The Ultimate Egoist (36 page)

A little dazed, Tobin was three blocks away before he realized he could have forced that policeman to believe him. He was halfway back to the crowded corner before he realized that then the policeman would have to take him in for questioning. An arrest was a penalty; something would happen to stop it! He was—invulnerable.

Tobin leaned wearily against a lamppost and tried to think. Every murderer made fatal mistakes; evidently he was no exception. He knew it now. No matter what he did, who he killed or how, something would happen to save him from blame. There must be a way out!

He’d try again. He had to keep trying until he managed to commit an indisputable murder.

At the next corner another policeman was directing traffic. Tobin walked over to him and took the man’s gun. The officer never missed it because of a rending crash at the far corner. A sedan and a coupé—The man ran away and left Tobin with the gun. He wouldn’t miss it until Tobin was well out of sight; that was certain. Tobin followed him and helped himself to bullets. No one noticed—

He picked a busy corner and a likely-looking victim, a young man with a briefcase. Tobin fired four times at twenty feet. The man screamed and fell, clawing at his chest. People ran toward him, gabbling. Some idiot collided violently with Tobin, sent the gun flying yards away. Another man picked it up— Why go into details? The police came and took the man away. No one had seen Tobin fire. The murdered man had screamed, and people had seen him fall. Tobin was left in the crowd while the Black Maria and the ambulance wailed away with their unoffending cargoes.

It was a new and different Tobin who found his way into a small park and sat heavily on a bench. The cocky air was gone, and the breezy smile, and the lift from the shoulders. MacIlhainy Tobin could not know fear today, but his was bewilderment.

For the first time he noticed the shabby figure beside him. They recognized each other at the same time. The boy sprang to his feet.

“You! Who—what are you, anyway? You’re the guy made me lie down under that truck this mornin’. I oughta—” He clutched the bench and weaved a little on his feet. Pickings apparently had not been so good. “Joke, I guess— Hell of a price you tried to make me pay to save yourself a couple nickels—” He walked off, trying to keep his head up.

Tobin watched him go. It never occurred to him that a dollar now would save a life. “Hell of a price—” The words said themselves over and over in his tired brain. The price of lying down under that truck was—death.

Tobin sat there and laughed. He roared. Murder wasn’t the only thing carrying a death penalty. There was—suicide!

Where, then? When? Some place where no one would bother
him, and some means that couldn’t fail. Poison? He’d throw it off. Ropes broke; guns missed fire. Gas wasn’t certain. Knives broke or missed vital spots.

He finally faced it like the man he was. He couldn’t kill himself because he couldn’t be killed. He’d keep fighting until he won, or lost—he had never lost before— Ah, well. He hailed a cab and went home.

MacIlhainy Tobin dined in his usual lonely splendor. He was a little more himself, now. He felt a little rueful, but once he knew what he had to face, he could stand it. He’d die tonight, then. The richest, most powerful man in the history of the world, and he was going to die. It was grimly humorous. Why hadn’t he taken a chance on boredom? He could have had his power indefinitely. He had stipulated that his power would last until he slept. As soon as he slept he would pay the penalty for paying no penalties—death. There
must
be a way! One more try—

“Landis!”

“Sir?”

“I want the whole household in the library in fifteen minutes—maids, gardeners, chauffeur, everyone. You, too.”

“Very good, sir.”

They were all there—twenty-six, including Landis. Tobin got them settled and then locked the door and put the key in his pocket.

“I’ve called you here as witnesses,” he began. “I want your complete attention. All of you are to watch everything I do, hear every word I say, and remember your stories when the police come and question you. You are not to be surprised. There is to be no screaming, fainting, or interference. Riggs, Cramp, come here. And Landis.”

The gardener and the chauffeur towered over the butler as they stood together. Tobin folded his arms and leaned back against the desk.

“Landis, you are not to resist or be frightened. Riggs, Cramp, hold him firmly.” This ought to do the trick, thought Tobin. Pity he hadn’t thought of it in the first place.

He went to the wall and lifted down a heavy scimitar. It was Damascus
steel, and Tobin knew that it would pass the time-honored test of slicing a feather floating in midair.

