fine little pinstripe stood out like a sour thumb among the citizens crammed shoulder to shoulder in his row. All the others were dressed in black, or in equally dark gray, but he stood out because he had a fine little pinstripe.

Right then I realized, perhaps a bit late, that I was probably the only person here wearing a canary-yellow sports outfit.

I rolled my eyes left briefly, just for a peek, then rolled them back at the girl a foot from me. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were very wide, but even wearing that expression she was well-worth seeing.

“Quick,” I whispered. “What’s your name?”

“Miss Winsome,” she whispered as if hypnotized. “Regina Winsome.”

“Beautiful,” I said.

I flashed a quick look left, and way up, hoping Lemming wasn’t preparing to throw a prayer book at me. But to my surprise he seemed not even aware that a big disturbance had been created. He was flipping through pages of a large book partly visible on the lectern in front of him. I took another peek at the gang on my left. Some were still eyeing me dimly, but about half of them were thumbing through little books held in their laps. And beyond the group closest to where I stood, hardly anybody was even idly gazing this way.

Here I’d thought the entire congregation was about to rise up and do something painful to me, but all the time it was only a few of those closest who had heard Regina’s squeak and scowled at it, heard it because—with strange timing that made me wonder if this was going to be one of my lucky nights—at the moment just before Regina’s noise Pastor Lemming had finished his sermon. So naturally it got as still as a tomb.

“Why did you make that funny noise?” I asked Regina.

“What noise?”

“I don’t think I could describe it. And I certainly couldn’t do it for you—skip it. I mean, you seemed so shook—startled.”

“Well.…”

“Uh-huh. It was my Adam’s apple, wasn’t it?”

“Your what?”

“My—skip it. You’d better tell me.”

“Well, you said that strange thing.”

“I? I said the strange thing? You’re the one—”

“I was standing here listening to our beloved Pastor, and waiting to receive the love offerings, when you tapped me on the shoulder.”

So, love offerings. She was going to pass the plate, then. No, the basket. The basket she was holding in her two hands. I hadn’t noticed it. Usually I notice things like that. It was big enough to hold a bushel of potatoes, too. It was a widely woven cane basket, I noted, and it occurred to me—I don’t know why, it just occurred to me—that unless there were plenty of bills in the bottom of the basket, any pieces of silver dropped in would scoot right through those big holes and clink on the floor.

“So that’s what you do, you take up the collec—the love offerings, hmm?”

“Yes. The other Sentry—” she glanced across the church to the other similarly clad person there—“and I always accept offerings right after the Chorale.”

Chorale? I wasn’t sure what that was, but I wasn’t going to expose my ignorance, not to this beauty. The way she said it, the word sounded capitalized, like Important. Maybe she did a dance. I hoped she did a dance. But probably that wasn’t it. Churches have a long way to go to get back to those good old days.

“Nobody ever tapped me before,” she went on, “so I was already a little bit surprised. And then you said that strange thing.”

“I thought we already settled—”

“It sounded like the first part was, ‘Pardon me.’ But then there was … oh, something like ‘Sororamumammimommis’—I don’t remember.”

“I don’t either. All I said was, ‘I beg your pardon, sir or ma’a—skip it. Well, if that was all, then I don’t feel so ba—”

“The real shock was when I turned around and saw you. You’ll never believe what I thought.”

“Sure I will.”

“I had the insane impression you were a great huge bird.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe it. You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what I thought, all I know is there was all this yellow around, blinding yellow, it was all I could see, so just in a flash, like, I thought it must be a great huge bird, or a bunch of bananas—”

“This has gone far enough.”

“—and then you started cursing.”

“Oh, come off it.”

“You did, I heard you. You took the Lord’s name in vain!”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“You did, you did!”

She was getting shook again. I slapped a hand against my thigh. “Sweet Je … Ah, Miss Winsome, Regina. You may be partly right. Just in case I did, accidentally maybe, sort of in funsies, not meaning any harm, take the Lord’s name in vain, as you put it, well, I like to think He’d be big enough to overlook it. How about that? Makes sense, huh? Right?”

A great voice boomed out, from up above me and over my left shoulder, and I don’t mind telling you I got a terrible chill.

“YOU WILL TURN TO …”

What? I thought. Turn to what?—Salt? Sodom and Gomorrah? What? A pillar? A pillar of what?

“…”

Come on. I can take it. Just don’t play with me. That’s inhuman!

“EIGHTY-NINE.”

Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine what? You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? Look, damnit—

“AND AFTER THAT IT WOULD BE MOST APPROPRIATE, I THINK, ON THIS EVENING, THE FOURTEENTH OF AUGUST—”

“Lemming,” I said aloud. “Lemming.”

“What?” Regina asked me curiously.

“Lemming. Just old Festus. See, didn’t I tell you—”

“—TO CONCLUDE BY SINGING NINETY-EIGHT,” Pastor Lemming concluded.

“Regina,” I said, “something just reminded me, I do indeed have work to do, serious work, in fact, that’s why I came up and tapped you, my name is Sheldon Scott, and it is of the utmost importance that I speak, as soon as possible, with Pastor Lemming, and because I wasn’t certain he’d talk to me, I thought perhaps you could sort of act as an intermediary, get him to agree to see me—”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. Why do you ask?”

“You look yellow.”

“It’s just the reflection. I’m serious about talking to Pastor Lemming, Regina. Do you think you might get him to come down here and give me a bit of his valuable time?” I looked up and over my left shoulder at him. “If he stays where he is, I don’t know how in the world I’d get up to him.”

She pointed toward the heavy gray curtains hanging from ceiling to floor behind the elevated podium where Lemming stood. “There’s a little circular staircase back there, behind the draperies. You just walk up and down. It’s easy.”

“It’s easy when you know how it’s done,” I said sourly. “Do you think you could help—”

“Of course. I’ll be glad to. I’ll ask him after the start of the Chorale, but before I accept the offerings, all right?”

“Sure.”

I was just standing there, minding my own business, when suddenly there was one—or, rather, several—of the most excruciatingly horrible sounds I’d ever heard. It was even worse than the last horrible sound I’d heard. Well, almost. This was a thumping and piercing and jangling and wailing and twanging and booming—and loud?

“What’s that?” I cried.

Regina looked at me smiling joyously. Her lips moved. I couldn’t hear her. So I made her repeat it and read her lips. They said, “It’s the start of the Chorale.”

“No wonder it’s capitalized,” I said. “You mean the Chorale is … What is it? Where does it come from? How does it happen?”

I figured it out from the movements of her lips and her pointing fingers and finally saw it, way down below Lemming, before those draperies behind which was the little staircase you walk up and down. It was a group of musicians—using the word as loosely as it is possible to use it—banging away and playing on their instruments. They were, allegedly, playing music, amplified more than seemed necessary. It wasn’t exactly rock and roll, or anything previously known to mankind. It was more like rack and ruin, or Christians on racks getting ruined by infidel lions. I suppose if I had to give it a name I’d call it Plymouth Rock, but it didn’t deserve a name as much as a description, like—well, it was what you might hear if you had magic ears and could listen to twelve guitars, two Salvation Army drums, and four tambourines being burned alive.

So this was the Chorale—or the start of the Chorale, as Regina had said. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t read them. The music had wrecked my eyes, too. Then I felt her take my hand and start leading me away somewhere. That was O.K. with me. Anywhere, just so we got farther—no, we were getting nearer the source of that melodic cataclysm, she was leading me not out and away but nearer the noise, then through ah opening in the draperies into dimness where was the staircase you walk up and down. I knew she must have a reason, but it was difficult to think, the crash and violence of the assault of that sound literally interfered with sparks of thought in the brain, short-circuited synapses, and wrenched neurons from dendrites—

As suddenly as it had begun, the entertainment stopped.

For a very small moment that last interrupted thought going out of my mind met and blended with another coming in. Not only Lemming’s preaching—his carrot of the Second Coming and stick of damnation-and-foreverburning, his technique of stretching a warning or revelation until suspense and anxiety were at their peak and then snapping it off like a man breaking twigs, his repetition, repetition, repetition of a word or a phrase—but also that sound, that noise, that astonishing assault on the senses, could not have been more perfectly designed to disorient the brain, befuddle thought, produce a state of what has been called “disinhibition” in the integrity of the mind. Disinhibition so often followed, if the new idea or morality or instruction is skillfully presented, by an almost instantaneous change of mind or heart, sudden switching of loyalty, change in belief so drastic and sudden as to be designated rebirth—as in that well-known rebirth described reverently as “religious conversion.”

It was the then-embryo but now-full-grown technique used deliberately or unconsciously, and so effectively in the past, by Calvin and Wesley and others equally righteous, by revivalists and torturers and brainwashers, by Hitler and Stalin and fire-and-brimstone preachers. And, it would surely seem, by Festus Lemming. Add communal singing and chanting and clapping of hands, and maybe a little more Plymouth Rock and perhaps holy dancing, and half the flock might fall down in a frenzy.

I pushed that out of my mind and let my thoughts wander—or, rather, forced them to wander—and was able to detect either physically or telepathically the hot thump-thump-thump of Regina’s pulse at the spot where her hand held mine.

First Dru, now Regina, in many ways as different as day and night, but each with the hot thump-thump-thump of a woman’s heart stirring the warm Red Sea in everyman, whether or not they willed it, a thing not contained in books or churches or even Bibles, a truth and law of nature and of nature’s God that no hope or fear or faith can deny, not while the blood moves and burns. But some, like Festus Lemming, try—and keep on trying—to deny it.

And then, there he was. Festus Lemming in the flesh.

I guess it was flesh.

5

We were at the rear of the church in what was Essentially a large and dimly illumined room with its fourth wall formed by those heavy draperies behind us, and with an enormously high ceiling and another four or five thousand square feet of floor space. Space for future expansion, I supposed; but right now, except for what were probably offices all the way back, it was apparently a kind of pastoral warehouse, jumbled and cluttered.

Regina had led me to a point near that circular staircase she’d mentioned, and I could see the steel treads curving upward above us. Festus Lemming had just descended them and was now stepping toward us. It seemed almost fated that Regina would remove her hand from mine the instant he lamped us, so in the same split second when I found Festus I lost her pulse. It wasn’t an equal exchange. It was more as though something had died—and, oddly, at that moment a long-forgotten memory came back to me.

It was a boyhood memory, sharp and so fresh I could feel again that morning’s unusual chill. I had rescued, from an ancient but not diabolical cat, a bird too young to fly, warmed it in my palm, and felt the wild beat of its heart for long seconds until, suddenly, it stopped.

Now, why, I wondered, would I think of a dumb thing like that at the very moment when I gazed upon the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor? And why would I be reminded that there are some people alive who, simply by their presence, crush life in others? Maybe it was that horrendous music or Regina’s pulse or the unique experience of being in church on a Saturday night. And maybe it was none of those things. All I know for sure is that when I saw Festus Lemming I remembered, and felt again, that long-ago morning’s unusual chill.

Regina was saying, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, beloved Pastor, that I was so late this evening. I was so tired, and took a nap and … overslept. But I’ve never missed the opening hymn before. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

I shook my head. Could I have heard what I thought I’d heard? Probably not.

“I trust, Miss Winsome,” Lemming said coldly, “you will not oversleep again tomorrow night.”

He gave “tomorrow” a marvelous emphasis, making of it a thing apart, illumined by Roman candles and rockets and bombs bursting in air. Ah, yes, tomorrow—tomorrow was to be the night of nights.

On he went, each word a dry leaf blown by wintry winds, “The Lord’s work … will not wait … on weakness and infirmity. If the cross of duty is too burdensome … lay it down—yes!—lay it down. If this happens again, Miss Winsome … there will be no room for you here. There will be no room.”

I had wandered unaware into Funland at Disneychurch. They’d heard I was coming and half-baked a kook: they were putting me on. But, no, I saw Regina’s smooth cheek pale. It became whiter, and I heard her suck in her breath once again with that odd little wheeuk, but I heard it without even slight amusement this time.

“I’m terribly sorry, beloved Pastor. Please—”

“Have you no work to do for the Lord, Miss Winsome?”

She glanced quickly, nervously at me. There was something almost like terror in her eyes. It was undoubtedly an emotion close to terror, for I assumed she had just been threatened with the Second Coming version of excommunication. If so, and if she did not humble herself sufficiently to avert the horrible fate, it would mean she could no longer talk to God; and, even worse, that God could no longer talk to her either. No wonder she was terrified.

But right then Regina won me. She got all the good marks I can give. Because she started to turn, then stopped. And did what she’d told me she would do.

“Beloved Pastor … this is Mr. Scott, Sheldon Scott.” Her voice was small and soft. “I said I would ask you if—you would give him a few, a minute or two of your time.” She swallowed. “He said it was very, extremely urgent.”

Lemming said nothing. And he managed to say it coldly. Regina turned and left. The Pastor stared at me, silently. Unmoving, unsmiling, and apparently—if given only casual inspection—unconscious. I looked down at the narrow face and shoestring lips and burning eyes. Those eyes surprised me. I had expected eyes of ice, but Lemming’s were warm, large, bright. Some kind of fire burned in him, somewhere.

Thirty or forty feet beyond him was a wall broken by half a dozen heavy-looking doors. Nearer, on my left, a roughhewn wooden table flanked by a pair of backless benches, all the comforts of camp. On my right, another table, piles of black books, perhaps Bibles, piled upon it; boxes of candles and candlesticks; a rolltop desk.

And nearer still, against the wall, a ten-foot-high wooden cross with its base a sharpened spike of steel, thus fashioned, perhaps, so it could be driven into earth or clay; and, upon the cross, carved from wood and painted—garishly painted, it must be confessed—the near-naked figure of Jesus the man and Christ the god, the flesh and spirit, one in the Jew of Nazareth, crucified on the Christian cross.

I looked at Festus Lemming’s burning eyes and said, “Pastor, I’m here to ask your help.”

And then I stopped. On coming here there’d been at least hope the Pastor might prove agreeable and speak a few words to his assembled flock—for only he could enlist the cooperation of all the flock, including one or more individuals who might earlier have seen Bruno. But right then I knew no words of mine, not even a million dollars of mine—if I had a million—would get me any help from this jolly chap.

However, even when facing impossible odds you give it your best shot, if not from reason then from habit, so I went on, “It is important, essential that I get in touch with Emmanuel Bruno. It’s my understanding he was here, or at least near the church, not very long after sunset. I …”

No word, no motion, no twitch of brow or change of expression. No sign of life at all except the brightness in those eyes.

“I know you’ve had your, ah, disagreements with him, shall we say?” I laughed lightly. “Even—stupendous, almost infinite disagreements? But Doctor Bruno may need my assistance in a matter …” I hesitated, then plunged on, “To put it bluntly, Pastor Lemming, it is possible Doctor Bruno is in some danger. That he may come to harm unless I get in touch with him as soon as possible. I’ll be greatly indebted to you if you will take, say, ten seconds to ask the members of your congregation if one or more of them happened to see Doctor Bruno here, or near—”

“No.”

“You may not completely understand the possible gravity—”

“I do understand. Completely. Emmanuel Bruno, he who is the name and form and face of evil … may be harmed, may be killed, if you do not find and help him. May be dying, may be dead.”

He had a queer, almost freakish way of falling into a kind of chant when worked up about something and speaking—as he had to Regina, as he had in some of the thunderous passages I’d heard earlier while he preached. It was unusual, on the edge of being totally buggy, but it did grab the attention, grabbed it and held it.

“If he is harmed or killed, if he should now be dead or dying, it is the will of God. I am a man of God. Can you suggest or think that I … that I would place my will against the will of Almighty God?”

“Oh, come off it—” I stopped, started over. “We must be discussing two different guys. I’m talking about a man, a human being not entirely evil, and if I retain faint memory of Christian doctrine and alleged practice—”

“Emmanuel Bruno has sinned against the Holy Ghost, sinned against both man and God!” His voice was rising eerily. “He has sinned, sinned, he has sinned … and he is doomed … damned and doomed … and God will strike him dead! Yes! That is the will of God!”

“How would you know?” It slipped out, but I know my own symptoms and suspected it was not all that was going to slip out.

“Leave, leave this holy house. You defile the house of God with your stink of flesh and stench of lust.”

“Can it, Lemming. It’s a great act, but since I am not included among your admirers, the performance is wasted—”

His voice became softer, changed a little. “I will not help Emmanuel Bruno—or you, his agent—in any way. I will continue to oppose him in every way—him, and you, his agent. Yes! Now you, as well!”

I grinned. “Is that a threat? You phrase things so quaintly it’s hard to tell, but I kind of hope it is. I’d hate to think I wet my pants for nothing.”

His voice became even softer. The next words were probably the quietest sounds he’d made all month. “One without power can make no threats. I have no power. Of myself I am weak … and humble … and of puny strength. But the Holy Ghost has lifted me up, God has given me strength. I claim no power except the power of God in me, and I have no will except the will of God.” It was a trick of light, surely, but it seemed his eyes burned brighter as he finished. “But I do know the will of God … and I shall work the will of God … so help me God!”

He turned abruptly to leave, now that he’d put me in my place. But I said, “Hold it, Pastor,” and he jerked, then turned slowly and looked at me.

I should have kept my mouth shut then, I suppose. In fact, I know I should have. But I said, “Before you leave to join the angels, I’ve a couple of questions. One, since you know the will of God, if it’s God’s will that Emmanuel Bruno be damned and doomed and maybe run over by a truck, might your working the will of God require you to drive the truck? Answer yes or no, so help you God.”

He didn’t answer.

“Just in case such an idea should enter your mind—if, that is, it has not already done so—it might be helpful for you to realize I would then, very personally, consider it God’s will that your arms and legs and neck be broken, each in at least one place, if not several. Two—”

That was as far as I got.

Later I would realize there had been a lull lasting this long only so those bushel baskets could be carried around and filled with the necessary; and that once those baskets were at least beginning to be pressed down and overflowing with bushels of love, the Chorale—which most likely had barely begun when suspended for the giving that is better than receiving—could continue. And, therefore, would continue. Later I would realize it.

But that was not yet. So, first thing, I decided my ears were going to give up their ghosts. They were hit again by that now-familiar clash of dueling decibels, but this time something new had been added—new and at least equally injurious, perhaps even fatal when combined with the old—and it went:

We are soldiers … Armed with love …

In the sacred Army of

He Whom has His arms about us …

He Whom would shed tears without us …

What’s this? I thought. Are they singing? Why? Haven’t I—haven’t we all—suffered enough? I turned my head to give Festus a dirty look, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was just as well; my business was done and all I wanted now was to get far away, maybe to some place where I could hear a distant cricket.

I left the dimness and headed into the dumbness, walked into the brightness, started up the aisle down which I’d come a few minutes ago. And stopped and looked. I had to stop and look. It was a sight, as well as a sound, to lock up in your memory bank. Everybody in the house was standing, holding little books, mouths so wide there appeared to be many bodies with no heads, only mouths. I deduced that they were all either screaming or contracting lockjaw or getting goosed. Whatever they were doing—it sounded a bit like that first verse over again, but probably anything would have—it was done with a kind of jerky bounce not remotely related to rhythm, reminiscent of a diesel locomotive starting to move and pulling a long train of empty freight cars behind it. You know how the at-first-slow forward movement takes up the slack and jerks the first empty car, then the second, and in increasing tempo the next and the next and so on, with a sound shattering to peace and joy?

That’s what it was like, if you can imagine those empty cars filled with broken glass and cement mixers and freeway accidents and a couple of South American revolutions. In spite of myself, I listened. I started walking up the aisle again, but I listened. In truth, it was impossible to do otherwise. Loud? Loud enough to be heard over the music.

… tears without us …

Tears of His sweet holy blaaaahhd.…

Yes! Yes! Yes! Almighty Gaaahhd!

I was getting numb. Certainly I was no longer moving up the aisle. But I felt I recognized the touch of Festus Lemming in there somewhere, the beat and “Yes!” and other things. He was a two-pronged man, as brilliant a poet as preacher. Not many men have it within themselves to destroy, unaided, two entire professions.

I started to relax, got ready to move a leg, thinking they’d hit their peak. But on they went, as sure-mouthed and leaden-tongued as any similar group of men and women since Atlantis sank without a trace.

Down with E-Vil, down with SIN!

We will FIGHT and we will WIN!

With our triumph sin will cease.…

LOOK OUT! Here comes the Prince of Peace!

They were geniuses. I had to admit it, give the devil his due as they say. These darlings had managed to make a wise, kind, gentle, and forgiving man sound like the Boogie Man. Jesus Christ will get you if you don’t watch out! Right then and there I began getting scared of these citizens.

I headed up the aisle in a bit of a hurry, because I was filled with extreme unease, and I am not reluctant to admit it. I wanted this place far behind me not merely because I felt it was a place where in a tilted moment the fanatics might all-at-once hit the fan, but to escape whatever it was that seemed to thicken the air—and to escape the aura or miasma or spooky that kept grabbing at my feet.

Like, back there, when …

Did it again. You think it wasn’t spooky?

I wasn’t even halfway up the aisle and here I was, motionless, frozen, transfixed. Never before had I been unable to move more than a few tottering steps without becoming completely paralyzed. But I had been sure they were through that time. Obviously they’d hit their punch line and hit it hard. Couldn’t top it, where could they go from there? Where, indeed?

Perhaps it would have been impossible to those not filled with the joy of the Lord, but to these cats nothing was impossible. No, it was not over. The worst—horrifyingly difficult as such a thing must be to believe—was yet to come. They bellowed it out like bulls in Spain calling their cows in Argentina, speeding up the tempo until when they hit the glorious final line they were going chugachugachuga like a choochoo train.

We will fight fight fight and smite the foe!

Come on, Christians! Go-go-go-go-GO!

We kiss the Cross and Corpse from which

the blaaahd of Christ is poured!

For we-we-we—WE ARE—THE LEMMINGS OF THE LORD!#?*@!

“God in Heaven, NOOO-O-OO!”

It sounded like one of those bulls in Spain, mooing.

But it wasn’t a bull. It was—yeah.

6

I hadn’t known I was going to do it until I’d already done it, which is not the usual way to go about such things. It definitely is not the best way.

And, especially, you shouldn’t be bent over in the manner of one experiencing an acute attack of appendicitis during a hemorrhoidectomy, with one arm and hand wrapped around your head in an attempt to cover both ears and the other hand clutching the seat of your pants.

Why was I clutching the seat of my pants? I knew someone would ask that question. And I am ready for you. The answer is: There is no answer.

I didn’t know I was doing it, so how could I know why I did it? Covering my ears is easy. I won’t even bother with it. But the other … well, perhaps it had something to do with that picture I’d locked in my memory bank. Or perhaps I felt unwanted here, and, becoming a little unstrung, feared the astonishing conglomeration of sounds trapped and tortured within these walls might come to life like in late movies and naturally want to get even, strike back—it’s not important.

What is important is the fact that, far from being drowned in the sound of the planet beginning to break up, when I bellowed out as I did, a unique hush had fallen over the congregation. It was so quiet in the church you could have heard the church mice, if it hadn’t been obvious that not a church mouse could be left alive anywhere in the area. As the last shriek ended and the singing stopped entirely, the deaf musicians also stopped, as though on a dime. That’s what ruined me.

Even so, it might not have been quite so bad if I had immediately blurted out my involuntary little criticism at the top of my lungs. But there was blessed silence for at least five long seconds, and then in ringing tones I volunteered my uninvited opinion to four thousand Lemmings.

Lemmings—that’s what really did it.

The shock to my already strained nervous system of “LEMMINGS OF THE LORD!” plus my absolute fascination, for several precious seconds, with the strangely curdling sound of four thousand adult human beings fervently screeching “wee—wee—wee” as though preparing to take a monstrous leak simultaneously, held me rigid. No corpse in the exact middle of rigor mortis ever got more rigid than did I.

So that’s why there was a good five seconds of unrelieved silence, and then: “God in Heaven, NOOO-O-OO!”

When I straightened up—and, in time, I did straighten up—eight thousand eyes were looking at me. It didn’t surprise me. It didn’t make me feel very good, but it didn’t surprise me. Nor did the comments, some whispered, some deliberately uttered loud enough so I would hear them: “If he doesn’t like it, why did he come?” and “Martha, don’t look at him, all he wants is attention” and “There’s one in every church” and “Some people have no respect” and “Why do you suppose he done that, Elmer?”

So I had another little cross to bear. People—if I ever got out of here—were, I knew, still going to ask me, with a faintly superior air, why I didn’t go to church every Sunday.

I straightened up even straighter, straightened my canary yellow jacket, stared straight back at those eight thousand eyes—and headed straight out. Lickety-split. Though, of course, I tried to maintain my dignity, carry it off with a sort of aplomb. Tried some. I didn’t try with all my might, because I now knew even better than I had known before that I wanted out, and in a hurry.

So, back straight, head held high, I picked them up and put them down, left foot, right foot, one-two-three-four.…

“WEE.…”

Yeah. Four was it.

It came from up above me, and over my right shoulder this time. Of course, I knew what it was. It was a bunch of angels, preparing to take a leak together. No, I joke. It was only the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor of the Church of the Second Coming, wherein I was trapped.

It mattered not one iota who or what it was. I was conditioned now. Every time I heard a sound, any kind of sound, I became petrified like those logs that have lain millions of years in the desert. My mind worked O.K., though. There was nothing wrong with my mind. Nothing serious. I considered everything, weighing and balancing the various factors, and decided I just wasn’t going to get out of there.

It’s strange how quickly a man can age, I thought. I had come into the church only a few wee minutes ago, then a young, vital, laughing lad of thirty. Now, here I stood at least a hundred and ten, bloodless, twanging, filled with dismay, unable to totter more than a few steps without suffering a seizure, feeling older than sin. And just about as popular.

But I always say there’s a ray of light somewhere, no matter how black the blackness seems. So I looked and looked. On the wall to my left there was a funny little mark. I recognized it I had seen it before when I was walking up the aisle toward it, and it had been five or six feet away. Now it was … now it was six or seven feet away.

Did you ever get the feeling that it’s just no use?

“… WILL NOT SING NINETY-EIGHT TONIGHT.”

I sighed, turned, looked up at Lemming. Might as well hear what he had to say. I probably couldn’t move, anyhow. So far, he’d said, “Wee … will not sing ninety-eight tonight.” He was on safe ground there. They hadn’t sung eighty-nine, either.

First eighty-nine and then ninety-eight. It was an interesting pair of selections—one was the other backward. Maybe for their second number they sang the first number sideways, which would have to be an improvement.

Thus my thoughts went, turning things inside out—if not insight-out, for in the process I arrived at an exceptionally valuable insight germane to my reason for being here, which I would speedily employ if I did not forever remain here—and then going on to another valuable insight, the awareness that Festus Lemming spelled backward was gnimmeL sutseF, but discarding that one as impractical.

So it’s easy to see my mind was, if not in a state of total disinhibition, at least bordering on the unconventional. More, that though feeling hopeless I had not really abandoned all hope, and could still be at least painfully amused by such an apparent—to me—calamity as the “Lemmings of the Lord.” And even to a lesser degree by the lesser calamity of the lesser lemmings, those small rodents with short tails and furry feet—and, interestingly, small ears—the surviving generations of which every few years leave their island and swim into the sea in order to reach the haven of another island out there, which would be wonderful if the island were there; one would greatly admire the lemmings’ suffering, sacrifice, determination, singleness of purpose, and faith if the island were there; one might even admire the obsession of each swiftly swimming lemming that not only he must reach that haven, and thus be saved from drowning in the sea, but so must all other lemmings as well—if the island were there. But, alas, the island.…

Pastor Lemming was speaking again to his Lemmings.

I honestly didn’t think anything could dismay or even surprise me now, not here. I should have known better.

Festus had completely convinced these four thousand members of his headquarters church and millions more elsewhere across the land—convinced them solely by his word, his I-say-so, unsupported by any evidence or proof whatsoever—not only that he alone among men possessed wisdom and “inside” information not granted to lesser mortals, but also that he could and would announce the year and month and day and perhaps even hour when the long and long and long-awaited Second Coming of Jesus Christ would become a glorious reality.

If his flock believed all that, naturally they would believe anything, for once it is accepted that black is white the fact that dark gray is light gray becomes obvious. Thus forearmed, I felt I would not be surprised even should Lemming, in a change of style if not substance, lean forward from his aerie and say, “Folks, I gotta s’prise for yawl. I been tellin’ yawl ’bout the Second Comin’ o’ Sweet Jesus, and how I know all ’bout it, but what I din’t tell ya—this here’s the s’prise—is I’m Him. Been Him all the time, folks, and I know it’s a sneaky trick to play on yawl but, you gotta b’leeve me, it’s for yrown good. So now le’s all sing eighty-nine, or ninety-eight, don’t make no difference.”

He surprised me anyway. What he actually said was hardly less fruitcake, but it sure sounded different when Festus Lemming laid it on. Part of it, of course, was that he didn’t lay it on corn-pone, but mostly it was—well, the sonofabitch had style. He had that voice, a delivery either natural or practiced but extraordinarily effective, and he had power.

There had been a long pause after his single statement, and when he spoke again it was without further comment or preparation. He simply began:

“I have spoken to you on many nights of Emmanuel Bruno.

“I have spoken to you on many nights of the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, who died in agony, crucified on the cross, in atonement for our sins.

“I have reminded you that it is foretold, at the time of the Second Coming, there will be famines and earthquakes in divers places … nation rising against nation, flesh against flesh, and blood against blood.… Of all these things and many others have I reminded you … and that the Antichrist will have appeared on Earth and will be slain by the true Christ … that the Scriptures may be fulfilled.”

In the crowd there had begun a murmuring. There was little movement, for all eyes were on Lemming, but there was a sound of mumbled words or audible breathing, or sighs. There was tension building in them, and I could feel it building in me as well. Much of it was the richness and impressiveness of Lemming’s delivery, much, but not all.

He had been speaking—for him—very softly, and now his voice began to rise and the tempo slowly quickened. “I have told you this Lord of Demons and Spawn of Satan, in order to appear in the carnal world, must and will take on a carnal body, that he will appear even to the elect as a man, an ordinary man and that BY HIS WORKS YE SHALL KNOW HIM. THE MAN SHALL BE KNOWN BY HIS FRUITS. THE ANTICHRIST SHALL BE KNOWN BY THE EVIL AND SIN AND CORRUPTION WHICH ARE THE FRUITS OF HIS WORD AND DEED, HIS PRESENCE AND HIS LIFE.”

That was no longer a murmur in the crowd, it was a soft but growing roaring, a babble and muttering and sighing, with a word or a phrase flung out into the crowd from somewhere within the crowd, and then another and another—because they knew what was coming, and so did I, but I couldn’t believe it, I simply wouldn’t believe it, not even of Festus Lemming.

“Tomorrow night.…” Again, more softly, for a little while more softly, and gradually speeding up, “Tomorrow night I shall tell you of the time of the Second Coming.

“I have told you I know the name of the Antichrist, that I know his evil face and his evil name.

“But I have not told you his name. Tonight I do so. Tonight I reveal this truth to you and through you, the Lemmings of the Lord, to the world.

“Yea, verily, I know his name, I know his name, I KNOW HIS NAME AND HIS NAME IS EMMANUEL BRUNO!”

I was shocked, dismayed, all the things I’d told myself I would not be. To expect that which defies logic and reason is one thing, to experience it is another—but Lemming didn’t give me, or anybody else, time to think about it, time to think at all. He continued without a pause, but with his voice for the first few seconds so soft it required careful attention from each man and woman here if it was to be heard and understood, and, in obedience to his desire, the rising rush and flutter of breath stopped instantly, almost entirely.

“You are not surprised. You are not surprised, for possessed of wisdom are you, and you, too, knew his name before I spoke it. Possessed of wisdom are you, and you, too, knew his name. YOU KNEW THAT EVIL NAME BEFORE I SPOKE THE EVIL NAME OF EMMANUEL BRUNO—YES, THE ANTICHRIST—YES, THE ANTICHRIST—YES! YES! YES!”

This time he stopped and waited. But this time, even before he finished, while he still spoke, that beginning murmur grew to a gushing roar so like a great gale of wind that even the enormously amplified and booming voice of Festus Lemming was almost drowned in it. He let it go on, while it pleased him, then raised his arms, lowered them, and as his arms were lowered the wind of voices died to whisperings in the cavernous room.

My throat was dry and tight. I couldn’t say, not with absolute certainty, that Lemming was good or bad, saint or sinner; but I knew without question I was watching him do something ugly, terrible, and frightening to four thousand men and women. Four thousand—for a start.

“The Antichrist will have many agents, he does, he does have many agents.…”

Agent. I’d heard that word. Whatever came next, it wasn’t going to surprise me. It wasn’t. No, it wasn’t.

“Yes! Some knowing they live and work and move in evil, some mere pawns and dupes of the Lord of Sin. One such is here. One such is here, an agent of Emmanuel Bruno, one who works for the triumph, THE TRIUMPH OF SIN AND EVIL AND LOVES THE LUSTS OF THE FLESH AND WORKS FOR THE DEATH OF CHRIST THAT THE ANTICHRIST MAY RULE—YES! THAT THE ANTICHRIST MAY RULE UPON THE THRONE OF EARTH WITH THE COURT OF FORNICATORS AND WHOREMONGERS AROUND HIS THRONE, AND VIRTUE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND DECENCY AT HIS FEET!

“One such is here. Yes! Here, now, in this our church, the Church of the Second Coming, in the House of God, here, here, a Satanic defilement within these sacred walls and his name—his name—his name is—”

Oh, for Pete’s sake, I thought, go ahead and say it.

“SHELDON SCOTT!”

For once I’d been right; I was not surprised.

But it could be guessed a bunch of other people were. Gloriously surprised. Wildly surprised. Ecstatically surprised. It wouldn’t show on their outsides, of course, but I had no doubt they were being filled up on their insides with gladly righteous juices, for here, right here, was somebody they could hate without the slightest guilt, happily hate—someone they could hate for the Lord.

I pulled my eyes from Festus Lemming, looked at the crowd. I’d expected the entire gang to be eyeballing me with happy hate. But they weren’t. Not even one was, so far as I could tell. Of course. It was merely my—I’ll say it—my vanity, that led me to expect sudden and huge, if hugely unflattering, attention the instant they heard my name. I had failed to take into account the possibility that the names of Sheldon Scott and Elvira Snull were equally familiar to them. We lived in different worlds, they and I, for which I was at least as grateful as they.

So, if Festus had finished, it was time for me to sneak out of this trap before he—

“Yes, his name is Sheldon Scott—Yes! YES, AND HE IS THERE, THERE, HE IS THERE!”

It was, truly, the goddamndest thing I had ever seen in my life. I was looking at the crowd. The crowd was looking raptly at Festus Lemming. And as he spoke the beggar flung out an arm with an accusing finger pointing at me. I knew he’d done it even though I didn’t see it because at the same instant every head in the crowd, every head, swivelled on a down-slanting left to right angle from Lemming up there in heaven to me down here in hell.

It was like a chorus of Rockettes employing only their heads, a movement as precise as a military maneuver, a sight as flabbergasting as seeing four thousand fans watching an ace in a tennis match—for which, I recalled thinking long ago, I was dressed—played on the side of an Alp.

Strike the Rockettes and tennis, stick with the military maneuver. For this was an army, an army of Christians, and all those “soldiers armed with love” were looking at me again, and—to me, at least, without a blindfold but standing with my back against the bloody wall—they had eight thousand guns for eyes.

They had gunned me before, but this time was different. Because I could feel it now, could literally feel the force of whatever flowed from those eight thousand eyes, and no one while I live will ever make me believe I did not feel it. I felt it like uncountable tiny blows, like the beating of thousands of soft black wings.…

I had a sudden apprehension: These fruitcakes were only a cackle away from killing me. It was not a logical, carefully analyzed conclusion. It was a message straight from the seat of my pants. And it didn’t matter whether the conclusion was true or false, I knew what I felt, and I felt like a lone winter nut in the presence of four thousand squirrels.

Well, I hadn’t been able to go up the aisle and out. Maybe I could back down it. Maybe not, but it was worth a try, so I tried it. Nobody leaped upon me, though there was much gunning with squinted eyes, mumbling, and undoubtedly a variety of sinister imprecations and curses—even though Festus Lemming was speaking again.

Speaking in the same varicose vein, but it need not be repeated or even commented upon except to say that it got worse. One would think it could not get worse. One would be wrong. That Sainted man had depths of depravity in him even I had only begun to suspect. He was going on once more—I swear it’s true—about fornicators and whoremongers as I drew abreast, if while backing up you can draw abreast, of the front row of backless wooden benches.

I should have been feeling more confident of escape, having made it clear to the foot of the aisle, but instead uneasiness was growing in me. Because Festus, after talking about fornicators and whoremongers in general—to their great detriment, needless to say—had switched from the general to the specific. Need I mention who was the specific?

The hell of it was, the man didn’t come right out and lie about me, he just took the truth and diddled with it until it died. I will admit I’ve got some faults. I will even admit I’ve got lots and lots of faults. And that I like girls and that sort of thing. And that I have—Yes!—even fornicated, on occasion. Oh, hell—lots and lots of occasions. But Festus Lemming made it sound awful.

By the time he got through with me I was a vile excrescence from the scum of hell, perhaps only a minor fiend but one allied with the Powers of Darkness and moved by the lusts and lecheries of Satan—these were his words—a man who had committed murders most foul, who banged hoods in their heads and female persons elsewhere. These last were not his words, but I would blush to quote in their entirety his severe condemnation, of “the hairy thighs of lust” and “sweet and undefiled nakedness” and even “innocence and purity ravished and slain by”—well, slain by the slobbering ape-man, let’s say, and I do not blush easily.

But by that time I was back there in the dimness beyond the pearly-gray curtains. Looking very nervously for a way out, a way which did not require that I walk up the church aisle. To some this may, even now, seem a needless thing for me to have done. After all, what real harm could come to me in church? What, indeed? Everybody knows most good Christians are chock-full of goodness, compassion, charity, and sweetness. And that all these people were good Christians could not be denied. Nor could it be denied that, to them, I was an infidel.

So I looked like crazy for another way out, and back in the corner I found a small, narrow, rather flimsy door, and opened it, and quick as a wink slipped through the narrow opening into the outside world. Which, strangely, seemed narrower.

In my expensive Cadillac—which would never get to heaven—I started the ignition and, as the engine idled, took a quick look at Emmanuel Bruno’s note to Drusilla. Sure enough; plain as plain could be. I had known where to find him ever since my own little illumination at the conclusion of the Lemmings’ Sing-A-Long, which had been, though it was difficult to believe, just a tick or two more than five minutes ago. From the time I entered the Church of the Second Coming until this moment, with the Cad’s engine idling in the parking lot, only half an hour had elapsed. It was not yet quite ten-thirty on the night of the fourteenth of August.

I thought briefly about the elasticity of time, but as I put the Cad into gear and stepped on the gas, I considered something equally fascinating—to me, at least. That was the curious way in which, often, my cases begin, or appear to begin, as matters mundane and routine, then zowie become something else. That’s not always true, but it could not be questioned that this time it was truer than ever before.

Because this one had begun, simply enough, with a girl calling upon Shell Scott, private eye, because she wanted him to look for her daddy. But now?

Now a fiend allied with the Powers of Darkness flew through the night to find and rescue the Antichrist.

And he was pretty damned sure he could do it, too.

7

I parked near the corner, walked to Fifty-eighth Street, and turned right, kept going for a block and a half until I reached the place I wanted. It was a Spanish-style house constructed of what was probably blocks of compressed sawdust or a new coal tar derivative, but it appeared to be made of adobe bricks with white mortar squeezed out between them like toothpaste between loose beige teeth.

I checked the number—1521—and walked on past. The house looked empty; no lights showed. A minute later I approached it again, but through the next-door neighbor’s back yard, walking very quietly with the .38 Special in my hand. The house wasn’t empty; at least light glowed softly from two windows back here. The drapes inside were drawn, but those over the window to my right, nearer the wall, sagged half an inch apart just above the sill. By bending and peering through, and moving my head back and forth, I could examine a small slice of the room’s interior.

And in that small slice I saw a man sitting in a wooden chair, his arms pulled behind him, obviously bound; but I couldn’t see his wrists or whatever held them. He sat erect, unmoving, his profile toward me, looking to my left, and I could see the band of white tape over his mouth. The one eye visible to me was open but puffed, becoming discolored. Somebody had landed a pretty good one on him.

I had never met Emmanuel Bruno, but his face was familiar to me from newspaper and magazine photos and television. He was six-five, three inches taller than I am, lean, rangy, with a massive head and features that would not have been out of place on a Roman coin, the lips a bit full—some might have described them as sensual or even Satanic—and usually twisted in a smile.

I couldn’t see much, maybe, but it was enough to know this guy was not Emmanuel Bruno.

I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, shook my head. For a crazy moment I wondered if I had really been talking to Drusilla Bruno earlier. She’d said that was her name, and I’d taken her word for it. Why not? What reason would she—I cut off that train of thought. It didn’t make sense. She hadn’t told me where to go, but I was sure this was the right house. Besides, you do not just happen to stumble upon homes in which guys who have been socked in the eye are bound to chairs.

By moving a little to my right I managed a glimpse of one of the room’s corners—and a bit of the floor, reddish or pink, and shiny, as if covered with bright new linoleum. But I didn’t spot anybody else. I heard someone, though. The scrape of a chair, a couple of muttered, unintelligible words. Then there was the thud of footsteps and the figure of a man appeared between the guy in the chair and me.

I couldn’t see his face, but he was stocky, thick in the middle, wearing dark trousers—with the checked butt of an automatic pistol showing above the belt—and a pale blue dress shirt with French cuffs, visible because he had both hands on his hips, elbows akimbo. After half a minute the man stepped—oddly, I thought—to my left and out of sight. I heard him open a door, his footsteps getting softer, but in seconds they were louder again. The door slammed and the man came briefly into view peeling cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, still moving with that peculiar, almost mincing, gait. There was a scraping sound once more, then silence.

I waited another minute or two but heard no further sounds. The guy in the chair continued to sit erect, motionless except for the blinking of his puffy eye. And as I looked at him I knew I’d seen that face, that profile, somewhere. It had struck me as familiar with my first glimpse of him, but the fact that it wasn’t Bruno’s face pushed recognition from my mind for a while.

It was a familiar face, yes, familiar from newspaper pix and a couple of television newscasts; but not by any means as instantly recognizable as Bruno’s, and almost surely, if I had not been thinking of Bruno, I would have been unable to remember who the man was. But my thoughts sort of bounced around—Bruno … Lemming … Erovite … Cassiday and Quince … C and Q Pharmaceuticals—Cassiday.

Dave Cassiday. I recalled Dru also mentioning something about, “Before he left, Dad tried to phone Dave, but wasn’t able to reach him.” Maybe there was one angle that made sense of this. But I knew two things for sure: I wasn’t going to see much more through my peephole; and I was going into that room. It was not one of the most cheerful conclusions I’ve ever come to.

Half a dozen feet beyond the other window, farther to my left, was a door, closed and—when I gingerly tried it—locked. But flimsy enough. Probably. Just a flimsy little door, like back doors usually are. I guessed there was a hallway beyond it, into which the stocky man had stepped upon leaving the room. He’d gone in and out quickly, slamming the door behind him, so almost surely that door was unlocked.

There was no way I could get into the room without making a little noise, and a little would be too much, so I decided to make a lot. I shoved the Colt into its holster, bent and took off my shoes, straightened up with one gripped in each hand. I sucked in a couple of deep breaths, then took two quick driving steps forward and slammed my shoulder into the door I hoped was flimsy enough.

It was. The wood splintered and the lock tore from the frame, the door sprang open and smacked the far wall.

By then I was jumping back into the yard, pulling my left hand across my body, whipping it toward the nearer window and letting go of my shoe. It hit and went through with a shockingly loud crash, but either the sound of broken glass landing on the floor inside was muffled by those draperies or I just didn’t hear it because I was still moving—moving one more long step forward and jamming my stockinged foot against the dirt, slowing enough to uncoil my already cocked right hand and toss my other shoe at the window behind which the stocky man was sitting—or, rather, had been sitting, because I’d have given a hundred to one he was not sitting any longer.

Four long fast steps and I was back at the broken door, two short ones and I stood in the hallway, Colt in my right hand, left on the knob of the door behind which were Cassiday and at least one other man.

It was not a time to wonder if the stocky boy was looking at one of the draped windows or straight toward where I was, so I just turned the knob and shoved the door hard and fast, and went in low.

I had him. He wasn’t even looking toward me. He was in a half-squat, eyes still aimed downward, toward one of my big shoes. Which have, on occasion, caused comment even when on my feet. His gun was pointed in the general direction of the window near him and I had him cold, but he got off the first shot.

I’ve no excuse except that I suddenly saw more blood than I’d ever seen in one spot in my life, and it was a shocking thing even for a man who’s seen spilled blood by the quart. I went into the room low and fast, and my right foot slipped a little when I shoved it against the floor to stop and steady myself, but that little slip wasn’t why I was late in pulling the Colt’s trigger.

Cassiday was just a blurred figure close on my left and beyond him was another chair with a man in it, his back to me but with his body twisted and head craned around so I could see three-quarters of that Roman-coin face, lips covered as were Cassiday’s by a strip of tape over them. Bruno this time, unquestionably Emmanuel Bruno. But there were two other figures on my right, one moving and one still.

Movement was the stocky thick-in-the-middle boy snapping his head around and pulling his gun toward me, stillness was a man I’d never seen before, his hands also bound behind him—the third guy in the room tied to a chair—but this one with his body hanging forward and restrained by the ropes around them, white face almost upside down, head dangling, waxen chin not quite touching his chest.

Both his shirt sleeves were rolled up over his elbows, and the left leg of his trousers was pulled above the knee. From what looked like a small cut in his left calf, a calf white as a piano key, brilliant red blood had poured down over his ankle, drenched his stocking and shoe, spilled to the floor. It wasn’t the man yanking his gun toward me, or even Bruno whom I’d at least half-expected to see, nor even the surprising sight of the dead man, it was the floor—that incredible, glistening, impossibly red floor—that shook me, held me, slowed my reactions for too long.

Except for half a dozen spots, the smallest being only a couple of inches wide on up to one a foot or more across, the whole damned floor was red. Those few spots were the dry places, their color the natural off-white of the plastic-tile floor covering—all of that red was blood.

The man hanging forward in the chair was dead, there wasn’t any question about that. And he had clearly been cut or knifed, had bled, and his blood had dripped or oozed down to the floor—but one man couldn’t have bled that much.

That thought and the sight of what seemed a lake of redness all around me held my brain for half a second, or maybe longer—long enough for the man near that waxen corpse to get his gun pointed in my direction and squeeze the trigger. But he was shaken up himself, more than a little, and the bullet ripped past my head and smacked into the wall behind me.

Barely after his slug hit, I was pulling the Colt’s trigger. I pulled it twice and his body jerked as both 110-grain chunks of metal pounded into him, burst and slivered inside him, and he turned slightly and his knees bent. He started down slowly, but the gun was still in his hand and I squeezed off the third shot, saw his shirt jump where the slug entered his chest.

The gun dropped with a clatter as he bent forward and then fell suddenly, heavily. His shoulder thudded against the floor, his head snapped down and hit with the crack of a handball bouncing from cement. I jumped forward and kicked the gun away—forgetting I was in my stocking feet, and grunting as pain ripped through my foot—then backed across the room and pressed my shoulders against the wall.

The stocky man wasn’t dead yet; but he didn’t have far to go. He quivered the way a man will quiver in freezing cold, turning onto his back, right leg pulling up toward his body, then sliding down again, the heel of his shoe the only sound, a tiny scraping sound, sliding and then stopping.

For a little time, I’m not sure how long a time, I could see the pale off-white streak where his heel had scraped the blood away, then it flowed in and covered the mark, and there was a smoothly glistening redness again.

8

I turned my eyes—and gun—toward the door through which I’d come. But there was no further sound, no shouts or footsteps. I went out, down the hall, gave the rest of the house a fast check. Nothing. Back in the room I eased the tape from Bruno’s mouth, started untying him. And the first thing he said to me in a rich, full, resonant voice was, “How do you do, Mr. Scott?”

Like, “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said. “Anyone else around here besides that guy and Cassiday? It is Dave Cassiday, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. There were two other men. They left nearly half an hour ago. There is no one here now except the four—” He glanced at the stocky man’s body and went on, “—or perhaps three of us.”

“Three. What happened?” I worked on the rope around his wrists.

He didn’t mention Dru, but obviously assumed—correctly—that she must have told me everything she knew and had guessed, and went on as though merely adding his information to what she’d told me. “I met André in front of the church. Dave had just arrived and was with André who had phoned him also. Within seconds the two men who are not now here—one is your height but heavier and with a ruddy complexion, the other slim and probably one inch under six feet, with a grayish white streak in the hair at the center of his forehead and a small mole at the left side of his nose—approached with guns in their hands and forced us all to enter a year-old dark-blue Chrysler sedan, four-door, with a slightly dented right-rear fender and a right-front fender that had been repainted, and eighteen thousand, four hundred and twenty miles on the speedometer. I don’t know the license number.”

“How come?”

“I didn’t see it.”

Cassiday was making noises behind his gag. It sounded as if he were humming the latest teen-agers’ hit. I glanced at him. “Be with you in a minute.”

“Nor did I see the left side of the car,” Bruno continued. “I was able to examine the car’s right side because before we entered it another auto came into the parking lot and its lights briefly illumined the Chrysler. That car parked well beyond us. A girl got out of it and hurried toward the church, waving as she passed quite close to us. The shorter, slimmer man had pushed Dave into the middle of the front seat and was still standing outside the car waiting for André to get in. I was in back with the other man and André was just entering the front of the car. I doubt she knew the gunman, so I concluded she was waving to André. She went on into the church and the tall man drove us to this address, where the man you just killed was waiting. Do you have any questions to this point, Mr. Scott?”

“Not … very many. Go on.”

“I was brought into this room first and the man you shot bound me, and after that he bound André. Dave was brought in then and tied to a chair as well. I haven’t been able to speak with him, of course, but before they tied and gagged him there were sounds as of … scuffling.”

“Yeah. Somebody popped him.”

There were some more humming and grunting noises from behind me. I twisted around and said, “Be with you in a shake, Mr. Cassiday. I can only do one thing at a time.” He said, “Whuwh” and wiggled a little.

I said to Bruno, “You weren’t mistreated?”

“Not physically.” He stared silently for moments, the strong face slightly twisted, as if he were looking at something repulsive. “The men told me what they wanted—my formula for Erovite, working papers, record of experiments, everything—and insisted I write a note to Dru telling her to bring the ERO envelope to the location mentioned in it.”

“Uh-huh. They knew what they were after, but did they know the papers were in an envelope marked ERO and that the envelope was in your floor safe?”

“No. They seemed only to know that I did possess such papers. Naturally I refused to do what they asked.”

“Naturally?”

I finally got the rope untied and pulled it free of his wrists. He breathed deeply, rubbed first one wrist and then the other as I squatted to work on the last knot, in a separate rope binding his ankles to the chair legs. There were some more smothered comments from Dave Cassiday, but I ignored them.

“On gaining possession of the formula and notes,” Bruno said calmly, “they would have killed me, and Dave. If Dru had been foolish enough to actually bring the papers—which I was confident she would not be—they would have killed her as well. They could not be sure that except for myself only Dru knew the entire formula, but men such as these would have killed her merely to prevent her from reporting to others what had occurred. Or for no sane reason. If you doubt it—” he nodded toward the white, waxy corpse in the chair near the man I’d shot. “That was André Strang. They killed him quite callously, with astonishing lack of any apparent human emotion, and for no other reason—unless there are reasons I’ve not considered—than to force me to write that note to Dru.”

The knot loosened, I pulled the rope through it, and in a few seconds Bruno’s ankles were free. I straightened up. My feet were wet. Wet with cold blood. My socks squished as I stepped over to Cassiday and removed the tape gag from his mouth, started to reach for the rope around his wrists.

“There’s a knife in my pants pocket,” he said.

I stared at him, dully. Then I looked at my fingers, the tips red, as if sandpapered. “Now you tell me.”

His wide face creased in a crooked grin, then suddenly his dark eyebrows pulled down and in, and he laughed.

Some pair I’ve got here, I thought. Dead man, blood all over the place, I crash in and shoot a guy, Bruno says, “How do you do, Mr. Scott, so glad you could come for tea, isn’t it a lovely day?” and Cassiday starts laughing.

He didn’t laugh long. “Stupid of me,” he said. “I should have mentioned it.”

I grinned at him, shaking my head, then found the knife in his pocket, opened it, stepped behind him and with one neat flick cut through the rope around his wrists. They’d used only one rope on him, running it down and wrapping it around his ankles and the chair legs, so it only took one flick. “I don’t mean to be unkind,” I said. “But please speak up the next time this happens.”

He was staring at me. Intent, not smiling. O.K., so he was the only funny guy in the room. “Don’t think I’m not grateful,” he said. “I am. For myself and for Doc. But where in hell did you come from?”

“My name’s Shell Scott, but the rest will have to wait. I feel strongly we should get out of this joint.”

“You and me both,” he said.

I retrieved my shoes, took off my sticky socks and cleaned the redness from my feet as best I could with a handkerchief. Cassiday had stood up and was stretching, and while I squeezed my bare feet into the shoes he walked to the stocky guy, squatted, and put a finger against his throat.

After a few seconds he said quietly, “He’s dead.”

“If he was still alive,” I told him, “I’d trade in my Colt for a sawed-off twelve-gauge. Those were Super Vel pills I put into him. Three of them. He was probably finished before he rolled over on his back.”

“Super Vel?”

“One’s usually enough.”

As I tied my shoelaces, Cassiday said to Bruno, “Where in hell did this guy come from? How did he find us? I heard you talking—while this baboon was ignoring my conversation.” The quick, crooked smile he flashed me took some of the sting Out of “baboon.” “But that didn’t tell me much. It couldn’t have been something in the note they made you write … could it?”

“Yes, Dave,” Bruno said. “That’s what it was.” He quickly explained.

Cassiday was looking at him in an odd way, and when Bruno finished he said, with something close to incredulity in his voice, “You mean, you managed to think of that, and do it, while André …” He let the question trail off.

Bruno didn’t say anything. Before straightening up I took another look at the incredibly white face of the late André Strang. “What did happen to him?” I asked neither of them in particular. “Him—and who else? It looks like there was a massacre in here. All that blood couldn’t possibly have come from one guy.”

“It did,” Cassiday said. “I watched it. Doc and I both watched it. The blood came from that cut in André’s calf, in a steady stream, until he died, and after he died, for a hell of a time after he died—”

“Wait a minute. Not for a hell of a time after he died, please. I’ve seen a lot of men bleed, and I’ve bled a bit myself. You can bet the boy I just shot has already stopped bleeding, and I’d guess there are as many holes in him as there are—”

Bruno interrupted me. “There is, in André’s body, only that one cut, Mr. Scott. Upon my continued refusal to do as they wished, the shorter and slimmer of the two men who brought us here—who seemed to be in charge, I would say—explained matter-of-factly that they would kill André most horribly, by letting him bleed to death before me, if I persisted in my refusal. I …”

His voice and brisk narrative faltered a bit, then he went on. “I did not believe him. The man took a leather case from his jacket pocket, and from it a filled hypodermic syringe. A ten c.c. syringe with, I believe, a twenty-three gauge needle. He thrust the needle into the large vein in the ante-cubital fossa—pardon me, the area at the crook of André’s arm—and emptied the syringe’s contents into his bloodstream. After a few minutes during which no one spoke—except André, who just before he was gagged said he was beginning to feel strange, light-headed, with a cool prickly sensation on the skin over his entire body—the same man took a small sharp instrument from the case and cut quite deeply into André’s calf. Very casually as if he were merely … opening an envelope.”

Bruno took another deep breath, moving his legs, tensing them, and turning his feet back and forth, working to restore full circulation.

“Can you walk?” I asked him.

“In a short while, Mr. Scott. The bonds were quite tight. Unnecessarily so.” He reached down and rubbed one ankle, then the other. “André’s wound began to bleed and did not stop, did not clot, continued to bleed. Clearly, André was injected with something similar to heparin—a drug which helps to prevent clots in the blood, reduces the prothrombin, increases the clotting time—but much more effective than, say, warfarin. It is something of which I have no personal knowledge. When I saw what was occurring I told the men I would do as they wished. I asked them to stop the flow of blood. They said they would do so only after I completed the note.”

I looked at him more closely, at the clear bright blue eyes, the firm and now unsmiling mouth. “You mean, you had to write that note to Dru while André Strang was bleeding to death?” And as I asked the question I understood that odd note in Dave Cassiday’s voice.

“Yes. It was difficult. I completed the note as quickly as I could. But—” He looked at me. “I know something of the nature of men, Mr. Scott. How base and cruel some men can sometimes be. But I did not believe they would let André die. They did, however. Deliberately. Even after I had given them the note. It was, their spokesman told me calmly, in order to impress upon me the seriousness of their intent, their determination to achieve what they were after. Or words of that nature—that ‘they meant business,’ I believe the man actually said. I was quite seriously upset, and not as attentive to the exact nature of his remarks as I would otherwise have been.”

“That’s hardly surprising. Then you’re telling me all this—” I indicated the redness around us—“came out of one man? André? It just … drained out of him?”

Bruno nodded.

Cassiday said, “Nobody who didn’t see it can know how horrible it was, Scott. He got pale and clammy and then started to sweat, finally began making awful noises behind his gag, and then, well, he went into convulsions. Just before he died. But even after that he kept bleeding.”

“Hypoxia,” Bruno added. “He convulsed because of a lack of oxygen. The blood carries oxygen to all the cells, to the brain, and he didn’t have much blood left in him then. Too little blood, too little oxygen, hypoxia, convulsion, death.”

I looked at Cassiday, noticed his puffed eye, and asked, “How’d you get the mouse?”

He put on half a smile. “For a couple of seconds I made the mistake of thinking I was a hero. After they got us all into the house there was a minute or so when I was in the front room with only the slim guy guarding me. Well, he took his eyes off me and I grabbed for his gun.” Cassiday licked his lips. “Didn’t even touch it. He merely moved the gun out of the way and smacked me with a fist like a bag of rocks. Next thing I knew, I was on my butt.”

“This slim guy. He’s left-handed?”

“Well … yeah.” He looked puzzled. “Did I mention it?”

I shook my head. “It’s just the most likely explanation. He bounced his fist off your left eye, so probably he was swinging his right. If so, the gun would have been in his left hand—he didn’t hit you with the gun or you’d be cut. And if he’s left-handed, that might help us find him—”

Cassiday completed the thought in my mind. “If he and that big ox don’t find us first. Let’s get a move on.”

Bruno pressed his feet against the floor, leaned forward, and stood up. For a moment he closed his eyes, undoubtedly feeling pain in his long-bound ankles and legs. “Just a few moments more now, I think.” He looked at a watch on his left wrist. “Almost eleven,” he said as if to himself, then looked at me. “So it was not Dru, but you, who deduced that reversing the safe combination in my note, that is the numbers alone in reverse order, revealed the address where I was being held?”

“Well, yes. She may have come up with the same idea since I left her. She was very worried about you.… How did you guess I figured it?”

“It wasn’t a guess. Not really. More like your left-handed man. If it had occurred to Dru, she would have told you immediately, and you would have been here long before now.”

I nodded. Then I nodded again. “When that gave me an address on Fifty-eighth Street, the fact that the info was to have been delivered to a house on Fifty-seventh here in Weilton, only a block away, just about tied it up. Incidentally, the thing that made me consider reading those numbers backward is also the reason for much of the delay. I went first to the Church of the Second Coming—”

He winced as though he’d just felt another shooting pain in his feet. Perhaps higher than his feet.

“And it was the … what they call the Chorale, and the Sainted Pastor, that, ah, inspired me. Hey, that reminds me, Doctor Bruno, you should know that tonight Festus Lemming pronounced you none other than the An …”

I couldn’t do it. I mean, I couldn’t come right out and say it, just like that. “How’s the feet? Think you can get a wiggle—”

Cassiday blurted, “Church? Almost eleven? Let’s go. We’ve got to—”

“Festus Lemming pronounced me what?” Bruno asked.

“We’d better get a move on, Doctor,” I said. “Don’t want any more blood on the floor, do we? Those two creeps might come back any min—”

“Festus Lemming?”

“Yeah. You’ve got to know. I mean, you’ve got to know. Well, we both realize there’s still a Flat Earth Society, don’t we? Sure we do—people who would swear on a stack of Bi … people who swear the Earth is flat as a pancake. Really believe it. And there are others who say that’s silly, the Earth is round, and we live on the inside of it—”

“Will you stop wandering all over this flat hollow Earth of ours and get to the point, Mr. Scott?”

“Well, he said you were … he—I was right there, I actually heard him say it. That you were—Oh, hell, you’re the Antichrist.”

“Come now, Mr. Scott. Lemming, of course, encounters serious difficulties when attempting to think rationally about any subject. But not even … he …”

Cassiday had stepped up next to me, his face showing concern. “I tell you, we’ve got to get the hell …” About then my last words penetrated and his face took on another expression. “Oh, come on.”

Bruno slowly cocked his big head on one side, not looking at my face in the hope of reading something there, just staring vacantly. “Hmm,” he said. “Yes. Hmm, yes.” Then he looked at me. “Really did it, didn’t he?”

“Really did.”

“Of course.” Bruno’s arms were hanging loosely at his sides. He didn’t wave them in the air, or shrug, or kick the wall. He just bent his hands at the wrists, out and up, then kind of slapped them in against his pants, pat. “I should have guessed.” Pat-pat. “I should have anticipated it. I should have been ready for it!”

“Doc,” Cassiday said, “forget it for now. Wait till we—”

“For years he’s been telling those imbeciles they’d better follow his example and start committing suicide or they’d miss the Second Coming. Been telling them he can name the day. And, of course—had to, couldn’t get around it, no way to get around it—when Christ came again the Antichrist would already be here, that’s what he told them and told and told them, the Antichrist here on Earth, raising all kinds of hell—naturally, only thing the Antichrist is good at.” Pat-pat-pat. “Tomorrow night, that second-rate Saint Paul has to name the year and day, so of course he’s got to have an Antichrist helling around somewhere. And who else? Who else would it be, who else could it be?”

“Doctor Bruno,” I said, “they may hear you at the Church. And it’s just possible that somebody heard all those extraordinarily loud shots and will send the fuzz—the cops—”

His hands were going out and flapping in against his pants with a solid beat and rhythm now, a steady pat-pat-pat-pat-pat. “Those goddamned ding-dong ding-a-ling dum-dums who call themselves the Lemmings of the Lord—hoo! And their Sainted Most-Holy—hoo-hoo! I hate myself. I should have been ready, I should have known—”

Bruno interrupted himself this time, cutting the sentence off and looking at me once more. “You know, Mr. Scott, there are one hundred horrible rumors about that man. And ninety-nine of them are true. Everyone knows Festus Lemming is a teetotaling, nonsmoking, nonfornicating vegetarian. But did you know there is a rumor that, when in high school, he took his first—and last—girl bouquets of lettuce?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do. There is also a rumor he is so mean he beats his cat for purring. But I doubt it—that’s the only one I do doubt. If he had a cat, by now it would have covered him up. There is also a hideous rumor—”

“You’re making these things up, aren’t you?”

“Of course. But I feel these rumors I am making up deserve wide circulation. What good is a rumor if nobody ever hears about it—”

“Mr. Bruno. Doctor. Your hands are O.K. now, I can tell. So your feet must be in pretty good shape, too. Therefore, let us both use our feet to speed us to my car, and once we’re in it you can yell all you want—”

Cassiday interrupted me. His face was a little pale as he said rapidly, “Scott, my car and Doc’s are at that goddamn church—we both drove in after André phoned us—and we probably should not leave them there. The services usually end at eleven, so about two minutes from now the whole congregation is going to pour out, filled to the brim with whatever the Pastor poured into them tonight, and head for the parking lot. If we’re going to get our cars, we better do it fast.”

“Yeah. Good … thinking.”

He stepped to Bruno’s side, gently turned him till he faced the door, continuing to speak. “If those cats see Bruno—do I have to spell it out? He may be the Antichrist, the King of Sin, but I’m at least a Prince—I’m the guy who made Erovite for him, packaged and sold it. They do not love the Doc, but I’ll bet they’ve got enough hate left over for me.”

I could understand Cassiday’s concern. I had no desire to go back to the Church of the Second Coming, myself. Not ever, much less in the next couple of minutes. And certainly not later than a couple of minutes from now. Not when all of Lemming’s sheep, with their teeth filed to sharp points by their Pastor, would be pouring out through those massive doors and under the golden cross.

Into the hallway went Bruno, pushed by Cassiday. I followed them out.

And I noticed as we left the room that I was walking, not as I usually do, but as I had seen the stocky man moving a bit earlier tonight, with a kind of half-on-tiptoe almost-mincing gait, over the sticky film of blaaahd on the floor beneath my feet.

9

As soon as I had the car in gear, I reached under the dash for the mobile phone. Bruno said, “What are you doing?”

“Calling the cops.”

“Could you avoid mentioning my name?”

Right after that, Cassiday said, “Do you have to notify the police, Scott?”

“Yeah, I have to. Besides it would be nice if about a dozen officers were handy to welcome your friends when they return to the house, don’t you think?”

Bruno repeated, “Could you avoid mentioning my name? And, Dave’s, too, for that matter.”

“Well, I could probably get away with it for a while. But I’d sure need some good reasons. The man I’m phoning becomes instantly suspicious when I hold out on him.” While talking I placed the call to the LAPD and my good but sometimes suspicious friend—and the Captain of Central Homicide—Phil Samson.

“There are many excellent reasons,” Bruno said. “One is your own report of Lemming’s latest psychotic episode, plus the fact that one of the dead men in that house is André Strang. I’m sure Dru told you he is an official of the Church of the Second Coming, and a rather close associate of the Pastor’s. I think you will agree it would be best if my name—especially tonight—is not closely associated with news of Strang’s murder. Particularly such a … strange murder.”

I broke it off as Captain Samson came on the other end of the line. “Sam?” I said. “Shell here. I don’t—”

He broke in, and I could tell from the muffled growl that his teeth were clamped into one of his black cigars, “Shell, if you got yourself shot in the head again, my advice to you is: Bleed to death—”

“Don’t say bleed—”

“I’ve put in four nights in a row, overtime on the Kinson case, and I just phoned my wife to tell her I’m coming home. Immediately. You know what she said? She said, ‘Who is this calling, please?’ My happy home—”

“Sam, I just want to report a couple of dead guys.”

“A couple—”

“Relax, I didn’t kill them. At least, not both—they’re both dead, I mean. And they’re in Weilton, anyway. I really don’t have much time, Sam, so here’s the dope. Address: fifteen twenty-one Fifty-eighth Street. Important, one of them was murdered by two men who left the scene approximately forty-five minutes ago. Almost surely they’ll return, but I don’t know when or why they left.”

He started to interrupt but I kept going, gave him the descriptions I’d gotten from Bruno and Cassiday, then added, “These guys are killers, armed, and definitely dangerous. Officers should approach the scene with care. Suspects are almost certain to return later, possibly even before officers arrive at the address. So have the boys grab ’em and beat ’em with rubber hoses, and I’ll get back to you later—”

“Wait a minute. How did these people get dead? What have you got to do with it? And another thing—”

We were on Filbert approaching Heavenly Lane and the dash clock showed it was two minutes after eleven. “Sam, I really meant it when I said I didn’t have much time. I’ll get back to you—and thanks a lot, old buddy.” I hung up.

“And thank you, Mr. Scott,” Bruno said.

“Yeah.” I shook my head. “You should see this guy, Samson. He’s big and solid and rough. Jaw like the Rock of Gibraltar. A damn good cop, but tough as gristle. I can guarantee, he isn’t going to let me play games with him very long.”

I started to swing left up Heavenly Lane when Cassiday said, “Scott, I don’t think you’d better go in, not now. Let me out and I’ll run and get my car, probably no sweat if I hurry, but Doc better not show himself at all. Every one of those Lemmings knows his face—and they’re already loose.”

He was right. A car was pulling out of the drive, turning left, another was visible well behind it. I swung to the right of the road and stopped, engine idling.

Cassiday said, “My car’s parked at this end of the lot. Not more than fifty yards from here, so I won’t have to go near the church.” He paused briefly. “And thanks again. I’ll give you the full speech when there’s more time, Scott.”

“Forget it. You’d better hurry.”

He did. Zip, out the door, and in a sprint before he was across the street. I looked at Bruno. “Where to now? Home?”

“I would very much like to call Dru, if you’ll allow me to use your phone. And explain how I operate it.”

“Hell, of course. I’m sorry—she must be having conniptions.”

I placed a call to the number he gave me, than handed the phone to him. Three more cars had come out, two turning right into Weilton, but lights from the other flashing over us as the driver headed for the freeway.

“You’d better scrunch down in the seat,” I told him, and was starting to put the Cad in gear when I heard another car coming, more speedily than those that had preceded it.

I craned my neck around to see a big Lincoln barreling down the drive. I didn’t know what make of buggy Cassiday drove, but assumed from the speed it might be Dave. It was. He must have seen my Cad about the same time because he came zooming out of the drive, swung right, hit the brakes and skidded for twenty feet, then backed up at a speed dangerous to life and limb. When he came to a sliding stop in the middle of the street and leaned out the driver’s window, he wasn’t more than ten feet away.

He looked from me to Bruno and back at me again, vast concern on his face. “What’s the matter? Anything wrong?”

“No—just made a phone call. We’re on our way.”

“You’d better be,” he said frowning. “Get Doc the hell out of here. The Lemmings are migrating! And where they have swarmed, nothing lives or moves or breathes, not ever “Surely,” I said to Bruno, “Dave Cassiday exaggerates.” manuel Bruno. “It is infinite.”

“Yes,” he said. “But only a little.”

“Man’s capacity for self-deception is not large,” said Em-again!”

I grinned, waved at him, and took off toward the freeway.

We were turning off the Santa Ana Freeway, with L.A. and Hollywood ahead. Doc had completed his call to a relieved and presumably ecstatic Dru, judging at least by the noises that came out of the phone. She had insisted we both come to her suite of rooms in the Westchester Arms, and that’s where we were headed.

At the moment the good doctor was continuing, “Lemming’s pronouncement that I am the Antichrist, like most of his other revelations, will at best amuse and at worst annoy rational men. Unfortunately, few men are wholly rational and many are completely irrational. So we are faced with this: Many individuals are actually going to believe I am the Antichrist. This is one of the few times in my life when I am nonplused, completely confused as to how I should proceed.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you run up against every day,” I said encouragingly. “Frankly, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes. I was there, I saw and heard old Festus. And his Heavenly Choir, for that matter. I wonder if those Lemmings think Heaven is like that?”

“No, they think Heaven is where they will get all the things they have on Earth, but which they deny themselves here, so they can get them there. You’ve heard the singing of the Second Coming hymns, have you?”

“Heard them—”

“I know. I was in attendance a time or two myself. Months ago, but I still hear them singing. They gave off a sound like a horde of vampires, awakening as wooden stakes were pounded into their hearts. A dash of Erovite in their sacramental blood—I suppose they drink blood—would do them a lot of good. But it would absolutely ruin Lemming’s Church, of course. Wouldn’t that be splendid?”

“I suppose. But you’re the one who should know. After all, you’re the Ant—”

“Please, Mr. Scott. Levity has its place. But not at the grave.” He paused. “In it, perhaps, but not at it.”

I turned my head and grinned at him. “Things aren’t that bad yet. And make it Shell instead of Mr. Scott, O.K.?”

“That is from Sheldon, is it not?”

“Right.”

“If you don’t mind, I shall call you Sheldon.”

I said I didn’t mind. “Tell me about Erovite, will you? What is it? And I’m puzzled by the snatch—kidnapping you to force your formula from you. Why? I mean, what’s so secret? Don’t formulas for pharmaceutical products have to be registered with the Food and Drug Administration? Or revealed to the Secret Service or something—”

“Let me dispose of your second question first, Sheldon. After you have promised not to repeat what I am about to tell you.”

I passed a slow-moving truck on the freeway, glanced at Bruno. “I couldn’t very well conceal evidence of a crime, but other than that—”

“It is a crime I intend to reveal.” He paused. “Or, rather, it is and it is not a crime.”

“You lost me.”

“No, I only misplaced you. Do you know of the sixteenth-century philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, writer, heretic, the wise and courageous man who also bore the name Bruno?”

“It rings a bell. Gardan … Cerdan …?”

“Giordano. Giordano Bruno. He committed a crime, and for this he was burned to death. After deep thought and long study, after discarding much that was in his time accepted without question or examination as truth—which is essential in any search for truth—he came to believe that the awesome and omnipresent ‘Something’ which is in all things and from which all things come, that ‘Reason’ which gives reason to the universe, is God. Inevitably he largely rejected the vengeful and all too human Idiot-God which was then—and is now—the puppet of the Church. Incidentally, though many irrationally insist I am an atheist, I embrace much the same holy pantheism and belief in a God-of-All as did Giordano. At any rate, Giordano Bruno further concluded that the Earth was not the center of the universe, that the Earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun about the Earth, that this planet of ours was but one, and not a very impressive one at that, of a myriad of other planets revolving about other suns or stars. That is, he agreed with the so-called Copernican system of astronomy, which today we know to be essentially the truth.”

“So where was the crime? Why’d they burn him?”

“They burned him because he was right.”

“Will you try that again?”

“It was—and it was not—a crime, you see. It was a crime by definition. The definition was formulated by the Church. Among other marvelous things, the Church taught that the Earth was the center of the universe—had not God sent his only Son here to save everybody in the universe, then called Israel? Therefore Giordano Bruno spoke blasphemy—as defined by the Church; and was anathema—as defined by the Church; and it was therefore required—by the Church—that he be burned alive. So, after seven years in prison, he was excommunicated and burned at the stake … on February seventeenth in the year sixteen hundred, in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome … in the name of God, who is alleged to have said through His only Son. ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’”

Bruno paused. “It need not have been the Church. Call it those in control, those of—Authority. They burned the truth when they burned Bruno. And they are still burning Bruno.”

This time when I glanced at him he was looking at me, a faint smile on his lips. “Now, then,” he said, “you are a detective, a criminal investigator. Define for me the crime, and the criminal.”

“I’ve a hunch if I listen to you long enough I may wind up in San Quentin.”

“Many other good men have, for lesser crimes. I shall proceed. You must silence me forcibly or else hear my confession. True, formulae for pharmaceutical products, compounds, cough medicines, miracle drugs, and even drugs incapable of producing miracles, must be registered with the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA, not to mention the AMA and HEW and other agencies, keeps a keen eye on such things. In the main this is very wise and good, when it is to protect the public, to ensure that people do not get poisoned or made uneasy by such items as thalidomide which was sold as a sleeping pill, or chloramphenicol sold as Chloremycetin, or tranylcypromine sold as Parnate, or tripananol sold as MER-29, by DDT and Dieldrin and contaminated cow manure on their strawberries, or by the many counterfeit drugs which in this country are yearly sold by the billions.”

I went beneath the overpass and headed up the Hollywood Freeway leaving the police building and city hall behind on my left.

“It is not so very wise and good when it protects the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of the consumer of pharmaceuticals, or restricts the availability of products which otherwise might be of great benefit to the public.”

“But they wouldn’t let that happen,” I said hopefully.

“Wouldn’t they? Hmm. I see I must skip a great deal, or I shall be educating you until tomorrow. So, then, to Erovite. I supplied the FDA with a list of concentrated herbal extracts, biochemic and homeopathic compounds, vitamin and mineral additives, animal and vegetable substances, and so forth which comprised the formula for Erovite. And I received in due time my patent on the product.”

“Patent? Why a patent?”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you copyright a book, patent an invention? I wanted to make some money out of it, that’s why. I didn’t want it stolen from me. It is of immense value to those who use it, but in monetary terms alone Erovite is worth millions, billions. Which is why, tonight, those retarded individuals seized me and attempted to force—”

“Relax. I just didn’t know the procedure was so bloody complicated. O.K., you spilled your secrets to the FDA and got your patent, and—for a while—Erovite was on sale. So, I still wonder, what’s so secret? Also, where’s the crime?”

“I hadn’t gotten to it yet. Hmm, yes. Well, I think of that formula I gave the FDA as Erovite A—or, you might call it Erovite FDA. What we were selling was Erovite B. Probably, since you seem not a dunce, it is beginning to dawn—”

“You lied to the government!” I said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“But—”

“Not exactly. It is a splendid formula which now reposes in the FDA files. Valuable. Helpful. Healthful. Almost a Supertonic. But the complete formula—we’ll refer to it simply as Erovite from now on, rather than Erovite B—which has proved so astonishingly effective, and thus has brought upon me uncountable curses and continuing damnation, not to mention the latest burst of brilliance from Festus … at any rate, the complete formula is the FDA formula plus several other items that Dave and I personally added to the glop in his factory.”

“Glop? If Erovite is all you claim it is, how can you call it—”

“Sheldon, it is not like a baby, an only child. It is just a kind of—glop until it is bottled and packaged and promoted and sold. Why, penicillin is a rather ghastly mold, you know, and—”

“O.K. What would the FDA do to you if they knew what—what I know.”

“Very likely, put me in prison. Very likely, they will put me in prison anyway. Thank God men are no longer cooked.”

“Who knows about this crime against drugstores besides you and me?”

“Dave Cassiday, and my daughter. No one else. You see how I trust you? Of course, you did save my life—”

“That’s not important.”

“What do you mean, it’s not—”

“I merely meant that our recent adventure was not germane to my question. Which is: If it is generally known that products—such as Erovite—are patented, and their formulae on file with the FDA, why would any hoods, or whoever, steal you? And attempt to—”

“That’s novel. I was stolen, wasn’t I? One usually thinks of jewels and automobiles—”

“And attempt to squeeze from you the formula for Erovite. Which is on file with the FDA.”

“There could be any number of reasons. The formula, once known to a criminal, could be changed enough to be patentable as a new compound and yet retain some of its former efficacy. It would not, of course, be as effective—but the criminal is not interested in improving man’s health and enjoyment of life, he is interested only in what he can steal. Or it could be made surreptitiously, counterfeited, as virtually all widely sold drugs are today counterfeited. Just as money is counterfeited.”

“Yeah. Still, something’s bugging me. Something that should, I’ve a hunch, be obvious. Maybe it’s Festus, and his Lemmings of the Lord.”

“Very likely. Perhaps Pastor Lemming was put here by God simply to bug people. There are other rumors about him, you know, which I’ve not mentioned. That he goes through books crossing out the word ‘girl.’ That he puts tiny chastity girdles on the pistils and stamens of spring flowers. That wherever he exhales even crabgrass becomes sterile. That—”

Bruno had earlier made it clear he wanted me to continue “representing his interests” as he put it, and take whatever steps I felt were necessary, so I let him get other rumors out of his system while I used the mobile phone to contact a couple of my most productive informants. Each of them would in turn get in touch with additional tipsters, thieves and heavy men and various criminal gentry, some of whom were known to me and some of whom were not. So, very soon, a large number of larcenous citizens would be looking and listening for info germane to the events of this evening, with emphasis on the three men, two living and one dead, whom I had described as best I could.

During the rest of the ride to Dru’s, Doctor Bruno came up with additional “rumors,” and I had to admit some of them were deserving of wide circulation. I also had to admit they weren’t likely to get it. Not, at least, as likely as those dreamed up by Festus Lemming; and it occurred to me that unless Festus was truly out of his gourd, he would know that very few citizens other than those who regularly sat at his feet—or, rather, way down there below his feet—or those who shared their specific faith and/or delusions, would even begin to believe his most recent seizure about Bruno. And I did not think Festus was out of his gourd, at least not all the way out.

So, unless he came up with something to impress the normal, reasonably rational individual, the mass rage and hatred Lemming clearly hoped to direct against Bruno would be largely confined to members of the Church of the Second Coming. Which was quite a bunch, but hardly the mass a character like Festus would, I felt, hunger for.

I didn’t know what else he could do, or even if he would try anything else. But I was worried. Maybe I was tuning in on events which had very recently occurred, and were still occurring, events inimical in the extreme to Emmanuel Bruno. All I knew was that I felt uneasy and, for some reason I couldn’t pin down, increasingly worried about Bruno.

I kept forgetting that Lemming didn’t like me much, either.

10

Dru opened the door, gave the Doc a hug, flashed a sparkling glance at me. She still wore the eye-catching green dress, which clung to her breasts, waist, and hips—and little else—at least as aphrodisiacally as it had before.

She backed into her living room, pulling Bruno after her. “Oh, Dad,” she said happily, “I was so worried, you’ll never know how worried I was!”

“Well, it’s all right now, dear. Thanks to Mr. Scott.”

I was standing there like a dummy, looking the place over and liking what I saw. The carpet was thick and white, the few pieces of furniture in the room solid, substantial, rich-looking. I got an impression of spaciousness and warmth, with splotches of bright color from throw pillows on a divan and some kind of bright hassock thing in one corner, a color television set—on, but with the volume turned low—and paintings on the walls.

Then Dru was in front of me, looking up at me, even more lovely and luscious and eye-socking than when she’d earlier appeared at my door. Same gleaming hair of blended reds and golds, same lazy gray eyes and reckless red lips, but the marks of strain and tension were gone from her face.

She was smiling. “Yes, thanks to Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

The tip of her tongue moistened the curve of her lips. “Shell … I don’t know how to thank you.”

She lied.

She knew how, all right. And how she knew how. Her arms went up over my shoulders and behind my neck, and she lifted her face to mine and kissed me as if she’d been practicing in local contests for years and this one was for the championship of the world. Which she won, if I was any judge. It was quite a kiss. If mouths could get pregnant we’d probably have given birth to quintuplet lips.

After a while I noticed she was leaning away from me, easing back down off her toes, and from the corner of my eye I caught sight of something which caused me concern. I turned my head to observe Emmanuel Bruno beaming benignly upon us.

“Ah …” I said. “Completely forgot you were … ah, Dad—Doc—Mr. Bruno, I wouldn’t want you to think I, uh, always go around, er, attacking your daughter. Just a moment there of madness, amnesia—”

“Nonsense,” he said. “The attraction of man for woman, of male for female, is perfectly natural. As natural as the attraction between magnets, positive-negative, yang-yin, the push and pull and pulse of sun and moon and stars.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

“You are very yang—”

“I am?”

“And she is very yin. The attraction between you should, therefore, other things being unequal, be very powerful.”

“Did I miss something?”

I didn’t think he was listening, but apparently he was. With hardly a pause in the flow of his words he said, “We have all missed something. For the simple reason that the free and natural—or healthy and healthful—expression of sex and sexuality has been damned and thus dammed, forced from its natural channels into weird creeks and rivulets like a stream blocked with boulders and limbs and weeds and sacred cows. Happily, Erovite bids fair to change all this, to blow up the dam, remove the obstructions, shoo the cows, restore and release the vital force in man—”

Dru was still standing close to me. Not, of course, as close as before, but close enough so I could feel plenty of yin, or whatever it was he’d said she had.

“Dad does get awfully wound up about all this, Shell.”

“I’d begun to notice.”

“Pay no attention to him.”

“How do you do that?”

She smiled. “First, you shut him up.”

“How do you do that?”

She looked at Bruno. “Shut up, Dad.”

The flow of words stopped. He blinked at her. “But, dear, I had barely begun.”

“I know. Why don’t I fix some drinks? And you can tell me what happened tonight. I am curious, you know.”

“Of course,” he said. “Splendid. I shall have a large brandy. Sheldon?”

Dru had a little bar stocked with cognac, Scotch, bourbon, ice, just about everything a man might desire—everything when Dru was the bartender. She fixed brandies for Bruno and herself, a bourbon and water for me, while the doctor explained in the concise and efficient manner he could employ when he wanted to, what had occurred during the time since he’d seen his daughter.

With a few added comments from me, by the time the drinks were ready and we’d had our first sips, the story was told—even including Lemming’s announcement that Emmanuel Bruno was the long-awaited and feared Antichrist.

At that, Dru was silent for some time. Then she said, “I wonder what that makes me?”

“A lovely island of sanity in a sea of madness, my dear,” Bruno said. “The Earth is mad, the entire planet is cuckoo. It has been for centuries. And simply because I attempt to introduce a little sanity into insanity, a little more life into life, I am denounced as an archfiend—I suppose, dear, that makes you an archfiendess. Oh, that Festus Lemming and his flock of holy sardines! They must be the most cretinous mass of aborted intelligences since the first retarded amoeba spinning dizzily in the ooze of Oz went bananas and gave birth to itself.… Hmm.”

He was holding the brandy snifter in his right hand, left arm dangling, and his left hand went up and out, then down, all by itself, pat. “Hmm. Very likely they are its direct descendants. I have seen them there in the Church of the Second Coming, which is a misnomer if ever I heard of a missed nomer, and they do resemble little amoebic beings descended from one dizzy daddy, all of them huddled together for warmth but not locating any. Why, when I first attended services out of misguided curiosity and looked upon them seated there in row on rigid row, my impression was that they were extinct. But, alas, they were not, they live—supercharged by Lemming with a save-the-world-from-sin philosophy that has for them become a divinely ordained mission.

“Lemmings! They have lips like ashes and eyes like night. They sin against their God of love merely by getting up in the morning, filled to the gills with hate for those whom they call sinners. They claim to live in the spirit, yet their bodies are sick. They deny life, and wonder why they are dying.”

Bruno’s voice had risen almost to a shout. He paused, spoke again more quietly. “Yes, they deny life, the flesh, the sweet joys of the senses, trade the pleasures of Heaven for the pains of Hell and insist that others must share their insanity in order to be ‘saved!’ You know—” he had another sip of his brandy and fixed me with a glance—“those Lemmings of the Lord will, Sheldon, should they have their way, stamp out fun and all other evils, every kind of filth there is, including laughter, pornography, eight-course meals, obscenity, naughtiness, premarital sex, postmarital sex, marital sex, desserts, and cookies. Why, even now, they lobby and campaign against pornography, obscenity, and going to the toilet on Sunday. Even now—”

Dru took my hand. “Let’s sit down, Shell. I think becoming the Antichrist has gone to Dad’s head.”

“Is he used to drinking?”

She pulled me after her across the room, to a long, soft, luxurious divan, sank into it and crossed her long, soft, luxurious legs.

I sat beside her and looked at her legs. They distracted me. They would have been extremely distracting even had the room been totally silent, but somehow Emmanuel Bruno’s continuing oracular pronouncements, instead of pulling my attention from them, socked it to them.

For he had followed us across the room without a moment’s pause in his speech and now paced over the carpet before us, occasionally fixing us with a piercing glance or waving a hand dramatically over his head. “… thus it is essentially a matter of definition,” he boomed, “just as the truth for which Giordano Bruno was burned was arbitrarily defined as a crime, in consequence of which he became a human faggot. The Church burned him to cook more dogmas. I would say ‘hot dogmas’ only it wouldn’t be true.”

“This,” I said to Dru, at last pulling my eyes from her thighs, “is getting interesting.”

“Oh, Dad has some interesting ideas,” she said with a small smile.

Bruno was verbally galloping onward, “… again, definition. Consider: There would be no hue and cry today about ‘pornography’ if the sex act itself was not considered pornographic—dirty, filthy, obscene. At least it would not be the same hue and cry, it would be about something else. For that which is ‘pornographic’ is pornographic only by definition, and is therefore created by those who define it.”

Dru continued, “And I think he’s at least ninety percent right.”

“At least,” I said.

“You haven’t heard half of it yet.”

“I’ll bet I do.”

“You’re not listening,” Bruno said, and in the same breath he went on, “If, as for a time in Tahiti and elsewhere, the act of eating instead of the act of sex was considered sinful, shameful—obscene—then pictures of people dining at home would be pornographic. Our priests and Lemmings would be entirely ignorant of cooking but determined to tell us what and when and where to eat, vegetarians who might allow us to eat steak, perhaps on holidays, but only if we first ruined it—charred on the outside and the inside, and never with salt and pepper.”

“Your Dad should have a church of his own,” I said to Dru. “I might even go to it myself. I’ll bet even the singing would be better—”

“But it is sex and the flesh, the earth and the body, that these maniacs of morality despise,” Bruno thundered on. “It has been arbitrarily decided—by those who know better than we, those wiser than we, our religious mentors in whom all wisdom reposes—that sex, sexuality, fornication, masturbation, lustfulness, desire, anything whatever to do with genitalia or sexual delight or carnality, is sinful and bad, unholy and unwholesome.”

“Well, I’ve never really gone along—”

“For centuries, the Church through its Lemmings has done everything possible to make sex joyless if not impossible, and has pathologically deemed virginity and celibacy virtues instead of monstrous sins against the source of life. Indeed, the mother of Jesus was pronounced a virgin, and even her parents hey-prestoed into virgins as well—the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception did not become official dogma, by the way, even in the Church of Rome, until eighteen fifty-four when a telegram from God was received by Pope Pius IX. But it was not even a gleam in Christianity’s eye until the second century A.D., so I presume that is when Mary became eternally virginal even by descent.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do. In short, a natural act was in every possible manner made to appear unnatural and foul. If the Lord’s mother is forever a virgin, must not all other mothers blush forever in shame? And all other fathers as well? To ask the question is to answer it. In consequence, the heirs of Judeo-Christian sexual psychoses can almost never indulge, with complete freedom and joy, in the act which is father and mother to us all!”

“Well, it’s a lot better than noth—”

“We wander,” Bruno boomed, “into dark labyrinths when we consider the imbecilities and sins of our wise and sinless spiritual leaders. Reason finally is led to ask: If Mary had been not Virgin but Lame, would priests break their legs and hobble on crutches while praising the Holy Crippled Mary? Reason answers: These ecclesiastical contortionists should utter their pronouncements while standing on their heads—but then their skirts would fall down, and we would know the truth, and the truth would set us free!”

“He really does get wound up, doesn’t he?” I said to Dru.

She nodded.

“Should we take his drink away from him? By the way, this is good stuff—good bourbon, I mean.”

Bruno must have heard me. He gulped the last of his brandy, stalked across the room to the bar, gurgled another shot or two into his snifter, and started back without missing a beat. Carrying the bourbon bottle.

I said to Dru, “You know, I think he did hear me. Your father has remarkable ears.”

“He’s a remarkable man.”

“I hope this doesn’t embarrass you. I mean, all this talk about sex and … that sort of thing.”

“Does sex embarrass you, Shell?”

“Certainly not! Hasn’t for years.… Should it?”

“No. It doesn’t embarrass me, either.”

“How about that?” I said. “Sex doesn’t embarrass me—or you. It doesn’t embarrass both of us. Isn’t that a swell coincidence?” She gave me a Mona Lisa smile, but didn’t say anything. And a Mona Lisa smile, all by itself, doesn’t say much.

“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “I said, isn’t that a swell—”

“… and our beloved ding-dong, Festus Lemming, is only the tip of the frozen iceberg, he has become the symbol today of what the Church has preached for centuries. At a time of healthy reaction against the sexual sickness of the Church, a Lemming arises to react against the reactions. He takes us back to Saint Paul and his, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman’—”

“A saint said that?” I asked quickly, while the Doc was taking a breath.

“Who else would say it?” Bruno leaned over to pour a glug of bourbon into my glass. “Moreover, it appears Paul practiced what he preached. It is possible he was unable to do otherwise, because of an ‘infirmity of the flesh’ not clearly defined—”

“He doesn’t sound like a well man to me,” I said.

“He was, in my view, even less well than our contemporary paragon of mental health, Festus Lemming. At least Festus has not publicly claimed, with Paul and the Paul-bearers, that we are all born defiled and irretrievably ruinated with sin, asking, ‘How can he be clean that is born of woman?’ Paul had no use for the opposite sex—for any kind of sex. This was the man who offered all other men a counterfeit ticket to Heaven and asked in payment only that they surrender their manhood. This was so brilliant that his words became sacred Scripture, with the result that for nearly two thousand years all good Christians have been robbing peter to pay Paul.”

“Saint Paul was a saint, huh?” I mused aloud.

“Was. Is. Once a saint always a saint. Unless you’re unsainted, of course.”

“Who made him a saint?”

“God.”

“How do you know that?”

“Please do not ask me dumb questions. Besides, you keep interrupting—”

“Shut up, Dad.”

In the silence I heard two barely audible words.

They came from the television set. The volume was very low, but my ears aren’t bad, either. More important, the words were a couple I am quite familiar with. One was “Shell” and the other was “Scott.”

A glance showed me the mouth of the nationally syndicated Midnight News commentator moving, and a quick bound put me in front of the television set. I turned up the volume in time to fill the room with, “… further details about the attempted assassination of Festus Lemming, Sainted Most-Holy Pastor of the Church of the Second Coming—after these important announcements.”

I stumbled back to the divan, turned, sat heavily. Bruno and Dru were motionless, silent, staring at the television set.

I stared, too, as a pair of luscious, moist, and bright red lips appeared on the tube and sort of nuzzled and kneaded each other, while the owner of the lips, or somebody else with a very sexy voice said, “Mmmm! It’s so good. It’s so … Mmmm!”

11

Dru said, “Assassination?”

Bruno said, “Festus?”

And I said, “Lemming?”

“Mmmm!”

The important announcements ended and the newscaster again looked out, with a frank and friendly gaze, upon the millions of unseen faces. “For more on the attempt to kill Pastor Festus Lemming, we go to Weilton, California. Here, in a report taped only minutes ago, is our Johnny-on-the-Spot, Johnny Kyle, outside the headquarters of the Church of the Second Coming.”

The picture changed, rolled, steadied on fortyish, intense, Kyle holding a mike in his right hand. He stood on the pebbled steps up which I had so recently ascended, behind him the open doors of the church. With his well-known, measured, almost ponderous delivery he said dramatically, “It is now eleven-thirty-one P.M. in Weilton. Exactly fifteen minutes ago two shots were fired at Pastor Festus Lemming as he stood speaking to a member of his congregation, at the top of these steps, before the church doors, open wide in welcome. Others of the congregation were walking to the parking lot or already in their cars, leaving for home and rest, when the shots were fired. Most of those present say the gunshots came from an automobile in the parking lot, which left immediately at great speed. Some say it was a dark, four-door sedan, some say two-door, some say it was a blue Panther or a blue Cheetah, others insist it was either a blue or green Stilleto or a gray Krakatoa, and one witness alleged it was a boy on a red scooter. Police are at this moment interviewing witnesses and sifting the conflicting reports.”

A long shot of the Church, reaching Heavenward, then a view of the parking lot, several cars still in it, forty or fifty people milling about. At the entrance to the lot a police radio car was parked, doors open, red light pulsing atop its roof.

“Of those who claim to have seen the occupants of the assassin’s car,” Kyle continued, “the majority say there were two men in it, several say there was only one, and some say there were four or five people in it. One witness alleges there was nobody in it, but this is the same individual who saw the red scooter, and police are greatly discounting the old gentleman’s testimony.”

Then a long shot of the church steps and two men standing midway up them, one holding a microphone—Kyle, undoubtedly—and the other either a thin bullfighter in his suit of golden lights, or Festus Lemming. As the camera slowly zoomed in and the two figures grew steadily larger on the television screen, Johnny-on-the-Spot’s voice, serious and solemn, declared, “Pastor Lemming has retracted—repeat, retracted, and in its entirety—his initial statement that he had reason to believe his would-be assassin was Shell Scott and that Mr. Scott was acting merely as a hired gunman—agent, in the Pastor’s words—for Emmanuel Bruno, well-known creator of the highly controversial nostrum, Erovite.”

“Nostrum!”