“Hold your head to one side, Landis. That’s it. Can everyone see? Very good.”

He swung the blade high over his head and brought it down with all his strength. It seemed to melt into Landis’ neck; Tobin thought it would never stop. He saw terror on the faces about him, but no one made a move. He had no idea there was so much blood in that scrawny body.

“Let him go.” The dead man fell with a squashy
thump
.

“Now,” said Tobin, “you are all to wait here quietly for one hour. Then call the police and tell them what has happened.”

“Yes, Mr. Tobin,” they chorused.

“Good night, everyone.”

A few minutes later he lay comfortably in bed and went over it all in his mind. The subtlety of it pleased him. Those murders this afternoon—they had failed because he had relied on coincidence to damn him. Coincidence had worked the other way. But, by merely setting his stage, he had nullified coincidence. He could not be blamed for the other murders, therefore he had done nothing to deserve a death penalty. He
must
be blamed for this one.

It had happened in his day of power, so he would not be penalized. A signed statement lay on the bureau, a carbon copy with an original signature was now in the mail. The fact that the penalty would, in the natural course of events, be brought to bear weeks or months from the time of the murder, did not matter. The fact remained that he had
done something to deserve a death penalty
. That was enough, and he was content with himself and the world.

He lay for a long while watching the butt of his cigarette burn to a white ash in the bedside tray. When it had gone out he yawned, stretched lazily and turned out the light. The last thing that he remembered was the faint tinkle of the doorbell. That would be the police. He smiled and went to sleep.

“He did it then. Got away with it. I must say I’m sorry,” I said to the man
.

“Wait. I haven’t finished.”

“But—”

“He hadn’t finished with his day of power—quite. Listen.”

MacIlhainy Tobin awoke gently. He smiled. That would be the police. He heard the faint tinkling of the doorbell. He reached up and turned on the light, stretched lazily and yawned. His eyes fell on the bedside tray. A wisp of smoke began curling from the dead ash there; a tiny sliver of paper appeared and grew into a cigarette butt. He was quite content with himself and the world— The smoke was curling
downward
toward the butt, not from it, something deep inside his mind told him. Thoughts of the penalty, of the statements, of the afternoon’s murders slipped through his mind. After a while he gripped the edge of the sheet, pressed it from him. He arose, pushed his pajamas off. His trunks sailed from a nearby chair into his hand; he bent and laid them on the floor, stepped into them. They flowed up his legs after he was standing straight up; he caught the waist, pulled it together. A button flung itself from the floor, placed itself over the buttonhole, the threads held it intact again. He finished dressing like a man in a movie film run backward—it
was
running backward.

Backward, he went to the door, down the stairs, into the library. Backward he did the murder, saw Landis’ corpse lift limply into the grip of the two servants, pulled the scimitar out of the wound while blood flowed into it, lifted it high over his head, hung it on the wall—and all the while he was talking gibberish, a horrible language, spoken with inhalations. He went back to the table and ate, and eating was revolting. He went backward out of the house, the cab driver handed him money, backed swiftly up to the park. He saw the boy again, the murders—everything. Until finally he got back home, disgorged his breakfast neatly, went upstairs, pressed his clothes off, wet himself with a towel, got into the tub and climbed out dry; went to bed. Landis moved about softly, backward, closing the curtains—Tobin drifted off to sleep, and as soon as it enveloped him—

“Six o’clock, sir.”

“Ah—Landis. Good. Has Synthetic Rubber moved?”

And so he began again his day of power. Again he ordered a shabby youth to kill himself, and swept into his office to start the day, and arranged for the transfers, and ordered Krill to die, and went through all those senseless murders, and went home, and killed Landis, and went to bed. And again, just after he closed his eyes, he heard the doorbell. That would be the police. Again he smiled, and watched the cigarette grow in the ashtray, and again he killed Landis, and again, and again, and again, he lived through his day, backward and forward, backward and forward. His body did as it had done the first time, and so did his mind, but there was something deep inside him, something that neither he nor I could touch nor destroy, that wept and wailed and had no will, that suffered and cried, and knew utmost horror, and had not strength enough even to go mad— It was the only way. He could not die, for he deserved death and denied himself death.