That wasn’t on television. That was Doctor Bruno, here in Dru’s living room. Who, I thought, cared what the gabby announcer called Erovite? It was a bit more important what he—and Lemming—called me and Bruno. Of course, the allegation had been retracted.

Except for the one barked word, that was all from Doc. He was leaning forward, eyes on the television set, elbow on knee, thumb and finger gripping his chin.

“Mr. Scott,” the apology continued, “no stranger to violence, is a local private investigator whose exploits have previously received national attention. Not only the police but some private citizens have expressed their confidence in Mr. Scott’s integrity and reliability. Pastor Lemming’s charge was made immediately after the attempted murder, when he was shaken and upset by his nearly fatal meeting with death. And here, live from Weilton, California, is Festus Lemming, Sainted Most-Holy Pastor of the Church of the Second Coming.”

The camera lens had zoomed about as far as it could zoom, and now was in tight on Lemming’s nickel-thin face, narrow shoulders, and enough of his golden chest to show the top ruby-cross button on his coat of chain mail. “Fellow children,” he sighed, like a small whirlwind, keeping the volume down, “fellow children of Almighty God, I deeply appreciate this opportunity afforded me by the blessed ABS Network to retract and refute my former words, made when I was shaken and upset by my nearly fatal meeting with death, here, before the doors of my Church of the Second Coming, open wide in welcome, in Weilton, California.”

He stretched to his full five feet, three or four inches, lifted his head a little. “I regret, regret deeply my initial unthinking allegation that it was Sheldon Scott, acting as agent for Emmanuel Bruno, who attempted to kill me. Yes! I regret it. I do not know the identity of the man or men involved in the murder attempt. I repeat, I do not know, I do not know. In partial expiation for my sinful thoughtlessness I can only confess that, less than an hour prior to the assassination attempt, Mr. Sheldon Scott departed from this house of God—” he waved one arm in an all-embracing gesture which seemed to include the church behind him, Southern California, Earth and Heaven—“after here interrupting holy services, shocking and disturbing the entire congregation of five thousand.…”

Already up a thousand from four, I thought, not really caring much.

“… or six thousand souls. And after having threatened me. Yes! After having threatened me with … bodily harm. This was in my mind, this was my thought, when the death bullets screamed past my head … this and the fact that Mr. Sheldon Scott had so recently made the threat. It was a human error, and I regret it. I have no evidence, no proof, of that allegation and I here publicly retract and deny it in its entirety! I repeat, it was only because of my recent dialogue with Mr. Sheldon Scott, and his threats at that time, that I made my thoughtless allegation, my reprehensible human error, and because of other …”

Other what?

He didn’t say. He just left it dangling there.

I thought that was clever of him. It did not endear Festus to me, but I thought it was clever. What else besides my dangerous presence and threats had impelled him to make the reprehensible charge? Surely a something other, and surely something specific, even if delicacy prevented it or It from passing his lips. And so soon after the repetition of “human error … human” … could it possibly have been something in or unhuman? A little bird? A big bird? Something even bigger?

Festus did not say. He let his listeners guess.

“Well, he’s cooked my bird,” I said aloud. “My goose, that is.”

No one else spoke. Not here, in the room.

Festus spoke. There, under the stars.

After a long pause, after that significant and titillating “other …” he said solemnly, “I am sorry. I deeply regret my too-precipitate speech. I am sorry.” And while the “ry” of “sorry” still brushed his lips he turned his head to stare keenly to his left. Where, to nobody’s surprise, least of all mine, Johnny Kyle was waiting, a question on his lips.

As the camera pulled back and there was room for both men on the screen, Kyle queried, “Pastor Lemming, you say Mr. Shell Scott threatened you? Threatened you with bodily harm? That is a serious charge—”

“Yes! And that charge, sir, I do not retract, that charge I will not retract.” Not a sighing any longer, beginning to boom and thunder now, voice rising as Festus turned and let his burning eyes blister all the fellow children watching. “He came into my church during my sermon, while I spoke, he confronted me during the Chorale—away, away from the eyes of my flock … and there said he was acting as agent for Emmanuel Bruno … name and face and force of evil! He said if I did not cease my work against Emmanuel Bruno, and against unholy Erovite, he would …”

“Yes, Pastor?”

“I hesitate—he did not say he would kill me. No, he did not.” The shoestring lips curved in a teeny-weeny smile, with the warmth of the last little coal from yesterday’s fire expiring on the hearth. “Those who know Mr. Sheldon Scott need not be informed that he speaks in strange ways. His words are strange, and his ways … If I recall his words to me, precisely, he said he would break my arms and legs and neck—Yes! And neck!—in at least one, if not several, places.”

Johnny Kyle couldn’t speak. Well, maybe he could. He didn’t.

Finally Festus confessed, “I came close, then, to feeling … fear. He—Mr. Sheldon Scott—is a huge man, a towering beast, very muscular, almost obscenely broad and bulgy.”

The camera drew back just a little, and because the camera cannot lie it could not help revealing how little, how frail, how weak and puny Festus Lemming was alongside five-feet-eleven and one-hundred-and-seventy-pound Johnny Kyle. He looked like Kyle’s arm. Which naturally meant he would look, alongside the huge towering bulgy beast …

“Yes! I would have felt fear in the presence of that violent man had I not known I would be protected by the seven thousand members of my congregation … and by …”

“Did it again,” I said.

“I understand, Pastor Lemming, that one of the bullets which missed you injured a member of your congregation.”

“Yes. Fortunately the wound was slight, very slight—the shock to her was greater than the wound. There was … hardly any blood.”

“You’ve got to hand it to this guy,” I said aloud. “Of course, you don’t save three million souls in only seven years unless you know what you’re doing. I think I underestimated—”

I stopped as I heard Festus say, “Miss Winsome.”

“Miss Winsome,” he said, “tarried after most of the other worshippers had left, remained behind in order to discuss some of her duties with me. She is one of the most diligent and devout, one of the finest and most spiritual members of the Church of the Second Coming. I know I am not supposed to have any favorites, but.… We were standing outside the church entrance when the shots rang out and hissed past my head. One of them wounded her. It was a slight wound, very slight, high on her left side. But that bullet, aimed at me to kill, could have struck her young heart! Could have killed her! Could have torn through the tender flesh, pierced the innocent brea—”

“Yes, ah, yes, Pastor, ah … she is all right, though, is she not?”

I was thinking, at least one of those slugs did not quite hiss or scream past your head, Pastor, not if it nicked Miss Winsome high on her side.

“Yes, she is,” said Festus, “thank God.”

On that lofty note, the interview with Festus Lemming was concluded.

There was about half an inch of bourbon and water left in my glass. I polished the drink off and said, “Well, I guess the old boy has also fixed me up just great with Regina.”

Dru finally turned to look at me. “Who?”

“Regina Winsome—the gal Lemming was just talking about.”

“You know her?”

“I met her tonight at the church. When I beat up on Lemming.” I paused. “Well, at least now I know that freak is a fraud and a liar. Didn’t know it before, not for sure. Which makes him, perhaps, even more dangerous.”

Bruno straightened up. “He is the most dangerous man in America,” he said, as though without fear of contradiction.

“The champion goose-cooker, at least. Mine, of course, is totally charred, on the outside and inside, but yours is about done, too, Doc.”

“He is attempting to get at me through you.”

“Besides which, the Pastor and I aren’t very close. What’s this?”

More action on the televison screen. Nothing of unusual importance, just quick interviews with three members of the flock.

“Yes, I seen him, standin’ there yellin’ his fool head off, like as if something … I won’t say what … entered into him. He shouted and bellered like as if to bring the walls down with his yellin’.”

That was a man. The next one was also, very likely, a man. “I didn’t know he was Shell Scott, then. But I saw all that yellow moving up and down the aisle, up and down—uh-huh, he had yellow clothes on. Yellow clothes. Stood there and howled. Like a wolf. WooOOOoo. Like that, you know?”

Then a woman for sure. Probably an actress, because I was almost certain I’d seen her on an old late-night movie, something about “The Undead Return,” if memory serves me, in which she’d played the title role. “Me and my bluvd husband we was settin’ real close to him. This Scott, the one they say is a detective. He swore, took the Lord’s name in vain, right there in the Lord’s house, cursed, went back and forth and stamped up and down, cursin’ and swearin’ like he was a wild man, and he yelled out with a great noise something I can’t reclect except it was loud and I didn’t like it.”

From that point to the end of the newscast there wasn’t anything else of importance, but we watched and listened to reports of an explosion on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a bloody riot at Vassar, and a severe earthquake during a hurricane in Florida, then Dru switched the set off.

Bruno got slowly to his feet as Dru came back to the divan and sat down, then, looking at us, started ticking his points off. “First, Festus Lemming is, as you say, Sheldon, a liar. But he is not a fraud. He is sincere. He believes, believes not only his message but that whatever he does in preparation for the Second Coming, if it in any way furthers the imminence of that desired goal, is justified. Not merely justified but is his holy, his sacred duty. I know the man, have studied him, observed him; he is sincere. He is thus—contrary to your conclusion, Sheldon—all the more dangerous. The sincere fanatic, convinced of his righteousness, has always been more dangerous, bloodthirsty, cruel, more horrible, and horrifying than the conscious fraud. To him who is sincere, nothing is too monstrous and nothing is forbidden if it saves souls from hell or the world from sin. On the contrary, no matter how hellish the act, it is virtuous because it is pursued in the name of heaven by a righteous man.”

“I apologize for my too-precipitate human error.”

“Yes, that was rather well done, wasn’t it? If God is on Lemming’s side—even if Festus, exercising admirable restraint, won’t come right out and admit it—who can be against him? And I dare say that is precisely what he believes. Surely, Sheldon, you have known other men who could steadfastly believe the unbelievable? And make others believe it—or him—as well?”

“Hasn’t everybody?”

Bruno began pacing while he talked. “We are in a most unusual and interesting predicament. Consider: Every ding-dong anywhere loose now knows that an agent controlled by the Antichrist attempted to kill the agent of the Lord, who was saved only because the forces of good are stronger than the forces of evil, after which both the mindless puppet and his master escaped on a red scooter—it would have to be red, wouldn’t it? The ding-dongs are few in number, but we ignore them at our peril. Our greatest peril, however, probably comes from the others, those millions who now know that someone tried to kill Festus Lemming, that someone fled the scene, and that in the preceding hour Mr. Sheldon Scott had threatened to inflict upon the Pastor such huge injuries as to a lesser man than Festus would prove fatal.”

“You make it sound worse than it is.”

“It is worse than it is. If that comment puzzles you, Sheldon, I ask you not to doubt but to have faith. Out there—” he pointed at nowhere in particular—“sits a tuna salesman who has just experienced the Midnight News. Who, he is wondering, could that murderous someone be? He has heard the name Sheldon Scott an even dozen times, I would say. And the name Emmanuel Bruno four times. And directly, or by implication, the name of Almighty God six or seven times. Our tuna salesman wisely eliminates Almighty God. Who, then, is left?”

“Beats me,” I said. “I’m only a mindless puppet.”

“Our salesman will puzzle it out soon enough. And his suspicions, now uncertain, will be strengthened when he learns that André Strang, Sainted Less-Holy Pastor of the Church of the Second Coming, associate of Festus Lemming, has been murdered. And more, murdered most foully and by a strange and diabolical means. More, slain on the very night when the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor himself was well-nigh assassinated. More, near the body of André Strang lies a dead stranger. More, in the dead stranger’s corpse are three bullets from the gun of someone. Who? We know who, you and I—”

“Stop. That’s enough more. I’d thought of that—or, rather, I had thought of part of it.” I paused. “You’re right. Faith wins. It is worse than it is. One ray of light, though, the three pills were hollow-points, which break up in the body.… But I am the man who reported the two dead guys to the Captain of Homicide, right? So Sam won’t need a ballistics comparison to guess I was familiar with the scene, right? And I had better call my pal, Samson. O.K. if I use your phone?” I looked at Dru and she nodded, indicated the Princess phone on a table across the room.

But before I got up she said, “There’s another thing, Shell. By now Dad’s car must have been noticed in the parking lot at the church. To some, that’s going to look at least suspicious. And for the Lemmings, that will settle it.”

“Ye gods, yes,” Bruno boomed. “I hadn’t thought of that aspect. Indeed, for many this will further congeal their suspicions, but for Lemmings it will be final and incontrovertible proof of my guilt. My automobile is, alas, a convertible Silver Shadow.”

“You both lost me. Proof? I don’t quite …”

Doctor Bruno stretched, then walked to his chair and sat down. Apparently studying his long fingers, he said, a bit wearily it seemed to me, “Most Lemmings of the Lord are quite poor. The few who were relatively well-to-do when they joined the Church of the Second Coming have in almost all cases—if they remained as members—given the bulk of their money or property to the Church. That is, to Festus Lemming. For they consider wealth undesirable, if not actually a mortal sin, and poverty a virtue.”

He fell silent, examining his thumb, so I said, “That kind of grabs me. Why is being broke a virtue for the Lemmings but not for Lemming, for the sheep but not for the shepherd? And I still don’t get this proof—”

“Ah,” he interrupted, “that is a difficult question to answer. I have personally found it impossible to answer. If I were a cynic, I would say that—if I were a Church—from my point of view it might be very helpful if my members believed poverty, humbleness, meekness, sacrifice, denial, obedience to me, faith in me, love offerings to me, even chastity and celibacy, and so on were stairways to the stars, little steps on the long-suffering ladder to my Heaven. But I am not a Church. I am something of a cynic, however, so I confess that I simply cannot imagine why the Law which applies to Church members does not also apply to the Church of, which the members are members.”

He turned his hand and examined his thumb from the other side. But never mind. To Lemmings, poverty is a virtue because as good Christians they believe, first, it is better to give than to receive, and second, it is easier for a bean to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.”

“Yeah, I went to Sunday school myself, believe it or … Bean?”

He finally folded up his thumb and looked at me. “The word—Gamla—translated as ‘camel’ in the Synoptic Gospels does mean camel, but it also means ‘bean,’ and ‘rope’ as well. If Jesus actually did make any such ridiculous statement about rich men, which is subject to reasonable doubt, he was certainly of such intelligence that given a choice among camel, bean, and rope, he would instantly have chosen rope—which though larger is of the same nature as thread. I will accept the premise that Jesus was divinely inspired, but not that the same is necessarily and equally true of all human translators of the Bible—lo, even unto this day. The translalator of Matthew, Mark, and Luke simply made a mistake. He—and all who copied him—wrote ‘camel’ when he should have written ‘rope.’ I choose the third possible translation, bean, just for the hell of it.”

“It is easier for a rope … yeah. But this proof—”

“Of course. I said my automobile is a Silver Shadow, which is to say a Rolls Royce, a not inexpensive vehicle. Because poverty is virtuous, and a Silver Shadow costs a great many beans, or dollars, its purchaser must be far removed from virtue. But, worse, a convertible Silver Shadow is stupendously costly. I paid … I would hate to tell you how much … for the undeniably sinful pleasure of owning such a vehicle. Therefore, at best I am damned, and at worst consciously in league with Satan.”

“Now I get it. I suppose it’s too late to sneak your heap out of … yeah. No way.” I shrugged. “Well, Doc, I own a convertible Cad, so I’ll see you in hell. Probably be glad to see a friendly face, too.”

“Yes, though Heaven may be a nice place to visit, I really wouldn’t want to live there. But consider: Would it not be sad, very sad, if the translator who wrote of the rich man, made, among his hundreds of other errors, a mistake there, too? What if the word should be, not rich, but mean, dumb, cruel—ding-dong—even poor?” He smiled sardonically. “I’m only guessing, I have no evidence. I do not contend that wealth, of itself, is virtuous.”

I got up, walked to the phone, lifted the receiver.

As I started to dial, Bruno said, “I know this will be difficult for you. But if it is at all possible, I think it would be wise if you continued to avoid mention of my name. For as long, at least, as you can.”

I thought about it, mentally agreed, and nodded. Then I dialed, got the LAPD and, in another half-minute, Captain Samson.

“Hi, Sam. This is Shell. I—”

“Where in hell have you been?”

“Well, first in Church, but I suppose you’ve heard—”

“Are you coming in or do I have to put out a local on you?”

“Coming right in, Sam, right in.” I decided instantly. I knew that biting-through-the-cigar note. “Can’t wait to tell you all the things—”

“We’ll get to your howling and stomping around in Church in a minute—”

“Ah, Sam, come on. Surely you of all people don’t believe everything—”

“—but right now, what’s the story on those two stiffs at fifteen twenty-one Fifty-eighth Street? Two stiffs, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah.” I squinted. Sam did not make dumb-sounding statements just for the fun of it. “Yeah, that’s what I said. That’s what’s there, all right. Right?”

“You want to know how many we found? Try a guess.”

“Not two?”

“No.”

“Well.… Three?”

“Funny fellow. No, Shell, not three. None.”

“What do you mean, none?”

“What the hell do you think none means? It means NONE. No stiffs. Not three, two, or even one—less than one.”

“You’re—” I cut it off. I’d started to say he was kidding. But I knew he wasn’t. And I didn’t want to upset him any more than was absolutely necessary. My pal, my good friend, was not averse to clapping me in a dungeon if it seemed to him a good idea. He had done it before.

So I changed the question to: “You’re sure the officers went to the right address? It, ha-ha, can be identified by two stiffs and a lot of blood—”

“Shell, don’t get gay with me. The report’s here on my desk.… At twelve minutes after eleven P.M. officers entered the house—exercising the great care which you so helpfully suggested. It was the right address, right house. In the back, door broken and two windows smashed. Front door unlocked. Room with smashed windows contained furniture, cut rope, strips of adhesive tape, broken glass, blood, a lot of blood, and no two stiffs.”

“A lot of blood, huh? Well, that’s the place. But, Sam, the stiffs were there when I was. That’s where I left them.”

“Did you also stiffen them?”

“No—well, one of them, yes. When the lab finishes checking they’ll find a slug from his gun in the wall near the door where I came in, which slug he fired at me before.… Um, no gun, either, I’ll bet.”

“You win.”

I didn’t like the way he said it. It sounded like, “You lose.”

“O.K., Sam. See you as soon as I can—on my way—take a little while to get there, since I’m someplace else, but I think it—you’ll get a clearer picture if we jaw person-to-person, just a couple of old buddies chewing the fat—”

“Get down here.”

“Sure. Right.” I paused. “Sam, you’ll wait for me, won’t you?”

I hung up and dug a finger into my ear. When the pain lessened, I took my finger out of my ear and looked at Doctor Bruno, at Dru, and told them:

“I … think I’m in a little trouble.”

12

I explained to Dru and the Doc what Samson had told me, and for a couple of minutes we discussed what the info might mean. Then I said, “We need more facts before we can even make intelligent guesses. Our best bet is to get a lead to those guys who grabbed you and Cassiday. Ill give odds they also tossed those pills at Lemming. But I haven’t the faintest idea why they’d have done it.”

“Nor do I,” Bruno said. He chewed his upper lip for a moment. “However, the unexplained disappearance of the bodies is fortunate in one way. The longer news of André’s death is unknown to the public, the better it probably is for us.”

I nodded. “You don’t suppose, do you, that Festus hates you—us—enough that he might have arranged for one of his worshippers to let fly a couple of near misses at him?”

“Anything is possible. But the element of coincidence disturbs. The good Pastor could not also have been responsible for removal of the two bodies, for he did not know about them.…” Bruno paused. “Or did he?”

“Well, he seems to know everything else,” I said. “Anything is possible. It is even possible I will get busted for loitering unless I arrive very soon at the LAPD.”

I had already told Bruno I would drive him home, and now he said, “Can you wait another two or three minutes while I phone Dave? He should be informed about the disappearance of those bodies, and he may not even know of Lemming’s most recent convulsion.”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll sit on the couch and molest your daughter.”

He smiled a sort of Papa Lisa smile and walked to the phone.

I sat down by Dru. “Are you ready to be molested?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind. If I have to explain it to you first, it’s going to take a lot of fun out of it.”

“You’ve really never tried Erovite, Shell?”

Earlier, at my apartment, I’d confessed I had never consumed even a drop of the stuff. So I merely said, “You’re changing the subject.”

She laughed. “Not really. Be serious.”

“You think I’m not? O.K., no, I have not tried Erovite. I figured maybe when I got to be about a hundred years old, if I was feeling poorly I’d give it a go. But why throw matches on the fire in July, why give a drunk double Martinis? Why carry coals—”

“You have a repulsively poor opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

“Would you rather I was conceited? The truth is, after what I heard I was afraid—”

“Shell, basically, Erovite merely normalizes the body’s functions, purifies, and in a sense ‘recharges’ the blood, feeds the cells, nerves, glands—”

“That’s not so good. I think I’ve got an extra gland that should be starved—”

“—aids in the elimination of wastes and toxins, and tends to balance the entire endocrine system, while at the same time providing that system with a natural and effective stimulus. Its primary effect is simply to normalize the health and function of the body’s cells, all the cells in time, cleansing them of what should not be in them, and providing them with substances and nutrients they need. It merely makes people normal.”

“That does it. That would ruin me—”

She balled up her right fist and gave me a sharp smack in the gut. “Will you listen to me?”

I was listening. In fact, all five senses and possibly more were on the qui vive. Not from the small but definite pain in my gut, but because Dru’s sudden flurry of activity had caused a flurry and commotion at and around and below the V-neckline of her pale green dress, and wiggled its skirt even higher on those smoothly gleaming thighs.

“O.K.,” I said. “Live dangerously if you must. I’ll take a crack at it. Bring me the jug and a cup. But I refuse any responsibility for—”

“Not a jug. Or a cup. Certainly not for you, you shy brute. Taken as directed, Erovite gradually builds up and strengthens the entire system including, of course, the sexual system, increases the sexual energies and drives and desires—which, as you know, is what all this ridiculous fuss has been about. People gradually become sexually normal, a condition so seldom experienced these days that many, particularly those who are themselves quite unwell, consider such a state of health abnormal. It’s strange, but they consider optimum health to be sickness.”

“That is strange. Of course, when you’re not well you feel sick, and then damn near everything looks—”

“But if a person doesn’t use Erovite properly—if he takes too much—it really does have a fantastic aphrodisiac effect. It isn’t actually harmful or dangerous, like cantharides, say, but that isn’t the idea. The whole purpose is for the individual to become, in every possible way, normal.”

“Hey, this could be important. Besides, I’m curious. How much is too much?”

That was a critical moment. Critical because Dru was prevented from satisfying my curiosity right then. In consequence, I did not learn how much was too much. Whether it was therefore a beneficent moment or a bad moment—a boost to man on his upward path or a kick in his pants on the road, paved with good intentions, leading in another direction—only future students of history will be able to say, and even they may be doubtful.

But I say without fear of present or future contradiction: It was a critical moment.

Dru opened her mouth to reply just as Doctor Bruno walked up to us and said, “Did you hear any of the conversation, Sheldon?”

“Only part of it, Doc. Dru and I were discussing—scientific things. I heard you passing on the info I got from Samson, so I assume that was news to Cassiday. He was up to date on Festus?”

“Yes, Dave caught it on another channel. Not Mr. Kyle, but essentially the same information. Including an interview with Pastor Lemming.”

“Another channel, huh? That’s nice. Maybe they’ll print Lemming’s retraction on handbills and pass them out in supermarkets.”

“In drugstores, more likely. Dave is nonplused. About the disappearance of the bodies, I mean. He also assumes the same two men who held us there at the house must have returned to it shortly after we left.” Bruno paused. “But he wonders, as do I, why they would then have removed the bodies. He made a sensible point. Finding all of us gone, the men must have realized police officers would soon be present. Their logical action then would have been to leave immediately, it would seem.”

“Yeah. If I can get my hands on them, that’s one of the other questions I’ll ask. Ask in a way I learned in the Marines. Incidentally, I also heard you saying something to Dave about—was it a march tomorrow?”

“Yes, a march, a demonstration. But I know you’re in a hurry, Sheldon. I’ll explain on the way home.” He walked to the apartment door.

As I stood up, Dru put her hand on my arm. “Why don’t you come back when you’re through with the police?”

“O.K. If the police are through with me. The way Sam sounded, he may want to have me arraigned first. But with luck it shouldn’t take more than half an hour at the police building.”

“It doesn’t matter. If you don’t come back, I’ll know you’re safe in jail.”

“That’s the spirit. Always look on the bright side. Well, the sooner I leave the sooner I’ll be back.”

“So why don’t you leave?”

“Well, that’s … look, don’t think I care. I’ve been thrown out of better places—”

“Will you get out of here?”

That’s what I did. In the Cad, heading back down the freeway, Bruno said, “About the march tomorrow, Sheldon. As the controversy over Erovite increased during recent months, a number of groups—hundreds by now, I suppose—were formed, some supporting and some opposing the sale of Erovite. The largest and most powerful groups in opposition are the voice of Organized Medicine, the AMA, and in the religious area Lemming and the members of his Church. But there are scores of others. The groups in favor of free and unrestricted sale of Erovite are smaller, less powerful, and the news media have given much less attention to them than to the medical-religious opposition. The most vocal of those groups that support me and Dave Cassiday, and campaign for lifting of the FDA ban, is composed of former users of Erovite. Many were debilitated, some seriously ill, most improved after a period during which Erovite was available to them and, now that it is unavailable, find themselves gradually reverting to their former condition. Unfortunately, they are probably no more than twenty thousand in number, but organized in all fifty states under the name ‘Citizens FOR,’ as it is usually called, though the full title is, ‘Citizens FOR: Erovite and Physical-Mental-Sexual Health and Freedom.’”

“Let’s hee, that would be CF, or CFOR. Or in full, CFEPMSHF, or even GFOREPMSHF. Couldn’t they have figured out a jazzier name? Man, you can’t even pronounce it.”

“It was felt that not choosing an acronymic phrase would make the name stand out from the opposition groups, nearly all of which form readily identifiable words. There are, for example, not merely the AMA but Members of the AMA or MAMA, and PAPA—Parents Against Pornographic Aphrodisiacs—and Mothers Opposed to Men and Sex, or MOMS, even Nuns in Opposition to Nudity and Other Obscenities, or NONOO.”

“If they’d just left out ‘Other,’ they’d have had a dandy, what?”

“Yes, it seems a shame. Most of these groups were long ago organized in opposition to, or against, numerous other evils and have now loosely united in opposition to the sale of Erovite. Which is one of the reasons for the name ‘Citizens FOR.’ At any rate, since tomorrow marks the climax of Festus Lemming’s campaign against virtually everything, in most of the fifty states, members of Citizens FOR plan some kind of march, meeting, or demonstration—the entire purpose being to achieve, hopefully, maximum coverage by various news media, especially television, so that the FOR side may be given more attention and publicity than has been the case till now.”

I shook my head. “It looks like a rough battle, if they’re lined up against not merely the Lemmings but MAMA and PAPA and MOMS and NONOO—I wish they’d left out that ‘Other’—”

“Their only real hope is to do something sufficiently dramatic that the news media will almost have to give it national coverage. In some states, membership is so small that not more than a few dozen people will be available for demonstrations, so the intent is to concentrate on cities where there are the most Lemmings. There are more Lemmings in Southern California than anywhere else, but also more Citizens FOR, so it is incumbent upon the local group to, somehow, take at least part of the play away from the Church of the Second Coming, and its Pastor’s announcement of the time of Jesus’ arrival.” He paused. “Perhaps ‘play’ is not quite the right word.”

“I gather the local group is going to march somewhere?”

“Not just somewhere, Sheldon. Up Filbert Street to Heavenly Lane and to the headquarters church of the Church of the Second Coming. They are aiming at the bull’s-eye.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I guess.” But I got a funny little feeling all along my spine, as if it had wrinkled a little. “Not, I hope, while Festus is sermonizing his worshippers.”

“No. That was considered, but was rejected for fear the march would be described as an attempt to suppress Religious Freedom throughout the Universe. And the members of Citizens FOR have no desire to prevent even Lemmings from meeting and holding whatever services they desire. They simply want to be left alone, so long as they do not themselves inhibit the actions of, or injure, others.”

“They’ve got a nerve.”

“Unfortunately, final plans are not yet completed, even though less than a day remains before the march. Most of the pro-Erovite people are strongly individualistic, they have minds of their own, are not easily led. In consequence, it is difficult for them to reach agreement—whereas all Lemmings everywhere can be instantly united by a word from their Leader. In a way, tomorrow’s march may exemplify the conflict between reason and faith, and I’m afraid faith is much better organized, much more united. In the main, those who are pro-Erovite reason, argue, debate, question, doubt, and usually wind up with a compromise that is neither the best nor the worst possible solution. Lemmings, however, do not doubt their Pastor or the dogma of his Church—in fact, cannot, for if they doubt or question, they are expelled from their Eden.”

“Yeah. You mean the local Citizens FOR still don’t know what they’re going to do tomorrow?”

“Not every detail. It is agreed they will march, and to the Church of the Second Coming in Weilton. But as of tonight—Dave passed this on to me when I phoned him—it has not been decided whether the entire group will participate or merely a selected few from the large number available. They are also still trying to decide upon messages to be displayed on the signs and placards they will carry.”

We were near the turnoff to Monterey Park. I swung into the right lane of the freeway, slowed for the turn. “How about …‘Try Erovite—Before You Die!’?” I asked. “Or—hey, here’s a great one—‘Feeling Poopy? Getting Droo—’”

“Tomorrow,” the Doc went on, pretending he hadn’t heard me, “the groupy … group will meet at Dave’s house and, it is hoped, reach agreement on final details. Dave has worked closely with them for the last few months, since he—as do I, of course—supports completely their goal of assuring unrestricted sale of Erovite once more. I’ll give you his address and phone number, in case you need to get in touch with him.”

“Good idea. I’ll want to talk with him tomorrow. Wasn’t a lot of time earlier.”

“It has been an unusual night,” Bruno said in quiet understatement.

I filled a paper cup with coffee in the homicide squad room, on the third floor of L.A.’s police building, then went on into the captain’s office.

Samson was grinding out a cigar in the heavy ashtray on his desk. He’s a big man, solid, like a guy chipped from a boulder, with a clean-shaven pink face, fringe of iron-gray hair on his scalp, and sharp, alert eyes. Brown eyes they are, but subject to a sort of limited chameleon change, capable of turning from a brown like chocolate fudge to a brown like cold dark marble, depending on his mood. At the moment they resembled a kind of marble fudge, which I supposed meant he could go either way.

Phil Samson is the best kind of modern cop, familiar with everything from legwork through interrogation to the latest wrinkles in scientific investigation, honest, dedicated, proud of his job and good at it, overworked, always behind but always trying to catch up, and ready to lay his life on the line if “the job” required it. He’s one of the many police officers with only ten fingers for a dozen holes in the dike, and a long-suppressed desire to go to the can, which is what’s on the other side of the dike. He maintained, as well, a not unreasonable conviction that without him and men like him no other citizens, including those who called him and his fellow officers pigs, could walk the city’s streets alone and unarmed by day, much less after dark.

Sam finished grinding out his cigar. A couple of short black butts, ends well chewed, were already in the tray. Then he looked up and glared at me for a few seconds before saying, gently, “Good of you to come, Shell. What news of great cheer do you bring me?”

“Nothing special, Sam. Just happened to be in the neighborhood—”

“Start at the beginning.”

When I finished, I swallowed the last of my coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and tossed it into his wastebasket.

Sam scowled for a while, made some notes on a yellow pad. He put down the pencil, opened a desk drawer and got another of his long black cigars, stuck it unlighted between his teeth. He chewed on it for a few seconds, heavy jaw wiggling, then he asked three questions and made one statement.

“What made you think Lemming could help you find the man you were looking for?”

“Information my client gave me. I didn’t get any help from Lemming—the contrary, as you know—but I had to check it out.”

“This guy, already dead when you crashed into the house, they shot something into him, then cut his leg and just let the man bleed to death?”

“That’s right. At least, it’s the story I was given, and there’s no reason to doubt it. All that blood was from him, and I don’t have any idea what they squirted into his arm.”

“When those two shots were fired at Lemming, you were with your client’s father, nowhere near the church?”

“That’s right, Sam. He and I were driving to the gal’s apartment in L.A.—of course, the father’s also my client, now. Anyhow, we weren’t even near Weilton. Left there right after called you.”

“O.K. About that call, and those shots at the church. You missed something there, Shell. Your call came in at eleven-oh-three P.M. Officers entered the house, eleven-twelve P.M. Your two hoods could have fired the shots, or they could have moved the bodies from the house, but they couldn’t have done both.”

I thought about it, nodded. “You’re right. I did miss it. But, Sam, that’s only because I had not yet carefully considered every little detail—”

“Just one more thing. Give me the names you left out and you can go.”

“Names? Sam, you know—”

“The names. Your client, her father, the guy held in the house with him, and the man who bled to death. Just those four and you can be on your merry way.”

“Sam, you wouldn’t hold me just because of a little—”

“I would.”

“You’d put the arm on your old buddy! Clap your pal in a cell and leave him—”

“I would.”

“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even nod, just chewed his stinking cigar—stinking when lighted—and let the sharp brown eyes stick me. After all, he’d told me twice, and usually he told people only once. Besides, this was, unquestionably now, a police matter; further, if Bruno and Dave had been in danger before, they remained in at least equal danger—which was not going to be lessened when news of André Strang’s murder was noised about. So I gave Samson what he wanted, or at least as much of it as I knew.

He was scowling and shaking his head when I finished.

He tore the top sheet from his pad and jotted a few lines on the next one while mumbling, “It couldn’t be something simple, could it? Of course not. You’ve got to get between two goddamned armies. King of the sex kooks on one side, high priest of the holy on the other, and you in the middle, a white-haired clown in No-No Man’s Land waving a banner with a strange device—”

“Hey, hold it. Clown you can get away with—this once—but what’s this king of the sex kooks? Emmanuel Bruno is, just to begin with, a hell of a man. Plus brilliant scientist, dedicated—”

“I know who he is. His real alias is Ponce de León, and he’s put the Fountain of Youth in bottles at forty bucks a pint, or three hundred and twenty clams a gallon, which comes to maybe sixteen, seventeen thousand bucks per barrel of snake oil.”

“Sam, you’re wrong. You’re getting cranky in your years of senility. What you need is Erovite. I tell you, this guy—”

“Erovite. You’ve tried it? And now you sleep two hours a night but waken with a magical brew singing in your blood, power purring in your brain, the surge of hot-diggety-dog in your loins? Casey!” he yelled out the door, beckoned with a waggling index finger, then looked at me. “You testify to this wonder from your own experience, your personal rebirth?”

“Hell, no, you know I haven’t tried the stuff—and will you quit yacking like Big Lord Fauntleroy? All the reports about Erovite—a lot of them, anyhow—mention the slow but steady, and in the end sometimes almost miraculous, increase of health, energy, well-being. And Bruno himself said—”

“He said. Some of the reports. Hearsay. Right, Shell? Hearsay testimony, pure and simple. After all this time, you’d still expect to put that kind of evidence in the record?”

“This isn’t a court, Sam.” I would have said more, but a plainclothes detective came in and Samson handed him the yellow sheet of paper on which he’d jotted some notes, including my secondhand description of the two men who’d snatched Bruno.

“See if you can get any kind of make on these guys, Casey,” he said. “This is all we’ve got right now. Not too many left-handers, start with him.”

The detective nodded and went out.

After we’d jawed another minute or two, Samson said, “O.K., on your way, Shell. But keep in touch. No tricks—and no more commotion. No more. This town’s ready enough to explode without your lighting fuses. You read me?”

“Loud and clear, Sam,” I said, and left.

Dru opened the door and smiled. “That was pretty fast, Shell. I’m glad you didn’t have to spend the night in jail.”

“Me, too. I’d much rather spend the night … out of jail. Hey,” I said as I walked inside and she closed the door, “I like that—outfit.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to call it. She’d changed into some kind of flowing white garment that covered her from throat to ankles, smooth over breasts and hips and belted with a length of braided cloth at her narrow waist. It could have been either some kind of filmy nightgown or a long dress to be worn to formal parties tossed by broad-minded people, but it looked good and it looked Grecian, much like something Aphrodite might have worn at her peak. Dru, too, looked good and much like Aphrodite might have looked at her peak.

“I hoped you would,” she said.

She preceded me to the divan, and we sat where we’d been little more than an hour before. After a few seconds of silence, I said, “Well, here I am. Here we are. How about that? Was there any special reason you wanted me to come back? You know, to … help you move the furniture, maybe? If so, let’s get it done, and maybe we’ll have time—”

“Yes.”

“The furniture?”

“No.”

“I was hoping that wasn’t it.”

“The reason is, well, partly the way you’ve acted all night, Shell. Of course, I could be wrong. And it has to do with something Dad said, too.”

“Dad?”

“It’s because …” A very small smile curved her full red lips, and the lazy gray eyes seemed more heavy lidded, almost slumbrous. She took a deeper breath, and beneath the smooth white cloth her breasts rose, and rose, and when she breathed out, her smile broadened as she finished in a soft warm voice, “… because I’m so yin … and you’re so very yang.”

13

I was tall, very tall, billions of light-years tall, and I lay on a bed of stars with my love of the latest millennium. In fact, I was kissing Andromeda on her neck.

She didn’t seem to mind. To the contrary, there was little doubt that she thought it a splendid idea. In consequence, Nature took its course, and we sinned.

One would think, however, if one were dumb enough to think at such a time, that this was the thing to do. For everyone else and everything else, here and below and above and everywhere you looked, was doing precisely the same thing. We lay, Andromeda and I, in the approximate middle of a writhing, seething, boiling and churning immensity absolutely crammed with Nature doing what comes Naturally, for both here and in the macrocosm above and the microcosm below, outside of us and inside of us, the almost identical play was being acted and acted again. Everything was having a swell time.

But then God, in hobnailed boots, came crunching over the stars. He was not pleased. He looked very much like Festus Lemming. Or else Lemming came crunching, and he looked very much like God. He was very thin, whoever he was, with lips like ashes and eyes like night and a long gray beard and the sour and cramped expression of Infinity with an upset stomach. He lifted a Leg, swung a hobnail-booted Foot, preparing to kick me out of Heaven.

In the millennia before God’s Boot landed, I caught a glimpse of something beyond and behind and around him, faintly luminous, indistinctly glowing, a wondrous nebulousness which neither eye nor mind could enfold or comprehend, a something truly wonderful and awesome, a magnificence incomprehensible, a fire infinite in which all else burned—a something I couldn’t quite make out but which was much larger and grander even than God. Or … could it have been a something larger and grander than Lemming, who looked as if he were God and sounded as if he were God and acted as if he were God?

The luminousness grew brighter, the nebulousness was shot through with flame, the answer was nearer, ever nearer as the flames burned brighter, and I had begun to wonder about that Foot, and the Boot upon that Foot, both of which were also getting nearer and nearer, and I realized with a terrible and horrifying and chilling fear that I was doubting the divinity of that Foot and Boot, and knew if they were of Lemming and Lemming was God I was going to Hell … Yes! … to Hell … Yes! … and burn forever for my sin of doubt, and that fear, and fear of doubt, froze my thought.

So even though the flames grew so blindingly bright that I knew the answer was there, it was too late, because—whumpf—God Almighty’s Hobnail-Booted Foot caught me with Infinite Force squarely on my petrified ass and kicked me out of Heaven, and I spun, falling, fearful and frozen and aching, knowing I was eternally damned for indulging in sinful and shameful pleasure, and I could hear Andromeda, for she had been sinful and shameful, too, screaming.…

I came up out of sleep with a growl in my throat and, in my mind, the most horrible thought that had ever been in it: What if Festus Lemming is God? Or even if he isn’t, quite, what if he’s right?

And then my eyes were opened, and I saw Drusilla Bruno. Or, I saw Drusilla Bruno and my eyes were opened.

She was leaning over me, and the sound that I had thought was Andromeda screaming was Dru, merely whispering. Her bright hair was tangled and wild, eyes heavy with sleep and love, her magnificent breasts naked and brazen, curve of waist and swell of hip and sweetness of thigh a gift and blessing for my eyes, and I knew in an instant, without need of confirmation by anyone or anything else that Festus was a freak and what for a fearful moment I had thought damnation was merely life, or Nature, or love. No, not sinful, not shameful, unless beauty is sin and desire damnation.

“What a heavenly sight,” I said, “but you’re light-years away.” Dru smiled and leaned closer, and I kissed her lips, felt her smile melt beneath my mouth, and her body merge with mine.

So it came to pass that—joyously—we shamefully sinned.

Again.

By ten o’clock of that bright morning, the fifteenth of August, I was tooling along the freeway once more, top down on the Cad, feeling fine and frisky and energetic, full of magical beans.

I had checked with my informants and got another zero for my pains. There wasn’t a rumble about the two men I was trying to find. I’d had a hunch before, and was now reasonably certain they weren’t local hoods. But I still felt they were hoods, pros, men well acquainted with guns and brutality and death—if only because of what had happened to Strang.

I had also phoned Emmanuel Bruno, who asked if I could stop at his home—which was where I was going, full of beans. Bruno had been interrogated at some length by the police, and though he’d not enjoyed it much, he seemed not overly displeased this morning that I had spilled the whole story to Samson last night.

He lived in an exclusive development called Riverdale Estates—though there wasn’t a river within miles, or a dale, either—and I had to stop and be okayed by a guard at the gate before driving in. It was a lovely development. There were many trees, much grass and shrubbery and greenness, and the widely spaced houses were set well back from the winding streets.

Bruno’s home—small, for a man who drove a convertible Silver Shadow—was centered in a full acre, landscaped so heavily that the house wasn’t visible from outside the grounds. I’d driven him home last night, but in the darkness had not been able to appreciate the virtual jungle of citrus and nut trees, eucalyptus and oak, and dozens of strange-looking trees and shrubs I couldn’t identify.

I parked in front of the house and started toward the door when Bruno called to me. “Sheldon. I’m over here.”

He was stretched out in a hammock tied between a couple of pecan trees, but as I turned and walked toward him he rolled out and sort of spilled, loosely and easily, to the ground. Smiling, he came forward to shake my hand, then led me back to a rough-hewn wooden table with four primitive-looking but very comfortable chairs around it.

We sat down and he said, “One reason for my wanting to see you this morning, Sheldon, is that I feel we should discuss my dialogue with the police.”

“Yeah, as I mentioned on the phone, it was either level with Sam or spend a night—or nights—in the can, so I chose what seemed the lesser evil. What I didn’t mention is that the captain told me he was going to have a team talk to you, but hinted that if I tipped you he’d have me analyzed a pound at a time in the crime lab. Sorry I couldn’t fill you in before the officers showed up, Doc, but Sam was not at his most relaxed—”

“That’s quite all right, Sheldon. I realize you must have been subjected to considerable pressure. I assume, under the circumstances, you held nothing back?”

“Not a thing.”

Bruno nodded. “Fine. From the officers’ questions and attitude I felt they already knew a good deal, and it must have been necessary for you to inform your friend of most or all that occurred last night. So I simply told them everything I knew myself. Therefore, our stories should be identical. If they had not agreed, I would guess your friend might have taken further action by now.”

“That’s not a guess, Doc. It’s a statement of fact. Actually, it’s a good thing Sam and the police do know.”

He nodded again. “Yes, my major concern was the effect on the public, particularly Lemmings of the Lord, of news about André’s death. But there appears to have been no commotion.”

“That’s because the police haven’t, as far as I know, found the bodies yet. When they do, the news will be made public.”

Bruno stood up. “That was one of the reasons I wanted to see you, Sheldon. The other is—excuse me a moment. I have something for you.” He walked to his house and disappeared inside, came back in about a minute carrying something in his hand. “Catch,” he said, and tossed it to me.

I grabbed it, fumbled it, finally got a grip on the bottle—for that’s what it was, a round brown pint bottle filled with liquid, but without any label on it.

“Erovite!” said the Doc grandly.

“So this is it, huh? This is what all the fuss is about. Looks harmless enough.”

“It is, it is, Sheldon. Harmless, at least, for those who desire health, energy, more of life. For those who believe life is best when lived least, why, undoubtedly it is iniquitous, a corrosive poison. Therefore, and quite properly, they are justified in their efforts to prevent everyone from poisoning themselves with an excess of life.”

“Somehow I get the impression you don’t have a very high opinion of the mass of mankind, Doc.”

“I have an astonishingly low opinion of the mass of mankind. But only because they have earned it.” He sat down again, across the table from me, and studied his long thumb.

“Erovite merely improves the function of the physical man, his glands, nerves, blood, cells, lymph, and so on. However, I believe mind, and whatever is spirit for that matter, and I suppose some might even say whatever is God—you need not agree with me, Sheldon, this is merely my opinion—resides within every cell and atom of man’s body. Thus to improve man’s cellular, muscular, glandular, nervous, and other functions is to at least make more possible, more probable, parallel improvement in the functioning of brain, of mind, perhaps even of spirit.…”

He folded up his thumb and glanced at me. “Be that as it may, Erovite’s enemies, in the main, oppose it because it isn’t spiritual enough.”

I blinked. “Come again? Neither is aspirin. Or how about vegetable soup—”

“I may have misled you. We are not speaking of pills to suppress symptoms or even overprocessed foods to keep the body in a state of suspended animation. We are speaking of … well, of life, and that more abundantly. There is no question that Erovite stimulates, energizes, improves the physical body of most men and women who use it—I stress the physical—the flesh, the carnal, the animal body of man. Including, as we have discussed, as you know, the sexual or most ‘base’ part of his nature.”

“Yeah, well, that’s first base as far as I’m—”

“I am not speaking of you, Sheldon. I would be offended if you failed to realize it. Essentially, I am speaking of individuals like the Lemmings of the Lord, and others less fanatical and less miserable but almost equally misled. Misled by ideas that have become dominant in Christian doctrine over the last sixteen hundred years. Long ago …”

He stopped, examined both sides of his thumb, then folded his hands on the table and looked at me. “No, I will not burden you with the full catalogue of names and dates, chapters and verses. We would be here throughout the day and into the night. We would have to examine all major influences on Christianity, from times both before and after the birth of the first Christian, who, as you recall, was crucified—or hanged on a tree, according to Peter and Paul and other Apostles … but no matter. We would be required to examine very carefully the singular influence upon Christian origins of Gotama the Buddha, who for presumably good reasons is vastly revered to this day, and who in a huge burst of brightness, concluded that life was pain, sorrow, suffering, misery—not merely for him, but for everybody—so the only solution was to get out of it.”

“Get.… How do you do that without killing yourself?”

“I don’t know. Buddha knows.”

“Doesn’t sound like a burst of brightness to me.”

“That is because you are not spiritual enough—which brings me back to my point. The Buddha was an unusually sheltered youth of twenty-nine when he left his parents’ home and set forth to find wisdom, and though it took him perhaps seven years to achieve illumination under a tree, he did find it.”

“The tree?”

“Wisdom.”

“In that case, I think I’ll settle for dumbness.”

“In this case, that is wisdom.”

“Something is cracked—”

“Something, perhaps. But it could not have been Gotama—Buddha is merely a title, by the way, meaning teacher, and the man was named Gotama as other men are named Bill or Tom or Pete—for Gotama the Buddha was an Avatar, one cosmically enlightened, who discovered Truths. That’s with a capital ‘T,’ Sheldon. People like you or me, or Bill or Tom or Pete, may stumble upon little truths, but we must depend upon Avatars like Gotama, and the cosmically illumined, and our religious teachers, to discover Truths. Particularly Spiritual Truths.”

“Who says so?”

“They do.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“And that is how we know—as found to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of Truths by Buddha—that the reason life is so miserable is desire. And desire at its very worst is exemplified by woman, whom we must therefore avoid like the seven-year itch.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m quoting. Well, accurately paraphrasing.”

“But, pretty quick, nobody would be left—”

“Precisely. That is the idea. Is it not brilliant? Our interest is that, from Buddhist wisdom, this idea sneaked into and became part of the Truth ennobling and glorifying Christianity. You see, possessed of all this wisdom—I shall not burden you with the rest of it—Gotama became consumed by the desire to share with others, hopefully all mankind, these pearls of his wisdom. So he did. At least, he did his very best, which turned out to be quite good, with the result that even today hundreds of millions of people, including the majority of Christians, while perhaps renouncing Buddhism by name, have unknowingly absorbed its pearls. Such as, the flesh is evil and woman a snare—”

“Wait a minute. You say Buddha was consumed with desire to spread this bilge to everybody?”

“Yes. Precisely. Well put, Sheldon.”

“But—consumed with desire? Isn’t he the same Avatar who said desire is undesirable?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“This is maybe a different desire?”

“No. Same one.”

“Then how …?”

“You ask very perceptive questions, Sheldon. Of course, I practically forced this one upon you. Still, you asked it. Therefore I shall insist that you answer it.”

“But I can’t.”

“Ah.” Bruno smiled. “Then we are all in the same leaky boat, aren’t we?” He leaned back, crossed one long leg over the other, and clasped his hands around his knee. “Enough of the Buddha. More, we shall not even look at similar views of the major author of our New Testament, Saint Paul of Tarsus, or at the Manichaeans and their one-time disciple, Saint Augustine, not at the numerous major and minor Popes and popes and innumerable life-hating poops, not at Wesley or Calvin or Saints or even Festus Lemming.”

“I’m glad of that. I’ve got to go to the john, Doc.”

“Suffer a little. It is good for the soul.”

“The hell with that. I could get constipated.”

“Naturally. You are supposed to get constipated. Now, we are discovering why so many loving Christians hate Erovite—”

“We are?”

“More correctly, you are discovering it. I already know. Very simply, there is a belief, a rumor, an assumption abroad that the God of all the Universe made man of flesh and of spirit, and that the spirit part of man is marvelously good, but the flesh part of man is marvelously evil. It is clear to discerning minds, then, that God goofed. Obviously, He did not know what He was doing—”

“How—”

“Please. I am telling you what our teachers tell us. And, because I cannot, I will not explain it. Ah, well.” He straightened up, stretched his long arms. Then he relaxed once more and said, looking not at me but at one of his trees, “Surely, the fall of man came, not when we are told it came, but when some men declared the flesh evil and other men believed the lie. Festus Lemming is the logical abortion of that bastard conception. And he must oppose Erovite, or else admit to himself that his entire life has been a waste and a ruin.”

I’d put the bottle of Erovite on the table before me. Bruno leaned forward, picked it up, and looked at it with a gentle smile on his face, like a boy looking at a new puppy.

“Perhaps now you understand a little better why—among many others—the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor is leery of this glop.”

I grinned. “Yeah, quite a bit better.” I looked at the brown bottle in his hand, wondering about it, even wondering about a couple of things Samson had said to me last night. “Doc, does Erovite really do everything you and Dru, and apparently a lot of other people, say it does?”

He nodded a couple of times, not speaking.

“And you and Dru, and Dave Cassiday, are the only people alive who know the formula? The full, complete … Formula B, I think you called it?”

He looked at me, eyebrows arching upward above his bright blue eyes. “Dru and I, yes. But Dave doesn’t know it What gave you that idea, Sheldon?”

I didn’t answer him for a while. Finally, I said, “I suppose I assumed it because he’s the manufacturer, he made the stuff for you—at the Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceutical Company. And last night you mentioned adding more glop to the glop, saying you and Dave did it. He doesn’t know what’s in Erovite?”

“Not everything. The basic formula, yes. And I meant that only Dave was present when I added the rest of the formula to the vats, not that he knew what I added. But—what difference does it make?”

“Maybe none. Maybe a lot. I figure the best chance right now of finding out who’s responsible for putting the snatch on you—assuming it wasn’t the bright idea of those mugs who did the job—is to get next to the two mugs still alive and loose, and lean on them. Whoever’s behind it, we’ll find somebody with motive—money, revenge, cleanse the world, who knows? Until this minute I assumed Cassiday had no motive because he already knew the entire formula. Hell, the way you tell it, Erovite could be worth hundreds of millions at least.”

“It is. But you can eliminate Dave from your investigations, and even suspicions, Sheldon. He’s an old friend, completely trustworthy. I’m sure you realize there could be at least a thousand men, now unknown to us, who are not only aware of Erovite’s value but greedy and conscienceless enough to employ any violence in the hope of gaining possession of the formula.”

“I’ll go along with that. But when it comes to where and how I go on a job—and my suspicions—I’m afraid I’ve got to be my own buddha, Doc. Before I’m through, I may suspect you of snatching yourself.”

He smiled. “You have had no success in locating, or even identifying, the two men?”

“Not yet. Captain Samson started checking them out last night, and the police machinery has a better chance of tagging them than we do. Incidentally, Sam made a good point when I talked to him. Those two toughs might have moved the bodies of their pal and André from the house, or they might have taken those shots at Lemming, but considering the time element they couldn’t have done both.…”

I stopped, as a thought sort of tickled my brain, then hauled off and smacked it. “I’ll be goddamned,” I said softly. “Of course. How could I have missed it?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Those two toughs who grabbed you took the shots at Festus Lemming, all right. Or, rather, they didn’t shoot at him.”

“They did … but didn’t? Sheldon, how—”

“They fired the shots, but not at Festus. They were trying to kill Regina Winsome.”

14

“Regina?” I said. “This is Shell Scott. Let me in.”

“No!”

I looked at the number on the door. Right place. Before leaving Bruno’s home I had checked on Miss Winsome’s address, Unit Thirty-four of the Canterbury Community, a sprawling condominium on Flower Street in L.A.

“Go away! You—you—”

I groaned. Sure. Yeah. I hadn’t phoned the luscious—but still Lemming—Regina. I had simply raced here at reckless speed to warn her, possibly save her from violent death. But I had forgotten there was a fate worse than death. Worse, I had failed to consider the probability that by now I was a fate even worse than the fate worse than death.

“Regina,” I said, “you’re in trouble, a lot of trouble, you’re in terrible danger, and I came here to—”

She screamed.

“Not danger from me, you idiot,” I roared. “I came here to warn you, to help you.”

“Go away! Go—”

“Goddammit, let me in! I’m not going to hurt you, or … anything. You hear me? I’m not going to, ah, anything. Do I have to break the goddamn door down to save you?”

I slammed the wooden panel with the side of my fist a couple of times, then stopped, took a deep breath, and another. Why did this babe get me so shook? Probably because she looked like a tomato grown in the Garden of Eden, but acted like a cucumber destined to be a pickle. Which would have been depressing even to a vegetarian. And I’m carnivorous. Or maybe I just react negatively when gorgeous babes scream at the mention of my name.

Movement to my left caught my eye. Twenty feet down the enclosed but open-to-the-sky walkway another door was open, and a small man stood in it. He had a wispy mustache, straight brown hair, and wore rimless glasses through which he bugged me with startled eyes.

I smiled at him. Smiled, sort of. “Something?”

He disappeared like a wraith and the door closed softly.

“Regina!” I said to the door. “Be sensible. I suppose Pastor Lemming, Earth’s Mr. Clean, said some dirty things about me last night after I left? Behind my back?”

“He told us everything about you, everything! Go—”

“What a rotten bit of luck,” I said. “Look, Regina, I suppose you still think I shot at Pastor Lemming?”

“You did! You did, you did, you—”

“Will you knock it off?”

“Well, you asked me.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to give you that one. Regina, dear. Just listen for a moment. I did not shoot at your Pastor. In fact, nobody shot at him.”

“They did! You did. I was there—”

“That’s my point. Those shots weren’t at Pastor Lemming. They were at you.”

Silence.

“They were,” I repeated, “aimed at Regina Winsome. Two slobs—not including me, two other slobs—tried to kill you, Regina.”

Finally, in a much smaller voice this time, “Me?”

“That’s right. And remember, you’re the one who got nicked, not Lemming. Lemming didn’t bleed even a drop. Not that I’m sure he could … ah. Just let me in, Regina, and I shall explain all this to your entire satisfaction.”

She kept me out there arguing for another minute, but finally I heard rattling as the door chain was removed, then more rattling for another door chain, then the click of a key in the lock.

“Why don’t I climb in a window?” I asked ungraciously. “No sense making you dial the combination.”

But then the door opened, and Regina stared wide-eyed at me, and backed away as I stepped into the room. Even backing away, however, which isn’t quite what a red-blooded man hopes for in his heart of hearts, she looked better than most gals running at you. I had only half-remembered the sweet bright beauty of that soft face, the enormity of those liquid eyes, eyes like light purple or deep lavender in the reflected sunlight.

And, too, she was not now wearing that droopy gray robe, or the shower-cap thing on her head, so I could not only see that her hair was long and thick and the color of chestnuts roasting on a charcoal fire, but that an accurate description of her figure would undoubtedly require breaking several canons of the Church of the Second Coming.

Looking at Regina in a soft pink turtleneck sweater and white skirt as she breathed much more deeply than normally, perhaps due to anger or fear or both, white skirt hugging rounded hips flaring from the slim waist, sweetly curving lips parted and eyes even bigger and wider than they usually were, I could not understand why simply joining the Church was not grounds for her instant excommunication.

You may think that I, having spent quite some time recently with extraordinarily yinny Dru Bruno, should not have been nearly so interested in, and certainly not fascinated by, the carnal and fleshly phenomena displayed so prominently by Regina Winsome. You may think I should have considered almost with disinterest, if not actual boredom, the distinct probability that beneath her sweater was no contraption cleverly designed to lift, spread, squash, separate, increase, disguise, decrease, or conceal Regina, but only the unencumbered deliciousness of Regina. And you may think it should never have entered my mind that the way the slightly fuzzy pink cloth clung to the warm abundance of Regina’s deliciousness with a caress that covered but did not really conceal was much like the way peach skins cling to prize peaches overdue for plucking.

You may think that. You have my permission. You may think any fool thing you want to.

“How much longer are you going to stand there?” Regina asked me.

“What? Well … how long have I been standing here?”

“Quite a while. I thought you wanted to explain a bunch of things to me.”

“Well, there you are. You just can’t trust anybody these—ah, yes, those two dirty rats were shooting at you, Regina. At you. And I am going to kill them the first chance I get.”

“Kill, kill! Can’t you think of anything else?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“The very first thing, you say you’re going to kill a bunch of people. You are a foul murderer, just like the Sainted Pastor said.”

“The hell with that ding—listen, two isn’t a bunch. Anyhow, maybe I’ll only wound … arrgh. Can you keep quiet a minute? You shake me up enough with your mouth shut. Look, let’s lie down on the couch—I mean, sit on the bed … arrgh. Let’s stand here on the floor while I explain. This is important. Really.”

She didn’t say anything.

“O.K. That’s better. Now.…”

I could feel a slight breeze cooling the back of my neck. The door was still ajar, since I hadn’t closed it when I walked inside. Doors ajar—especially under the circumstances I was, soner or later, going to describe for Regina—fill me with” considerable unease. So I stepped to the door, shut it, picked up the chain and prepared to stick the metal doohickey into the slot, and

“What are you going to do!”

I dropped the chain and it tinkled on the wood. I damn near tinkled on the wood. There had been in Regina’s voice the high shrill note of innocent children meeting goblins in the forest, and it went through me like light through a bulb.

I found I had my eyes shut, teeth clenched, lips spread, arms down and rigid at my sides. I stood there and noticed that, without my willing them to move, my hands went out and up and then down, pat, and I felt I was beginning to understand the terrible stresses Doctor Bruno must have been experiencing lately.

I wiggled my shoulders, shook my arms, then turned my head. “I don’t know how you did that,” I said. “But please don’t do it again.”

Regina had retreated a couple of yards farther into the room. Her arms were crossed over her chest, left hand cupping most of her right breast, right hand full to overflowing with the left one. Her knees were slightly bent, and she was in a little crouch as if preparing to hop straight up into the air for about an inch.

“What am I going to do? Why, I am going to leave,” I said. “And I will make sure the door is wide open, so the bad men can peek in and see you and shoot you. I’ll go wait for you at the morgue. Isn’t that nice?”

“Bad men?”

“They’re not exactly good.”

“I—I’m sorry, Mr. Scott. I thought … our Sainted Pastor told us last night that you …”

I sighed. “We’ll get to our beloved tattletale in a minute, maybe.” Behind her was a door, ajar, visible beyond it a bed and a nightstand with a lamp on it. “Right now, Regina, you go into that room.” I pointed. “And shut the door. Lock it. Put the bed against it. Then we’ll talk. We seem to do better with a door between us. Not much, but some.” I sighed again. “I really do have to explain why you may have celebrated your last birthday. How many have you had, by the way?”

“I’m twenty-five. Twenty-six in two months.”

“Uh-huh. And thirty in four years. By then I’ll be thirty-four, over the hill. Well, go lock yourself in, dear.”

“No—I said I was sorry. I won’t … won’t act like that again.” She’d already straightened up and dropped her arms. She moistened her lips, then walked across the room to a teal-blue divan and sat down. “You can sit down if you’d like, Mr. Scott. Please.”

“Not just yet. You sit and listen—closely. Last night two men fired some shots, presumably at Pastor Lemming, actually at you, shortly after the services ended. A few hours earlier the same two men forced other individuals, whom I needn’t name, into a car in the church parking lot. While one of those individuals and one of the two gunmen were still standing outside the car, a girl drove into the lot, parked, and ran toward the church. As she passed these men, she waved to one of them.”

Regina’s eyes were wide again. I paced toward the door, and back, restless. “When you and I were talking to Pastor Lemming last night, you apologized to him for being late. We’ll ignore how sweet he was about your tardiness. More important, I’d guess you were just about the last member of the congregation to arrive. Which is to say, the girl in the parking lot.”

“Yes,” she said softly, curiously. “I was terribly late. And I remember the car, some people—I waved at Pastor Strang. He’s one of the Church officials, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Did you get a look at the other man, the one standing near Strang?”

“Well, yes. I didn’t pay much attention.”

“Describe him. If you can. Anything at all.”

“He did look right at me, I remember—I really got only a glimpse of him. Let’s see, he was … shorter than you, and quite a bit slimmer. Dark. That’s all. Oh, I think his hair was lighter, almost white, right at the middle of his forehead. Like maybe it was gray there.” She shook her head, the thick roasted-chestnut hair bouncing. “That’s all.”

“It’s enough. It’s why he, and his buddy, tried to kill you.” She took a deep breath and I heard it sigh from her mouth. “Regina,” I said, “can I tell you something in confidence? I mean, that you won’t repeat to anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Not even to Pastor Lemming? Especially not to him?”

“Not even.…” She was silent for a few seconds. “All right.”

“O.K. That man you saw, and his buddy, plus a third man they met after leaving the church lot, last night killed André Strang. After you’d seen them together. They murdered—”

She gasped, lifted one hand to her throat.

I went on, “murdered him, in a very cruel and cold-blooded manner. Strang’s body hasn’t been found yet, but those hard boys know when it is found and reported, the girl who waved to André will certainly recall waving to him, and very likely remember the man who was with him. Remember that other man well enough to describe him, maybe later identify him. So they also know, if everything’s to be kept tidy, they have to kill that girl. They knew it last night—when they tried to do it, and missed. They still know it. And maybe next time they won’t miss.”

Regina looked pale. She bit her lower lip, then said, “I can’t believe anyone would want to kill me. Besides, Pastor Lemming said the shots were at him. And if he said it—”

“Yeah, if he said it, it must be true. If he says roosters lay eggs, hens will start crowing in the morning. If he says the sun rises in the west, from now on we march north to go south. Will you please get rid of the idea that Lemming is the repository of all knowledge and start using your own head for a change?”

“I—I can’t believe it. Even if it was true, what could I do?”

“Exactly what I came here to help you do. Get out of this apartment, hole up somewhere else for a day or two. Look, a friend of mine named Hal Prince has a cabin, more of a summer palace, actually, about fifteen miles from L.A. It’s not far, but you’d think you were in Canada. Leave here with me, right now, and I’ll drive you there. It’s isolated, but very comfortable, and you’ll be safe while the police, and I, try to run down those two—”

“Leave? With you?”

She was starting to bug me again. “Why not?” I asked icily. “I’ll bet even Jack the Ripper had a good side. Who knows? Maybe he was a dear, sweet boy except for his little problem—” I cut it off.

“Make up your mind, Regina. I’ve given it to you straight, but you’ll have to decide what you’re going to do. I parked out front on Flower—probably shouldn’t have, but I was in a hurry—and I checked everything I could see in the area. I didn’t spot anything unusual, I’ll admit, but there’s an alley across the street, a service station next to it, an apartment house and half a dozen other places where men might squat if they wanted to stake this place out and wait for you to show.” I paused. “I’ll bet you haven’t been out of your apartment this morning, right?”

“No.… I haven’t.”

“If you had, I might have gotten here too late.”

“I think you’re exaggerating, Mr. Scott.”

“Yeah, I do it all the time. I’m just trying to send you into shock, so I can drink some blood out of your neck. The hell with it, get a wiggle on and leave here with me right now, or you stay and I’ll leave. Believe it or not, I’ve got a couple other things to do.”

Regina was still a little pale, but she didn’t say anything. I started to pace the floor again, and apparently Regina had now become as restless as I, because she stood up, tugged absentmindedly at the bottom of her pink sweater, then started walking back and forth, arms behind her and one hand clutching her other wrist.

It was not a pose she would have adopted unless greatly preoccupied with her thoughts, and certainly not with a sixteen-year-old lad in the same room, much less one such as I. Because, with her arms stretched behind her and shoulders pulled back, her breasts seemed to rise like plump birds and begin pecking at the pink sweater, which was itself pulled back even more tightly against her flesh, molding and cupping and even appearing to the observant eye, which is what I had a couple of, to become thinner, a garment fashioned less for concealment than decoration. And also because the little force she’d expended in tugging her sweater down was entirely wasted, since other and greater forces tugged it right back up. And kept on tugging, animated by her movement. One thing about this gal, it was difficult to stay bugged with her for very long.

There is a time to pace and a time not to pace, and this was Regina’s time. So I stopped and waited for her to reach a decision. And I didn’t care how long it took.

After about half a minute she stopped and looked at me, one smooth eyebrow raised. “How do I know Pastor Strang is dead?”

“Hell, I just told you.… Oh. Maybe I fibbed a little? How do you know I’m not making it up? How do you know he was bound and gagged and looked like an accident in a wax museum and that there was maybe half a barrel of his blood on the floor? Because that’s the way it was, Regina. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

She walked slowly to the divan and sat down again, shaking her head, and I knew before she spoke I’d lost the argument. “But I couldn’t just leave, Mr. Scott. Not today—especially not today. All the Church members must be at the services tonight. Why, it’s tonight that our Sainted Pastor—”

“Yeah. I know all about it. Everyone does. Even on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, the natives are waiting for drums to bring Festus’ words up the mountain.”

It wasn’t the right touch. Her sweet lips turned somewhat sour, and she said, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I want to be there, and it’s my duty to be there. Besides, even if all you say is true …” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, or probably somewhere beyond. “… the Lord will protect me.”

I looked at the ceiling myself, then the wall, then at Regina. “O.K. Then you certainly don’t need me or the police or the cavalry—please keep in mind what I’ve told you, though, and be careful. Good luck, and good-bye.” I paused after opening the door, but she didn’t try to stop me, so I went out.

I walked past the door from which the small man had eyeballed me through his glasses, past one other apartment, and on to Flower Street. In a way, I couldn’t blame Regina. We hadn’t gotten into the specifics of what Lemming might have said about me last night, but there was no question that it wouldn’t have made me sound like Saint Shell, and opposed to the pronunciamentos of Pastor Festus were only my wild-sounding statements and warnings, unsupported by anything but my word.

Besides, I was thinking, it could be I’d laid it on too heavily, that I was wrong. Maybe Regina wasn’t really in any danger—

Maybe she wasn’t, not just yet, but I was.

I shouldn’t have been woolgathering, wondering about her reaction, I should have been thinking of what I’d told her. Of the gas station, apartments, and the half-dozen places where men might be staked out, waiting. Including the alley right across the street from the Canterbury’s entrance, which had been the first spot I’d mentioned to her, the most likely spot, I’d thought. Thought correctly.

Because that’s where the shots came from.

15

I’d just reached the sidewalk on Flower when the sharp flat crack of the first gunshot banged against my ears and yanked my wandering thoughts back from Regina to the here and now. To the cement beneath my feet, bright summer sunlight pouring down on me, and a bullet snapping past my head.

Ten feet on my left was my Cad, parked at the curb, another car was on my right, and there was blurred movement in that alley across the street. I didn’t look toward the movement, not then. My leg was already swinging, and I just let it swing on out in one fast step, slammed my foot against the cement, and shoved, diving toward my Cadillac as another shot cracked out. I heard the slug split the air behind me, where I’d been half a second before.

I hit the sidewalk inches from the Cad and then slammed against its right front fender, and it was like being swatted by half a dozen guys swinging baseball bats. My head bounced from the metal with a thunk, but before and during that noise both outside and inside my skull there were the sounds of several more shots, half of them the deeper and heavier boom of a .45-caliber handgun. Three or four bullets hit the far side of the car like steel rain.

I pulled my legs up, scrunched down behind the car, got my feet beneath me, and pushed against the hot cement with my left hand, grabbing under my coat for the .38. I was on my haunches and starting to straighten up, groggy and with a dull pain swelling and fluttering in my head, when I heard a car’s engine catch and roar.

I stood erect, took a step to my right, and could see the back of a dark blue sedan in the alley. It wasn’t in motion yet, but as I took two more quick steps over the sidewalk and thumbed back the Colt’s hammer, I saw a big heavy-shouldered man climbing in the car’s right side and slamming the door as it jerked forward. The tires spun and squealed as the sedan picked up speed, started roaring away down the alley. I leveled the gun, but a car moving from my right to left on Flower Street was almost directly in front of me, and I held my fire, eased the Colt’s hammer down, and shoved the gun back into its holster.

Then I scrambled into the Cad and grabbed the phone to put in a fast call to the police complaint board. By the time I realized one of those slugs had knocked out my mobile phone, though I didn’t hunt around to discover what had been hit but merely swore colorfully for a few seconds, I knew the men would be long gone. Men, plural, one driving and the other jumping inside as the car started to move, I hadn’t gotten a good look at the car, but I knew it was a dark blue sedan and that was enough.

I turned the ignition key—simply to make sure the Cad would start—then cut the engine, ran back to Regina’s door, and banged on it.

Inside, she squeaked something and I said, “Shell Scott. Let me in.”

Clink of chain, clink of another chain, scrape of key in lock. I drummed on the wood with my fingertips and let air bubble past my lips. When the door opened I stepped inside, closed the door, leaned against it. Regina had backed away, of course, but only about half as far as before. If things kept improving at this rate, one of these days she’d let me walk inside and bump right into her. Sure, she would.

“I’ll bet it’s easier to sneak into the sultan’s harem blowing a bugle,” I said. “O.K., get whatever you want to take with you and let’s go. You should know, now, I wasn’t kidding. I suppose you heard the noise?”

“Yes, I—was it … guns? It sounded like … guns.”

“Beautiful. That’s what it was. Two guys were shooting at me from the alley—remember my mentioning the alley, Regina?—across the street. But either they were lousy shots or I moved so fast it made them dizzy. I know it made me dizzy.” I shook my head. I was still a little dizzy.

“It wasn’t just you?”

“No. Oh, I had a gun, but I merely waved it around in the air a little. It was the two bad men I told you about, they made all the noise.… What do you mean, just me?”

She didn’t say. She was looking me up and down—I was a bit scraped in several places—and then she actually walked toward me. She raised her arm and tapped my left shoulder with a finger. “Is that … is that from a bullet?”

I craned my head around, pulled at the shoulder of my once gorgeous cashmere jacket. There was a slice in the canary yellow cloth where one of those slugs—undoubtedly the first one—had burned through the fabric.

I nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t realize it was that close. O.K. if I use your phone?”

I dialed Central Homicide, saying to Regina, “Those two dandies must have been staked out near here for a while. They weren’t in the alley when I arrived, but it’s eight to five they saw me then. If so, they didn’t shoot at me then because, while obviously they feel killing me is a keen idea, they were waiting for you. If you’d left with me, they’d have tried to gun down both of us. When I came out alone they must have figured half a loaf was better than none.”

An officer answered the phone, and I asked him to put the captain of Central Homicide on. In the few seconds before Samson answered I said, “They missed me, Regina. But I have been shot at before, and when I hear that unmistakable noise I automatically move like an electrocuted gazelle. Most people, I mean like innocent citizens, pretty girls, say, usually get quite still if they are shot at and missed. First they think, ‘Was that a gunshot? Isn’t that funny?’ And, ‘Could somebody have been shooting at me? But, why? What did I do?’ You get the idea. I hope. Anyhow, I’ll still take you to that cabin if you want to go.”

At the other end of the line Sam growled, “Homicide, Samson.”

“Shell here, Sam. I hope you’re in a better moo—”

“You, huh?” He wasn’t in a better mood. “I thought I told you to keep in touch?”

“That’s what I’m doing. Sam, old buddy, you didn’t say every hour on the hour—”

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for an hour. Where you at?”

“Well, right now I’m at the Canterbury. But not for long—”

“I wanted to let you know we found your bodies.”

“My bodies?”

“Strang and the one you shot.”

“Where?”

“Shallow grave in an acre of onions just outside of Weilton, about two miles from the house on Fifty-seventh. Kid out walking with his girl last night saw a car pull up there, couple men carrying something. Decided to report it after he got up this morning. The press already has the story.”

“That last part’s not so good, maybe.”

“No maybe about it. Some of the reporters jumped on Strang’s connection with Lemming like they’d seen the light themselves. Natural enough, after Lemming’s various announcements last night. And the shots at him. And your splendid performance at his Church. Don’t you think?”

“Well.… You know reporters, Sam—”

“Yeah. I just got through talking to one, from the Hollywood Informer. He wanted to know, in view of all the facts as he put it, why I, your very close friend as he put it, hadn’t arrested you on suspicion.”

“Suspicion of what?”

“My impression was, everything.”

“Uh-huh. Well, except for destroying Sodom and Gomorrah I’ve been a good boy. Ah … that, and one other little thing.”

I paused. I was going to tell him, but the timing was very important, considering not only Sam’s mood but the reportorial pressure he was undoubtedly being subjected to, and the timing wasn’t quite right yet. So I went on, “Any lead to who the other guy is, Sam? The one I plugged?”

“Yeah, made him fifteen minutes ago. Local muscle named Monk Cody—not a real monk, by the way.”

“I’d guessed it. If he was, it would fill me with marvelous suspicions.”

“Full handle, Arvin Foster Cody. Got the monicker ‘Monk’ when his girl found out he was shacking with two other women and shot one of his nuts off. No connection so far between him and anyone answering the descriptions of the other men involved—no lead to them at all. Lab boys haven’t come up with anything helpful about Strang’s condition, except they never saw a guy so anemic. Hold it a second.”

I heard Sam’s voice get softer as he spoke to someone in his office or the squad room, and the indistinct mumble as another man replied, then Sam’s voice much louder. “What? Where?”

I had a hunch. “Sam,” I said, “I’ve got something to tell you. Sam?”

There was a little more roaring and then Samson said, ominously, into the phone, “Shell, where did you say you were?”

“Ah, there you are, Sam. I was trying to tell you something—where’d you go? I was about to—”

“The Canterbury, was it? That’s on Flower, right?”

“Yeah, I was about to explain—”

“Would you believe we just got a report of a shooting there? Several gunshots, right here in my peaceful city. As far as I know, there have not yet been reports of innocent citizens killed or wounded, but we can expect the worst, can’t we? If you were involved, that is. You were involved, I suppose?”

“What a coincidence! That’s what I was trying to tell you, Sam. You must’ve got the report an instant before—”

“What happened?”

“Couple guys—same two we’re interested in, no doubt—let some fly my way. Took off in a dark blue sedan. You’ll be happy to know they missed me. Didn’t hit anybody else, either.”

“When did these sharpshooters let some fly your way?”

I sure didn’t like the way he sounded. “Just happened,” I said earnestly. “Maybe a minute before I phoned you. To … tell you all about it.”

“Fine. I’m pleased that you phoned me, Shell. Hold it.” This time there was mumbling I couldn’t make out, a little silence, then Sam, “As I was saying, Shell, your call saves me the trouble of putting out a local on you.”

“A local? On, ha-ha, me? Sam, you wouldn’t send my friends, the fuzz, out to arrest me. Would you?”

“Got another report here. From the Canterbury, too. Isn’t that curious?”

“What?”

“Seems there was a big ugly man with white hair pounding on a door. White hair—old fellow, I suppose.”

“Getting … older, Sam.”

“Apparently this old fellow was trying to break an apartment door down. And right after that a girl screamed.

“I can explain all this junk. It isn’t what it sounds like.” I paused. I had a sickening feeling that, especially the way Sam sounded, I would be explaining for about three days, once I started. I thought about it, and the alternative was no less sickening, but I made up my mind. “In fact, I will explain it all, Sam, as soon as I can get to the police building. But I’ve got a couple—”

“Get your ass—”

“—things to do first. There’s really no more to tell, but I’ll go over it again—”

“—down here right now or so help me I’ll—”

“—just as soon as I can, Sam.”

I hung up.

“What’s the matter? Why are you making that face, Mr. Scott?”

I discovered I had my eyes squeezed shut and lips stretched away from my teeth again. I relaxed my face, shook my head, opened my eyes. Regina was standing near me, holding a suitcase.

“Got your toothbrush?” I asked her.

“Yes. And—”

“Never mind. Let’s go.”

The cabin was only a mile and a half off the freeway, but isolated and alone in a spot so quiet you could hear the birds peep, at the end of a narrow, winding, dirt road. It wasn’t a shack, however. The place was owned by a bachelor friend of mine, a lovely character who, though only three or four years older than my thirty, had made two million bucks in the stock market. And kept it.

Consequently the “cabin” contained fourteen rooms, a well-stocked bar, crammed refrigerator and freezer, all the conveniences of home—if home is without phones, radio, or television, but equipped with such extras as the latest in stereophonic sound systems with tape deck, two infrared ovens in the kitchen, a swing built for two in the living room, barbecue pit, and a heated swimming pool complete with pushbutton operated waterfall behind the house.

When I stopped near a shallow reflecting pool dotted with lily pads, Regina looked at the stained redwood and native stone house, at a clump of weeping willow trees behind the shallow pool, back at the house, and then at me. “This is a cabin?” she asked.

I grinned. “Yeah, about a hundred thousand bucks’ worth. It is also your hideout for the next day or so. You may be lonely, but you won’t be uncomfortable. I know, I’ve spent a couple of weekends here.”

Regina gave me a suspicious look. I climbed out of the Cad, opened the door on her side, ushered her to the cabin. Then I walked around the side of the house, eyed the six feet of stone at its base, found the triangular chunk of split granite, eased it out, got the key, and used it to open the front door.

Inside, we walked down three steps into the living room, and Regina said, “Why, it looks positively sinful.”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?”

The lavender carpet, with its foam-rubber padding, was a good two-inches thick, sort of a thin wall-to-wall mattress, and the draperies over two of the walls were of the same color. Two massive divans faced each other about ten feet apart, with a low red-lacquered table before each of them, narrow ends flat but with the long sides convex, like rectangles pushed in at the ends and bulging out at the sides. There were three man-sized easy chairs, and a dozen huge brightly-colored pillows scattered over the floor.

I conducted Regina on a quick tour, showing her the essentials like frozen and canned foods, and even a few luxuries, including the swimming pool and a very wild-looking round bathtub much too big for merely one bather.

Back in the living room I said, “Next to the bed in the bedroom we peeked into, the one with all the mirrors, is a little table with a drawer in it, and in the drawer is a gun. I’m sure you won’t need it, but sometimes it’s comforting to know a heater is handy. It’s a revolver, so you just point it and pull the trigger. Any questions?”

“I guess not.”

“No phone here, but I’ll get back when I can. So enjoy yourself.”

I had the door open when she said, “You’re … leaving?”

I looked over my shoulder. “Yeah.” I grinned at her. “Of course, if you’d rather I didn’t—”

“No! No.… It’s just …”

“Let me guess. You thought, once I got you out here in the wilderness, I would at least ply you with booze, and when your eyes grew dull and your wits addled—”

“Oh, you dirty—you awful …” She stopped. And then Regina’s sweet lips curved in a small sweet smile, and she said, “I guess I did. You know, you … well, you aren’t at all like Pastor Lemming said you were, Mr. Scott.”

I smiled. “Neither is anything else. By the way, call me Shell.” I went out.

Five minutes later I was on my way back to town. I used those five minutes making sure the small sports car usually kept in one slot of the three-car garage was still in its slot, and transferring its license plate to my Cad.

In case Captain Samson had put out a local on me—and I felt it not entirely unlikely that he had—the illegal plate would give me a small edge. Yes, illegal. I had broken the law. And as I drove back to the freeway and headed for Beverly Hills, I was thinking, in such little ways can a career of crime begin.…

Dave Cassiday’s home was a good-looking two-story house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. I drove twenty feet up a cement drive to a gate—part of a high wrought-iron fence paralleling Roxbury and continuing on all around the large residential lot.

Doctor Bruno had not only given me Dave Cassiday’s address but described the place, including the gate of upright spearlike rods which Dave had put up about four months back. Some anti-Erovite people had learned that here lived the Cassiday of Cassiday and Quince, friend and associate of Bruno the sex magician, and almost instantly a group of MOMS had picketed the place. When they wearied of their duty another small group, presumably court-martialed from the Salvation Army, began beating a drum on the lawn and singing about the New Jerusalem. That did it. Dave had put up the wrought-iron bars and gate in self-defense.

I got out of the Cad and reached into a small box at the right of the gate, took out the phone there. In half a minute I heard a man’s voice. “Hello.”

“Mr. Cassiday? Dave?”

“Yes.”

“Shell Scott. You busy?”

“Busy as hell. Come on in.” There was a buzzing sound and a click. The two halves of the gate slowly swung inward, kept moving until they were open wide. “You can park in back,” Cassiday said.

“Right.” I started to hang up, but he said, “Scott, I’m glad you came out. I guess Doc told you we’re having a meeting of Citizens FOR today.”

“Yeah, he mentioned it.”

“A bunch of the gang’s here now. You’ll get to meet them—think you’ll enjoy them, Scott.”

“Great.” I hung up.

As I drove in, the gates closed automatically behind me. The driveway continued on to the rear of the house, where there was a large green lawn upon which were parked at least a dozen cars. I found a space and cut the engine, got out of the Cad.

Dave was standing in the back doorway. He waved a hand as I walked toward him and said, “You smell of fire and brimstone. Welcome.”

I grinned, shook his hand.

He pointed inside and as I walked past him he asked, “Anything new?”

“Yeah.”

We walked a few feet down a hallway and through an open door into a small room I guessed was Cassiday’s den. Leather couch and a couple of easy chairs, small desk, walls panelled in blond wood. It was warm, pleasant, masculine, and there was an odor of pipe smoke in the air.

Dave sat behind the desk as I took a seat on the couch and said, “First, I suppose, we should touch lightly on the matter of suspects. Aside from the lobs who actually grabbed you and Bruno, and numerous godly and ungodly others, there’s a new one I hadn’t considered until this morning.”

“A new suspect?”

“That’s right.”

“Who?”

“You.”

16

Dave Cassiday started to smile, but half of it stayed down, as if an unseen hook had caught one side of his mouth.

Finally he said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Erovite’s an extremely valuable product, Dave. At least it is if it can be freely sold.”

“You can say that again.”

“So anybody who might be able to get the formula would conceivably profit immensely. And thus has motive for the snatch, even murder.”

“Sure. I still don’t get the point.”

“Until this morning I thought you knew the formula. Now I understand only Bruno and his daughter know the whole thing, and you’re familiar merely with the basic compound, not what Bruno adds to—the glop, as he phrased it.”

Cassiday seemed to relax, and he got his crooked smile all the way on this time. “I see. I guess that’s what Doc told you, right? About his mumbo jumbo, adding secret ingredients at the plant?”

I nodded.

He leaned back, propped his feet on the desk top. Still smiling he said quietly, “I’ve known Doc a long time, understand him better than you do, Scott. But you’ve been around him enough to realize he’s—O.K. if I say eccentric?”

“O.K. by me.”

“Well, in the first place, he’s a man of great integrity. Reliable, honest, no sham about the man. He might object to rules, laws, some of the FDA regulations, but he’d go along with them. In other words, he wouldn’t file one formula with the FDA and then try to manufacture and sell a different one.”

“Bruno told me he always adds something to the stuff, a compound apparently only he and Dru know about—”

“Sure. Told me the same thing. He wants us to think he’s pouring in some esoteric elixir, and has therefore managed to keep the formula secret. Maybe to deliver us from temptation, maybe he doesn’t really trust anybody, even me.” Dave took a pipe from his pocket and reached for a round tin of tobacco on the desk. “So Doc and Dru know what the formula—the complete Erovite formula—is. So do I, so does the Food and Drug Administration, maybe a lot of people in the FDA.”

“You mean Bruno doesn’t add a damn thing to—”

Dave waved a hand. “No, he does add a gallon or so of—” he grinned—“dark brown glop to the dark brown glop already in each of the vats at the plant. Usually at night, just him and me there. But I’d say it’s the identical glop. Adding Erovite to Erovite. Or maybe blackstrap molasses in distilled water, what the hell? If it makes Doc happy to think I believe he’s performing some wonderful kind of alchemy, what difference does it make to me?”

“Can you prove that?”

He frowned. “I don’t get you.”

“Can you prove what Bruno adds to the vats is no different from what’s already in the vats?”

The frown stayed on while he chewed his lower lip, then Dave slowly shook his head. “Come to think of it, no. Not right this minute, anyhow. Never thought I’d have to.”

I grinned. “I’m not saying you do, Dave. But could you prove it if you did have to?”

“Probably, if I had one helluva complicated analysis done.” He chewed on his lip some more, looking at me. “Well … maybe yes, maybe no. Some of the ingredients in Erovite are homeopathic remedies, biochemic substances, cell salts. If there really is anything in them there’s no way we can analyze what, or how much. Not the higher potencies, and not with the scientific equipment available today.”

“What do you mean, if there’s anything in them?”

“Well, take a homeopathic substance. Hypericum, Arnica—anything, animal, vegetable, mineral, they’re all in the homeopathic Materia Medica. The potency is described by a number, and a letter, X or C or M. For example, Aurum Metallicum 1X—that’s metallic gold, by the way—signifies one part of gold thoroughly mixed, blended, triturated, or diluted as the homeopathic physicians say, with nine parts of milk sugar, or a dilution of one to ten. Take one part of this Aurum Metallicum 1X and mix it with nine parts of milk sugar and you’ve got Aurum Metallicum 2X, and that’s not one part in twenty, remember, but one part in a hundred. Do it again and the 3X is one part per thousand. So Aurum Metallicum 6X is one part of gold to a million parts of milk sugar, 12X is one part per trillion. When you get up around 40X or 60X you’ve produced what most doctors call the middle of a zero, or the short end of nothing. Up at 100X you switch to 1C, which is the same thing. And 10C or 50C—well, the mind gets a bit dim. And when you get into the M dilutions, for some the mind goes out completely upon contemplating the infinitesimal minuteness of the absence of anything.”

“Seems like there wouldn’t be enough molecules or atoms or whatever to go around.”

He made a circle with his thumb and middle finger, nodding toward me. “You’ve got it. There wouldn’t be.”

I waggled my head. “Hell, if there isn’t anything in it, what good is it?”

“That is precisely the question modern medicine and science ask of homeopathy. Homeopaths, in fact, claim the higher the dilution—the less of the material substance there is in the remedy—the more effective or potent it is.”

“Are you having a little fun with me, Dave?”

He smiled. “Not at all. In fact, there’s a good deal of evidence tending to support the homeopath’s claims—but you’ll find none of it in the J.A.M.A. or other medical journals. I said the less of the material substance there is, Scott. Homeopaths contend that in the process of dilution, an essence or vibration or something of the substance—its spirit, to lay Doc Bruno’s usual word on you—is transmitted to the carrier. And, to continue with what Doc claims, since science can’t yet analyze or weigh or measure the spirit in man, it isn’t entirely surprising that they can’t discover the spirit, or essence, in the higher potencies of homeopathic medicines.”

The conversation was getting away from me. “O.K. Maybe Bruno adds Erovite to Erovite. But what if he adds some of the—the nothing under discussion? Would that change the formula, or at least make Bruno think it changed the formula?”

“There’s no question Doc would think the formula changed, and frankly I’d be inclined to agree with him even if chemical analysis couldn’t prove there was any difference.” Dave paused. “From the FDA point of view—assuming tablets of a few very-high-potency homeopathic substances were dissolved in distilled water, say—analysis would reveal the presence only of water and milk sugar. So they’d undoubtedly feel there was no basis for concern, or action. I just don’t think Doc would do even that. He’d think it dishonest … deceitful.”

“O.K., you know him better than I do.” Dave was scowling slightly so I asked, “Something the matter?”

“No, I was just—you got me thinking a little. I hope he hasn’t been pouring pulverized elephant testicles into the vats.”

“Would that help?”

“I haven’t any idea,” Dave said. “Sure wouldn’t help the elephants.”

There was silence for several seconds. Cassiday finally started filling his pipe, then asked me, “Have my carefully considered remarks removed me from the number-one spot on your list of greedy suspects?”

“You never were number one. But I’ll put you at the bottom.”

“Fine. So what else is new, Scott?”

“After we split up and I took Bruno home, I had to go down to the LAPD and tell the police what I knew. They’ve since talked to Bruno. I suppose they got around to you, too.”

He nodded. “Not much to it. I think they’d already talked to Doc by then, and also had your story, of course. So I suppose I was just another check. Two detectives were here for maybe half an hour. That was after Doc called me, you know—you were there then, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I was with the Doc and Dru at her place.”

“So he’d already told me about police going to the house, finding the place empty. Man, that shook me up—you realize, if we hadn’t gotten out of there when we did, we might have been there when those guys came back?”

I nodded. “We cut it pretty close.”

“Funny thing, the officers didn’t even mention that to me last night. You sure those bodies really were gone?”

“They were gone, all right. But the police usually don’t say any more than they have to. So I guess you don’t know they found the bodies this morning.”

He stared at me. “Found them? Well … why in hell doesn’t anybody tell me anything?”

“I’m telling you now, Dave.”

His muscular face slowly relaxed, and he smiled. “I didn’t mean you, Scott. But the cops sure don’t say any more than they have to, do they? What happened, where’d they find them? Police have any luck identifying that heavyset bastard? Or figuring out what the hell was injected into Strang?”

“They don’t know about Strang yet, but the guy I shot was a local hood named Monk Cody. Hadn’t tied him to the two other men when I talked to Samson.”

Cassiday had tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and put the lid back on the can. He pushed the can to the edge of his desk, saying, “Well, maybe that’ll help. If the police already know who one of them was, they should be able to catch up with the other bastards. I hope they do it fast.” He licked his lips. “Last night was the first time … well, I never saw a dead man before—I mean, except laid out. Like for viewing, like at a funeral. Just dead … not dying.” He moistened his lips again. “You got any more surprises?”

I told him what I’d guessed about Regina Winsome, that the shots had been aimed at her.

“Crazy,” he said. He shook his head rapidly, poked his thumb into the pipe bowl, dug a lighter from his coat pocket. “Or maybe not so crazy. If those shots were meant for the girl, then they weren’t really very close to Lemming after all, were they? And his close but restless associate, André.… Never mind. Maybe the shooters were just lousy shots.”

“They aren’t perfect. Fortunately. They threw a bunch of slugs at me a little while ago.”

He’d flipped on his lighter and started to draw on his pipe, but when I said that he just let the lighter burn, then snapped it out. “At you? Why the hell? Why at you? You’re not important—I mean, you’ve never had anything to do with Erovite. You know, you’re just working for the Doc.”

“I know what you mean. But I have to assume they had their reasons.”

“Yeah. Man, if they shot at you.… I wonder if Doc and I should, well, sort of stay inside for a while.”

“Probably a good idea. At least till things simmer down. Incidentally, Dave, I didn’t have much chance to talk with you last night. André Strang phoned you, too, right? And I suppose he called from the church?”

“Yes, from his office, next to Lemming’s—there are several offices in the rear of the church. Told me to come down to the church. Didn’t say why, just that it was important. Of course, we know why now.”

“What time did he call you?”

“I don’t know for sure. Didn’t think much about it then.” He paused. “It was a little before seven, though. Maybe five minutes to. Services hadn’t started.”

“You get there very long before Bruno?”

“Five, ten minutes before Doc drove up. André met me outside the church, said Doc was coming and we’d have to wait for him. Then Doc showed, and you know the rest of it.”

That was about all I’d wanted to cover. Dave at long last got his pipe lit and said, “Come on into the front room. The gang’s there now—the Citizens FOR gang, I mean. Like to meet them?”

“Sure. Bruno told me a little about the bunch. They ever figure out what they’re going to do today?”

“Yes, most of it. This is the largest group in the country, you know, but it was decided instead of a big parade and all that confusion, only ten of the group—all gals, damn good-looking gals, by the way, best we could find—would march. Including an Italian girl, French, German, and so on—nice compact, cosmopolitan, and attractive selection we think. Should make a damned good impression. Some of the other members are going to picket the local FDA office, that sort of thing. Gals still haven’t decided all the details, but they’ve got a few hours left.”

He stood up behind his desk, puffed a few times on his pipe, then wiggled a finger and led me out of his den and up the hall.

I saw the girls as soon as I stepped into the living room. I simply looked to my left, toward the sound of shrieks and giggles and babblings. Well, I could forgive them even that, I decided, with a few added squeals and squeaks thrown in because though it was a feminine sound possibly permanently damaging to male eardrums it was above all feminine, and considering that from which it came, it could not have been otherwise.

When Dave said they were “damn good-looking” he had committed an understatement of wonderful proportions, for in that group was just about everything luscious, delicious, and quintessentially female discovered or developed by women since Eve first primped and puckered up under the apple tree, and each of the ten appeared to possess more of it than the other nine.

My eyes bounced over a wild-honey blonde, two flaming redheads, three umber-to-mahogany brunettes, two girls whose black locks were bright as polished coal and a third gal with hair black and wild as a storm at midnight, plus one platinum-tressed lovely with long straight gleaming hair even whiter than mine.

All ten of the ladies were seated on a big couch that curved around a low table, with a big vase of red and pink carnations on it, to form three-fourths of a circle. All of them seemed to be talking at once, and I wondered who was listening. Which possibly explained why some details were not yet firmly pinned down.

There were about a dozen men in the room as well, in separate bunches of three or four, talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Dave took me around the room, introduced me, then ushered me toward the squealing and squeaking couch.

As we neared it a marvelously shapely gal with plump young breasts and huge brown eyes—one of the redheads—was saying loud enough to be heard above the other comments and just plain noise, “No, no, that wouldn’t be any good, Ronnie, we probably wouldn’t even get on television. And we’ve got to get attention, make sure they talk to us, interview us, so we can explain our position on—”

The platinum blonde interrupted, in what I suspected—mainly because of her Swedish-looking hair—was a pronounced Swedish-sounding accent. “Yes, Dina, we should tell it how we feel about Erovite, about how we all used it and it helped us feel bedder, and even loog bedder—”

“If the ridiculous old FDA wasn’t all men, mostly tired old men, we wouldn’t be having any of this trouble in the first place. I say there should be a woman commissioner.” That was a black-haired lovely, about thirty years old, with heavy-lashed eyes and a low sultry voice. “We’ve got to strike a blow for woman’s equality at the same time we—”

“That’s eet! They all are men. I ’ave eet!” The other redhead, bouncing, excited, highly animated, and waving her hands. “All the televeezyun men, and newspapermen, all of the men we ’ope to anfluence, attrack, get interview wiz, they all are men. Zo ’ow do we anfluence and attrack men? Hoo! Zimple, we take our cloze off!”

“We god do dake off our glothes?”

“We take our cloze off an’ put on bikinis. Put on loose.”

“Girls,” Dave said.