Tobin has another wish coming when he wakes in the morning.

“That story is true,” said the man
.

“I—believe it. Er—when did it happen?” I said
.

“When? When? You speak of time, and MacIlhainy Tobin?”

“Oh—why did you tell me this story?”

“Because after MacIlhainy Tobin had two wishes, he—stopped. If I grant a man wishes, I must grant him three. So you see, my work here is finished. I want you to tell people. I can do no more here.” And he left me
.

Perhaps he was never here at all. But this is the story I wrote last night
.

I
T WAS
D
URHAM
’
S
fault, though when it happened he was as scared as the rest of us. The whole crew clustered on the poop deck, staring off into that ghostly fog, listening to our hearts beat boomingly, great waves of sound that rolled and tumbled about on the unseen waste of water. It was that way, and we were horror-struck even before the screaming started.

We had dropped the hook off the Dodecanese Islands, to wait the lifting of the fog. That in itself was unusual, but then everything about this trip was unusual. We trusted our skipper, a rocky old squarehead who could sail two sticks and a rag around the world, or navigate a rowboat from here to the moon. We’d have followed him, too; and if he’d wanted to send the
Willowtree
butting full ahead, why, there would never have been a murmur from us. But this fog was—different … anyway, we’d dropped the anchor, and were standing by.

There wasn’t much to do. There was a lookout forward, and one on the wing of the bridge, and there was a fireman down below keeping steam up. The rest of us were on deck. It was too quiet to sleep, and too hot. Even with the heavy crude oil we were carrying from Constanta, the
Willowtree
vibrated like a Model T when she was running, and now the stillness was disturbing. We lolled about, and talked quietly—a typical sailor’s bull session. With a difference. We were all disembodied voices. I didn’t know who the man next to me at the rail was, save that he was a living bulk whose breath stirred the fog about his head, making the dim light from the anchor lamp flicker.

And Durham’s voice came from somewhere, quietly, talking about Haiti. Some wild adventure of his—the details don’t matter. The gist of it was that once he had jumped ship there and headed for the hills.
He’d bedded up in the lianas, and had been awakened by drums. “Thought they was in me head, first,” he said. “Quiet like, more as if I was feelin’ ’em ‘stead o’ hearin’. I got up and followed the sound. Dark? It was black as—” (Durham’s simile was vivid) “—an’ after a bit I saw firelight, just like it was comin’ up out of th’ ground. An’ the moanin’ an’ groanin’—gawsh! Give me th’ creeps. I flopped, and crawled over to see. There was a pit dug in th’ ground, deep, an’ maybe a hundred feet around. Fire was down there, an’ some kind of altar.” Durham’s voice shook, and we began to
feel
the scene, just as if the fog were a medium for carrying his emotion, carrying it the way a clear cold night carries the sound of bells. There was nothing lost in the telling.

His voice went on and on, and through it came the almost soundless beat of drums—or hearts? The voodoo sacrament, ever weird and compelling to white men in spite of skepticism, took on real meaning now … we felt the power of it, and the nameless evil … perhaps it was the fog. I don’t know.

Couldn’t he talk of something else? A great impatience surged through us, and someone said shakily, “S-shut up, will ya, Bull?” And he did, and the thread of his story ceased, with the pictures it had conjured up, of the moaning and the firelight and the drums …

The drums? But what was that, in the deathly silence that followed? It was just my heart, that steady pluh-boom! pluh-boom! The beat continued, unhurried, barely audible, its rhythm speaking in a language we dared not understand, in terms inevitable. And now it was louder. No, not louder. There was just—more of it. It
was
my heartbeat, for my heart was beating with it—and yet it was more, for against my suddenly cold flesh I could feel my rough clothes vibrating too. The beat of it was looming over the dark ship, shaking the air so that we could feel it on our cheeks, and
something
was coming to us through the fog.

And then we heard the moan. Almost as inaudible as the first drumming, it was far more terrifying. It was inhuman, and yet … it was something in pain, and yet crooning joyfully. It had panic in it, but shook with terrible control. It rose slowly and died away, and caught at its dwindling echoes and gathered them and builded them
into something greater and yet more horrible. None of us made a sound.