“You were right the first time, honey. We take ’em off—but we leave ’em off.” The latest speaker, a tall and stupendously curvaceous black beauty—or, rather, chocolate-brown beauty, with skin the shade and smoothness of melting Hershey bars—went on in a voice soft as caterpillars curling up on peach leaves, “No bikinis. Nothing. Just what the good Lord gave us. Strip all the way and stay stripped. You want to attrack ’em, Thérèse, we’ll attrack ’em.”

“Ai, chihuahua! Hey, boy! Hot doag, Lula, I’ll do it, I’ll do it weeth you!” A warm-eyed brunette this time, silently sizzling, with lips that looked as red and hot as those scarlet peppers that burn you from your gums all the way down to your bladder. “I’ll do it,” she went on excitedly. “Chass, I will. Boy, will I? Bueno! We all do it, we all march desnudo!”

“Girls,” Dave said, “I’d like to—”

“Desnu—naked?” Another new one, a little over five feet tall but with enough curves for a six-footer and eyes big and dark as ripe plums. “Margarita, do you mean we should all march naked?”

“Chass, Ronnie—Sí. Desnudo. Totalmente!”

“Nudo?”

“Naken?”

“Naket?”

“Naked?”

“Nackt?”

“Girls!”

The lass addressed as Ronnie didn’t even look at Dave—of course, neither did anyone else—and continued, “That’s easy for you to say, Margarita, you’re a nudist. You run around naked almost every weekend. But what about the rest of us? My goodness—”

“Besides, we’d get busted,” said another. I smiled at that. This one was the wild-honey blonde, with eyes blue as the sea off Capri. “After the first block we’d all be on our way to jail. Who needs it?”

“Oh, Silvia!” the big-brown-eyed redhead—Dina, I gathered—said heatedly, “and you, too, Ronnie—”

“GIRLS!”

“We don’t have to march along Filbert naked,” said the brown-skinned beauty, Lula, who seemed to have been the first to suggest total nudity. She went on, her voice like warm fog rubbing itself dry on a velvet towel, “Maybe just up that little street, Heavenly Lane. Or we could even wait till we got clear to the end of—”

“Girls! GIRLS, HEY! HEEEEEEYYYY!”

“Dave, do you have to chout?” Margarita asked him.

“I’d like for you all to meet a friend of mine—of ours, Shell Scott. He’s on our side, and—”

“Good, we need all the help we can get.”

“So you’re Shell Scott!”

“Hello.”

“Hiyee!”

“Loog at him, will you?”

All that, plus some other comments I couldn’t decipher. I smiled and nodded and said hello and hi and hiyee, and, after a minute of fluttering confusion, had been introduced to all of the girls.

To red-haired plump-breasted Dina, sweet-chocolate Lula, short and shapely plum-eyed Ronnie, platinum-tressed Britt of the Swedish syllables. Then to a lovely little Japanese doll named Yumiko, with a face like a flower and lips like petals, who smiled at me and said sweetly, “Herro, Sherr.” To brunette Emilie, a recent Miss Germany runner-up who, in my view, could have placed second only if all the judges were Lemmings. And to redheaded, animated, rosy-cheeked Thérèse; soft and smouldering and lovely Leonore; silently sizzling pepper-lipped Margarita; and the wild-honey blonde named Silvia, with Capri-blue eyes, perfect, brilliant white teeth, and a mouth made, among other things, for laughter and smiles.

It was a remarkable group, a little UN with lots of pulchritude, and every one of the gals looked as if she’d been long overparked in the erogenous zone. More, each of them was not only beautifully sensual and vice-versa, but looked vital and healthy, crammed with energy, enthusiasm, and—I soon learned—Erovite.

After a little while longer with them, and a couple more minutes with Dave, I headed for my Cad. As I left the living room these ten lovelies were still talking and arguing and squealing about marching at least part way to the Church of the Second Coming in their stupendously provocative shapes alone.

It amused me. It was probably girlish fun for them to yak about stripping, strolling nude over the up-slanting green lawn, even perhaps to the very doors of the church, naked as jaybirds.

But, of course, they wouldn’t do it. Not really. Such things simply don’t happen. I knew that; I just knew it.

Which put me in the same class as the wizards who just knew the market was going up-up-up in 1929.

17

The next four hours were the only dull ones since Dru had rung my chimes the evening before. But after that and from then on, it got more than a little exciting.

I spent those four hours in a concentrated effort to run down or at least get a lead to, the two men who’d grabbed Bruno and Cassiday. I checked again with my two informants, phoned half a dozen more, prowled through bars and boardinghouses, talked to bellmen and waitresses, bookies, other private detectives, bartenders, and half of the crooks and ex-cons I’d had anything to do with in the last year. All of it for nothing—until almost four o’clock on the nose.

Even then the tip wasn’t from among the people I’d been questioning but from a man I hadn’t talked to for six months, who’d picked up word over the underworld wireless that Shell Scott was hot for certain information. All it amounted to was a couple of quick sentences from a small-time thief and small-luck gambler called Famous Brown—what he was Famous for I never knew, but that was his name—and it was the only useful bit of info developed from all the legwork and lines I’d put out. But all it takes is one.

I’d been unable to receive calls on my mobile phone, but had asked the operator to keep a record of the calls. When I checked from a phone booth at four P.M., in addition to some unimportant messages was one, received only minutes earlier, consisting simply of the word “Famous” and a phone number. The operator was puzzled by it; I wasn’t.

I dropped a dime and dialed the number. A male voice said, “Gilly’s.”

At first the name didn’t ring a bell, but then I remembered. Gilly’s was a small cafe with adjoining bar well out on Hawthorn Street in L.A., a couple of blocks from Figueroa. It was the kind of “restaurant” where a guy who ordered beer with his meal was considered a gourmet. The joint’s specialties were eggs, pork chops, potatoes, and ptomaine poisoning.

I said, “Let me talk to Famous. If he hasn’t eaten yet.”

“He’s inna bar.” Clatter of the phone being put down, or dropped, then a few seconds later, “Yeah?”

“Shell Scott. If you’re in Gilly’s, you must have lost the last pot, Famous.”

“And then some. This here’s the only place I can get credit. Like gettin’ a bargain at the mortuary, ain’t it?” He was speaking very softly.

“You come up with something for me?”

“Yeah, yeah. Lissen, s’pose I finger the dude you want, one with the white hairs in the middle of his conk. What’s it worth to you, Scott?”

After four hours of nothing I’d started getting flat, a little stale, but suddenly I was wide awake. I could have told Famous to name his price and I’d pay it, but the philosophy of the thief is always to grab more than he can carry. So I said, “Name it yourself, pal. But you shouldn’t have let me know you were at Gilly’s.”

“Mhuh,” he grunted. “Dumb me. Didn’t think of that. Dumb—well, it oughta be worth a couple C’s easy, ain’t it? Ain’t it?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Well.…” He burped hugely. It was apparent that he had not put his hand over his mouth or delicately turned away from the phone. Famous was not a delicate fellow. “There’s a game I can get well in tonight,” he said. “Gimme a C and I can sit in it.” After a pause he continued, “Dumb—I gotta have a C. But if I come up winners, I’ll give you back six—fif—forty of it. O.K.?”

“O.K. Where is this cat?”

“Right here. Out in the restaurant, I mean. Didn’t sit down to eat more’n ten minutes ago, when I rung you up. Maybe fifteen, no more.”

I looked at my watch, estimated the time it would take me to reach Gilly’s, getting a little uneasy. “The guy with anyone?”

“Come in alone.”

“He served yet?”

“You kidding? The dude ordered pork chops. Man, they got to cook it.”

“You make him?”

“Never seen him before.”

“You’re pretty sure he’s the boy I want, though?”

“Well, he’s got them white hairs, and a little mole alongside of his beak, like you mentioned. How many like that is there?”

“O.K. Thanks, Famous. In case he leaves before I get there, try to glim his heap if he’s in one, get the plates.”

“You mean for extra, if I foller him, don’t you?”

“That’s what I mean.”

I hung up.

I started to slow down on Hawthorn in front of Gilly’s, looking to my right for a parking spot, then tromped on the gas. A man was stepping through the front door onto the sidewalk, and he was my man.

Not only was the streak of white running back from the middle of his hairline visible, but no more than three or four feet behind him was tall and lean Famous Brown, determined to get into that game tonight. I should have warned him not to shuffle along behind the guy, burping on his neck. No matter, it was one of the two men I’d been hunting for. And it gave me quite a jolt when I saw him.

I guess I’d almost reached the point where I believed I might never run down either of them, a feeling that they’d skipped, blown town. But there he was, looking to his left, then turning to walk briskly in the same direction I was moving in the Cad.

I swung around the corner, gunned halfway up the block and pulled left into an alley littered with paper, boxes, dented trash cans behind the sagging houses. Half a block down the alley, on my left, a dark blue sedan was parked. There wasn’t time to check it, but I backed into the street and straightened out facing Hawthorn, waited to see if the man turned and came this way.

He didn’t. He crossed the intersection and kept walking straight ahead, moving speedily. A bit too speedily for his determined tail, or else Famous had, unaided, come to the conclusion that he might have been pressing a little. By the time Famous crossed the street and started to step onto the curb I’d rolled to the corner and stopped close enough to his heels that he cranked his head around and gave me a very dirty look.

Then he recognized me and opened his mouth, and I winced, but he didn’t yell. Instead he stepped up to the right side of the Cad as I let the window down. I had seven twenty-dollar bills folded in my hand and I held them toward him.

As he took the money I said, “Forty back if you win, remember.”

“Man, I always lose, you know that—”

“Beat it. I’ll talk to you later.”

He faded around the back of the car. I could see my man thirty yards down the sidewalk, moving ahead—but suddenly turning to his right. There was a sagging two-story frame building on the corner near me, with a sign “Hotel Adams” in peeling gray paint over its entrance. The other buildings in the block beyond it were all smaller, ramshackle houses even more ancient and dilapidated than the hotel. The man had turned toward one of them, stepping over a strip of sidewalk bisecting patches of yellow weeds that might once have been a lawn.

I pulled around the corner, let the Cad move slowly forward while I eyed the house. As I looked at it the front door opened and a big man appeared, his bulk filling the doorway. Big and, unless I imagined it, not unfamiliar. But because he was there, waiting, I had no doubt he was the ape whose broad back I’d glimpsed as he climbed into a blue sedan—after he and his buddy had taken those several shots at me.

His buddy? Not exactly.

The man I’d followed was less than ten feet from the house when the big guy placed his left hand against the doorframe, steadied himself, lifted his right arm. Light gleamed dully on the gun in his fist. When it was levelled he didn’t wait.

My man was in midstride, one leg swinging, when the big guy squeezed off two shots and slammed both slugs into his buddy’s chest. The bullets hit him while he was moving forward and threw him violently back toward the street, spinning him, the lifted leg jerking crazily and bending at the knee, his foot flipping upward.

The blast of sound was familiar, too, the deep heavy crack of a .45-caliber handgun, and it was as if the crashing noise itself struck the man, whirled him, shoved him down, killed him. When the shots rang out I kicked the accelerator and the cushion behind me rammed against my back, then my foot hit the brake pedal hard and muscles lumped in my arms as I squeezed my hands around the steering wheel, holding my weight away from it.

I slapped the gearshift up, slid over the seat. When I shoved the Cad’s door open the man had already fallen onto the brittle yellow grass. As I jumped out he lay with his mouth and nose pressed against the ground, but he wasn’t dead yet, not quite dead. He lifted his right arm into the air, the hand dangling loosely, held it up for a fraction of a second, then arm and hand fell like a stick, like something not really part of him. The big man was still in the doorway, head turning left, from the body before the house to me.

I had my hand on the Colt’s butt, was yanking it from under my coat, but the big guy didn’t swing his gun toward me. Instead he half-stepped, half-jumped, backward, started to slam the door.

I sprinted past the limp body, trying to reach the door before it closed completely. But when still eight or ten feet away I knew I wasn’t going to make it unless I managed to move just a little faster, so I left my feet in a marvelous bound and sailed the last few feet through the air. Why? How do I know why?

Maybe at that moment I felt I could go faster through the air. Maybe at that moment I keenly calculated my speed and the door’s speed, and wind resistance, and drag of gravity, and concluded that if I gave a marvelous bound I could hit that door a split second before it closed and locked. Maybe, maybe not; who knows now?

If I had done it, the door would have sprung open lightly, it would have offered very little resistance to me, I would hardly have noticed the impact as I sailed past it and on into the little house.

Yes, if I had done it.

It was when already in the air that I realized for sure I wasn’t going to do it. It was the wrong place to be. I was in flight and still a couple of feet from the door when I heard it slam with a great crash and even heard the metallic clicking of the spring lock snapping into its slot. But that was only an instant before the much greater crash, the truly astonishing smack and thud and crack and horrible yell.

I knew I couldn’t have been sitting sort of sprawled out, with my head propped against the door, which had gotten behind me somehow, for very long. It couldn’t have been long, because I could still hear the car’s engine whining, hear the squeal of its tires as it skidded out of the alley. I wondered why the big guy hadn’t shot me instead of slamming the door and racing away. Probably he was another dumb one. Like Famous.

I also wondered why anyone would have such a remarkable door in such a beat-up and dilapidated old house. The way I’d hit it, the whole wall should have caved in. The house should have crumpled about my head, instead of vice-versa. But the house was still standing, even if I was not.

After a little while I got to my feet. I held my head in both hands for a little while longer, then hunted around until I located my gun, and my car. After that I went through the back door, the usual way, and checked the house. Nothing was in it except rummage-sale furniture. A few minutes later I was many blocks from the scene. Some things were still unclear to me, in fact quite a lot of things, so I pulled over and parked at the curb.

Twenty minutes later I’d smoked three cigarettes and come to a firm conclusion: I was going to have to quit reading the warning printed on cigarette packs, or I might get lung cancer. I had also come to another conclusion. Though I hadn’t realized it until now, the kidnapper, blood-spiller, hell-raiser, killer, the guy I’d been after all along, was—had to be—Dave Cassiday.

This time I did not pull into the drive and use the handy little phone. I parked a couple of blocks from Cassiday’s home in Beverly Hills, cased the area and found a spot behind the house where shrubs and the bulk of an old silk oak tree would conceal me from anyone inside while I negotiated the wrought-iron fence.

Getting past the eight-feet-high barrier was surprisingly easy. I grabbed one of the upright bars near its top, put my left hand lower on the bar next to it, jumped up, pulling hard, swung my legs alongside the fence and over its top like a pole-vaulter going over the mark, and landed inside on my feet. I’d come down with my back to the house, so I turned around, waited, but there was no sound and nothing moved.

It was a small thing, perhaps. Nonetheless, I felt quite pleased with myself. Instead of cracking into the bars, or impaling myself on their tops, I had soared over them as lightly and gracefully as a bird. After my recent difficulties with the door, overcoming this first new hurdle with such ease gave me something I sorely needed: confidence.

I stepped to the trunk of that silk oak tree and confidently looked for other cover that might hide me as I moved to the back door. There wasn’t any. No cars were parked on the lawn now. And neither here nor anywhere nearby had I spotted a dark blue sedan.

All the cars were gone; thus all the Citizens FOR—and the ten gorgeous tomatoes—were gone. Maybe Dave had taken off, too, and I was preparing to sneak up on an empty house. I checked my watch. Just after five P.M. In another half hour, or close to it, those lovelies would be marching along Filbert Street carrying their signs and banners, on their way to picket the Church of the Second Coming, to make their statement for and protest against while trying to grab newspaper space and time on T.V.

I’m not much of a guy for pickets and picketing, whether by unions on sympathy strike or students in unsympathetic revolt, by hot-eyed militants of the left or right or middle, spokesmen for the poor or rich, vegetarians or meat eaters, whoremongers or chastemongers, or even lovely ladies greatly exercised about Erovite or whatever else lovely ladies might become exercised about.

Still, I suppose there are times when a public “demonstration” serves a purpose and even has positive value—so long as it is benign, so long as the insistence upon “my” rights doesn’t limit or deny you yours, or break your head. But the more I thought about—I reached back a few hours into memory for the names, and the faces, bodies, eyes and lips, voices and warmth that went with them—Lula and Britt and Silvia, Yumiko and Emilie and Leonore, Thérèse and Ronnie and Margarita and Dina, the more a kind of chillness of worry grew in my middle. It had grown from a mere cool twinge of concern to a small gut-clench of cold, as if a single icy cell of fear had split, again and again, dividing and multiplying like a virus in my blood.

I tried to ignore the worry. I couldn’t be dithering about supersexy tomatoes when there was a job—an important job—to be done. But that was the nub of the trouble, those gals were supersexy, and whenever that thought crossed my mind it was double-crossed by another thought, of the hate and fear of sex and sexiness, and above all supersexiness, which possessed Festus Lemming and his joyless, juiceless, loveless flock.

But I pushed that out of my mind, or at least over to its edge, took the Colt from its holster and moved away from the silk oak tree. I was out in the open for only a few seconds while walking rapidly alongside the fence on my right, then left at the rear of the house to the back door. I turned the knob, pushed. The door was unlocked. I felt my pulse pick up a few beats, because to me that meant Dave Cassiday was, very likely, home.

His den was empty. The smell of pipe smoke was strong. I found him in the living room, sitting alone on the big curved divan recently warmed by ten splendid derrieres. He was on its far side, opposite the five- or six-foot opening that allowed entrance to the inside of the circle, seated facing me, pencil in his hand and a pad of yellow paper on his lap. His eyes were on a big color television set in the corner on my right, but they flicked to me as soon as I stepped into view. And I went into the living room with the Colt .38 in front of me.

Cassiday stared as I walked toward him. “What the hell is this, Scott? What in hell’s the gun for?”

“For you, Dave.” I stopped between the two ends of the divan. “Sit on your hands, pal. Lace your fingers together, and sit on them.”

“Is this some kind of joke? I’ll be goddamned if—”

“Sit on them.”

He hesitated, then put his arms behind him, leaned forward, sat down with his hands pinned under his hips. I moved around the little table, noticing that the carnations in their colorful vase were already beginning to wilt, frisked Cassiday for a gun. He was clean. When I stepped back and sat on one edge of the divan, he was a good eight feet away—it was a big hunk of furniture.

“O.K.,” I said. “You can relax.”

He shifted his weight, let both hands drop into his lap, scowling. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I grinned. “That was the wrong thing to say, Dave. You should hope I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do, finally. Didn’t really take so long at that, though, did it? Hell, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you snatched Bruno, drained the blood out of André—incidentally, what was it you pumped into Strang?”

“You’re not only getting paranoid, you’ve got a damned short memory, Scott. You forget I was grabbed along with Doc, tied up and gagged—”

“Yeah, tied. Not very carefully. Bruno was really wrapped up, separate ropes for his wrists and ankles, and they were tight. So tight it was several minutes before he could walk at all. Not Dave Cassiday though. In about five seconds you were moving around like a ballet dancer—making sure Monk was dead, by the way—because there was only one rope around your arms and legs, and even it was pretty loose. I imagine if I’d started to work on those knots I’d have wondered why they unraveled so easily compared to the dandies holding Bruno. Fortunately—for you, Dave—I didn’t untie them but cut you free instead. Using your handy knife, at that.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Maybe I wasn’t strapped down like Doc, maybe I was. How would I know? After all, he was the important man, not me. And is it some kind of crime to carry a pocket knife? It’s just lucky I had it in my pocket—”

“Not so lucky. Pretty careless kidnappers to leave a knife in your pants. I suppose if you’d had a pistol, or a bazooka, they’d have let you keep it, too. But that’s a small item. Let’s take a look at the big picture, from your point of view, Dave. You were taking a swing at a tricky multimillion, maybe billion, dollar operation. If you were quote kidnapped unquote along with Bruno, you could keep an eye on the whole operation, and on those three hard boys you hired, could protect your interests—the Erovite formula, essentially—but at the same time appear not to be the villain but one of the victims if anything went wrong. Which it did, of course.”

“You’re going to feel damned silly—”

“Hold it a minute. You just said a chunk of it yourself, Dave. That Bruno was the important man, not you. It makes sense that our bruisers might force André to phone the Doc, get him down to the church—good sense, because considering the time, and the nature of recent events, very few people other than André could have got Bruno to a spot where he could be snatched. Or beaten, or killed. Lots of people around these days who’d at least like to pound on the Apostle of Sin, and Bruno knew it. So André was the right man to lean on, the perfect lever for moving Bruno when they wanted him moved. Naturally, after that they’d have to kill him. But how did our bruisers know about André, Dave?”

“What?”

I didn’t say anything. I waited, watching him, while his brow crinkled and a corner of his mouth started to twitch slightly.

“Yeah,” I went on softly, “how did they know about André? He was cooperating with you and Bruno, undercover in the Church, passing news of Lemming’s plans to you and Bruno. Nobody else was supposed to know about that. Sure wasn’t common knowledge. Bruno wouldn’t have told the boys. Dru wouldn’t have. Sort of points the finger at you, Dave. Right?”

This time he didn’t say anything.

“Maybe you knew it would tag you—if there was a hitch, that is, and if anybody ever learned these little details—which possibility might have helped you decide to be a covictim with Bruno. But you should have stayed home in bed, that was another mistake.”

“What?”

He was in a rut. Both times the word had just popped out. “If our boys knew as much as we now realize they must have, they also knew they didn’t need Dave Cassiday, not if they had Bruno. No reason to pull you down to the church and snatch you, too, Dave. No reason at all. Except your reasons.”

He smiled oddly. “You make a pretty good case with nothing to go on but half-witted guesses. I’d almost turn myself in if I didn’t know you were full of—”

“I wasn’t quite finished. And I’m not guessing, not any more. Once I realized you had to be it, the rest was easy. For example, if André had phoned Bruno and you about the same time, Bruno should have arrived at the church well before you, since he lived much closer to Weilton. He didn’t. You admitted to me yourself that you waited several minutes for the Doc. Besides, both calls from Weilton would have been long-distance, and thus recorded. So on my way here I checked with a contact in the phone company. You know what I found out. There was a call to Bruno from André’s phone—same number as Lemming’s, by the way—in the church. But none to you, Dave. Not near seven P.M., or at any other time yesterday. How do you explain that half-witted guess?”

He was silent for a good half-minute. Then he smiled that very engaging crooked smile of his and said, “I don’t suppose that’s all you’ve got?”

“No, that’s not all.”

Still smiling, he sighed. “Well, it wasn’t supposed to get this screwed up, Scott. It was arranged so Lemming would be in the squeeze, not me. It was beautiful. It was supposed to work. And if it hadn’t been for you, you sonofabitch, it would have.”

18

Cassiday relaxed, crossed one leg over the other, folded his arms, and went on, “If it had worked, none of these questions would have been asked—there wouldn’t have been anybody to ask them. Even if Dru refused to deliver the Erovite envelope, Doc would never have suspected me for a minute. I could even have tried it again, maybe a different way, made it work. I suppose you know I’m the only man who could have made it work.”

I nodded. “That’s what brought me here. Anyone who squeezed the formula out of Bruno would then have to kill the Doc of course. But as soon as he tried to market Erovite, even if he called it something else, he would automatically tag himself as the guy who’d killed Bruno to get the formula. Unless—unless he was a man who already knew the formula, or could claim he’d known it all along, because he was the very lad who’d been producing and marketing Erovite. Someone like you, Dave. More accurately, only you.”

“You mind if I smoke? I can’t shoot you with my pipe.”

“Go ahead. I’d hate to put two or three into your gut, but I will if you get cute. I suppose you remember what these pills did to Monk.”

He pulled his pipe and a tobacco pouch from his coat pocket. “I remember,” he said. After tamping tobacco into the pipe’s bowl he added, “You said you had more, Scott. That all there is?”

“Not quite. Last night on Fifty-eighth Street, Bruno and André were brought into that back room first so you could be alone with at least one of your kidnappers long enough—besides getting that part-of-the-convincer tap on your eye—to give last-minute instructions. Such as ordering the murder of a lovely gal, who’d seen one of your men and probably Strang as well in the church parking lot, and might even have recognized you in the front seat of the car. Just as Strang wasn’t killed merely to make Bruno write his note to Dru, or even because he could identify your two heavy-men, but because he knew you were behind the snatch from the beginning, since he hadn’t phoned you at all but instead had been forced to call Bruno by you.”

Dave had gotten his pipe lit and was drawing on it. After a couple of puffs he said, “You’re pretty good.”

“I don’t have to be good when a guy makes as many mistakes as you did.” I paused. “Tell me something, Dave. A minute ago you mentioned setting things up so Lemming would be in the squeeze. Lemming, not you. Mind explaining that?”

He was quiet for a few seconds, squinting at me. Then he said slowly, “Matter of fact, I’d kind of like for somebody to know just how good it … was. But what difference does it make to you?”

“You’re going to tell it sooner or later. Besides, maybe the only thing that kept me from tagging you before now was the idea, damn near a fixation I guess, that of Earth’s entire population the man most likely to kill or ruin Bruno—and Erovite along with him—was Festus Lemming. If Festus wasn’t such a weirdo and so obviously out to get the Doc, you’d have been number one sooner.”

“Very natural assumptions, Scott—for you and a hundred million other people. That’s what made it so sweet.” He paused for a while, then went on easily, “If half the country was ready to believe Lemming could kill Emmanuel Bruno, or have him killed, why not help them to believe he did?”

“Come again?”

“Use your imagination. Say it had worked my way—Bruno’s dead, nobody knows for sure who killed him, half the country thinks maybe Lemming had something to do with it. A gun, knife, that wouldn’t be the Pastor’s style. But an unknown rot in artery and vein? Something creepy in the blood? More like it, huh? No worry about ballistics, either, no fingerprints, just—the Antichrist is dead! Praise the Lord!”

Cassiday smiled broadly. “If I can brag a little, I took that angle into consideration, too. I learned from André on Thursday that Lemming was going to make his Bruno’s-the-Archfiend announcement two days later, on Saturday night. Made things a little tight for me, and I knew I’d have to get a move on, but the toughest part then was conning André so he wouldn’t spill the same thing to Doc. Because that angle was like the answer to a prayer. Not only would most of those hundred million start spinning their fingers around near their heads when they spoke of Festus, but his motive, already bigger than Texas, would look the size of—well, the planet? The solar system? The universe?” He smiled again, apparently enjoying himself a lot.

“Not bad,” I said grudgingly. “Except Festus arranged all that help for you himself. Besides which, a solid motive—even means and opportunity on top of motive—isn’t necessarily enough. There’d have to be some kind of evidence, something solid to point—”

“Do you think I’m a half-wit? If Lemming was suspected of lacing Bruno’s blood with poison, and a vial of the specific and previously unknown poison—in a kit with hypodermic syringe and some needles, say—was found taped under the little altar in Lemming’s private office at the church, that would be something solid, right? And naturally—here’s the frosting on the cake, Scott—since Festus is the biggest mouth sounding off against Erovite, and I’d have a lock on Erovite, every bit of trouble for Festus would be money in the bank for me.”

“You don’t mean you were going to plant a kit and some of that crud you shot into Strang—”

“Not going to. I told you it was beautiful, didn’t I? I talked André into letting me visit Lemming’s office for a couple minutes Thursday night—in the Pastor’s absence, of course. So, it’s already there, it’s done. Just waiting to be discovered at the appropriate moment, preferably by the police. And if they should need a little help, an anonymous tip maybe?”

I shook my head. “Well, there’s another reason dear old André had to go. I suppose Festus killed him, too?”

“Naturally. Friction between them. Doctrinal disagreements. Strang was about to leave the L.A. Eden. And—the big one—Lemming discovered André was spilling all the Church beans to the … well, I won’t say it again. Just say to Emmanuel Bruno.”

“In a way, I’ve got to hand it to you, Dave. I really think you could have made it work. If you hadn’t made so many mistakes.”

“This is the second time you’ve said that, Scott. And it’s not fair. It’s not even right. True, I had to improvise, and it got a little hairy—after you showed up. But if you hadn’t blundered into the picture I’d have been in the clear. And there’s still not a damned thing to tie me in—except you. If you were dead, I wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. Even now. Right?”

I thought about it. With me—and Bruno and the lovely Dru—knocked off, I couldn’t really see anything that would keep Cassiday from sliding home free. With Festus Lemming framed for something he didn’t do. Which didn’t strike me as desirable even for Festus.

I said, “Maybe. Except, as always, for that one little flaw in your otherwise admirable optimism, Dave. I’m not dead—”

“Sure you are.” He pulled the pipe stem from his mouth. “You already know Monk was a local man. What you don’t know is, Billy Hickel and Ed Loeffler—Ed’s the big guy—came to L.A., at my request, from Chicago. Billy’s the one the girl saw last night. Billy’s the one you just saw Ed kill.”

That told me more than I wanted to know. The only way Dave could be aware I’d seen the killing was if the big bruiser had very recently told him. Which meant big Ed Loeffler had either phoned Cassiday, or else—

Dave explained. “The only chance I had today to tell Ed what to do was when Billy left the house for something to eat. Ed called me and I told him to take care of Billy and then come straight here—he couldn’t stay holed up there on Hawthorn after the shooting—and to dump the blue Chrysler on the way. Seemed to me that would smooth out most of the snags all at once. Except for you, of course. Well, Ed does what I tell him to do. And you’ve taken care of my last little worry yourself, Scott, because Ed’s right behind you ready to bust your head open as soon as I say, ‘Bust it.’” He grinned. “I’ll hand you one thing, you came over that fence like a professional gymnast.”

I didn’t thank him. I started turning my head, slowly, saying, “When your hired slob took off I thought he was just getting away from the scene and the guy he’d shot—and from me. Besides …”

From the corner of my left eye I could still see Dave, calmly puffing on his pipe, but becoming visible to my right eye was something else. Not furniture or something way across the room. Something very close, and very large, and very depressing. I rolled my eyes around a little more. Yeah. Ed. I’d known he almost had to be there, but it’s one thing to have a mental picture of calamity, and another to be looking at it.

As I turned my head way around, apparently so I could stare directly into the bore of the Colt .45 automatic in Ed’s large hand, I kept talking, not because that was more rewarding than anything else I could think of but because I wanted both these guys to keep listening.

“Besides, Dave, I didn’t realize until later that you had to be the guy I was after, so I couldn’t have known Ed might be heading here, not then. Afterward, I guess I was too busy putting the picture together around you—”

Dave interrupted, and it was clear he wasn’t addressing me this time, “I’d like it better if we don’t have to shoot him. But if he wiggles, give it to him.”

Ed said, and it was clear he was addressing me, “Hired slob, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, “slob. Stinking, sapheaded, lard-assed slob.”

For, though directed not to wiggle, I was sure as hell going to. It was either cooperate with Dave and Ed while they killed me, or be totally uncooperative while they killed me—and at least the latter way there’d be a chance of living.

I was sitting directly between big Ed and Dave, and if I moved fast enough—while Ed was still feeling suddenly insulted and griped—when he pulled his Colt’s trigger he might put the slug into Dave instead of me. If he missed me. Besides, the instant I moved I was going to bang off a shot or two from my .38, and even though I was looking at the .45’s bore and Dave was eight feet away in the other direction, it was possible I’d get lucky and hit him. If nothing else, I would for sure make a lot of noise.

It was about as good as any desperation plan, and possibly the best of several lousy alternatives, so as soon as I spit the last “slob” out of my mouth I was ready to move.

Ready. But in the well-known phrase there is “ready” and “set” and “go” and all I got was ready, which doesn’t even get a guy off the blocks.

The reason was that my swift summation of the situation was slightly—approximately seven feet—in error. While I was verbally slapping Ed off guard and getting ready to get set and go and make a lot of noise, Dave Cassiday was not eight feet, but more like one foot, away from me.

What he was doing so close was swinging that vase, which had been on the table between us and in which were carnations and water and possibly a lead anvil, at—actually, against—my skull. I didn’t see him swinging it, so I couldn’t be positive, but I recalled nothing else handy that was both movable and the right size and suitably solid. Logic says it was the vase.

It sure wasn’t the carnations.

19

At first there were transparent films of gray, like gauzy curtains, one behind the other, each a different shade of grayness. Then there was color, a rosiness, and little darting brightnesses that left fading streaks behind them. And sound, a rustling, something or someone breathing. Voices, a man saying, the words soft and fluttering as if he were very far away, “… ought to do it. After we dump him we both better lay low at See and Cue for a while, at least till we know where his fuzz buddies are looking.…”

I could still feel the small pain at the bend of my left arm, or thought I could. I wasn’t sure if it was pain itself or merely memory of pain. But that had been the first thing, the stinging and an odd pressure, and after that the grays and color and brightnesses.

The sound had faded, was coming back. “… one shot should be plenty. But it’s the old juice, might have lost some strength by now. And this sonofabitch, I don’t know. I’d better give him another squirt and make damned sure. Watch him, Ed.”

There was thumping, like footsteps, someone walking over a carpet. In the room at … Ed … Ed … yeah, the big guy who’d killed Billy, Ed the slob. And Dave. I was remembering. The room was in Dave Cassiday’s home. I was in his home.

It was like waking from sleep with my head being squeezed in a vise. I kept my eyes closed, tried not to let my breathing change, held myself still. The pain didn’t lessen; if anything it got worse, but in a few more moments I knew where I was and why and all that had gone before.…

My breathing stopped.

It was seconds before I realized I was holding my breath, and I tried to continue breathing with the same slow and even rhythm. But I couldn’t do it, my breathing was too fast, whipped by sudden fright.

Because my mind had reached back to brush over what had gone before and stopped on the thought and picture of André Strang, slumped forward in a chair, his face like something carved from candles, his leg fleshed with gray-white putty, and on the floor beneath him, blood …

It was when I knew what it was Cassiday had shot into my arm that my breathing stopped. Knew not its name, but that it was whatever had been forced into Strang’s blood before his leg was cut, and he bled and bled and bled and grew chill and short of breath and died.

It was in me now, in my blood. In me.

I heard the soft thump of footsteps again. Dave coming back.

“… give him another squirt and make damned sure,” he’d said.

I felt my eyelids tremble as I tried to open them slowly, lift them enough so I could see, but without bringing a yell out of Ed if he was looking at my face. There wasn’t any yell. With my eyelids barely cracked and quivering I could see, as if I were looking through inches of water, Cassiday a few feet from me, fat hypodermic syringe in his right hand, inverted bottle in his left, bright needle thrust through the bottle’s rubber-covered top and into a murky liquid. He pulled on the plunger, sucking fluid into the syringe.

A blur moving on my right, four or five feet away, was undoubtedly Ed. I let my right eye close, opened the left one wider. I could see little lines etched on the glass tube in Dave’s hand, darkness already half-filling the syringe. I lay on some kind of long polished table in Cassiday’s living room. My arms rested on my chest. My wrists were not bound, but I couldn’t see my feet. And I couldn’t afford to move them to find out if they were tied or free. It wasn’t time to move them, not quite yet.

The men weren’t speaking, but I could hear a voice, soft, well-modulated. I concentrated on it, heard the phrase, “Citizens FOR,” and then something about “The Church of the Second Coming.” Television, probably a news commentator. At least it wasn’t another man here in the room. I wondered what time it was, how long I’d been unconscious. And I wondered about the girls, the lovelies, marching … or had they marched already?

But I allowed those thoughts in my mind only for a moment because that fat syringe was filled, Dave was stepping nearer. I let the lid slide almost shut over my eye, could barely see movement, the arm extended close to me.

“Better hold him down, Ed, just in case,” Dave said. “Looks like he’s out for the night, but when I shove this needle in him he might—”

I didn’t wait for the needle. Or for Ed to get his big paws on me. Dave was on my left, syringe held point up before him, his other arm extended as he reached toward me. I snapped my eyes open and yanked up my legs, pulling with my left hand against the table’s edge and swivelling on its top.

Inches beyond my shoes I could see Dave’s startled face, mouth stretching open as he let out a high soft yell, an almost girlish shriek, and then I uncoiled my legs and drove the heels of both shoes at him. One hit his right hand, drove it back against his chest, and the other scraped along the side of his chin instead of landing solidly where I’d aimed.

Dave reeled backward, and there was a grunt behind me as I half slid and half fell from the table, hitting the carpet with both hands and a knee, managing to get one foot planted beneath me. I jerked my head up to see Ed coming around the end of the table, not more than six feet away, that .45 automatic in his hand again. He stopped, bent his thick legs slightly, and slapped his left hand over the slide, cocking the gun, then shoved it six inches forward like a man uncorking a gut punch.

As soon as his hand hit that slide I’d grabbed at the .38 Special beneath my coat—or, rather, the empty clamshell holster, because my gun wasn’t in it. Ed’s lips were stretched away from his clenched teeth and I knew his finger was tightening on the trigger. I started to flop and roll but suddenly Dave’s voice cracked out, startlingly loud, “Hold it, Ed! Ed, back up!”

Ed managed to hold his fire, but it was close.

As I landed prone on the carpet, Dave yelled again, “Stay, away from the sonofabitch, don’t let him get close to you. And don’t shoot him unless it’s got to be that way. He’s already dead, you goddamned fool! Keep the gun on him, but stay away from the bastard.”

By the time he’d finished yelling I was getting to my feet. But that’s all I did. Dave was well to my left and behind me, but Ed was still hunched over with the gun aimed at my middle, moving his big square head toward Dave and back to me, like a very slow thinker trying to reach a decision.

Finally he straightened up, stepped backward another two or three yards. He seemed to shudder slightly, then stood quite still, holding the gun on me. His lips relaxed, formed a recognizable mouth again.

I felt a little dizzy. Maybe it was from the blow on my skull, the tension and emotion of these last seconds. I hoped that was it.

Dave was swearing softly, looking down toward the right side of his chest, and as I glanced at him he yanked his shirt open. He didn’t do it neatly, just grabbed its front in both hands and jerked. Buttons flew and one of them bounced to a stop inches from the syringe on the floor. The glass tube was broken, a dark stain on the carpet beneath it. A stain much like a splotch of dark wetness on Dave’s shirt.

He stared at his bare chest, ran his fingers over it, then lifted his head, sighing, a half-smile on his lips, his expression one of almost ridiculous relief. He regained his composure, then spoke, but his voice was still higher than normal. “All right, Ed. Hold him where he is. Keep him nailed there. We’re still going to do this according to plan. Scott?”

I looked at him.

“If you take one step toward Ed, just one, he’s going to plug you. We took your gun. No way you can get to him. No way.”

“So?”

“So don’t try anything. Don’t even move. I don’t want to … kill you.”

I laughed. It was a mechanical sound. “Of course not,” I said, and then I told him what he was full of. He didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps because he knew what I was full of.

“Well, I don’t want you shot.” He cut it off, moistened his lips, glanced at the broken syringe and then at my face. After a few moments he said, “I don’t want you shot—here. You’re not stupid, Scott. And I know you saw the hypo, the syringe. Hell, you broke it. I suppose you’ve guessed, but I might as well tell you what I was going to do.”

He put a little too much emphasis on “going.” He was about to tell me, not what he’d done, but what he was going to do? Of course, Dave couldn’t be aware that I already knew he’d shot his gunk into me, and maybe he didn’t even suspect it. Not that his ignorance was likely to do me much good.

He went on, “You’re going to go like André Strang, Scott. André, and … maybe some others. I can’t say it’s something to look forward to, but it’s a lot slower than getting shot in the head.” He paused. “You try to pull another trick like this last one and you’ll be dead in a couple of seconds. This way you live longer, you’ve even got a chance to stay alive. You’re supposed to be one of those never-say-die bastards, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer him. I’d become aware of an odd, creepy sensation, like a million cell-sized goose bumps starting to freeze on my skin. And there was another mild wave of dizziness, fortunately brief. Normally none of it would have seemed serious, or have been very disturbing to me. At least not physically disturbing.

Dave was going on, “I’ve got to get another syringe, fill it, pump the juice into you. Even then we’ll have to take you away from here before.… Hell, you’ll have all kinds of chances.”

“You’re all heart, Dave. Incidentally, what the hell is this juice, as you call it?”

I was a little surprised when he told me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Even though Dave couldn’t be sure I knew the stuff was already in me, he knew it was. “It’s one of the company’s experimental drugs,” he said easily. “This one’s made from a few common chemicals and, primarily, an extract from seaweed. Seaweed, isn’t that interesting? It’s a blood thinner, like coumadin, meant to dissolve blood clots or prevent them, help stroke victims, that sort of thing. Only it doesn’t work. That is, it works too well.”

“Too much of a good thing, huh?” I said, feeling sick. At the moment I didn’t notice any dizziness or prickly goose bumps, but I felt sick anyway.

“We checked it out in the lab,” Dave said casually. “Injected it into mice, guinea pigs, dogs, and even a couple of horses. Killed them all. If they were cut or had open sores they bled externally, bled to death. If not, they bled internally, hemorrhaged, their body cavities filled up with blood. They went into shock, keeled over, and kicked the bucket.”

I was feeling very sick, but I managed to say, “Mice and guinea pigs, even dogs and horses. Killed them all, huh? You dedicated scientists, you’ll do anything to save a life, won’t you?”

Dave didn’t answer me. He said to big Ed, “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. You know what to do if Scott tries anything.”

Dave walked out of the room, but Ed didn’t watch him go. He didn’t take his eyes off me. Or his gun. He was much too far away for me to have even a slight chance of getting close to him—at least while he was staring at me, waiting for any movement, for that first step. Maybe even hoping for it.

I knew I couldn’t just stand here waiting for Dave to come back with more of his miserable juice, that I had to try something, and fast. But I also knew if I gave Ed any reason for taking some shots at me he wouldn’t have to hit me dead center or blow my head open. If he merely nicked me in a couple of places I could wind up like Dave’s guinea pigs and horses. Even if I didn’t get shot, the blood inside me was changing, thinning, walls of arteries and veins might be weakening.…

I pushed all that away, tried not to think about it, but it was difficult to concentrate on anything else. Beyond Ed in the corner on my right, movement flickered upon the television tube, the head and shoulders of a television newscaster filled the screen.

Except for sound from the set it was completely quiet in the room, and though the man’s voice was low I could clearly hear him saying, “… on Filbert Street, and moments from now will turn to march up Heavenly Lane, the short private drive leading onto the grounds of the Church of the Second Coming. There has—as yet—been no evidence to confirm the report, but it has been reported or rumored that the ladies plan to make part of their march in, ah, the nude—as an, ah, emphasis of their protest against the … what they allege is … the fanatical antiwoman, antiflesh, and antisex attitude of Pastor Lemming. It, mm, is only a rumor at this point—”

Only a rumor. Still it gave me an idea—at least, the beginning of an idea—and, along with it, hope.

“Hey!” I said. “You hear that, Ed, baby?”

20

Ed’s brows twitched. “Huh?”

I pointed a thumb toward the set. “Television announcer, the latest news. When I was here around noon, Cassiday told me ten of the best-looking gals in Citizens FOR—gorgeous gals, actually, and built!—were going to march to Pastor Lemming’s church. When I left, they were talking about parading at least part of the way in the nude. Without any clothes on. But I don’t suppose they really would.…”

Ed’s lips slowly took on a round, pooching shape, as if he were saying “Whoo.” But there wasn’t any sound, and he didn’t take his eyes off me.

From the television set: “Pastor Lemming has just announced, and I quote, ‘Members of the subversive antiGod, antiChrist, antidecency heathens who call themselves Citizens FOR will not be permitted to profane the Almighty’s earthly Edens. God will strike them, will smite them. Yes. I am rallying members of the Church of the Second Coming to my side and we will work the will of God in opposing the filth and obscenity of Citizens FOR, for though the foul forces for filth fill the, er, ah, fill the land, we are not weak but united by God in the defense of God.…’”

There was a little more but it sure sounded different when the voice and delivery were not Lemming’s own. And I feared Ed’s not overlong attention span was weakening and wandering. I was losing him.

But then the announcer—even his usually calm voice showing some slight excitement—mentioned a report just received and continued, “… because of conflicting reports that reached us earlier, apparently due to a lack of agreement among the ten representatives of Citizens FOR, we were unable to film the beginning of the march now in progress on Filbert Street, on the outskirts of Weilton. However, two of our camera trucks are now racing to the scene—”

“How about that?” I said. “They’re actually going to do it.”

“Do it?” Ed echoed questioningly.

“I don’t know what they’re going to do, but whatever they do do, the station’s going to take pictures of them doing it. That’s what the announcer just said, anyway. You heard him, Ed. Wouldn’t it be crazy if those gorgeous babes stripped naked, and the television guys actually took pictures of them? Moving pictures?”

He was silently going “Whoo” again.

“Probably they wouldn’t really fling their clothes off. Not all ten of those beauties. Not all their clothes. But … I did hear them say they were going to. Even if they stripped, you don’t suppose anybody would show it on television, do you?”

“I … don’t s’pose.”

“I can believe the guys will take plenty of pictures, all right. But I know those bastards. They’d probably keep the whole damn thing for themselves. Run the movie at home, you know. Maybe run it over and over.”

“You think they’d do that?”

“Hell, yes, they would. I know they would. Just run it over and over, especially the good parts—and I’ll tell you something else, Ed, those gals have got some good parts. It’s a shame. Those bastards will make a movie of those gorgeous naked tomatoes—if anything marvelous does happen, I mean—and keep it for themselves, keep it a secret, Guys like you and me, we’ll never even be sure it happened, much less see it. I don’t know about you, Ed, but it gripes the hell out of me. Why, those dirty—”

“Bastards!” Ed said.

“You said it.” While talking to him I’d been trying to keep an ear tuned to the newscaster’s remarks, and he had just informed his expectant audience that the studio’s camera trucks were ready at the scene.

I held up a hand—and took a small sliding step forward—and cried loudly, “Listen, Ed!”

From the television set: “And now, live from Weilton—”

From Ed: “Whoo!” Audibly this time. His big square head jerked an inch left, but stopped. He wasn’t going to take his eyes off me, no, sir. He knew his duty.

I gazed intently beyond him to the set in the corner—and took one more little step forward.

“Hey!” Ed said.

“Hey is right, pal,” I replied excitedly. “Hey, boy. I can’t quite see what …”

There they were. Ten of them carrying little signs on sticks. It was a long shot and I couldn’t read the signs, but it was the lovelies of Citizens FOR, ten gorgeous and curvaceous gals—with every stitch of their clothes on. Well, I hadn’t really expected anything else. But I was a little disappointed. They were marching in single file up Heavenly Lane toward the church, nearly past the parking lot and about to step onto the grass.

The camera zoomed in and panned over the ten lovely faces, as a deep male voice said, “And here they are, already approaching the church, just as in an earlier statement to the press they said they would—”

“Just as they said they would!” I cried. “My God, my God. Oh, Lord in Heaven.”

“What’re they doin’?” Ed asked. “What’re they doin’? Is they—”

“Oh, Ed,” I cried, “don’t look! Don’t look, Ed!”

And I took another step forward, bugging my eyes at the television screen. I was getting a little nearer Ed, true, but that wasn’t entirely my intention. I had been trying to move closer to the long polished table on which I’d earlier been lying, and I had succeeded. It was now little more than a foot away. Just one more sliding step and I’d have my hands against it.

“What is it?” Ed asked hoarsely. His eyes were fixed on me like hot rivets and the tendons were bulging in his thick neck. His head was tilting slightly toward the television set as though pulled by a bone magnet. “Are they doin’ it? Did they?”

“Ed, don’t ask. Why, how can it be? How could they show this on television?”

“Is they naked? Did they take their clothes off like you said? Pants and all?”

“Pants and all!” I howled, throwing my hands into the air and letting them fall as I tottered forward. Letting them fall to grip the table’s side. “I can’t believe my eyes! Can I really be seeing on television, ten gorgeous, shapely, sexy, naked babes? Naked as jaybirds? Naked?”

I had to say “naked” three times in a row before Ed cracked. But he had probably been fighting his baser nature, his carnal desires, longer than ever he had before. If there were ten tomatoes on the tube, with their clothes off, pants and all, he just wouldn’t have been a man if he hadn’t looked.

So he looked.

And once he’d decided he simply couldn’t afford to miss this unprecedented high point of television history, he did not merely turn his head a trifle and slide his eyes left and take a little peek. No, he did not. He did what any real man would do, he snapped his head around as if it had been shot from a cannon, with his eyes opening wide as he let his head carry them forward several inches through the air, aiming them toward and closer to the television tube. At the same moment, before he even got a little look—and this is the sad thing, really—he had begun to smile wetly in anticipation.

Well, that ruined him, of course. Not merely the smile, the whole thing. Another big, strong man, like so many sinners before him, had given in gladly to his weakness, and got what for. His fate was sealed the instant he decided to look.

I did what I had to do rapidly, but I suppose I could have taken my time. Because Ed looked, I mean looked, with an intentness and total concentration I had rarely observed except in bird dogs, and perhaps for a while he actually thought he was seeing that which he had dreamed of seeing, for he was still smiling when I hit him with the table.

Even as I leaped forward and shoved the table with a horrible smack into Ed’s gut, I almost hated myself for doing it. I felt like those callous scientists who catch boy boll weevils in traps reeking with the synthetic scent of girl weevils in heat, or lure male Costa Rican macaws to their doom with the recorded croak of a female Costa Rican macaw laying eggs. Yes, I almost hated myself. But I did it, anyway.

I jumped forward, yanking on the side of the table and lifting it. Three of its legs left the floor, and I shoved with all my strength, trying to sail the furniture at Ed like a huge angular discus. The table’s right end swung up in an arc, the left end slowed by that one leg dragging on the carpet, and the fastest-moving part of the table—its sharply pointed corner—caught Ed at just the right spot to remove his appendix and hip bone if it had been moving a little faster.

Ed let out a noise of astonishing volume and complexity. Complexity, because it was a blend of pain, shock, disbelief, and dismay, at least. And, surely, it was not merely physical pain he expressed with that unbelievable howl. For Ed was still staring at the television set, bent over several inches and slightly twisted, and it was possible he had not even detected my movement, had not realized I was preparing to ruin him. If so, it followed that when the excruciating pain got him he did not know I had done it. Thus he must have felt he had suffered a massive and spontaneous embolism, or mysteriously ruptured himself. I would hate to think what he might have believed if that point had caught him smack in the middle.

Or maybe it was that he’d had just enough time by then to get his eyes carefully focused, only instants before they unfocused, but long enough for him to realize those ten gorgeous babes, contrary to what he’d been led to expect, still had their clothes on, pants and all.

The noise he made was accompanied by such a great rush of breath that his lungs should have emptied and collapsed, and he bent forward far enough that when I reached him and swung my right fist in a low-swooping uppercut it had to travel only a foot and a half to reach his chin.

He spun to the side, arm flipping, automatic sailing through the air—but not before his finger had tightened on the trigger and sent one .45-caliber bullet past my leg, his gun so close I could feel its muzzle blast slap the cloth of my trousers.

Ed reeled, staggered away from me, still on his feet but very unsteady on them, making a yard sideways for every yard forward. I jumped toward a window in the front wall. A few feet left of the window was a big overstuffed chair, alongside it a lamp on a small table. I grabbed the lamp, hurled it through the window, and, as the glass shattered and sprayed outward, picked up the table and banged it against shards sticking up from the bottom sill.

“What the hell’s—”

That wasn’t Ed’s voice. It was a shout from Dave Cassiday behind me. I turned, saw him running up the hallway, lined by his den and half a dozen other rooms, his feet skidding as he saw me and tried to slow down. I kept turning, swung the table around my body hip high and let it fly. Cassiday ducked, flipping both hands before his face, lost his footing, and started to fall. On my right, Ed had caught his balance and stood facing me. But his gun wasn’t in his fist. There was time. Time for me to put one hand at the bottom of the window and another at its side, and hoist myself through.

But as I turned and reached toward the window my eyes fell on the television screen and a scene—brief but vivid enough to stun the cerebellum—so startling, in fact unnerving, that at almost any other moment it would have stopped me. But at this moment it didn’t even slow me down. My feet slipped on the lawn, or on broken glass, and I fell. Seconds later I was up and sprinting toward the iron gate and Roxbury Drive beyond it.

My Cad was parked two blocks away, but reaching it would be a breeze if I got over the fence. I don’t quite remember how I got over the thing, but it must have been at least as speedy a performance as my first attempt. Maybe practice makes perfect. Or maybe there was so much adrenalin and thyroxin and smog and steam in my blood that I could almost as easily have gone through the fence as over it.

My feet slapped the sidewalk and continued slapping to the corner and around it, and I felt very damned good except for one thing—the fact that I kept mentally repeating as I ran, with my heart pounding and the blood churning inside me, “adrenalin and thyroxin and smog and steam … and something else.”

The thought stayed with me as I drove to the freeway and headed, well over the speed limit, toward downtown L.A.

It was in my mind when I passed the Civic Center and the L.A. police building, when I turned onto the Santa Ana Freeway.

And it was still in my mind when, a mile before the turn-off to Weilton, with a thin film of sweat on my face and a strange chill tension gliding beneath my skin, I discovered I was sitting in a pool of wetness. And looked, and it was blood.

21

All during that short fast ride, with the thought of Cassiday’s “juice” filling my mind, I tried to concentrate on other things. And, part of the time, succeeded.

Especially when I remembered my last glance at the color television set in Dave Cassiday’s living room. And that brief but vivid sight of Lula. The shot was live and had included all, or at least most, of the girls, no longer marching in single file but gathered in a group on the grass. I’d gotten a glimpse of red-haired Dina on the screen’s left and pint-sized but quart-curvy Ronnie next to her, a blur of others, but closest to the camera and facing it, dominating the foreground, had been tall and slim but shapely Lula. Lula of the chocolate skin and charcoal eyes, the wild black hair and wild breasts, breasts so remarkably eye-catching and full, so heavy and yet high, she should have sent pictures of them to soldiers, sailors, and U.S. Marines to help win, or prevent, wars—as I had briefly thought when I’d first lamped Lula.

But it occurred to me now that those goregous globes might possibly start World War Three, commence it on August Fifteenth, today; and perhaps it had already begun. For in the second or so before the picture was replaced, very speedily replaced, with a shot of the soaring Church of the Second Coming and its golden cross—and the figure of Festus Lemming, himself, before the open doors of his church, a distant and diminutive figure, but reconizable, thin and angular and as rigid as the cross above him—Lula crossed her arms, gripped the green sweater at each side, and smoothly pulled it up over her head.

Over, and probably off. “Probably,” because I and all other viewers could only guess. The scene vanished instantly, to be replaced by the much more obscene view of Festus Lemming; and Americans last sight before the guessing began was: Lula, arms stretched high, sweater turned inside out and concealing her face, a circumstance that could not have been more perfectly designed, by hiding the loveliness of her eyes and brows and smiling lips, to emphasize the startling thrust and weight and curve and jiggle—yes, for an instant they jiggled—of those astonishingly eye-catching jugs.

They were not bare. Not quite. That, I suppose, would have blown lots of fuses, in people if not television sets. They were cupped and half-covered by a lacy contraption remotely resembling two peek-a-boo doilies which, for some reason, reminded me of a pair of the slingshots used by David to slay Goliath. Though in this case, I figured Goliath was the winner in a breeze.

As I kept a heavy foot on the gas pedal, on my way to Weilton, an unusual tension and unease began to fill me. I couldn’t decide whether I was worried more about what Lula had started to do, or had done, and the possibility that those nine other lovelies had followed suit, perhaps birthday suit, or about Festus Lemming glaring at the world from the steps of his church. Festus Lemming confronted by that which he had spent his adult years—to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he had reached them—in damning and denying. Confronted by that which it was his whole purpose and passion to destroy. Confronted by ugliness, obscenity, filth—the nakedness of woman.

It was, I thought, unlikely that Festus Lemming had looked upon a woman gloriously—or shamefully—nude since his infancy. If what I feared had come to pass, then unless Lemming had covered his peepers or turned away or declined to look, he had been forced to digest with his eyes the undeniably jarring sight not merely of a female person unclothed but of ten peeled tomatoes, each a gorgeous and voluptuously fashioned sizzler, each stupendously sexy alone and apart; and all ten together in the altogether, the whole gang bare en masse naked, would surely have been a sight so severely shocking to Festus as to frazzle every nerve in his nervous nervous system.

More even than that, Festus was a man who did not care to allow people thus to cavort nakedly in groups, not merely in public but in private woods or dwellings, or even large tubs—like the dandy in the cabin where I’d left Regina Winsome. What, then, would his all-embracing righteousness demand if the worst should happen in the shadow of the Holy Church itself, on God’s very own green grass?

I shuddered to think of it. I seriously doubted that he would pluck out his right eye and cast it from him, even though that wonderful procedure was recommended in the sacred Scriptures. I doubted that he would pluck out anything. Anything of his own. But I did not doubt that almost any other action conceivable was possible to the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor. And for that matter, to his flock of virtuous Lemmings, given the right time and place, the suitable circumstance and mood.

I recalled the newscaster’s comment, to the effect that Festus Lemming vowed, should the representatives of Citizens FOR attempt in any way to bug him or God, if God did not Himself smite or strike the sinners, presumably dead, he would himself—with the aid of his flock—take whatever action was necessary for the defense of God.

Ordinarily the congregation would not begin arriving at the church until shortly before seven P.M. And neither in that television longshot of the girls marching toward the church nor in my one quick glimpse of Lemming had there been other people in view. I’d seen no evidence of any appalling—and, unquestionably, I felt, dangerous—massing of the flock, of Lemmings gathered to follow their leader, of Christian soldiers come to “fight and smite the foe.” But I knew within minutes after a call from Festus Lemming went out to the faithful—assuming it had not gone out long before now—the sweethearts would gather, ready and eager to do battle in the named of decency, no matter what the cost.

But … maybe I was worrying about nothing at all. Maybe Lula—who struck me as rather playful anyhow—hadn’t taken her sweater all the way off. Maybe the girls, decently clad, had headed for their homes by now. Of course. That’s what they must have done.

Thus was I thinking, talking myself out of undue concern until and unless there was unquestionably cause for concern—when I became aware of something else to worry about.

I had, at nearly every moment since feeling that small pain at the bend of my left arm, been chillingly aware of Cassiday’s juice in my arteries and veins. But the natural fear was lessened by a hazily recalled comment—Dave’s saying the stuff was “old,” and might have lost some of its strength. So I assumed, and fervently hoped, it wasn’t as potent or as dangerous as the shot given to André Strang.

But that hope died, or at least got pretty sick, when I became aware at the fuzzy edge of vision of a smudge or stain on the left sleeve of my coat. I looked at the small dark splotch of wetness halfway up my sleeve and felt my hands tighten on the steering wheel. For seconds I forgot I was moving eighty miles an hour on the Santa Ana Freeway, only minutes from Weilton, because I knew what the wetness was and why it was there.

I jerked my head up, slowed, and swung sharply right to pass a Buick convertible, missing its rear bumper by inches. For a few moments I let the Cad roll, staring straight ahead while a cool moist breeze seemed to wrinkle the skin over my spine and on the back of my neck. Holding the speedometer needle at sixty, I took one hand then the other from the wheel and shrugged out of my coat.

The whole length of my forearm was wet and red. I rubbed my coat over my arm, pressing the cloth up over my bicep. From the tiny hole where the hypodermic needle had entered, above the faint blueness of vein, blood oozed, began to move in a crooked line like a small red worm wriggling on my skin.

My heart was beating too fast, pounding in my stomach and against the inside of my skull. And then I became aware of the wetness beneath me, dropped a hand to thrust it between the car seat and my thigh, felt the stickiness. Looked at my hand, saw redness on my fingertips. My fingers were trembling. I started to swing the wheel right, caught myself, and checked the rearview mirror. When the lane was clear, I angled across it, slowing, pulled to a stop at the far right of the freeway.

I cut the ignition, pulled off my gun harness, and started to use its strap as a tourniquet around my arm—changed my mind. I grabbed the keys and climbed out of the Cad. My knees felt weak, but that didn’t have to be caused by the junk circulating inside me. It could be the natural result of shock, tension, stress—and the uncertainty, not knowing what might happen to me in the next minutes or hours. But I still didn’t waste any time.

I unlocked the trunk, pawed in the gear there, found the first-aid kit, and opened it, then yanked off my pants. There was redness upon the backs of both my thighs, but after a fast scrub with a handful of gauze the only spot that bled, continued to bleed, was a small cut high on the back of my left thigh.

Even though immediately after I wiped it away blood streamed from the little gash again, I felt an almost dizzying sense of relief. Because I must have got the cut from broken glass when I slipped and fell after jumping through Dave Cassiday’s window, and in my leg and hip there could have been half a dozen deep gashes. But there was only the one, not more than a quarter of an inch long. It would hardly have been worth patching—if it hadn’t kept on bleeding.

I found a box of .38 cartridges, wrapped one of them in cotton, and pressed it over the cut. Then I strapped it tightly to my thigh with gauze and held the makeshift pressure bandage in place with strips of adhesive tape. A smaller ball of compressed cotton held with tape plugged the needle hole in my arm.

I used another handful of gauze to finish cleaning up my thighs and arm, then straightened, breathing deeply, and reached for the trunk lid. As I slammed it shut, a car whizzed past on my left and I heard the poppoppop of a motorcycle engine near, slowing. The sound ended with a pprmph, close behind me. I turned with the keys in my hand to look at the guy climbing off his motorcycle and stepping—somewhat warily, was the impression I got—toward me.

“Guy” isn’t quite the right word. He was a uniformed patrolman, a bike cop. His right hand rested on the holster against his hip, and as I looked at him he pushed his helmet up slightly with the thumb of his left hand, and at the same time, with the fingers of his other hand, pulled open the holster’s flap.

It struck me that his attitude, his approach, his expression, and—particularly—his unflapped holster, were not encouraging signs. So many other things had been occupying my mind recently that there’d been no room for worry about my last conversation with Captain Samson and what Sam might have done when I failed to appear at the LAPD. No doubt he’d taken some sort of vigorous action by now, but precisely what I didn’t know. Maybe the officer knew.

He stopped about six feet away, squinting at me, let his eyes drop to my feet, raised them slowly. He glanced at my car, then let his gaze rest on my face, his expression a strange one. His mouth opened.

I’d have bet ten to one he was going to say, “Shell Scott, I have a warrant for your arrest on several misdemeanors and a felony or two, so please come along quietly,” and so forth. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t anywhere near it. He didn’t even know who I was, or he would have used my name. But instead he called me “Sir.”

He said pleasantly, showing a thin strip of his upper front teeth, “Nice day for strolling along the freeway without—”

I started to put the car keys into my trousers pocket and sort of rubbed them against the hair on my leg, so if I’d thought fast enough I could have guessed while he was still speaking what the officer was going to say. But I didn’t think fast enough, and it really startled me when he finished:

“—any pants on, isn’t it, sir?”

“Oh, brother.” I glanced down, then up. “Man, I forgot I had ’em off,” I said.

He nodded encouragingly. “That them over there on the ground, sir?”

I glanced around. There they were, crumpled near the Cad’s right rear tire, where I had flung them when moving with great speed and thinking only of blood leaking out of me. “Yeah,” I said. “Look, officer, I can explain. Believe me, this is the first time I’ve ever been caught in a ridiculous situation like—”

“First time you’ve been caught, is it?”

“First time I’ve been in such a—damnit, will you knock off the nice-dummy dialogue? I’m not some kind of nut—”

“Of course not, sir. Now, why don’t we get your pants and—”

“Will you shut up a minute?” That didn’t set very well with him, but I went on, “I yanked the things off because I was afraid I might be bleeding to death. I got cut and blood was leaking out of me, practically squirting. I must have lost a pint already. Maybe a quart.”

One of his eyebrows lifted. “Not a gallon?”

“I didn’t put it in a bottle, dammit. You can check the blood on my pants—and the coat in my car—if you want to. I had to bandage the cut, and in a hurry.” I jabbed a thumb at my thigh. “There wasn’t time to fool around.”

He glanced at my Cad again. “Doesn’t look like you were in a wreck. This just happen?”

“No, about half an hour ago.”

“You were bleeding to death for half an hour?”

“Well, it was only a little bit of a … look, I got squirted with—” I chopped it. I couldn’t stand here for another twenty minutes trying to explain in detail everything that had happened in the last several hours. And now that I’d plugged my holes I was increasingly anxious to check the church in Weilton. Maybe there’d be nothing to check, maybe Festus was in his sanctum and all was right with the world. But I had a very funny feeling. I was uneasy. I had a hunch something horrible might be happening.

So I continued earnestly, “Officer, I have recently discovered I’m a hemophiliac. You know what that is?”

He scraped teeth over his upper lip. “One of those guys that bleed?”

“That’s right. Bleed and don’t stop bleeding. Once it starts, it just keeps pouring out. That’s what I am—a bleeder.”

“Well.…” His expression softened.

He seemed, if not overcome with concern, at least less wary, so, eager to be on my way, I laid it on a bit. “You don’t know how rough, officer,” I said soberly. “If this had happened while I was unconsc—asleep, I’d have bled to death. Wouldn’t even have known I was dying. Why, if a girl bit me, it could kill me.”

“Girl?”

“Ah … dog, cat, an animal. A mosquito. Anything that bites. Or scratches. The hell—if this condition of mine gets any worse, I could die getting a transfusion. Why, a couple glands rubbing together could spring leaks inside me, and I wouldn’t even know I was bleeding to dea—” I stopped, uncomfortably aware that I could be telling him the literal truth.

The officer shook his head. “If that’s the straight story, I guess I won’t have to hold you. I’ll even lead the way to a hospital.” He relaxed a little more. “It jarred me pretty good when I spotted you, though.”

“I can understand that, officer. I’m sure it isn’t every day—”

“Figured you must be one of the bunch doing a strip. Or supposed to be. Well, if they were doing it, they must’ve got it done by now.”

“Strip … bunch? What bunch?”

“Supposed to be some women peeling down to where it’s at, in front of a church of all places. I guess some of the congregation showed up and turned blue. I was on my way to check it out—figured it was another crackpot calling in, you know? Women stripping naked at a church? Had to be a crackpot. But then I got a load of you, and I started to wonder. Got suspicious right off, could be you were one of those Citizens FOR nuts—”

“My God. You mean they did it? They took their clothes off? Really took ’em off?”

Something changed in the atmosphere, as though the sun had gone beyond a cloud or a total eclipse was beginning. The officer said slowly, “I don’t know what they did, if anything. Why are you so interested?”

“Well … I heard about it—the rumor—on television. News broadcast. Crazy. Who’d believe it? But it was very … interesting. And … that’s why I’m so interested.”

He nodded a time or two, then said briskly, “All right. If you’re really a—what was it? Homopheliac?”

“Not homo, for crying out—hemo. Hemophiliac. A bleeder.”

“And if you had to get that bandage on in a hurry, O.K. We won’t have to call it indecent exposure. Funny damn coincidence, though. Well, you can be on your way. Just let me see your driver’s license, sir—and then get those pants back on.”

My license? This guy hadn’t tagged me by my appearance—maybe the legs threw him off—but I had no doubt he would instantly recognize my name.

“Straight goods, I’m a bleeder, all right,” I said rapidly.

“The license?”

I hesitated. A bit too long, perhaps. The officer’s briefly softened expression hardened again, and his hand rested beneath the holster flap, palm on the gun’s butt.

“Sure,” I said. “Of course. Coat’s in the car.”

I walked around to the Cad’s right, reached in with one hand, slowly pulled my coat out and walked back near the patrolman. He’d moved a couple of steps in order to keep an eye on me. I took my wallet from the inside pocket, removed my license, put the wallet back, stalling. Stalling and trying to decide what I’d do if this guy lamped my name and recognized it. Or, rather when.

Because he plucked the driver’s license from my fingers, took one glance at it, and said, “Shell Scott? Sonofabitch—how’d I miss the white-haired boy? The busted nose, the beatup look?” And his gun was no longer in the holster. It was in his hand, aimed at my middle.

“Of course I’m Shell Scott,” I said easily. “I never claimed to be anybody else. What in hell’s the artillery for? Everything I’ve told you is true—”

“The gun’s because it is you, Scott. There’s a local out on you, maybe an APB by now. Way I get it, you’re wanted for a homicide last night, maybe another attempted homicide, a shoot-out today, flight to avoid prosecution, and probably more—ah, yeah, you maybe kidnapped a girl from the Canterbury Community, too, that right? And now—” he grinned—“this.”

I started to argue with him, but he giggled or cackled, oddly. His features twisted. Funny noises came out of his throat. He looked from my license in his hand to the license number of my Cadillac, glared sternly at me. “Illegal plates? So now we got another count—”

He couldn’t make it. His lips peeled open in a grin and he cackled again. I thought he was unraveling at the mental seams until I heard him croaking, “… bleeder! Him? Hoo-aah, wait’ll I tell the boys! Shot! Knifed! Stabbed!” He strangled a whoop. “Gun-whipped, sapped, beaten to pulps—and hoo-aahh, he’s a bleeder? Him, Shell Sco—”

That was as far as he got, because though my decision was difficult it was not impossible, and as howling amusement overtook him and shook him and moved the bore of his revolver away from my middle, I hauled off and plugged him solidly on the chin. He sailed away from me, landed on his back, relaxed, and moved no more.

“Look! Look at that!”

The first word was loud and shrill, the last sentence equally shrill but diminishing in volume. I snapped my head around. A car had zoomed past and was still moving on down the road, but from its right window stuck a female head and neck, open-mouthed face twisted around and staring back at me.

I swore, trotted to the patrolman, put the revolver back into his holster, and hauled him to a spot well off the road near his motorcycle, then sprinted to my Cad and jammed the key into the ignition.

I was skidding right at the gaudy sign announcing “FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING” when I realized I’d left my blood-stained trousers back there. Among other things—including my driver’s license.

Well, it didn’t matter much now. Add another peccadillo to the growing list: I was racing, well over the speed limit, into Weilton—without a license to drive.

No, it didn’t matter much. Because if the patrolman’s information was true, and there was even small reason for the large apprehensions that filled me, in a minute or two I would be gazing once again not only upon the Church of the Second Coming where I’d had so much fun last night, but also upon its recently acquired and unusually decorative landscaping. And probably its Pastor, in a frenzy. In which case, I would very likely feel impelled to take some sort of action. What sort, I had not the faintest idea. But whatever it might be, if there really was any action, I’d have bet a hundred dollars I didn’t have a license for it, either.

22

I stood at the edge of a clump of eucalyptus trees and looked out and down. Out about two hundred yards and maybe a hundred feet down. At what appeared to be half a thousand pallbearers trying to find the funerals.

They were, as I had feared, a sizable chunk of the congregation of the Church of the Second Coming. The chunk, approximating in appearance and beauty a giant paramecium expiring on land, was between the partly filled parking lot and the church, quivering on the green grass. Behind it in the lot a hundred or more metal globs gleamed in the slanting sunlight. At the rate of two or three a minute, other globs rolled up and around to stop among the rest, and from them little figures scurried directly toward the quivering chunk, as if it were a magnet and they iron filings.

A few yards nearer the church, higher on the grassy rise and facing the chunk, was one little golden filing, alone, waving his arms and mouth. Who? Not a buggy Jonah cast out by a giant paramecium; not quite. This was Festus Lemming, doing his ding-a-ling thing. Partly because of what hit the eye, and partly because of what struck the mind and heart, it was an ominous sight. Which explains why I was among the eucalyptus trees.

Minutes earlier I’d gotten a glimpse of the gathering when I—briefly—considered parking in the lot myself. One glimpse, however, and I was backing down Heavenly Lane and zooming up Filbert Street, away from the scene. From Filbert, a winding two-lane road named Crest Drive led right and up along the top of a hill beyond and well above the church, snaked away from it for a mile or two and then returned to Filbert again. I’d zoomed only a short way up Crest and parked behind the small grove of trees, then trotted to here.

The church’s wall was directly ahead of me, perhaps a hundred yards away, its curving roof arching upward from my left to right. Farther right and lower were the Lemmings and their leader. I wondered what Festus was thinking, with his electrifying announcement—the climax of his seven-yearlong campaign—only an hour or two away. Nothing much fun, I imagined.

I wasn’t able to hear his harangue, but there was no doubt he was haranguing. His arms went up, out, down, up again. Then I saw his small figure turn, he swept an arm around to point at the church—and at last I heard a sound, not words, just sound, a kind of sigh or moan that came from the crowd.

I wondered.

Since arriving here, and during my brief stab at the parking lot as well, I had not seen hide nor hair of a real girl. One of my chill apprehensions had thus been laid to rest, for I had half-expected to view with dismay the sight of ten naked beauties gamboling on the church green. But if the girls were gone, why were the Lemmings not in the church, not in their house of worship, especially on this night of nights?

Scattered on the grass sloping up toward the church steps were bits of whiteness. Squinting, I was able to see what they were. There were ten of them, ten signs, the placards and posters the girls had been carrying, still affixed to their sticks but discarded. One was only a short distance from the edge of the grass, another a few yards up the green slope. Then half a dozen, scattered about. Finally, one near that bed of flowers I’d seen last night, and one more—the last—on the church steps themselves.

Lemming swung that arm again, turning to point, and again I heard the crowd sound. Not a moan or a sigh this time, a bit sharper and louder, more like a bark with some growl in it. I moved back into the trees, walked left a hundred feet, started down the sloping hillside. With the eucalyptus grove behind me, I bent over and scuttled along with pretty good speed—there was no cover here. Farther down, the side of the hill dipped below the crest of that green mound atop which the church sat, and the mound itself would conceal me from the Lemmings’ view. But that concealment was two hundred feet from the trees.

I made it. At least there were no blood-clabbering shouts or hoots or shrieks. When I could no longer see the Lemmings and vice-versa, I straightened up and ran to a door near the left-rear corner of the church, the door through which I had last night escaped. This time instead of opening it to get out I broke it to get in, which ordinarily would have made no sense at all. But I had to break it. The door was locked. So I slammed a foot against the wood near the knob and the lock sprang open, the door flew inward and hit something with a crash.

I heard screams.

Even if the assembled Lemmings had noticed the noise I’d made, which was doubtful, it would hardly have disturbed them sufficiently to set them screaming. So I felt sure I knew who had screamed. And was—or, rather, were—still screaming.

I leaped past the sagging door and ran through the cavernous and shadowy room where I had met Festus Lemming, skirted the up-circling stairway near which we’d stood, pounded ahead to the aisle where I’d gotten stuck so many times last night. I couldn’t help thinking my speed had improved greatly since then.

But that was the last thinking backward I did for a while. Because as I flew past those thick curtains hanging behind the elevated pulpit and my feet hit that carpeted aisle, the sight smacking my eyes grabbed even more of my attention than the sound smacking my ears—a result I would have thought totally impossible, considering the sound, had I not been seeing the sight.

For there were ten girls, and each of them was screaming, and each screamed with unique pitch and intensity, with a volume and tone all her own. It was as though the best sound tracks from television’s entire library of late-night horror movies had been selected and blended and amplified, and then thrown like New Year’s Eve confetti through the air.

If all ten of those ladies of Citizens FOR—needless to say, that’s who they were—had been standing still and aiming their mouths at a man it would at the very least have made a eunuch of him, a fate to be classed at such a moment as the unkindest cut of all. But they were not standing still. No, they were running in every direction there is. Running with astonishing speed.

Maybe I imagined it, or maybe the gals were getting short of breath, but it seemed to me there was a definite Doppler effect warp in the air, individual screams either rising or falling depending on whether they came toward me or moved from me, the way horns go on the freeway when cars speed past you lickety-split while honking, the sound rising on approach and dropping on departure. Thus parts of the bone-cracking blast edged from flat up to sharp in piercing counterpoint to others sliding sharply to flats, and its was such an unbelievably marvelous noise that I couldn’t help thinking it belonged here. Here it must feel at home. Indeed, perhaps only here in the Church of the Second Coming could it have happened at all.

It was still happening. What made it even more interesting was the inescapable conclusion, which did not escape me, that all ten of those girls were naked as jaybirds. No … not jaybirds. Naked as—ten girls, which is pretty naked. In fact, I found myself thinking, it’s about as naked as you can get, especially with all ten of them running lickety-split like that.

Actually, they hadn’t been running long. I had experienced the oddly unnerving combination of gorgeous sight and hideous sound for no more than a second or two, but it was a lifetime of second-or-two, and though I had already cranked my jaws open for a yell it seemed to be taking a while to get yelled.

As a second second-or-two stretched past, one scream Dopplered away from me flatting, another raced toward me sharping, and a third bounced sideways from bench to bench in a fetchingly jiggling obligato—but what caused me most concern was not those three, but the three winged fannies flying up the aisle and heading screaming for the doors. Heading outside. Heading into Lemming-land.

“HEY!” There it came.

“Hold it! STOP! Do you idiots want to get KILLED?”

At last, a bellow from my chops had filled the church—again. And bounced from the walls and boomed against the ceiling—again. And caused heads to swivel, eyes to stare at me—again. Was history repeating itself? Was my needle stuck on a crack in time? No, I thought, eyeing the girls, not exactly.

It took a while for all that movement to end—actually, it never did end completely—but the screaming stopped almost instantly. In silence that made me wince, I heard the confusing pat-pat-pat of bare feet on carpet as the three flying fannies flew toward the exit. Then slowed. And stopped. And turned around. And were no longer fannies. They had become stationary girls, and not a tick too soon; the fleetest of foot was no more than a yard from the doors.

Now that the gals were facing me, I was able to recognize them despite the distance between us. Almost out the door was tall white-blonde Britt, long of leg and thigh, and very speedy. Ten feet nearer, black-haired and busty Ronnie, breathing like a long-distance runner, and even from here a sight to warm the blood in an Eskimo’s toes. Several yards closer, smaller and shorter of limb than the other two, and thus bringing up the rear so to speak, Yumiko of the soft face and sweet lips and sparkling eyes.

It was she, Yumiko, who ended the silence. “Why, it’s Sherr!” she cried. “Herro!”

She started trotting down the aisle, Ronnie and Britt close behind her, then—all of a sudden, it seemed—the three of them plus seven others were grouped around me giggling and cooing and talking as one. They seemed, so far, to do damn near everything together, planning, marching, stripping, screaming, running, giggling, cooing, and talking. It was an intriguing thought.

The whole gang—and it was the kind of gang I’d like to think of, if I had a gang, as “That Old Gang of Mine”—stood in a curving, and I mean curving, line before me, a wobbly semicircle that would wake a man up grumbling if he dreamed it, but was the dream of dreams to a man wide awake. And I knew—as I gazed upon Thérèse and Yumiko and Britt, Lula and Leonore and Emilie, Margarita and Silvia and Ronnie and Dina—I would forever cherish this time with the Ten as one of my life’s most blessed moments. Except for one thing.

Why did I have to get blessed in church? What kind of blessing was that? Especially with the congregation outside, waving their arms and beating their gums and getting ready—I’d have bet a million dollars on it—to charge in here and spoil the fun. It was inevitable, fated; I knew it, I just knew it. When that was the Lemmings’ whole purpose in living—to take all the fun out of life—how could it possibly be otherwise?

In the first seconds after the gals gathered near me, there were almost simultaneous comments from several of them.

“Mr. Scott, what are you doing here?”

“We heard that awful noise and thought it was them.”

“The Pastor heet me. He noked me down!”

Softly, from langorous Leonore, “Hi, there, Shell. I’ll bet you don’t remember me.”

And from sexy, swinging Emilie, “We never dreamed this would happen, all of us nude, can you forgive us?”

I tried to answer, saying groggily to Emilie, “Yeah, I forgave you a while back. Bless you all.”

To Leonore, “What’ll you bet?”

And, “You heard an awful noise?”

And, “I’ll let you know the minute I figure it out.”

Plus a few remarks apropos of nothing in particular: To Yumiko, “What’s a Nisei girl like you doing in a place like this?” and to Britt, “Mmm, how Swede it is!” And I had just turned to lay wide-awake eyes and a casual comment on Lula when she shook me up by saying:

“Crazy. You don’t have any pants on.”

“Wha—oh, them. Yeah. No, I guess I don’t.”

“Where in the world are they?”

“Why, they’re on the Santa Ana Freeway, where else?”

“Shell, really. Why don’t you have any pants on?”

“Are you practicing to be a Lemming? I could ask you the same thing,” I said stiffly. “But there are more important matters to take off—up. Girls.…”

I paused to collect my thoughts.

How, I wondered, could I keep forgetting I didn’t have any pants on? It wasn’t an easy thing to let go of mentally. Of course, I still had my shorts on—if I’d lost them, you can bet I’d have known it all the time. But I wondered if my thinking was as sharp as it should be.

There was Cassiday’s gunk circulating around in me, too. Hadn’t killed me yet, but it couldn’t be doing me much good. Had to keep in mind the possibility that thin blood swirling through my brain might cause me to think thin when fat thoughts were needed. But I felt remarkably good considering the shape I was in.

“O.K.,” I said. “You may not realize it, and it may not even be true, but if it is, we could all be in a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble. So I’ll take charge now.”

Red-haired, brown-eyed, plump-breasted Dina said, “What?”

No one who has not experienced the same thing—and who could that be?—can possibly know how difficult it is for a man, especially a hot-red-blooded—even with gunk in it—man, to think logically, plan, decide upon a swell course of action, when confronted by a million distractions inches from his nose. With only one woman there are lots of distractions to consider, especially if she’s bare as an egg. But when you get up to three or four at once, the distractions increase geometrically, which is to say by leaps and bounds. Thus when you’ve got ten on your hands, or merely within reach, the distractions become practically infinite and the difficulties prodigious.

Besides, when it came to what we’re talking about, these gals had far and away the best and most I’d ever seen. And it was not far and away. So I forgave myself for experiencing some small difficulty in thinking a complete thought about anything for a while, and for being unsure if the difficulty was because my brain might be bleeding, or merely a bit too much of my usual trouble, girls.

One of my troubles—wild-honey-blonde and Capri-blue-eyed Silvia—said, “We were all so terribly confused—and frightened. I’m so glad you’re taking charge, Shell.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing. O.K. Well, all right. Girls … what happened?”

I got ten answers and understood none of them.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “Choose a spokesman.”

“You’re our spokesman.”

“A spokeswoman, then. Wel’ll ah, form a little sex republic here. You select a representative—of your sex—to speak for all of you. I’ll speak for all of me. That way we’ll clear everything up. And, incidentally, prove women should have the vote.”

“But we’re all of our sex.”

“This isn’t going to work, either. Which, incidentally proves men should rule. Lula.” I turned to the brown-skinned, velvet-eyed lovely who had seemed to be leading the noon nudity discussion at Cassiday’s, and later headed the march of Citizens FOR. I gazed at the black-is-beautiful black of her eyes, at the astonishing high-heavy thrust of her breasts, at the sharp inswoop of waist and flatness of middle, at—

“Yes?”

“Yes? Yes, what?”

“You said, ‘Lula.’”

“So I did. Ah, we’re not going to vote after all. I select you, Lula, as the representative of your sex, to be the mouthpiece of all the other sexes standing around here. Is that all right with you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Is everybody cracked in here except me? I want you to tell me what happened! How come you’re in the church, where did your clothes go, whither went the television cameras and horny reporters, why did you scream with such frenzy, what are you all doing tonight—”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Lula shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other, resting a hand lightly on her interestingly thrust out left hip. “Well, we all mached down Filbert and up here in front of the church. I started to take off my sweater—did you know about that?”

“I’m hip.”

“We’d decided all of us were going to march nude in front of Lemming’s church. Form a picket line, you know? Everybody else does it. Not just unions, but school kids, professors, farmers, PTA’s, poor folks, rich folks, everybody. They do whatever flaky thing they feel like doing, and some of it’s ugly, but nobody ever bothers them much. So why couldn’t we do a simple little fun thing like taking our clothes off? At least, it wouldn’t be ugly, it wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“Your points are impressive. But you forgot the most hairy rule of all. You can march, picket, take over universities, blow up buildings, burn down banks, shoot policemen and firemen, do any creative thing you desire—as long as it’s for the good of all mankind—but only if it isn’t sexy. If it’s sexy, it’s immoral. And you’ve got to admit, you gals are pretty sexy even with your clothes on.”

“Well, I should hope so—that’s the idea. We want to be sexy. That’s why we marched here in the first place—we’re demanding the right to be sexy, the right to have Erovite if we want it. We’re all members of Citizens FOR—we’re for Erovite, for sex, for health, we’re for life—”

“There’s where you went wrong.”

“Anyway, I started to take my clothes off. But they wouldn’t let me. Not right then, anyway. The cameraman stopped taking pictures, and some fellow there running things told us we’d have to keep our clothes on or we couldn’t be seen on television. It would be bad, and they couldn’t show bad things on television. Hundreds of people would send millions of letters and he’d get fired. The network would crumble. The government would fall. The world would be reduced to chaos.”

“He probably meant well.”

“I’m sure he did. He said after he checked in at the studio he’d try to come back, and if we still wanted to do it, he had something on the president of another network and—”

“I knew it! That’s what I told Ed.”

“Then Pastor Lemming came down—he was already in the church when we got here—and made a terrible fuss. Said if everybody didn’t leave immediately, didn’t get off the sacred ground—and his own private property—he’d have everybody arrested and put in prisons and fired and even cast out. Cast out, I don’t know what he meant by that.”

“I do. Same thing he meant by ‘fired.’ Actually, it should be cast out and then fired, but—it’s not important.”

“Well, that worried the men. Pastor Lemming does have an awful lot of power and influence, I guess.”

“Not as much as he’d like us to think.”

“They were about ready to leave anyway, and then they heard about the fire. Isn’t that funny, you just said ‘fired’—”

“Maybe it’s funny. Something was burning? Besides Festus?”

“A movie theater in Los Angeles. It was showing a double feature, Do Your Thing with Your Thing and Hump the Bump advertised as, Sauce for Geese and Ganders and Beavers. I don’t know what either of them was about.”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“It was on fire, all aflame.”

“It was? What was?”

“I just told you. The theater. About a hundred members of the west-L.A. Eden of the Church of the Second Coming had marched inside and yelled holy things at the audience earlier. There were even some fist fights. The Lemmings were picketing the theater when it started burning, but I don’t suppose they lit it.”

“I don’t suppose. Probably started by lightning.”

“It was going up in flames and firemen were there, and policemen. And all those Lemmings were yelling, ‘Burn, Sin, Burn!’ and singing hymns and blocking traffic. That fellow in charge told us about it, and he explained they had to go cover the story. Especially, they wanted to get human-interest pictures of the Lemmings, because they’d been in the news so much lately.”

“See? They had their clothes on.”

“Everybody left. Except the Pastor. Well, I was mad by then, and when I get infuriated I get mad. So I told that mother to go take a flying … well, I said we’d come to picket and we were going to picket, and I stripped, and then all the other girls took their clothes off, too.”

“Wow! What did Festus do then?”

“He hit Margarita on the head.”

“He what? I do seem to recall somebody here saying—”

“He grabbed the sign Margarita was carrying and zonked her with it. Bang on the side of her head.”

“It keeled me!” That was Margarita chiming in. “It noked me down.”

“The sonofabitch,” I said. Then I added, “Please pardon the language, girls. It just popped—”

“That’s all right.”

“That’s what he ees!”

“Zay it again!”

“He is a sonofabitch!”

“I told that mother—”

“GIRLS! Watch your language. There’s a man present. Lula, go on—then what happened?”

“Well, that creepy sonofabitch was flailing around with Margarita’s sign and we all kind of got spread out, you know? Keeping out of his way. Right then two cars drove up. There were five or six men in each of them, and they all ran up to the Pastor. He pointed at us and yelled, ‘Get them, get them!’ I don’t know what he meant, exactly. But … well, it scared us.”

“It would have scared me.”

“Especially when the men came toward us. They didn’t run toward us—but we ran. We all ran into the church here and locked the doors, left our signs and clothes, everything. I don’t know what happened to them. Then we looked all around for a telephone in here, but there just isn’t any.”

“The men didn’t run at you, huh? Didn’t try to grab or beat or tickle—tackle you or … anything like that?”

There were several comments from the other gals.

“They sort of sneaked at us,” Dina said. “Very sneaky.”

“They onry rooked. But it was the way they rooked.”

“You’d think they hadn’t ever seen a nude woman before,” Silvia said, unconsciously—I guess—arching her back and stretching the kinks out of it. She sure stretched hell out of something. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they hadn’t,” she finished, gently scratching her tummy.

Emilie said, “The only really wild one was the Pastor. He was simply livid, foaming at the mouth, would you believe it?”

“He was, he was really frothing,” Britt added. “Liddle bubbles.”

Lula summed it up. “That’s right. The Pastor was jumping around like he had had an alligator in his pants and yelling ‘Get them.’ But the other men were sort of … confused, I’d say. Just started coming at us, slow, like they weren’t sure what to do.”

“That’s because there weren’t more than a dozen of them. The odds were too even. Besides, they had to think about it—ten or twelve’s not quite enough for a mob. A few more of the beggars and they’d have acted on impulse without reasoning at all. Follow the kookiest leader, like down on the farm when one turkey gobbles and all the rest of the dumb birds gobble their heads off. Why? Because they heard a gobble, that’s why. And that’s also why an honest-to-God mob is so mindless and horrible.…”

I stopped. For a little while I had forgotten about that mass of Lemmings outside. More accurately, without forgetting it entirely, I had largely ignored its presence, its nearness … and the predictable state of its mind. Its mind, very likely, not the minds of its members, not a multiplication of individual brain and thought. Because, more stupidly and blindly than dumb turkeys, when a crowd becomes a mob each individual brain and its thought becomes part of the mob mind, each individual body merely a cell in the body of the beast. The frightening thing is that the awful whole, for the rest of its infant life, is moved and motivated, impelled to action, by that vaster and more vicious mind which is capable of any baseness, violence, and evil, of incredible cruelty, and of madness unrelieved by any virtue, for only the bestial is natural to the beast.

Of course, outside was only a crowd. So far as I knew. But any crowd can become—or, much more often, be made into—a mob. And never so easily as when the individuals composing the crowd are already conditioned, have long been conditioned, blindly to obey, mindlessly to act; when they are wed not to reason but to faith; when there is hate in their hearts, guilt in their guts, fear in their bowels; when they are clad in Christ’s armor and girdled by God, and above all when they are led by the man or the men—whom God Almighty will have to forgive for only He could forgive so monstrous a crime—who made them: the man or men who crippled their minds, squeezed dry their hearts, blinded them that they might follow the blind. Him, or they, all the world’s Lemmings will follow to the ends of the Earth. At least, they always have.

And, outside—Lemming, who had made them, and the Lemmings he had made.

23

“What’s the matter, Shell? You look—pale.”

It was Lula speaking again, close on my left.

I smiled at her, but it took me a few moments to get back from where I’d been. “Well, of course,” I said casually. “I got to thinking of all those Lemmings, and it spooked me. You look a little beige yourself.”

She laughed, and the sound of her soft laughter brought me back the rest of the way. “Wait a shake,” I said. “I’m going to have me a peek at the chosen of Earth out yonder.”

I flew up the aisle—perhaps as speedily but certainly not as fetchingly as three well-remembered winged fannies had flown—found a great iron key in the lock, turned it, pushed against the thick golden handle on one of the massive doors. It was open no more than a couple of inches when I heard that crowd sound again, a low muttering that rose swiftly to an unintelligible babble—unintelligible to me, at least.

It was startlingly loud. Much louder than before, and not merely because I was closer to it. The sound quickly died, and as I pushed the door out a little farther and peered toward the parking lot I not only saw the mass of men and women there below me but heard the trumpeting, resonant, virulent voice of Festus Lemming. He stood facing the flock, his back to me, and spread his arms wide as though to embrace all of Earth, or a giant paramecium.

“And now—and now—as we prepare for the thousand-year reign of our Lord and Savior … who shed His sweet blood on the cross for our sins … as we prepare for His coming, His promised coming … as we mortify the flesh and crucify desire that we may be ready and holy for Him … as we toil to make pure the land for our Lord, to make the Earth sinless and ready for Him—SIN LIVES IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD! YES!”

There was a brief sharp yell or shout from the crowd, more like the bark of a wolf than the bleating of lambs, volume up, and then quickly down so the Pastor’s golden voice could be heard.

“Yes! There!” The Pastor turned and aimed an extended arm at the church as the crowd woofed and howled—and as I jerked back, thinking for a moment Festus was aiming at me. “There in the sacred house of our Savior, profane in their paganness, obscene in their nakedness, they flaunt their filthy flesh in the face of …”

There was a longer than usual pause, and I thought at last Festus had gotten his agile tongue twisted around some of his phrases or sprained it on an excess of alliteration. I was wrong. He finished at maximum volume, throwing all his lung power into one word that cracked like a cannon over hill and parking lot, grass, trees, freeway, and Pomona:

“GOD!”

If there had been noise from the crowd before, it was nothing compared to the explosive roar as Lemming turned to face a thousand members of the Church of the Second Coming. The mass had grown, had doubled, hundreds more of the faithful had arrived and I guessed at least a thousand were roaring now.

I eased the door closed, locked it, flew back down the aisle. The girls were waiting, motionless and silent. On every face were marks of worry and concern, on some the evidence of sudden fear; they’d heard that sound, too, that cry more animal than human.

“What was that?” Silvia asked me in a soft shaky voice. “What are they doing out there?”

“I’m not sure they know,” I said. “But I don’t like it. Look, you gals have to get away from—those people. But you can’t just walk out, can’t let them see you. The shape they’re in—and the shape you’re in—well, there’s no telling what those characters might do. They’re pretty close to the edge right now, and if they should get their hands … get a sudden look at you, and all your, um.…”

I stopped. I didn’t want to scare their pants off—figuratively speaking—but at the same time I wanted them convinced they must not under any circumstances allow that gang of Lemmings to get near them. “The ladies and gentlemen thus affronted might merely swoon,” I said, “or lay a sermonette on you. But there’s a definite possibility their reaction would be a little nastier. And with Festus souping them up, maybe a lot nastier.”

Pepper-lipped Margarita summed up what I was trying to say, and said it better anyhow. “Shell, when Pastor Lemming heet me and noked me down, I theenk for a minute he is going to morder me. He looked wild, crazy—and he was then all alone! I do not like to see the Pastor or any of those … whatever’s outside. I might get mordered, I theenk.”

“Good thinking, Margarita. It would be very clever of us all to avoid tempting fate and Festus. You hit it right on the head when you hinted he may be a little cracked. Especially at this moment.” I paused. “Gals, it’s possible I’m exaggerating. But when you get that many people together, especially that kind of people, and they’ve been stirred up for months and are getting more buggy every minute—well, I’ve seen crowds turn into mobs before, and … we’d better play it safe, that’s all.”

“How?” Leonore asked. “What can we do?”

And Emilie said, “If they see us … God, now I really feel naked.”

“Well, there’s a chance you gals can go out the back way—through the door I ruined a few minutes ago. My car’s parked about a hundred yards up the hill. While you’re getting started, I’ll try to keep Festus and his flock occupied. I’ve some important information, vital to Pastor Lemming himself, and I’m sure he’ll be very glad to hear about it.” I paused. “Or—maybe—see it. Back in a minute.”

I left the gals, ran to the rear of the church and checked the row of doors I’d noticed last night, one of which almost certainly led into Lemming’s office—where Dave Cassiday had spent a couple minutes Thursday night. All the doors were locked, and they were not light-weight jobs like the one I’d kicked in. I wasn’t about to chance a hemorrhage trying to batter them all down. It was probably just as well, anyhow; if I ran up to Lemming with a kit and hypodermic syringe he’d swear I’d brought it along with me.

So I sped back to the gals and went on where I’d left off, “Festus can’t see the surprise yet, but he should be glad to hear about it, even from me. If he’s got any gratitude in him, he should be exceedingly grateful for the news. It’s just, with so many of those characters out there, I might not be able to get close enough to him long enough … well, anyway, if they’re all looking at me there’s less chance they’ll ogle you.”

“What’s ogle?” Britt asked.

I never answered her, because Lula, still about six inches away on my left, said, “You’re going out there like that?”

“What do you mean, like tha—”

I groaned. I did keep forgetting. I wondered if I should close my eyes and become very still and have a mental go at multiplication tables, or recalling the words of that poem I’d memorized in high school—The boy stood on the burning something or other—to make sure my brain was still doing an adequate job. But I was thinking clearly enough to know Lula had called my attention to a problem of serious dimensions.

I had a pretty good idea what that mass of Lemmings would do if immediately after hearing Festus describe, in a fashion unrecognizable to any but Lemmings, the attributes of my ten lovelies, they should then lamp the ten brazen hussies and all those prominent attributes. Therefore, it had been my intent, while the girls sneaked away, to stride boldly at Festus and his flock and—with carefully chosen words and, hopefully, the authority and hynotic command of my presence—grip their attention, hold them rapt, while the girls escaped from the church. Which is a difficult thing to do even on normal Sundays.

On my side, too, I had believed, would be the shock of my sudden appearance. For, though by now the members knew ten nude females were desecrating their church, they didn’t yet even suspect a male might be desecrating with them. My sudden appearance, then, should prove such a startling diversion that the gals’ chance of fleeing unobserved would be at least doubled, and I might even survive myself. This was true, however, only if in addition to vying against Festus with carefully chosen words I possessed that aura of authority and hypnotic command.

Or, in other words, if I had my pants on.

It just didn’t seem fair that a pair of pants-should make so much difference. But I knew those cats out there. I knew what they’d think. They’d think the worst, that’s what they’d think.

Lula said, “I know those flockers as well as you do, Shell. You get out there and wave a leg at ’em, they’ll use you for a tug-of-war. They’ll pull you seven different ways and make fourteen wishes. They’ll put cranberry sauce on you and—”

“Don’t remind me. I’m trying to—I’m thinking.”

It was a simple problem: All I had to do was stroll up to the mindless mob and appeal to its intelligence; occupy all its attention while the lovelies fled; and then remove myself from the mob’s presence before it … did any of the things Lula had mentioned.

Yes, the problem was simple; its solution was something else. I couldn’t let that mob gobble me up or bite me or scratch me or even pull off my bandages much less arms and legs. I began feeling depressed. What if the solution wasn’t merely difficult, but impossible? Maybe there wasn’t any way to do it; maybe I’d met my match. Always has to be a first time. Even if I surrendered and advanced under a flag of truce, due, to the present drastic shortage of materials I’d probably have to use my shorts—

I stopped. That wasn’t positive thinking. In the old days—before today—I had always said to myself, “There’s always a way!” I wasn’t always right; but that’s what I’d always said.

So I said to myself, “There’s always a way!”

“A way to what?” Emilie asked curiously, rubbing her well-rounded derriere with both hands.

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” I said. “But I am at last thinking clearly. Give me another half a minute.”

The problem was exactly the same as it had been a couple minutes ago, except that it was now much worse. How could a solitary pagan, unarmored and unarmed, stop a whole horde of Lemmings in their tracks? How could a lone infidel hold at bay, even briefly, an entire division of Christian soldiers? Especially if God was on their side.…

Something fluttered in the cave of memory. As I thought of “Christian soldiers” I heard again, faintly—fortunately—the sound of voices raised in apparent agony; heard again last night’s Chorale, here in the Church of the Second Coming; and put together Christian soldiers-agony-Chorale-Second Coming; and I knew what to do. But I knew I wasn’t going to do it.

That is, for a second or two I knew I wasn’t going to; and then I knew I was.

“Yeah,” I said—after a lapse of some time—to Lula. “I’ll have to sort of change my plans a little. O.K., which one of you gals can run the fastest?”

“Run?” Britt clenched her hands into fists before her and made running motions. “Lige in a race?”

“Yeah—and that’s what it may be. You can quit that now. Britt, you can quit—thanks.”

“I gan,” she said.

“You can what?”

“Run fastest. I gan run faster than anybody. Anybody here.”

“Well.… Even that may be a bit overoptimistic, but—O.K. You’re the runner, then. If you want to be. The runner starts later, and takes more of a chance than anybody else. It could be dangerous. And I’m not kidding.”

“You mean … if somebody gatches me?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody will gatch me.”

“Well.… O.K. Who’s almost as fast as Britt?”

“Me. I’m probably faster.” Lula sort of bounced on the balls of her feet. At least, that’s where it started.

“You? I gould beat you with one leg tied behind—”

“Chickie, I’ll give you fifty yards and pass you—”

“Girls! Damnit, don’t you realize I’m trying to save you from the Christians? And while we dawdle, they may—”

Even here inside the church it was clearly audible this time. We all froze, listening. I saw the girls’ eyes widen, felt my skin get cold. It was the voice of the crowd, rising slowly, an eerie quality to it, like a howl and hiss and roar in a monstrous raw throat. It was a sound appalling and unreal, like a huge beast growling and gnawing on still-living bone.

I glanced around. “Dina.”

Her huge eyes moved to mine, her face composed but pale.

“Run to the door,” I said. “If you hear anything scuttling around on the other side—anything—come back. If not, crack it open and keep an eye on that mob. If it looks—”

“I know what you mean,” she interrupted, turned immediately, and started running like a deer.

I pulled the car keys from my shirt pocket, which was the only place I’d found to put them, and handed them to Lula. “All you gals—except Britt—gather at the door back there in the corner.” I pointed. “When I go out the front door, run like hell.”

I told them where my Cadillac was parked, how to reach it, that they’d be concealed the first hundred feet or so but in view, in very plain view, for the last stretch, maybe two hundred feet and all of it uphill.

“Lula, you lead the way. When you get to my Cad start it, and honk the horn a couple times in case some of the gals don’t have the heap in sight. Britt, you come up front with me, let me out, lock the door behind me and start running.”

She nodded.

“You’ll have to run down the aisle again, to the rear of the church, and then follow the others. They’ll be way ahead of you, and I don’t know what else might be out there by then. So you don’t have to be the one to lock the door if you don’t want to. I suppose I could lock it myself and throw the key—”

“No.” She was paler than usual, and white-blonde Britt had been pale as milk—and smooth as cream—all over, to begin with. But she said, “I’ll do it.”

“Thanks. There isn’t time to explain why, but it would be difficult for me to handle. One more thing, Lula. None of this may be necessary, but it might—we’ll know damned soon. When you’ve got the Cad started, don’t wait around for me unless it’s obvious to you there’s no need to hurry.”

She said, “You think they’re going to light out after us, don’t you?”

“It’s possible. Festus is really pouring it to them, and—well, it’s quite possible.”

“You suppose if they grabbed us they’d, like, mess us up pretty good?”

“Not if they stopped to think about it. But once they start running—if any of them do—it isn’t likely they’ll be doing much thinking. It isn’t likely they’ll be doing any.”

“You’re not going to come arong after us?” Yumiko asked sweetly.

“Beats the herr out of me, dear. Don’t think I wouldn’t like to, and I say that sincerely to every one of you lovelies. But I shall simply go where the spirit moves me, and where that may be I know not.”

Silence.

“Any questions?”

There weren’t any.

I’d been keeping an eye on Dina most of the time, and I got an extremely queer feeling when I saw her suddenly push the door shut and lock it, then spin around and come tearing down the aisle. Ah, she was a lovely sight, erotic poetry in a kind of mellifluous motion, but I couldn’t give that moment the concentration, much less the appreciation, it deserved.

The other gals moved aside to let Dina through, and she pounded and bounced and quivered deliciously to a stop inches from me. Panting, staring up at my face with those luminous brown eyes now not merely huge but enormous, she gasped, “They’re going freaky!”

“Are they moving up toward the church?”

“No, not—yet. But they were waving their arms and making a lot of noise and … well, one of them fell down. And then in a few seconds two more, one right after the other. As if they’d fainted. Only the first one, an old man in front where I could see him, shook and rolled and kicked and … do you know what it means?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I fear I do. We won’t dwell on it But … I don’t consider such conniptions encouraging.”

I felt suddenly tired. And my skin, which had seemed to become cool when we all heard that last blood-chilling sound, was still cool, was cold. I brushed moisture from my forehead and upper lip, sucked in a deep breath.

Then I looked at the girls. “That’s it, except for this. In case we get separated for … a while, you’ve got to know about a few things. And people, including Dave Cassiday.”

I told the tale fast. In thirty seconds they knew all the essential facts even though there wasn’t time to include any of the reasons or explanations. But I made sure each of them realized how important it was to get the info to Emmanuel Bruno.

And even as I spoke I realized, very clearly, that what I was telling them was—from a legal standpoint—merely hearsay evidence, of little if any value. Whether I liked it or not, I was the only man on the planet with firsthand knowledge and evidence sufficient to ruin Cassiday, the only man who could prove what Dave had done and was planning to do. Well, the next few minutes would undoubtedly determine who was ruined: Dave Cassiday—or me.

I didn’t pause to think about that but went ahead, “So on your marks, gals, at the back door. And when I yell go, you go!”

There was a little verbal bubbling and some fluttering, then short and shapely Ronnie said plaintively, “I’ll probably be last up that damned hill. Hell, I run like a girl.”

“Give thanks to God. But that reminds me,” I told them all, “it may or may not get squeaky out there for you, scampering up the hill, but if it’ll make you feel any better I’ll be doing my damnedest to make sure all the bugging eyes bug me and me alone until you’re well on your way. Or at least for as long as I can hack it. I won’t try to explain right now, but I know every eye out there will be on me for a while. So you can at least count on a good head start.”

Dina, still short of breath—but nothing else she needed—said, “Shell, if you’re going out there with all those nuts, you must be crazy yourself.”

“That’s my only chance—I intend to fight fire with fire.”

“You’re really going outside, where they are?” Emilie asked.

“Of course. The best defense is a good offense, right? Well, if I wait for them to attack me, they’ll have the advantage.”

Then Lula, each soft word wrapped in hot goose down: “Shell, honey … don’t you go out there and get yourself killed.”

“Dear, why would I do a dumb thing like that?”

She had leaned a bit closer to me as she spoke, and her right breast brushed against my arm. “Hrrum,” I said. “Lula, I’m going to be in enough trouble when I confront those suspicious cats … as it is.” It was still brushing. I gazed down at her warm, firm, brown breast. “As it … was.” She smiled, moved back slightly.

I turned, slapped the nearest gal firmly on her fanny, and shouted, “On your way! Skedaddle! Get your sweet.… Sorry, Britt. Little goof there.”

“Id’s all right.”

“The other gals skedaddle. You get to stay with me.”

“Ain’t I the luggy one?”

“Britt, this is no time for dumb Swedish wisecracks. Or any other kind of—in fact, this is no time for—Kids, I am now convinced Divine Providence has been watching over us. True, we’ve got the right place for it. And this is Sunday. But even Divine Providence must get fed up after a while. For, as the old Wise Men have wisely told us, ‘As it is above, so it is below,’ and if that is true …”

I looked around at all the girls, taking what might be my last look at them—what might be my last look at girls—and concluded, “Skip it. So much for the Wise Men. Let’s go.”

The lasses ambled toward the back of the church. I said to Britt, “Get up there by the doors, honey. Join you in a minute.” Then I turned and followed the girls past the hanging curtains into the gloomier rear of the building, walking speedily and passing a couple of them on the way. The concealed jumble—concealed, at least, from anyone who might sit on those backless benches—was the same as it had been last night: huddled chairs, circular stairway rising, table with uneven stacks of black books upon it. Nearer, against the wall, was the ten-foot-high crucifix, its spiked base resting on the floor and top against the wall, only one arm of the cross touching the wood behind it, and nailed to the cross the carved-wood corpse, Christ, crucified in effigy, for perhaps the ten-billionth time.

For a few moments I stood before it thinking, not for the first time, that to anyone who had never heard of Christ or Christianity—who didn’t know he was gazing upon something warm, beautiful, and inspiring—this broken man nailed in bloody agony on a wooden cross would seem a terrible symbol of brutality and violence, torture and death, a constant reminder of pain, sorrow, failure, a degrading depiction of man’s savage inhumanity to man. Almost surely he would suspect that constant contemplation of such a symbol might require or in time produce a state of mind bordering on the pathological. And unquestionably, it would be difficult if not impossible for him to believe that it represented the virtue, invincibility, and splendor of any man who ever lived or god who died, and he would surely adjudge you mad as a hatter if you told him it was—a billion times multiplied, worshipped, revered—the centuries-old and supreme symbol of Christian hope, optimism, gentleness, goodness and beauty and truth.

I glanced over my shoulder. The girls were moving like bright shadows through the dimness. Lula was already at the half-open door, the eight others sort of floating toward her. I watched them all for a few seconds, watched the dull gleam of their swinging thighs, sensuous swaying of hips, gazed at smoothness of back and limb, swoop of waist, plump roundness and firm line and lustrous curve, admired their splendid nakedness, let my eyes linger a last moment on the sweet, reviled flesh.…

Then I turned my back on all that, and took up the cross.

24

The big crucifix weighed maybe eighty pounds, and by the time I’d labored up that horrendously long aisle, I was kind of tilted over and grunting a bit.

Britt said, “What in the world … what’s that?”

“This is—well, it’s just to use in case of an emergency. Like, when there’s a fire and you break the little glass window—”

There was one hell of a noise outside. From the same place and people, of course, but strangely different from their last effort. Still blood-bleaching, needless to say, but now more like a shout rising from the Coliseum when the game was over and the last gladiator had suddenly stopped wiggling. It was as if something had just ended … or was just beginning.

“Get that door open. Quick.”

Britt turned the key, pushed against the golden handle. When the door was open only inches I glimpsed the mass of men and women a couple of hundred feet away—but narrowing the distance. They were finally moving. Toward the church. Starting to run up the grass.

“Here’s the emergency,” I said. “Shove that damn thing, get it open!” Then I shouted down the aisle to the back of the church, “Lula—GO!”

Britt leaned forward, straining against the heavy door until there was room for me—and my burden—to get through. As I moved past her I said, “Slam the door as soon as I’m out, lock it—lock it—and run like you never ran before.”

It sounded as if she let out a high and tiny scream, but I didn’t look at her. I was starting down the wide pebbled cement steps, when I heard the dull boom as the door thudded shut behind me. That boom seemed to keep on echoing coldly behind my solar plexus as I stumbled down the steps, almost falling but reaching the bottom on my feet, and then it froze in my gut and choked my throat as I lifted my eyes. Because I’d kept my eyes on the steps while going down them, but as I took two struggling strides forward onto the grass I raised my head and saw—racing toward me, still howling and screaming—the Lemmings of the Lord.

They were quite enough to give a man pause even when sitting quietly on their backsides on backless benches, but the sight of them all screaming horrendously and thundering at me, a determinedly unmusical and speedily moving mass composed of a thousand bits and each bit with wide-open mouth—thus presenting the curiously familiar picture of a bellowing monster with a thousand heads and a hole in every head—stopped me. It takes quite a bit to stop me when I’ve made up my mind to do something. It stopped me. It even made me think seriously about changing my mind, now that it was too late.

The sight of that mass of Lemmings had an extraordinarily paralytic effect upon me, true; but the sight of me also affected the Lemmings. I can’t pretend that I was as fearsome a sight to them as they to me; and I have to assume they didn’t see me, or else didn’t know when they saw me that they’d seen me, until I had maneuvered the steps and taken those two strides; but any unbiased observers, none of whom were anywhere about, would have to agree with me that I won the first confrontation hands down, or perhaps more accurately pants down.

Which must prove, just as surely as every stumbling block is a stepping-stone, that what seems a great calamity can be a blessing in disguise; for you cannot appeal to a mob with reason, and I didn’t; and I could not have accomplished more with my pants on, and almost certainly not even half as much, therefore I must be twice as good a man with my pants off; and since I needed to be a genius in order to overpower a thousand Lemmings, it was only by the grace of God that I didn’t have them on, for I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it all by myself.

At any rate, I unquestionably won—won the first moments of the Battle Against the Lemmings, anyhow—for there were a thousand of them to only one of me, and alone I moved them all. Or, rather, unmoved them.

Because that entire crammed-together crowd of male and female fruitcakes—which had surged forward in response to the words of Festus Lemming and was now leaping over the grass in obedience to his swinging hand and arm, his hand and arm swinging as though with that silent command alone he could move the mass toward me, toward the girls, toward the obscenity of nakedness, toward the evil he would have it destroy—stopped.

It didn’t slow, mill, move, gradually settle. Each member of the mob-body stopped moving at virtually the same moment. It was a strange, frightening thing to see. There had been a thousand separate motions blending into the mass that was the body of the Beast, then almost instantly every quiver of that movement ceased, as did the roaring sound. The whole breathing myriad-eyed mass became silent and still.

Still, as the air was still, and quiet. For a little while. A very little while.

Because I saw Festus Lemming, apart from all the rest—separate, but on guard like the shepherd as he watches o’er his woolly-headed flock—turning to point at me, and in the clear sweet silence I heard him cry: “JESUS CHRIST, IT’S SHELL SCOTT!”

And right after that with hardly a stutter, “It—er—ah—he—OH, JESUS, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR—it is he, there, there, the foul and satanic agent of the Antichrist! Yes! THE ANTICHRIST! GOD IN HEAVEN SAVE US FROM HIS EVIL PRESENCE AND—”

Well, I thought, that was a nice thing to tell them.

Especially when every single ding-a-ling was ding-a-linging the same off-key tune on the identical out-of-sight and perhaps even out-of-mind wavelength as were all the other freaks of Festus crushed together in the body of the Beast. Maybe they marched to a different drummer, but all of them marched at the same time in the same place, and the drummer was not even distant because there the sonofabitch stood not fifty feet away, the sly old fox pointing his finger at the gizzard of the goose he had cooked.

I figured there wasn’t much more he could do to ruin me. In fact, I figured there wasn’t much more I could do to ruin me. I didn’t even hear what came after the “AND” in “HIS EVIL PRESENCE AND—” because the rest of Lemming’s words were ripped, shredded, destroyed by a coarse and horrible cough bursting from the huge throat and rising to a snarling shrieking cry, surely the most God-awful and horrifying sound I have ever heard or will ever hear, and the Beast moved. It slid, flowed, surged toward me; and I knew why it moved. I knew without questioning or doubt that it moved to kill. It had the blood smell in its nostrils and the blood thrist—long and well-nourished by Lemming, by all the Lemmings—in its heart, and it moved without any other purpose, without any real purpose at all except blindly, mindlessly, to destroy.

The Lemmings had seen and recognized me but they hadn’t seen, at least not clearly, the cross I carried. I held it parallel to the ground, only its end pointing toward them. So they hadn’t recognized the symbol they revered and adored—and sang at the top of their lungs about. But they damn soon were going to.

They’d picked up speed, were running now. And the unearthly howl no longer swe’led in their throats, they were silent, and somehow because of that silence even more horrifying, as they ran—directly at me.

So I ran, myself—at them.

Only not directly. Toward them, yes, but angling left down the slanting lawn, making them turn, so that while they looked at me their eyes would be aimed away from the hill on my right up which, hopefully, ten naked tomatoes were bounding with astonishing speed. Speed much more astonishing, I decided, than my own, even if many of them had fallen down and were rolling back.

To move like a man shot from a cannon while carrying an eighty-pound cross is not a difficult thing to do, it is impossible; it is much more natural to move like a man shot by a cannon, and that describes quite well what I was doing. Not so the giant fruitcake; it had achieved maximum motility and was rising yeastily up the slope with such speed that in seconds it would reach and presumably digest me.

So I thumped to a staggering halt, gripped the giant crucifix tightly in my hands, and swung it out and up, lifting it as high above my head as I could stretch, and then slammed it down on its steel-spike point. The spike sliced into earth and the square wooden base in which it was imbedded thudded solidly against the grass. When I let go of the cross it swayed only slightly, remained upright, outstretched-arms and the figure suspended from them facing—and leaning with the weight of two thousand years upon—the Lemmings of the Lord.

At that moment they were less than fifty feet away. The mass blocked my view of Festus Lemming, but I felt sure he was where he’d been before, standing still, watching, waiting. And if this rabid flock of his would stop for even a few seconds there was a chance I could make him hear me, understand me, and with that booming and long-listened-to voice of his yank them back from the mindlessness in which they now lived and moved, hold them while he herded them back into the fold. If anyone could manage that, anyone at all, it had to be Festus Lemming.

At least, that was the thought in my mind. But it was not there long. Because it wasn’t true, and I knew it wasn’t when I saw the horde of Lemmings still racing toward me and toward the ten-foot-high crucifix between them and me, though I should have known it long and long before. If the presence by proxy of their Master and Teacher, their Savior, their Lord and very God Of All couldn’t yank them back, then their Sainted Most-Holy Pastor didn’t have a prayer. Nor, needless to say, did I. There was no point at all in my yelling at them, and I knew it, but I yelled.

I shouted something or other I don’t remember and then, pointing at the effigy of Jesus—Jesus, not the Christ—at their Savior’s spiritless flesh racked on the Christian cross, I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Stop! Stop, you blooming idiots, can’t you see what’s right in front of your eyes?”

They saw. I had known they would; I know they did. Many of the heads moved quickly up and down, many of the wild eyes stared. They saw, and they were aware, they recognized—how could they not?—their long-loved symbol of pain and blood, suffering and death. It slowed them down, a little. But it didn’t stop them. It didn’t even begin to stop them.

Had it ever?

And finally, as they came on in that horrible silence broken only by the drumming of their cloven hooves, I yelled—though already moving backward while yelling at the Beast—“STOP, you sonsofbitches! You blithering lovers of all mankind wouldn’t crucify me, too, would you?”

Sure, they would.

You can just bet your sweet ass they would, if they could find a piece of me—when they got through with me—big enough to stick on a nail. The thing rushed on—up to the cross and against it and over it—eyes glittering like two thousand pieces of broken glass, its two thousand feet trampling, scarring, splintering the cross and the wooden Christ, its two thousand lips stretched and twisted in a sadist’s smile, and I turned and fled from the Beast as if Satan himself were pursuing me, Satan or a thousand Saints—and at that moment, given my choice of pursuers, the Devil would have won pants down.

I had been scared, damn well scared, for all of this last half-minute or minute since the church door boomed shut behind me, but it was only when I turned and fled—from them—that the fright grew into something closer to panic, became cold ugliness churning in me, a faintness in my flesh and darkness in my mind. And for a warped but real, a very real, moment I was racing over the surface of a miniature Earth that spun too slowly beneath my feet while all of Earth’s horrors flew languidly after me—formless things that cast no shadow and lived by devouring the brain and drinking the body’s blood—flying as fast as I was able to run, though they did not exert themselves or hurry, knowing I would slow and fall back to them, as soon as I tired.

I glanced over my shoulder, only once. Once was enough.

There was a single encouraging thing in view. Whatever I had seen or thought I’d seen in or out of my mind must have given me unprecedented incentive to run, because I had moved with such leaps and bounds and superchurning of feet that my pursuers were fifteen yards to the rear and losing ground. But not all of the Lemmings were pursuing me now.

Well beyond and to the right of those nearest me Festus Lemming was standing, arm thrust out and pointing, but not at me. He was gesturing to his left and up, toward the hill down which I had earlier come, the hill atop which were eucalyptus trees and my Cadillac, the hill on the side of which were visible—I got a quick blurred glimpse of them—the moving figures of some Little girls. At least from here they looked like little girls.

Several—fifty or a hundred—of the people who’d been charging after me had split from the mass and were loping toward Festus, not bunched but scattered out, and not all moving in the same direction. Two or three were already veering to run toward the hill. Or, rather, toward the little girls; for not even Lemmings would have run with such enthusiasm toward a bare hill.

I had run on an angle away from the church in order to lead the pursuing congregation away from the girls, and in that I had largely succeeded. But an incidental result was that I would now have farther to run if I hoped to catch up with the lovelies before any of those galloping Lemmings caught them.

It struck me as an impossible task, but I changed course sharply and sprinted toward the rear of the church anyway, pouring all the strength I had left into my legs and feet, and the task turned out not to be impossible after all. It damn near killed me, yes, but it wasn’t impossible, and the reason was not so much that I outdistanced the Lemmings as that they simply couldn’t keep up with me, and might not even have been able to keep up with lead-footed Ronnie racing on the flat.

Maybe I wasn’t at my absolute best, but ordinarily I am as healthy and full of snorts as a bull being led to the cow pasture, while most of the Lemmings were less lively than the very-recently deceased. I had temporarily forgotten that, when I first lamped these citizens in the Church of the Second Coming, my impression was that a great many were so full of years another month or two might fill them up, and most of the rest, even including the younger members, appeared to have been laid out for viewing. So it was only when I was well up the hill and took another peek back and below that I realized, for the moment anyhow, there was little for me to fear from the flock.

A few dozen were still in staggering pursuit, but only a handful were actually working their way up the sloping hillside. The rest had either stopped or collapsed upon the grass, and their still bodies formed a long ragged line that began a few yards past the trampled cross and continued in a wobbly curve on around behind the church.

Of those pursuing the girls, only one man was ahead of me—apparently bound and determined to capture a lone fanny disappearing among the eucalypti. A dozen more men were almost as high up the hillside, but I ignored them temporarily and chased after the one man above me. He was determined, but his hot pursuit had cooled considerably, and I caught him just as he reached the trees, grabbed him from behind, and sort of threw him toward the loosely bunched group of men not far below.

He hit two of them and knocked them quite a distance. The rest stopped in their tracks and looked at me, wearing sweaty expressions ranging from concern to perplexity, and even returning sanity. Very likely none of them had seen people knocked sprawling by a flying Lemming before.

The nearest pursuer was only fifteen feet away, breathing through his open mouth and with his tongue hanging out two, maybe three, inches. The nine or ten others were scattered over the fifteen yards or so beyond him. I faced them, fists balled on my hips, chest heaving. My insides felt like a large, hollow ache, and my skull seemed to expand and contract every time I gasped for air.

I said, “Well, here I am. Come and get me. As soon as you darlings kill me, any survivors can chase the girlies some more.”

I suppose I was a little bit short of noodles right then. But so were they, apparently. At least, not one of them came up and killed me. They all just stood there. I didn’t. After a few more seconds I turned and headed for the trees. For the trees and my Cad and the girlies.

I didn’t look back. And I walked the rest of the way.

It seemed to me I’d run long enough from the Christians.

25

Maybe I should have run. Not from the Christians but to the girlies.

Because, by the time I got to the spot where I had earlier parked my Cad, my Cad was no longer parked there. It was zooming away down the road.

I watched it zooming away, feeling sick. There went my Cadillac, filled with girlies. Ten of them. All naked as eggs. And here I stood, beginning to sag, quaking in every limb, with nowhere to go and without even transportation to get there.

I had suffered from anticlimaxes before, but seldom had I suffered so much.

Never again, I mentally cried, will I expect gratitude from a girl! They’re all ingrates. They don’t give a hang. Just use a man, then toss him aside like an old shoehorn—or shoe, that’s what I felt like. An old shoe, scuffed and worn and half-soled and bent out of shape and with my tongue hanging out two, maybe three, inches.…

There was the screech of brakes.

Distant girlish squealing.

Zoom, back toward me came the Cadillac.

Damn near knocked me down as it skidded to a stop, but I didn’t care. Smiling, I said, “Playing a little game with me, eh? For a minute … half a minute … for half a second I thought you’d tossed me aside like an old shoehorny—horn—old shoe—”

“What are you wheezing about?” That was Lula, crammed behind the steering wheel. Scrunched next to her, on Leonore’s lap, Dina was saying, “Get in, hurry, get in, hurry up!” And in the back seat, her head poking out from among a bewildering collection of arms and jugs and heads and knees, Emilie was crying, “Yes, hurry, before they catch us.”

“Catch us?” I asked. “They? Who?”

“The Lemmings, you dummy,” Emilie yelled. “The dummies chasing us, that’s who!”

“Oh, them.” I gave my hand a little flip through the air. “Relax. I took care of them.” But then I scowled. “You may call them dummies if you so desire. But please do not, in the very same breath, refer to me—”

“You rearry took care of the Remmings?” The voice was muffled and faint—in fact, I couldn’t even see her—but I assumed it had been Yumiko speaking. “Are you purring our regs?”

Boy, there were sure plenty of them to purr. The Cad’s top was still down, naturally, and in a way it was a good thing, since in order to get ten gals into it at once—something I had never tried to do before—they had to be crammed together in a sort of flesh pyramid that stuck up into the air higher than where the Cad’s top would have been if it had been up.

I said, not speaking directly to any place in particular, “If those citizens were going to show up and attack us, I imagine they’d have got here by now. Probably they’re straggling inside, scrubbing the church with bleach, getting ready for tonight’s services. At least, I don’t see any approaching at the moment.”

Lula spoke again. “As soon as Ronnie was in the car I drove down the road a ways, so we wouldn’t be sitting ducks if those men …” She paused, looking at my face. “You didn’t think we were leaving without you, did you, Shell?”

“Well.…”

“Did you?”

“Why, it didn’t enter my mind. Well, it hardly entered—”

“The idea was, get far enough away, then wait and see if you made it. If you didn’t get killed, that is.”

“Of course. Ah, I suppose we might as well be on our way. Better let me drive.”

“Sure. Climb in.”

So I climbed in. That is the easiest way to say it—skipping the incredibly complex movements, shiftings, further squashings, and astonishingly interesting rearrangements required before I could do it.

I climbed in, consumed approximately fifteen seconds getting the gearshift into drive, and then did nothing. “Maybe if I worked the steering wheel,” I said to Lula, so close on my right she was rupturing my appendix, “and you did the gearshift if necessary, and Dina stepped on the gas, we could really get cracking. How did you manage to drive away so fast?”

“It wasn’t this damn crowded. We didn’t have a big ape driving.”

“Big—you can say that to me after—I presume, Lula, you’re hinting you’d like to walk the rest of the—”

“No, I lost my mad money, you big mother. You’re just like all the rest. You want me to move to the back of this bus—”

“How can you joke at a time like this? Isn’t it enough that Britt and Yumiko—hey, I didn’t see or even hear Britt in this mess. Did we leave her behind?”

“No, I brod it with me. Ain’t you the luggy one?”

I groaned, shook my head, gnashed my teeth. “Well, here we go,” I said. “Pretty quick, we go. Ah, there it is, we’re off!”

“That’s my foot you’re stepping on,” Leonore said faintly.

“Would you move it just a weeny bit so I can get my goddamn foot on the goddamn gas? I—maybe somebody better look and see if any Lemmings are coming at us. There, now if we move, kids, it means I’ve got everything figured out.”

We moved. There was as much squealing and whooping as if I’d picked up the car and was carrying it on my shoulders. “All I did was find the goddamn gas pedal,” I said.

“We go! We go, ’ere we go!” sang out Thérèse.

“Yeah, here we—hey. Where are we going?”

“Don’t you know?” Silvia asked from somewhere, in a disappointed tone.

“Yeah … I mean, I figured we’d go to a jazzy cabin I know about. But …”

In my mind’s eye were streets, freeways, intersections, cars—all with people on them or in them. And police cars with policemen in them. Insurmountable obstacles to surmount.

“But …” I finished, “it’s like that old joke—you can’t get there from here.”

I was wrong. We could get there, and we did. Oh, we experienced a few little adventures. At one red light that I couldn’t run because a diesel truck blocked the intersection, a three-year-old Chevrolet pulled up on my right, middle-aged chap wearing horn-rimmed glasses at the wheel, ferocious-looking middle-aged babe seated next to him. Both of them stared and gasped, but the old boy opened the door and leaned toward us, leaned farther and farther as though drawn by some force beyond his power to control, and when I started moving into the intersection he fell smack out of his car onto the cement. He’d left the Chevy in gear, and when he fell out, naturally his foot left the brake, and then some.

So the Chevy started chugging slowly ahead, and the gal, presumably his wife, slid behind the wheel, but—since she was a woman driver—she did not grab the steering wheel or do anything with brakes and other machinery, but instead stuck her head out the window and yelled at Henry—that’s how I know his name was Henry—“Henry, you fat old fool! Get back in the car!”

Well, Henry tried to. At least, I thought he was trying to. Because he got up and started running like a maniac, short legs whirring like those little wheels on sticks that spin when the wind hits them, only he ran up to his car and right on past it, and was picking up even more speed when I tromped on the gas pedal and dashed his mad hopes forever.

There were other little adventures, of course—there would have been fewer if I could have put the Cad’s top up—but we did indeed make it to the cabin, with none of the numerous screaming sirens ever really close to us, and I even felt reasonably certain nobody followed us up the little road leading to our destination. Felt so with reason, for in our first ten minutes there nobody else showed up, not even Henry, and if we hadn’t been safe the gang would have arrived in much less time than that.

We trooped down the three steps into the living room, first the ten girls and then me, and I stopped a few feet inside the door aware of ordinarily lovely Regina Winsome, who’d obviously had to let us in, waggling her head slowly, a dumb look on her face.

“Ah!” I cried. “Ah! Regina. Forgot you were—I mean, just for a minute, I forgot you … uh.”

“Forgot I was here, didn’t you?” she said icily.

“What makes you think that? Now, look,” I said. “Look, this isn’t what it … looks like.”

“No? What is it?”

“Why, it’s—ah, don’t be like that, Regina.” She was giving me a stony look from cold eyes, freezing eyes, eyes that were practically Bird’s-Eye eyes, and I knew I had better change the subject. “My,” I said impulsively, “you look funny with your clothes on.”

“You look a lot funnier.”

“Me? Damn, did it again! Dear … Regina … Miss Winsome … the hell with it.”

The girls started talking, some walked over to Regina, a couple sat down on a divan, one swang in the living-room swing.

I began, “Girls, this well-bundled-up lady is Miss Regina Winsome,” and proceeded to introduce all my ten nudists by name. They didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to me. When I’d finished introducing everybody I said, “Well, I’ve got one or two more very important things to do, so I have to go—SO I HAVE TO GO.” They kept milling around, yacking at each other, even making a few comments about what a swell house or cabin it was.

“I HAVE TO GO, DAMMIT.”

Dina, whose ear just happened to be nearest my mouth, said, “So, go. I don’t even know where the bathroom is.”

I went to the front door, kicked it, opened it, looked back at all that gorgeous, ungrateful stuff.

“Well, au revoir,” I said. “Toodle-oo. See you later. A bientôt. Hasta la vista.… A dios?”

They didn’t even say good-bye.

The pain was bad by the time I reached the buildings comprising the offices and plant of Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceuticals, in west L.A. Half of my left thigh was a purplish-blue ugliness, and there was a bruised darkness the size of a cantaloupe on my right side. The inside of my right arm, between wrist and elbow, was heavily mottled with puffy dark smears and bruises, probably from rubbing against the heavy cross when I’d run carrying it. There was a deep tearing ache in my arms and legs, side and chest, and all my muscles seemed to be tightening painfully, as if very slowly beginning to knot and cramp.

I’d driven from the cabin in Hal Prince’s sports car, but before leaving I’d taken two items from my Cad’s trunk. One was a set of pick locks in a soft leather case, the other an old but still serviceable, and loaded, Colt .45 automatic I’d inherited from a hood who’d missed me with it.

The picks opened a padlock on one of the gates in a chain link fence surrounding the square block of Cassiday and Quince property, and also the back door in the low white office building. Whether I would have need for the pistol or not depended on the value, or lack of it, of the hunch that had brought me here.

I knew Dave, and Ed Loeffler, would no longer be at Cassiday’s Beverly Hills home—not with me on the loose and presumably at least half-alive. While wondering where they might have gone, I recalled one of the phrases I’d heard, or thought I’d heard, when coming up out of unconsciousness. Dave had been saying something to Ed about their lying low for a while at “See and Cue.” That’s the way it had sounded then; but very likely he’d been saying “C and Q.” Dave had thought I was unconscious, or he wouldn’t have been talking at all, and he might casually have used his verbal shorthand for “Cassiday and Quince.” If nothing else, the plant was a reasonably logical place to look for them, and I’d know if my hunch was right in a minute or two more.

I knew in less than that. Only seconds after I eased the door shut behind me and started walking slowly along a polished corridor, I heard a man’s voice saying, “… no goddamn point in beefing about it anymore, Ed. What’s done’s done.”

“Yeah, well.… The sonofabitch did say they was bareass nekkid on the television. He did, Dave. The whole bunch of ’em. Only thing I done was take a little quick peek, just barely rolled my glimmers—”

“Will you shut up? He lied to you. I’ve been trying to tell you, the bastard tricked you—”

“Tricked me, did he? Tricked me, did—”

“—and you fell for it like a prize saphead. None of them were stripped then. Later, yeah, there at the church, all ten of the broads wound up naked as the day they were born. Craziest damn—and who wound up with those goddamn dumb broads? Shell Scott, the fink you let get loose. In the church, yet! The bastard probably lined them up and banged ’em all, one right after—”

“Dave—Dave—don’t even say things like—”

“Well, you goddamn crud, you let him get away—”

“I tole you, he said they was—”

“Oh, shut up.” Silence for a couple of seconds, then Dave continued less belligerently, “We only got one shot into him, and the stuff must have broken down more than I thought it had, but I still don’t know how the bastard could’ve done all that running around. He must be the healthiest freak in the whole damned country.”

There was silence for a few seconds. As I moved slowly toward an open door a few feet ahead on my left, the room from which the sound of voices came, I realized my name must have been mentioned on some kind of news broadcast again, and recently, or Dave and Ed wouldn’t have known about my appearance at the Church of the Second Coming. The knowledge neither astonished nor pleased me. There wasn’t time to dwell on such matters anyway, for I was only one long step from the door.

I took that last step as Dave went on, “I still say he’s done for. Chances are he’s bleeding to death right now. If he had sense enough to get a K-one shot, or something to build up his prothrombin, he might make it. But when in hell would the bastard have had time for that? When in hell would the freak take time for a shot if there were ten naked broads lined up—”

“Dave, I already ast you not to—”

“Clam up. I don’t care if Scott lives on fresh blood and raw liver, I say he’s probably dead already.”

“Not quite, Dave. But thanks for all the compliments.”

Dave knew Ed hadn’t said that, and Ed knew Dave hadn’t, so both of them snapped their heads toward the door—and Ed began springing to his feet. Dave was seated behind a desk, his feet propped on it, facing me, and Ed was coming up out of a chair on my left, his right hand held before him with the fingers spread.

I don’t know whether Dave was already pasty-looking from worry or if he simply paled then, almost instantly, but to me he appeared frozen and white, immobile, and he didn’t speak. Not Ed; he was roaring as soon as he started out of his chair. “You sonofabitch!”

“Ed, hold it. You haven’t—”

I never got to tell him all of it, that he didn’t have a chance. The cocked automatic was in my hand and the moment he moved I’d swung it to point at his broad thick chest. But he wasn’t listening. His mouth was open, chin stuck out, lips peeled from his big teeth. The butt of a gun stuck up from behind his belt buckle, and that spread hand of his slapped against it as he yelled, “You tole me they was bareass nekkid, you sonofabitch! Pants—”

I shot him once. Ordinarily with a man yanking out a fat .45 I would have put from two to half a dozen into him. But I held my finger from the trigger after the one blast of sound, just pulled the gun down level again after it bounced in my hand. But that one was enough.

Ed spun backward, arms flipping up and gun flying into the air. He hit the chair, toppled over it, crashed to the floor on his side. I jumped to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and started to roll him over. But Ed had started to say something to me, and with the thought stuck in that simple one-track mind of his, he finished it. He lifted his head, stared straight into my eyes, and squeezed it out in a high whistling voice like a boy’s: “… and all,” he said, then he relaxed, relaxed completely, and his head hit the floor with a thump as he died.

I put a finger against Ed’s throat and felt for his pulse, just to be sure—but kept my eyes on Dave. There wasn’t any pulse. I straightened up, aimed the .45 at Dave’s stomach and took a step toward him.

“You’re a real sweetheart, Cassiday. André Strang, the chunky hood there in the house with him, Ed’s buddy, and now Ed. Four men killed. A close call for Regina Winsome. Bruno and Dru were supposed to go. Not to mention the miscellaneous misery, and that crap you shot into me. I doubt you’ll be missed.”

“Don’t.…” Dave put his left hand up in front of him and sort of pushed it toward me, then shoved the other open hand at me, shrinking back, turning his head to the side but continuing to stare wide eyed at the bore of my gun. “Don’t!”

“Why not?”

“Scott—I won’t give you any trouble. I knew it was all up, over, when I saw you in the doorway. Don’t shoot, for God’s sake, you wouldn’t murder a man—Scott, don’t shoot me—”

I relaxed a little, and my heels gently hit the floor. I hadn’t realized I was standing on the balls of my feet. “You talked me out of it, Dave,” I said. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

He shook his head slowly back and forth, his face white as a halibut’s belly. “I was just thinking,” I said to him. “If one of those Lemmings—by the way, did you hear about the excitement at the church on television?” He shook his head. “Radio?” He nodded. “Anyhow, if one of those dandies had got close enough to bite me, I’d either have died of rabies or bled to death—and you still might have made it all the way. Right?”

He ran his tongue over his lips without moistening them, then shrugged silently. Dave didn’t have much to say at the moment. But I assumed he would make up later for his silence—later, with several teams of police officers. Not, however, if I keeled over and followed Ed to wherever he’d gone.

A phone rested on Cassiday’s desk. I lifted it off the hook, dialed, not using my gun hand. When I got the LAPD I asked for Samson in Homicide, and took several slow deep breaths while waiting for him to come on.

When he answered, I said rapidly, “Sam, this is Shell. Now, please shut up just for a—”

I didn’t say it fast enough. I know he didn’t hear me say “shut up,” and there was a good chance he hadn’t heard the “please.” I had been chewed out unbelievably by the captain of Homicide on other occasions, but for at least thirty seconds Samson achieved a peak of violent invective and magnificence of thundering condemnation unique even in my experience.

After he’d promised personally to expedite my indictment, arraignment, trial, conviction, and incarceration at San Quentin if not Devil’s Island on a wondrous array of charges—including, assaulting a police officer, being a public nuisance on purpose, and most recently, transporting naked sexpots openly within the city limits—and had begun to concentrate with undiminished sarcasm on my unforgivable insults and affronts to the Church of the Second Coming, Lemming and Lemmings, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Scientologists, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I wearied.

I had tried several times without success to interrupt him, so I held the Colt .45 a foot from the phone’s mouthpiece and fired a bullet into the ceiling.

“What—Shell, was that a shot? Shell, are you all right?”

He sounded a little more human. Sam got very, very bugged with me at times, but I knew he’d hate it if I got killed. “Afraid not, Sam,” I said. “While I was trying to squeeze a word in edgewise, a hundred-and-twelve-year-old mafioso crawled in here and pooped me. I never thought I’d get it from the world’s oldest hoodlum—”

He was off again.

But this time he stopped the harangue himself, and after a brief but pregnant silence said, “All right. Well?”

“I’m at the Cassiday and Quince offices in west L.A. With Dave Cassiday. He hired three hoods, Monk, Billy Hickel, and Ed Loeffler—all now deceased—snatched Bruno, planned the whole caper. He also supplied some kind of blood-thinner that was injected into André Strang before they killed him. I called so you could have some cops take this creep off my hands. Please don’t send the officer I slugged, though—”

It was a very short outburst this time. I went on, “The other reason I called, old buddy, Cassiday shot a dollop of that same crud into me a couple hours ago, and it is doing some strange and—I hate to complain, Sam—unpleasant things to me. I thought you might care to send along an ambulance—”

“The same injection given Strang?”

“Yeah. Obviously a weaker brew, but I think I’m leaking in a couple places, anyhow. Probably need a shot of—just a minute.” I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at Dave. “What do I need, pal?”

He ran that dry tongue over his lips again, but said, “K-one, it’s a vitamin, vitamin K. Tell him Mephyton, administered intravenously, or any other good preparation designed to reverse anticoagulant-induced prothrombin deficiency.” Dave was being very cooperative now.

So, apparently, was Samson. I guessed he’d heard Dave’s words, because when I stuck the phone alongside my head again, I could hear him yelling—out his office door into the squad room, undoubtedly—and I caught his last words, “Code Three. Jump!”

“Code Three” means with red light and siren, or very speedy. Which gave me some comfort.

“Shell?”

“Yeah. Still here.” Cassiday clasped his hands together on the desk top and leaned forward slightly. Probably he was merely shifting to a more comfortable position, since he’d been almost rigid for some time. So I went on, “If you hear another shot, it will be because I got dizzy and shot Dave Cassiday, just to make sure he wouldn’t get away if I passed out.”

I didn’t think Cassiday could get any paler, but he did. Samson asked me, “How do you feel? No wisecracks now, give it to me straight.”

“I’m still on my feet. But I might be bleeding a little somewhere in my innards—” I chopped it off with a grunt, involuntarily. One of the tearing aches that had been grabbing me every couple of minutes ripped through my gut and right side. There was dead silence at the other end of the line for a few seconds, and I supposed Sam had put his big paw over the mouthpiece. Then he was on again, saying, “You’re in the company’s office building?”

“Yeah.”

“Who else is there?”

“Cassiday and Ed Loeffler. The only dead one is Loeffler. So far. Incidentally, Cassiday set up the try to knock off Regina Winsome, the girl nicked at the church last night He’s also the busy boy who hauled the bodies of Strang and Monk from the house on Fifty-eighth Street there in Weilton.” I paused. “That’s about it for now, Sam. I’m going to concentrate on our chum here. Get the word about Cassiday to Emmanuel Bruno, will you?”

“I will. Hang in there, Shell. I’m sending a doctor out right away.”

“Could you—” That griping pain squeezed me again, and I grunted, then went on “—make it a nurse?”

He hung up on me and hurt my ear. Sam has no really deep feelings at all.

Dave was looking at me as I put the phone back on the hook. He said quietly, “You knew I moved those bodies?”

“It had to be you. Once I got to thinking about it—and about you—some things I’d soaked up, but hadn’t paid enough attention to, then appeared in a different light.”

“Like what?”

“I’m tired, Dave. You really want to know?”

“Yeah. I guess I did make … yeah, I’d like to know.”

“For one thing, when you came racing down Heavenly Lane last night after picking up your car, you turned right, toward Weilton, before you backed up alongside my Cad.”

“You noticed that, huh?”

“Noticed it, sure. But it didn’t mean anything to me until a little while before I dropped in on you earlier this afternoon. By that time it fit in with your big sweat to get out of the house where those stiffs were. The sweat wasn’t just because your car and the Doc’s were parked in the church lot, but because you knew very soon after eleven P.M. there’d be a try by your heavy boys to kill Regina Winsome at the church. Naturally you didn’t want Bruno and me around when it happened.”

I picked up the chair Ed Loeffler had knocked over on his way down, sat in it facing Cassiday. My legs were tired, and the ache in them was worse, becoming constant now. “Well, you backed up next to my Cad there on Filbert Street,” I said. “And after we jawed for a few seconds, Doc and I took off. I didn’t pay any attention to whether you turned around and followed us or not, but of course you didn’t. By then you’d heard me phone the law and knew police were on their way, so you went straight ahead into Weilton and back to the house on Fifty-eighth Street. Obviously you contacted your two heavies afterward, but you had to be the guy who moved the bodies of Monk and Strang. Your boys didn’t do it, they were busy till at least eleven-sixteen when they took those shots at the girl. The way it worked out, you had maybe five or six minutes to get there and do the job, so you must’ve moved pretty fast.”

“Not fast enough. I guess … I did make some mistakes, after all.”

“One big one.”

“Oh? What was that?”

I looked at recently ebullient and bouncing Dave Cassiday, now appearing somewhat shrunken and as tired as I felt, and thought of what he’d bought: almost certain arrest, trial, conviction; exposure for—well, for what he was; the loss of his solidly based and potentially immensely profitable business; years, maybe endless years, behind high walls and solid bars, with a lot of other losers.

“Trying to get something for nothing,” I said.

Samson had pulled out all the stops. It wasn’t an ambulance but a police helicopter that came for me and settled down in a whirlwind of noise and smog twenty feet from the back door of the offices wherein Dave and I sat.

Homicide detectives took care of Dave. A doctor—a very nice, capable, helpful, charming efficient, and welcome medical doctor, and loyal member of the AMA, by the way—took care of me.

He looked at me sorrowfully, and shook his head in the way those fellows sometimes do, and for a moment I wondered if he was an undertaker. But then he gave me a shot in the—put it this way: by then I was wearing Ed Loeffler’s pants, and as though my tailor-made curse had struck again, I had to take Ed’s pants off, or at least down. It was a large shot of very suspicious-looking gunk from a huge and deadly syringe, and half an hour later instead of dying from whatever FDA-approved embalming fluid he’d preserved me with I was feeling better. Quite a bit better. The pains were much diminished. I had stopped grunting. Which probably meant I was going to live.

Perhaps the shot affected my disposition, or mental balance, as well. Because I began to have a warm feeling—not merely for the good doctor, but for Organized Medicine, the AMA even, but especially for my pal, the MD.

For after all, had he not—well, almost—made a house call?

26

Captain Phil Samson rubbed his sledgehammer jaw, shook his head, and said again—we’d been talking in his office for half an hour—“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m beginning to understand why you had to commit mayhem on a police officer. Nonetheless, a judge is going to rule on the wisdom of that act. I will even admit if you’d been brought in we’d have kept you at least a week, if not forever, and probably I would personally have beaten you with a stick. And I realize that from your unique point of view—you had to avoid being jugged at all costs.”

“Not jugged, Sam. Jailed, yes. But a jug—”

“Jesus, can’t you think of anything else? Tell me, why in hell did you go to that church, and … Shell, now with hindsight, it can’t be denied those ten Citizens FOR protesters were in a bad spot, might have been seriously injured. Or worse—I’ve had more experience with mobs even than you. But you couldn’t have known before the fact—”

“I had a hunch, Sam. I mean, a real zinger—”

“Very scientific. Let me finish.” He got one of his black cigars from the desk drawer, stuck it into his wide mouth, and growled around it. “I’m really trying to be fair, to understand. If it was a lovely day and you had nothing else to do and decided to visit the church and say hi to the marchers, that I can understand. But full of the stuff Cassiday shot into you, with your blood dissolving, the LAPD, the FBI, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police looking for you, what possessed you under those circumstances to think you and only you had to help those people?”

“Why, they were girls, Sam—”

“I know they were girls! Even girls in some danger. Good lookers. No clothes on. I’m sure you took all that into consideration. But what other weighty factors influenced you? What else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

He flipped his hands into the air. “I don’t know,” he repeated yet again. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”

“I’ve told you a dozen times. Just sympathize with my delicate condition, thank me for all my good works, and let me—”

“Will you shut up? I’ll jail you for littering the air. And don’t give me any more of that bleeder baloney—ah, I’ll admit you were in serious difficulty for a while. But I talked to Frank Killem and he told me you’ve got to be one of the most amazing physical specimens he’s ever seen. An hour under observation in Central Receiving and you were almost back to normal, which for you must be abnormal. He said you’ve got hyperactive glands or something—”

“I had a hunch. Why, I was telling Dru.… Who’s this Killem?”

“Dr. Frank Killem. He’s the man I sent in the helicopter to save your miserable—”

“Killem? Sam, you sent me a doctor named Killem? Now I see you in your true colors—black and blue. You can’t get me legally, so—”

“Will you shut—”

“Keerist, what must happen to Frank’s patients in hospitals? Guy’s waiting for an operation, shot full of various cruds, half dead, nurse says, ‘Is Dr. Baranowski going to operate on this dying man?’ and a cold voice replies, ‘No. Killem.’ Why, the guy could kick the bucket. Reminds me of the sad case of Dr. Curtin. Patient was being given the usual formaldehyde before surgery and somebody asked, ‘Is Dr. Baranowski going to operate on this hopeless case?’ and a cold voice said, ‘No. It’s Curtin’s.’ Patient let out a little squeak and expired right …”

Samson was wiggling a finger at somebody in the outer office. A plainclothes lieutenant came inside. Sam looked at him, then pointed a thick rigid finger at me.

“Arrest that man,” he said in a cold voice. “Dead or alive.”

It was a narrow squeak, but I got out of the police building by ten P.M. Samson let me go, but insisted the police officer I’d socked on the Santa Ana Freeway should, and would, press an awesome battery of charges against me. Mitigating circumstances, if any, could be presented in court to the judge—but all that was in the future.

At the present, I was swinging right off the freeway at the turn to Monterey Park, on my way to see Emmanuel Bruno. I had phoned him from the police building, hit a few high points of recent hours—including the fact that police officers had already found in Festus Lemming’s office the “kit” Dave Cassiday had indeed hidden there—and accepted the Doc’s warm invitation to visit him before going home.

This time Bruno’s trees and shrubs, his “garden,” were illumined by colored spotlights and several paper-covered lanterns hanging from tree limbs. The grounds looked warm, very festive and inviting, but the Doc greeted me outside his door and led me into the house. We got settled in his front room, which was also warm and festive but looked more like a den or library crowded with odd-looking idols, unusual furniture, fearsome masks, and peculiarly compelling paintings on two of the walls. The other two walls were lined with books, some in bright new jackets and others obviously very old. There were also three or four terribly pornographic bits of statuary, which I admired.

He mixed a bourbon and water for me, poured a glug of brandy into a snifter, listened—with for him unusual restraint—while I explained in more detail the afternoon’s events. Restraint, in that he refrained from getting his mouth into gear and shifting it from low to second to high and higher; but not silence. Because several times toward the end he whooped and shouted such things as “Glorious!” and “Splendid, Sheldon—splendid!” and as I finished my summation, he actually slapped his thigh several times. I found this a most refreshing contrast to Captain Samson’s excessive restraint.

“Well, that’s pretty much the size of it,” I said.

“Ah, thank you for telling me, Sheldon. How I wish I could have been there. For all of it, needless to say, but especially when, alone, you confronted the army of Lemmings clad in your shoes, shorts, and sports shirt. The thought of that confrontation is one I shall cherish. It will strengthen me during earthquakes, floods, and the coming Ice Age.”

He rose to his full six feet, five inches, voice gradually gaining in volume and power like when they turn on those big generators down at the electric light company. “But if only, at such a significant and symbolic moment, you could have gone forth entirely naked to smite the fearful foe—not alone, but borne on the shoulders of your nudist troops—a naked general charging from the church and down the greensward, your ten bare privates bouncing along beneath and behind you.”

I had a hunch the Doc was pretty well wound up. Of course, I’d never seen him when he wasn’t. I had a hunch, too, that letting me speak so long without interruption must have been a strain on him. Like some of my other hunches, that one was right on the button.

He slashed an arm through the air as if it were the Singing Sword and continued oracularly, “I can see it now! The brave little band of nuts thundering down into the Valley of Death, shouting four-letter words and scattering Lemmings in a charge the like of which the world has not seen—The Charge at the I’ve-Seen-the-Light Brigade. Ah, what a charge!

“Canons to the right of them, canons to the left of them—from pulpit and pew they follied and blundered! Stormed at and shot was Shell, but bravely he rode, and, well … tolling the ding-dong bell? Bang-BANG! BOOM-bang—hell, I can’t remember the bloody poem. Haven’t read Tennyson since I was nine years old.”

“Uh-huh. Didn’t happen that way, though. Too bad. I guess.”

He took my empty glass and filled it, added brandy to his snifter, and sat in a chair near me. “Where did you say you took the ten lovely ladies?” he asked, all calmed down.

“I didn’t say. But I left them at a rather isolated cabin owned by a friend of mine. It’s got almost everything, except a means of communication … and clothes.”

“Then I presume you intend to visit the ladies eventually, inform them of what occurred during your absence.”

“I had thought about it. Yes, I had. Uh, eventually. Like in half an hour, maybe.”

“Hmm.” He stood up, left the room, came back with a dark-brown pint bottle and a tablespoon. “You’d better have some of this right away, then, Sheldon.” He paused, while I poured the spoon full, then took back the bottle, saying, “It will—also—replenish some of the elements in your bloodstream assuredly depleted by the ravages of this day. Erovite is immensely rich in the vitamins, minerals, and trace elements necessary for optimum functioning of the human organism. The base is composed of concentrated extracts from liver, brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, and seaweed, among other things.”

“Seaweed? Ye Gods, that’s what Dave—”

“Never fear. Sea water, seaweed, and kelp contain all the minerals and trace elements of our nourishing Earth. All of which are also, though many in microscopic quantities, found in the body. The blood is very similar to sea water, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do.”

I hadn’t swallowed the stuff yet, was still holding the brimming tablespoon in the air before my chops. Before tossing it down I focused my eyes on it, looked at the thick brownish nondescript gunk with an odd, complex mixture of emotions.

The spoon was full, more than full, liquid arching well above the spoon’s edges in what was obviously defiance of the law of gravity, if only the law of gravity were considered and all other laws ignored. It certainly did appear that Erovite was breaking the law, though. Definitely criminal stuff. The ceiling light and the glow of a table lamp were reflected in it, glittering like dots of warmth or life or little suns or even bright little bugs. Which for a moment made me imagine a wee Festus Lemming in there, and a church and a cross, a scalpel and a caduceus, and me, and even little girlies. Then I opened my mouth and gobbled it all down.

“This is quite a moment for me, Doc,” I said. “It really is.” I smacked my lips. “So that’s Erovite, huh? That’s what the whooping and hullabaloo are about? It didn’t hurt a bit—doesn’t taste bad at all.”

“I find it delicious, myself. It’s a food, really. Erovite, Sheldon, is essentially—about ninety percent—concentrated nutrition. The average American in this rich land is not, despite propaganda to the contrary, well-fed. He is, to a significant degree, starving. Tragically, he fails to realize it. Adding insult to injury, and in support of the status quo and their own imbecility, the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration announce every hour on the hour that Americans are the best-fed people in the world, that no U.S. citizen eating the mythical normal well-balanced diet requires any additional vitamins or minerals or food supplements designed to provide him with the nutrients and nutrition eliminated from his food, and that Peter Pan is alive and well in Argentina. And that it has been revealed to them from the source of all wisdom that Erovite is the product of quackery designed for faddists and must therefore be excommunicated.”

He got up, walked across the room, and poured himself a bit of brandy, saying, “If a man is to resist with minimal success the countless stresses of modern society, plus the effects of poisons in the earth, in the waters, in the air, and in his mind, then that with which he feeds his body, his cells and nerves and blood and brain, must not add to the poisons and wastes and stresses afflicting him. It must in every possible way feed, strengthen, nourish him. Since it does not, Erovite—or something like it—is not only desirable but essential.”

“So,” I said. “Erovite is simply steak and potatoes and a vitamin pill. Plus seaweed.”

“Not—” he grinned at me, satanically, I thought—“exactly. I said it was ninety percent nutritional, Sheldon. There is that other ten percent. While the ninety slowly but surely feeds the cells, often cells starved for most or all of a lifetime, the ten feeds the spirit and soul—in a way. I have, in a long life, a long and joyous life.…”

Still standing, he cocked his massive head on one side, as if glancing back over the years, and I asked, sort of automatically, “How long a life, Doc? How old are you, anyway? About sixty? Of course, if you’re older you can tell me it’s none of my—”

“Why, I’m eighty-four—”

“You’re what?”

“Eighty-four. Last month. Didn’t you know?”

I didn’t say anything because I was speechless. I was sure he had no reason to lie, but.… Suddenly I wasn’t speechless. “If you’re eighty-four, how old is Dru?”

“She’s thirty-eight. Be thirty-nine in—”

“Jesus Christ!”

“What’s the matter with you? Did Dru tell you she was younger?”

“No … she didn’t say anything. And it was a lie.”

He smiled that Papa Lisa smile, sat down again, and crossed his long legs. “As I was saying, in my lifetime I have discovered, in one case stumbled upon, three substances—or combinations of natural substances, entirely harmless—each of which has a profoundly beneficial effect upon the average individual’s body and state of mind, all three of which are in Erovite. One is a euphoriant, a mood elevator. It brings a chemical ray of light into darkness. The second is an energizer. It acts primarily upon the ductless glands, and to a degree upon neural tissues and fibers. The third is a kind of peniscillin or libido lifter, which acts upon the sexual glands and the systems most directly supporting them. And acts also, it appears, upon a minute sexual center now known to exist in the hypothalamus. This is the notorious aphrodisiac, concerning which there has been a certain amount of discussion.”

He smiled. “So there, basically, you have it, Sheldon. Steak and potatoes and a vitamin pill. Plus seaweed … and a few other delicacies. And a euphoriant, an energizer, and a sexual stimulant of marvelous potency. Behold: Erovite!”

He fell silent for a few moments, examining his thumbnail. “Life’s pleasures, Sheldon, are not infinite in their number and variety. And I have come, finally, to believe that man’s primary goal in life is, or should be, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Here, in this life, which we must assume. God, whose gift it is, gave us for our enjoyment. I would hate to think He is a practical joker, who puts firecrackers in birthday cigars.”

“Well, they say He gives bad people a hotfoot. Hell, not just foot—”

“Pleasure, remember, can be derived from many things—love, work, success, play, friendship, a book or painting or poem, gazing upon a sunset or the sea—but pain is almost invariably harmful, inhibiting, destructive. Pleasure expands, rewards, builds; pain contracts, punishes, tears down. Pleasure is harmony, pain discord. Pleasure is health, pain is sickness. Almost invariably the misfits, meddlers, and misanthropes who bring most pain to others, as well as themselves, are those already warped and twisted by their own previous experience of pain. For many reasons, Sheldon, I honestly believe that Erovite, to a degree unsuspected even now, can help men, strengthen them, make more possible for them the achievement of that ideal: the joyous pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of crippling pain. Yet millions, including many of those who would benefit most from Erovite, fight or fear it, would forbid its sale, ban it, destroy it.”

I got out a cigarette—one of life’s less-than-infinite number of little pleasures, especially before it became more carcinogenic than smog, insecticides, and sewage—lit it, and sucked in a deep, sensual drag. “Well, Doc, I’m no philosopher, but I think fun is a lot more fun than.… I’m sure you know what I mean. Whether I do or not. As for Erovite, I gather a whole bunch of people are afraid if enough of the country got turned on there’d be a coast-to-coast orgy—”

“Orgy! Ha! Aha!”

“What’d I say? Did I—”

“Sex—yes, the monster of frightful and frightening mien. Filth! Damnation! I deliberately did not name among man’s pleasures what very likely is—or should be—life’s chief pleasure. Sex! Supersin! Desire! The bang! The orgasm! The release of sexual and even cosmic energies! Copulation! Fornication! FUN!”

“Well, yeah but … just think how many would hate themselves in the morn—”

“So, an orgy. Couples coupling from Maine to California and Yonkers to San Diego, groups groping from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the sea. Why not?”

“Well, yeah, but … besides, they wouldn’t all be legally married—”

“Such a forbidden and stimulating phenomenon might awaken sex from its hypnotic sleep, rescue fornication from the priests and preachers and politicians, instill The Bang with new life and vigor and—”

“Sex is asleep?”

“Not asleep, Sheldon, it is tottering toward the tomb in a coma. It is dying, and its grave is the blushing-bride’s bed.” Bruno couldn’t sit still any longer. He placed his brandy snifter on a table, got to his feet, waved one arm in the air and waggled the other.

“Can any rational being deny that sex is in grave difficulties? If not verily in the grave, almost totally kaput? Consider: Does not every married couple, without exception, learn and simultaneously deny the knowledge that after one or five or ten or twenty or fifty years, each blessed or burdened with three hundred and sixty-five nights—assuming there ever lived such a pair of prodigies as to continue nightly to consummate the contract which according to local statute was made in Heaven—the seven thousand and thirty-first attempt somehow failed to recapture that first fine careless rapture of the initial extravaganza?”

“Is that a question?”

“The tent is still there,” Bruno boomed, waving his arms overhead, “and even the same old pole may still hold it up, but—where has the circus gone? Where the lions and tigers, the acrobats, the girls on trapezes? Where are the bands playing, the oompah—oompah, the roar of the crowd? Why, there is not even a snake charmer, not a peanut vendor, alas! not even a lass selling candied apples. O Misery, have they all fled? Even the clowns—Ah! There! There in the center of the ring, do you see him?”

Goddamnit, I looked around. The old boy really had me this time. I was there—there in the empty circus tent. It wasn’t only his words, it was the booming, humming, electric-light-company-generator vibrancy and zap of his voice, the conviction behind his words, the arms waving tragically.

“There—” he boomed on—“alone, is he. Only the clown remains. The solitary clown, salt tears traced on his painted grin, and around and about him the lone and level sawdust stretches far away. He alone remains, and now—there he goes!—he is blowing his brains out!” Bruno stalked to his snifter, polished off the last swallow of his brandy. “Is it not a tragedy?”

“Boy, I’ll say,” I said. “Well, I guess the only thing to do is play now, go later. Which reminds me, do I have to take a leak, or is it something I drank?”

“It is Erovite. I have been waiting for you to mention the feeling of warmth, energy, increasing alertness—”

“You’re sure I don’t have to take a leak?”

“That is something you will have to determine for yourself, Sheldon. Erovite does not vulcanize the bladder. It—”

“Excuse me a minute, will you, Doc? Where is—”

He showed me. Still, there really was—also—the feeling of warmth, of somewhat greater alertness and energy than I’d possessed only minutes ago.

In Bruno’s front room again I told him that and added, “Well, I’d better leave, Doc. I only came here to use the bathroom. But I dropped a dime in the toilet.”

“Lord, oh, Lord,” he sighed, staring at the ceiling. “These are the dimes that dry men’s souls.” Then he went with me to the door, stood in it looking benignly after me while I walked to my Cad.

As I drove toward the freeway, I glanced back once—just as all the lights, except for a soft glow from inside the house, went out. The trees, lamps, shrubs, the small figure of Emmanuel Bruno in the doorway, disappeared, vanished in sudden darkness.

It gave me an odd feeling, kind of a chill. I don’t know why it did; but it did.

27

Well, all that was a year ago. Only a year. But it was, as everybody knows, an unusual and exceptional year.

It was a great year for me.

I stayed on Erovite—and when I finally got hold of a bottle with a label on it learned, to my dismay, for by then of course it was too late, that the recommended dose was ten drops after each meal. I saw each and all of the Ten, and even Regina. And spent quite a bit of time with Dru, for several reasons. I had a lot of fun. I guess you could say I worked at Doc Bruno’s “pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain” and did pretty well on both ends.

Except for the unavoidable pain of being literally forced to combat the miserable myth about me that grew to such ridiculous proportions, and in some dizzy circles is still growing. So let me say again as I have said a hundred or a thousand times before: There were only ten.

Well.…

Eleven if you count Regina. But I don’t think it’s fair to count Regina.

Anyhow, for everyone else it was a year, in the main, either of delight and satisfaction, or trial and tribulation, but for all it was undeniably a year of unprecedented change, because the alterations and upheaval already in progress at the time were vastly accelerated by the death of Emmanuel Bruno.

Yes, they killed him.

Of course they killed him—like so many hundreds, even thousands, who had come before him, bearing gifts.

Within days after his murder, it was learned Bruno had made arrangements, before Erovite first went on sale, to ensure that it would survive him, no matter when and how he died. He had entrusted to the care of three separate attorneys identical sets of several hundred addressed and sealed envelopes which were, in the event of his death, to be immediately mailed. This was done. In consequence, well before the end of that August, members of Congress, every major pharmaceutical company as well as several minor ones, plus miscellaneous physicians, pharmacists, pharmacognosists, biochemists and other researchers, nutritionists, writers, magazine editors, newspapermen, and even some quacks and faddists became possessors of the full and complete formula for Erovite, together with such clear instructions for its preparation that almost any reasonably bright and persistent individual could, if he desired, produce it by the barrel.

Several legal battles were begun, mainly initiated by large pharmaceutical companies that desired exclusive rights to and control of the worthless concoction. But it became unnecessary for a legal decision to be handed down by any court simply because damn near everybody soon knew all there was to know about the composition and preparation of Erovite.

Within a week after Bruno’s death, the formula and instructions—his last will and testament, the legacy of a long, well-lived life—had been published in newspapers with a circulation of at least ten million readers. Additional newspaper stories, magazine articles, pamphlets and brochures and mimeographed flyers were to follow. The result was that—after an abortive attempt to make Erovite freely available on prescription—it was sold openly, in drugstores, along with Alka-Seltzer and Aspirin and Ex-Lax.

Before the year was out, more than a dozen companies were producing and selling Emmanuel Bruno’s elixir. Most marketed it as one or another name brand of Erovite, but a few tried selling their brew under other names, none of which gave rise to uncontrollable excitement. The only one I recall was “The Fountain of Youthanasia,” alleged to “Close the Regeneration Gap,” but I haven’t spotted that one for months. There was even a “NEW IMPROVED Erovite,” presumably containing Mmmm!, but it didn’t catch on, either.

Not surprisingly, as sales of Erovite increased so did sales of the Pill, despite publicity about possible side effects from its use. As one widely quoted single girl explained on the Johnny Carson Show, “I know if I take the Pill it may be injurious, but if I don’t it could be fetal.” On the other hand, many citizens grew prune-lipped and stony-eyed and quoted Scripture and cried that all the sinners were de-immortalizing their immortal souls by sinning, though they never explained precisely how this curious result was produced or clearly defined the de-immortalizing sins. These were the citizens who also refused even to give Erovite a try, but—as Doc Bruno once said to me—you can’t wean ’em all.

Of course, within the Church and in the churches were millions of troubled, seeking, honest, hopeful, and hoping men and women looking either for answers or The Answer, but all of them—Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Infidel—were caught up and torn in the flux and ferment of the times. Many high Catholic and Protestant officials responded to attacks upon them—as though still in reaction against ancient Rome and the Coliseum—with the centuries-old technique of throwing the lions to the Christians. The greatest upheaval was in the modern Church of Rome, for—though, we had not yet seen headlines, “POPE HAS ABORTION”—there were priests and nuns not only living in sin but exclaiming, “I’ve seen the light, and it isn’t the light they told me about.”

At any rate, before long half the country must have been consuming the stuff, because thousands of tons of Erovite had been produced and sold. It was a flourishing new business grown from infancy to monster size almost overnight—happily, or sadly, much of that which Festus Lemming feared had come upon him—and extremely profitable to many. But I suppose things have a way of balancing out, because simultaneously the sales of Alka-Seltzer and Aspirin and Ex-Lax, along with other nostrums, declined.

It was interesting that sales of insulin, cortisone, nitroglycerine, and digitalis also slipped slightly, while the drop in gross income from barbiturates and tranquilizers was deemed catastrophic. All this was interesting but not significant—according to an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association—but it did appear there might be a lot of spontaneous remission, not to mention improvement following previous medical treatment in 1940, going on.

However, not even Authority could now successfully indict Emmanuel Bruno as a quack or an elf, or dim the luster of his name. Not even the most exhaustive tests and analyses had revealed the presence in Erovite of anything poisonous or harmful, unless an increase of vigor, energy, libido, and love of life was harmful—which, needless to say, some continued to claim with the fervor and feverishness of constipated Savonarolas. That battle continued, and not with diminished but with increased sound and fury, especially fury.

Most vocal and purple in the forefront of the hindmost were, as always, the Lemmings of the Lord—still going strong, membership up half a million in a year. But to the previous sacred duty of their convictions and desires had been added a new and powerful motivation, the necessity to convince others, and perhaps themselves, that they were right and in the right and only they were right. For it was a member of the Church of the Second Coming who killed Emmanuel Bruno.

It happened a few minutes before midnight, on August fifteenth, only about an hour after I left Bruno standing in the doorway of his home. From there I had gone to Hal Prince’s cabin, and I didn’t learn of Bruno’s death until late the next afternoon. Even after that, some of the facts were never made entirely clear. The officers assigned to duty at Riverdale Estates where Bruno lived had been withdrawn when Dave Cassiday was taken into custody. So nobody saw the little man arrive, and nobody ever found out exactly how he got into the house.

There was some evidence that he’d climbed the chain link fence, walked to the house, and entered through an unlocked window, carrying a brick he’d picked up somewhere along the way. That was the official conclusion; the little man didn’t remember very well. There’d been all that excitement earlier, for one thing. He had been among the group harangued by Festus Lemming, the group that pursued me for a while, and later, sweaty and disturbed, filed inside the church.

During the next three hours Festus Lemming was, according to virtually all reports, at his finest, his most magnificent, his most stirring. He announced, true to his word, the time when Jesus Christ would come again in his glory—seven years in the future, exactly, on the fifteenth of August, said Festus—and among a great many other necessary things declared yet again that the Lord could return only if the world were by then swept clean of sin. It was also required that the Antichrist be overcome—quite a bit about that. Lemming didn’t even mention Emmanuel Bruno that night. But it is not unfair to assume that many in his congregation remembered the applicable name.

After that, the little man found himself—he said—driving, then walking in darkness, and then inside Bruno’s house. And suddenly near Bruno, who was in bed, asleep. Near him, standing over him, lifting his right arm, gripping tightly in his trembling fingers the brick he’d picked up somewhere.

That’s what he used. Not a gun or a knife. Not even something significant or “appropriate” like a bust of Giordano or one of the Doc’s small obscene sculptures. Just a plain old brick. That’s what he used. He used it to break open Emmanuel Bruno’s skull, break it open and spill from it that fine, that unique brain.

When they apprehended the little man—a neighbor walking his dog heard thudding sounds and a man’s shrieks and screamed obscenities—he was dazed. He “knew” he must have done it, must have killed Emmanuel Bruno, but he couldn’t quite “believe” it. Even though it was done and the jelly covered brick was still in his hand, the little man could not—not quite—believe he had really killed Emmanuel Bruno.

As far as I could determine when I checked it out—and I did the best job of it I could—the little man was indeed sorry he had committed murder. He was not, however, sorry that the person in question, the individual deceased person, was dead. For he knew that to all right-thinking men and women and boys and girls and angels singing celestial harmonies in the unearthly chorus of Heaven, and certainly to each and every good Lemming alive or half-alive, it was undeniable that Emmanuel Bruno was evil, or at least an agent—though perhaps not fully conscious of his agency—of the forces of darkness and corruption and sin.

The little man, however, was greatly grieved that, in preserving inviolate for all mankind the First of God’s Ten Commandments, to Israel—the murderer was not, it should at least be made clear, a Jew—he had himself been forced to break the Sixth. He seemed unaware that he had broken the Fourth as well; and that this could have been avoided if he had waited until after midnight, a mere six-minute delay, for he would not then have done his work on the sabbath.

It appeared—they told me; I could not make myself look at what was left—that the little man must have struck not merely one blow, or two, but many, as many as twenty or thirty or more. Every once in a while I think of that, of the small beast, its arm rising and lifting the weight up and then falling and hurling it down, again and again and again; I think of that and I hear again, very softly, that indescribably chilling sound from the hundreds of throats, feel the force that pushed outward from them and touched me, and what I hear and feel mingles with the soft squishy sound of the brick striking Bruno’s brain, striking it … striking it … and striking it again.

But when I left Bruno—for the last time, not knowing it was the last time—I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. Hell, nobody did. And I was busy for the rest of that night, and some of the next day. Busy with a busyness which, should it have been revealed as in a vision to all the Lemmings of the Lord, would surely have struck deeply into each of their three million hearts a keen pang like unto a most curdling and painful infraction, whereupon it is possible they all would have plucked out their eyes and then in an excess of piety, and for good measure, ripped up their zippers and shredded their bloomers. For, as I’ve mentioned, I went straight to Hal Prince’s cabin, where.…

But first, this is probably the best chance and maybe the last chance I’ll have to destroy that miserable myth I’ve mentioned, and I hope before I’m through to kill it utterly and finally, kill it deader than dead.

Let me make it clear that I don’t really blame the first guy, probably well-intentioned and meaning no harm, who said—back there in the beginning—that it was “a dozen.” But the bigmouth who first claimed it was “fifteen” is going to get it if I ever find him. As for those imbeciles who said “twenty” and “forty-two,” and that whack now living alone in a small soft room who claimed it was “a hundred”—well, those people are so completely out of touch with reality as to be unworthy of our attention.

I speak to the reasonable and rational among you: Who would know? Who would really know? The guy you’ve all been lying about, right? Of course. Me. I know. And I swear, and will swear again, on a short stack of Bibles if it will help: There were only ten!

Well.…

Maybe eleven if you count Regina. But I insist it isn’t fair to count Regina. So call it ten and a half, O.K.? And forget it.

I’d like to count Regina—for a lot of reasons. They say that if you save even one lost soul, prevent even one person from living a life of sin, there’s a little corner of Heaven set aside just for you. And—no matter what you may think—I’d like to go to Heaven. For a visit. Just to see what’s so great. Listen to the hymns and all. And I’d like to feel that, along with all the sinful things I’ve done, somewhere along the way I helped at least one lovely girl toward the light. But in this world, the real world we all know about, things are seldom clear-cut, or cut-and-dried. Black usually has a little white in it, and vice-versa. There’s always something else beyond the final answer.…

Hell, I’m just going to have to tell you about it, exactly the way it was, and let you make up your own minds. That’s what minds are for, right?

So here we go. No matter what you may have heard—and I know you’ve heard some dandies—here is what really happened last year, on the sixteenth of August.…

28

It was a few minutes after midnight—I had stopped at my apartment in the Spartan for a quick shower and change of clothes—when, still driving Hal Prince’s car, I reached his cabin. On the way I had hoped, or kind of dreamed, that the girls would not be fast asleep, or in bad moods, or gone somewhere else, at least not all of them. And my dream came true.

When I stopped in front of the house, every light inside the joint appeared to be burning, and I could hear that giggling and cooing and screeching egging me on.

I was feeling pretty good, even before that, and I had a hunch some of my gradually growing zip and euphoric zing might be a result of the tablespoon of Erovite—a reasonable dose, I assumed—that Doc Bruno had laid on me. So, since the bottle he had personally given me was still in the Cad’s glove compartment, I pulled into the garage and parked Prince’s sports buggy there, then leaned into the Cad and took out my pint of Erovite, uncapped it, and slipped myself another little gulp, for if a little good is good, twice as good is better. Or so I thought then, in the days of my innocence.

I smacked my lips, snorted through my nose, scraped my feet a couple of times on the ground, and headed for the front door.

It opened before I got there. A head came around its edge and a female voice—it would have caused me real concern had it not been a female voice—called, “Shell? Is that you, Shell?”

“You bet! Yeah! Here I am!”

“Oh, good. We heard noises and were afraid it was a robber.”

“That’s what it—I mean, it’s me. You’re all safe now!”

As I neared the entrance she opened the door wide, and light—and noise—sort of leaped out and around and past her, fizzing over her bare shoulders and narrow waist and flaring hips on its way to me. Not until then was I able to recognize her. It was red-headed Dina. She stepped aside and closed the door as I walked past her and down into the living room.

Standing on the thick lavender carpet at the bottom of the three steps, I looked up at scrumptious Dina. From this angle, her plump white breasts looked warm and yummy and yeastily rising, as if they’d just come out of the oven. “Some party, huh?” I said.

“It is?”

Her impossibly big brown eyes had sort of drifted from my face to a spot a couple inches below my ear, and she pulled them back on target, smiling ecstatically.

“I’ll bet you’ve been drinking,” I said.

“Sure. What’ll you bet?”

“Oh—” I didn’t finish it.

“Herro, Sherr!”

“Hey, did you bring us some glothes?”

“Man, I thought sure you’d be dead by now. Welcome home, Daddy.”

I turned, smiling ecstatically, to gaze upon flower-faced Yumiko, white-haired and creamy-white-all-over Britt, and sweet-chocolate super-shaped charcoal-eyed Lula. “Clothes?” I said wonderingly. “Gee. No. I suppose I might have only the stores are all shut tight. But … I passed a fig tree about a mile down—”

“Never mind.”

“Who needs ’em?”

“Bare is beautiful when you get used to it.”

“What’ll you bet?” Dina asked me again. “Hey, you want a drink?” She came down the steps, stood next to the three other girls.

“Sure,” I said. “By the way, where’s everybody else? I know there’s more. I mean, even over the music, if that’s what it is, I can hear the sound of their coo—”

“They are swimming in the poo.”

That was Yumiko. She, I deduced, had also been drinking.

All was explained in the next half-minute. Following my presumably unnoticed departure earlier, after looking around—and being delighted, one and all, with the luxuriousness and comfort of Hal Prince’s cabin—the ten gals had investigated refrigerator and freezer and cooked up a picnic dinner which they’d consumed out in back by the swimming pool. The eleven, rather, not ten, because Regina Winsome had pitched in with the rest, and in fact had cooked what were described to me as “scrumptious” hamburgers.

Later, somebody put tapes on the stereo, then mixed highballs, Martinis, and a previously unknown alcoholic invention or two, and the gals had proceeded to consume a bit of the sauce. Nobody was bombed, but all I gathered were feeling festive. All, that is, except Regina Winsome. She had not pitched in when it came to cooking with sauce.

“Where is Regina?” I asked. “I don’t suppose she’s skinny-dipping with the other cookies? Of course, with this bunch it could hardly be called skinny—”

“She’s taking a nap. She didn’t want anything to drink, so she decided to sleep an hour or two.”

“I’m worried about that girl. She sleeps too much. And she’s got such great potential. So, Regina sleeps, like … Sleeping Beauty? Ah, where is the prince who—”

Looking past the gals’ heads I could see the open sliding-glass door in the rear wall, beyond which, and out of sight to my left, was the heated pool. Heated by now, surely, whether its oven was turned on or not. The door was open, and at that moment another nude lovely, short and splendidly shapely, glistening all over, shining with wetness—black-haired, busty Ronnie—came bouncing inside.

She saw me, stopped, yelled, “Hi, there!” then she turned around, leaned out past the glass door, and shouted something. I couldn’t catch the words because of music thumping melodically from the stereo—something interesting but pretty far out, wild and sexy and mildly freaky, on the erotic scale maybe halfway between “Puberty Rites in Peru” and “Fire Drill in the Harem.” Whatever it was, I figured it was worth playing over and over.

Of course, at that moment I was watching Ronnie as, first, she came bouncing inside; second, turned completely in the opposite direction and leaned out the door; and third, turned a hundred and eighty degrees of tropical latitude and longitude again, then walked toward the gals and me.

Why is it, I wondered idly, that a man two feet from four stunning nude lovelies will look at a fifth naked tomato who appears twenty feet away? Perhaps … because it is there? Perhaps … there is no answer to the question?

“Mix Shell a highball, Ronnie,” Dina called. “He drinks—” she glanced at me.

“Bourbon and water. Thanks. Just a small—”

“A double bourbon and water,” she said, and Ronnie did it again. Bounced to a stop, turned a hundred and eighty centigrade degrees, and trotted away.

“You dear, you,” I said to Dina, and right then, through the open door, from the balmy outside to the perhaps balmier inside, pretty much in a bunch—a bouncing, jiggling, swaying, swinging and sizzling bunch—came the other five lovelies, lusciously and sexily and wetly gleaming, light trembling on quivering breasts, glowing on firm rounded hips, lustrous on luminous thighs.

In the lead, Leonore, dark hair clinging wetly around her quietly beautiful face, smiling with her lips and heavy-lashed eyes. Then Thérèse, red hair barely wet, winking and saying something which, though perhaps not in French, wasn’t quite in English, either. Next, blue-eyed Silvia, her wild-honey hair water-darkened now but that white smile flashing as brilliantly as before. And hot-red-lipped Margarita, also verbally rippety-popping something unintelligible, sounding like—and in a way looking like—a string of scarlet-pepper firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July. Finally, sultry brunette Emilie, taking her time, walking with a sexy sway that was like a slowed down wiggle, and for some reason, or maybe no reason, with one hand lifted to cup and cover one full, firm, globular breast.

As they crowded around me I began getting a feeling that queer things were happening inside me, as if my nerves were stretching to their maximum length, then a little bit more, and snapping. As if my corpuscles were turning into tiny cubes. As if my bones were getting hot and glowing and would soon give off a pale bony light. It was all very queer. There was about fifteen minutes’ worth of dialogue in fifteen seconds, and then in came Ronnie with my drink. Ronnie—the tenth of the Ten.

She bounced and bobbed to a stop and reached between Silvia’s and Emilie’s shoulders to hand me the booze, saying, “There, that ought to hit the old spot, Shell.”

I think that’s what did it.

In a hot flash I knew what was wrong, or else I went into a waking coma for a minute or two. And I spoke, mainly to myself but aloud, “Of course. It’s too much of too much. Man was never designed for such an excess of excess as we have here. If God wanted man to fly, would he not have given him wings? Of course. Therefore, man’s built-in obsolescence guarantees that at a moment like this he will burn out. Soon I will know what my weakest link is. There will be a pfft! and—”

“What are you muttering about?” Lula asked.

“Drink your drink, Shell,” Ronnie said. “And I’ll run and mix you another.”

“Well, maybe if I don’t watch—”

“You look like you could use a couple,” Emilie said, peering up at my face.

“A couple what?”

Silvia stepped forward a little and took my hand. “Drink it and catch up with us—we’re two or three ahead of you—”

“More than that.”

“—and then we’ll all go sit on those big pillows. And you can tell us what happened since you left.”

“You really knew I left?”

I drank the drink. Ronnie took my glass and sped away. Silvia pulled me by the hand. When Ronnie returned with another bourbon and water, I was feeling quite comfortable—and more relaxed in the head, too. I sat on a soft orange pillow about six-feet wide, with Silvia on one side of me, Dina on the other, Britt curled at my feet and leaning on my kneecap. The other gals were sort of—well, displayed is close enough, I guess, on a couple of other big pillows and the carpet.

That is where and how Regina Winsome found us at one A.M.

Precisely. I remember it well. Hal Prince had a chiming clock that struck the hours with a pretty little bing-bing! when it was fixed. But it hadn’t been fixed for a while—I learned later—and went more like bnng-clnk!

That’s how I know it was exactly one A.M. on Monday morning, August sixteenth. For what I heard was, “Well!” Bnng-clnk! “I thought so!”

I kind of disentangled myself a bit and looked around to see Regina, very lovely in that pink turtleneck sweater and form-fitting white skirt, glaring down at me.

“Hi,” I said. “Thought what so? By the way, how did you do that?”

“You’re drinking, aren’t you?”

“Of course. Listen, how did you—”

“I just knew you must have come back here, knew it was you, when I heard all that screaming and laughing. It woke me up.”

“Hell, I told the girls a funny joke. You’re supposed to laugh at funny jokes. Otherwise there’s not much point in it. I’ll bet you could use a laugh yourself, Regina. Well, once upon a time, long ago when knights wore girdles—”

“I won’t listen. I don’t want to hear any dirty jokes!”

“Who said it was dirty? I said it was funny.”

“If you tell it, it will be dirty.”

I was losing my euphoria. “Since you have not heard it yet,” I said gently, “did you achieve this awareness through logical deduction or while toe-dancing on the water?”

“Don’t blaspheme!”

“Who’s—”

“The girls told me what you did at the church! All the awful—and carrying the cross—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “and I may try to explain why there’s nothing wrong with using a cross to maybe help ten tomatoes on their upward path—when you’re a little less cross yourself. Incidentally, and this may or may not excite you, that’s the only sore spot I’ve got left. On my right side and hip where I was carrying the heavy thing. Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it?”

“You should be ashamed of what you’ve done.” Regina looked around, her still very lovely, even under the circumstances, purplish-blue-almost-lavender eyes wide and flashing. “And you girls, too! Sitting around naked, with a man. You should all be ashamed!”

My neck was getting a crick in it. I shifted my position so I could look with less strain at Regina. “Well, we aren’t, dear,” I said pleasantly. “Would it make you happier if we were? Come on, Regina, these splendiferous ladies and I are just shooting the breeze, having fun, enjoying ourselves. Clothes on, clothes off, there’s nothing for any of us to be ashamed of.”

“That’s only your opinion.”

I smiled. “Whose should I use?”

She started to turn away. “Hey,” I said. “Let’s be friends. Stick around—join us.” I glanced at the other lovelies. “Right, gals?”

There was a jolly chorus of “Yes,” and “Come on, Regina,” and “Chass, do!” and “Sit right here, honey,” and similar comments from the entire ten.

Regina got—I don’t know—a sort of pleased and at the same time anxious expression on her lovely face. “I …” she began, then looked smack down at me again. “You,” she said, employing her previous tone, “would probably expect me to take my clothes off.”

“Well.… Perhaps ‘expect’ is too strong a word. I might hope or hint or even pray—”

“Oh! You’re awful! You’re horrible!” She stopped, started over. “Mr. Scott, you’re already sitting in a room with ten naked women—but you still want another one. Isn’t ten enough? Do you have to have one more, always one more?”

I shook my head sadly. “Regina, it’s a terrible and tragic thing, I know. But that’s … a man for you. Ah, ’tis a rotten curse—”

“Well, it won’t work with me, Mr. Scott!”

“Call me Shell, will you? By the way, I am somehow reminded of a kid I knew in school, Regina. He saved his birthday cake for a special occasion—I guess that’s enough right there. Anyhow, when the Fourth of July came around, it was all dry and moldy.… Forget I mentioned it.”

I don’t think she was listening with much interest, anyway. She balled her hands into fists and stamped one foot on the carpet, quite worked up. “Besides, you’re just like the goose and the ganders. All the girls have their clothes off, and you even want me to take mine off, but you’ve still got yours on.”

“Well, that’s different.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Maybe you don’t think so now, dear. But you might if I took ’em off.”

“’Ow about that? Zhe is right—” this from Thérèse—“’E ’as ’is cloze on.”

“Why should we have our glothes all off, but him—”

“Chass! Shell desnudo tambien, o ninguna—totalmente o nada—” That’s what it sounded like.

“Regina’s right, what’s sauce for the gooses—”

I said, “Speaking of sauce, let’s all have a little drink, what? I’ll go fix them.”

Nobody paid any attention to me. They were obviously talking about me, but nobody paid any attention to me. It could make a guy start wondering about his ability to communicate. It could also, if meditated upon, maybe tell him a little bit about women. Not much, of course. But every little bit helps.

It was Silvia who brought the discussion to a stop—or a start. To the moment of truth. Or, at least, to a point of decision. She said quietly, and it just happened nobody else was speaking, so her words rang out as clear as bells, “I know how to settle this. And in a way that’s fair. Shell and Regina are the only ones dressed. Regina says she’s leaving and won’t strip. So Shell can keep his clothes on and leave with Regina, or take them off and stay with us?”

“Chass!”

“Dressed with the dressed and nude with the naked!”

“Nude—nuder—nudist!”

“That’s fair!”

I said, “For Pete’s sake, this is ridic—” but I guess you know how closely they were hanging upon my words.

Silvia said, “I suggest we vote on it.”

“Hey,” I said. “I know you must want my opin—”

“Right, let’s vote.”

It didn’t take long. I cannot report that the decision was immediately unanimous. The first vote was seven to three—not too bad—then nine to one, and then ten to nothing. I got the impression they were the ten, and I was the nothing. With the vote concluded, Silvia looked at me, her Capri-blue eyes sparkling as if sunlight were bouncing from them, flashing me a bright white smile, and said, “There. It’s settled.”

“What do you mean, it’s settled? I didn’t vote.”

“You vote now, Shell. And go, one way or the other. With Regina … or with us.”

“But.… Suffering catfish—”

“I didn’t vote, either! I won’t let him anywhere near me! He can’t go with me—and you can ALL go to hell!”

And with that Regina stamped her foot once again, turned, and stormed from the living room.

Somewhere a door slammed.

So I suppose you could almost say, even there at the end, that I didn’t really make the decision. That Regina made it for me. I suppose you could, in a way.

However, I was, I realized, once again alone with the Ten, as I had been before—and yet not as before. The first time I’d been in church. This time I was, instead, in an absolutely impossible situation. Yes, impossible. But.…

Impossible? Yes. Of course, impossible. But, by God—or by Devil, the final verdict isn’t really in yet—I was going to take a shot at it.

Yes, I was. And I did. And I guess you could say, to borrow a phrase, that it was “the shot heard ’round the world.”

We will not dwell on the remainder of those early morning hours, on those hours before, at, through, and following the dawn.

And we will merely mention in passing that, as the sun rose-slowly in the east, Shell Scott rose even more slowly in the west—and made trip number four to his Cadillac for another nip of Erovite, just in case there was really something miraculous in it.

We will not make dumb references, either, to the several labors of Hercules or the terrible time Sisyphus had, but will leave all that to your imagination, which may also be severely strained by the exercise.

Finally, because it isn’t considered cricket to kiss—or anything—and tell, we will totally ignore the fact, well known to all of suffering mankind, that it is difficult for one woman to keep even a little secret. In fact, that is all I will say about it, for, though I at last know why mankind is suffering, chivalry is not yet dead … quite.

I do, however, want to make one thing perfectly clear, and if necessary I will say it again and again: Folks, there were only ten.

Well.…

Eleven if you count Regina, yes—but, at the risk of repeating myself, well … call it ten and a half? You see—hell, it was like this:

The cookie crumbled—which somehow sounds more poetic than “Regina Winsome cracked”—at eleven-forty-five A.M. Monday morning.

I came back from the bathroom, where I had been pouring water on my head, to find the living room empty—except for Regina Winsome. She stood in approximately the middle of the room, kind of tugging at the bottom of her pink sweater, much as she had so fetchingly tugged an eon or two back in time.

“Huh,” I said. I walked to a lime-green pillow and flopped on it. “Well, see you around, kid,” I said.

Regina didn’t look the same. Of course, at that point I don’t suppose much else did, either. But she was flushed, appeared feverish, her great purplish eyes almost glowing. She was also, however, smiling as if she’d just learned how it was done and liked it so much she couldn’t stop.

“Shell …” she said, her voice like the higher registers of an oboe.

“Yeah?”

She didn’t say anything else for a while, just smiled.

I guess it was all the result of a kind of brainwashing by life, an attack upon the noodle by too many confusing stimuli, weariness approaching exhaustion, trauma from trying to choose between Heaven and Hell, the strain of estrangement from her peers and the stress of holding out, maybe even the feeling of being left out. Which was O.K. by me.

Regina commenced by kicking her shoes off. Then removing that pink sweater. And, slowly, all the rest. She was really astonishingly lovely. I mean, she really was. That is, under circumstances even remotely approaching normal, she would have been a sensual, sexy, and immensely desirable woman.

Naked as a fried egg, she stood a few feet away, facing me, smiling and smiling and smiling.

“There,” she said dramatically. “I did it! You kept after me and after me and after me—”

“I did?”

“—and I did it! Well, you win, Shell. You win!”

“I do, huh?”

“Yes. You win! Shell, I feel so … free. I feel just wonderful!”

“Yeah. You look great. You look like you should come in a plain sealed wrapper. But … Regina, there are, in the real world, which is sure where we’re at now, sometimes serious and sometimes rather laughable little problems—”

“Shell, I’m really glad. I didn’t think I would be, but I am. I can hardly wait!”

“For what?”

“Why, I’ve done it. I’ve taken my clothes off. Here I am! This is what you wanted …” The bright smile faded, just a little. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sure. You better believe it. I better believe it.”

“Shell—darling—take me!”

“Take you, huh? You mean … yeah, I suppose you do.”

She did.

So it came to pass that, at the very end, Regina Winsome awakened from her sleep, saw the light—and was saved.

Well.…

About the Author

Richard S. Prather (1921–2007) was the author of the world-famous Shell Scott detective series, which has over forty million copies in print in the United States and many millions more in foreign-language editions abroad. There are forty-one volumes in the series, including four collections of short stories and novelettes. In 1986, Prather was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. He and his wife, Tina, lived in Sedona, Arizona.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1971 by Richard S. Prather

Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5218-7

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

THE SHELL SCOTT MYSTERIES

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

Available wherever ebooks are sold

Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign up now at

www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

FIND OUT MORE AT

WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

FOLLOW US:

@openroadmedia and

Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

About the Author

Copyright Page