He turned to the door, lifted the inside, mechanical latch, shoved
with his foot and snatched his revolver from his hip-holster. The
vault door opened ponderously revealing an empty warehouse. Neff
peeked through the crack between the hinges to clear the area
concealed by the door itself.
One hoodlum hopeful had hidden there. Spotting him through the crack,
Neff had simply beefed into the foot-thick slab of fireproof steel.
Inertial plus surprise had disposed of that one. Neff hadn't even had
to shoot.
* * * * *
Tonight there was no one. Funny. The wheat country was getting tame,
or else the tin-horns had learned their lesson. It was no secret that
Erd Neff never visited the local bank, yet it had been more than six
months since anyone tried to hold him up.
The local bank hated him plenty. He was costing them. His five loan
offices in the rich wheat county skimmed the cream of the mortgage
loan business. Of course, nowadays most people paid off their loans,
and the low interest rates he charged to lure the business barely paid
expenses. Yet, he still picked up an occasional foreclosure. Farmers
still got drunk, divorced, gambled, broke legs or committed suicide
once in awhile, and Neff's loan documents were ruthless about
extensions of time.
These foreclosed acreages he traded for grain elevators and warehouses
when crops were small and operators were desperate. Then came the
bumper years during and after World War II. Wheat on the ground and no
place to store it but in Erd Neff's sheds. It wasn't cheap to store
with Neff, and he had a virtual monopoly in Ulma County.
Neff swung the great door back into place with its _whoosh--thunk_
that sealed in air, sound and nearly a hundred thousand dollars in
currency. He levered the bolts into place and spun the expensive
combination lock.
The vault, tucked away in the front, left-hand corner of the old frame
warehouse expressed Neff's distrust and contempt for mankind. Concrete
and steel. Bed, shower, toilet and desk. In this walk-in cash box he
was fireproof, bomb-proof, theft-proof and, most important of all,
people-proof. There he consorted unmolested with the one mammal on
earth he found interesting--John, the brown rat.
He slid the broad warehouse door closed behind him with a cacophony of
dry screeches and padlocked it. The dusty street was deserted except
for a black sedan which two-wheeled the corner a block away and sped
toward him. Neff dropped his pistol back in its holster. "Now, what
the hell--?"
He waited on the splintery platform, a huge man, ugly of face,
shortlegged and long-bodied with a belly swollen from regular
overeating. His shaved head swivelled slowly as the police car leaned
into a skid-stop.
Officer Collin Burns got out and stared up at the motionless statue in
sweat-dust stained denims. Burns was half Neff's 56 years, tall and
thin. He wore gray, a silver star and a big black hat. He said, "I'll
take your gun, Erd."
"Now what? I got a permit."
"Not any more. It's revoked."
"For why?"
"There were witnesses this afternoon."
"Witnesses? What in hell are you--oh, no! Not that damned dog?"
"The puppy belonged to a little girl. You can't claim self-defense
this time."
"He was coming down here chasing the cats away every day."
"So you shot him, like you did Greeley's collie."
"Cats count for more. You know well as I do, you can't control the
rats around a warehouse without cats."
"You've shot five men, too, Erd. Three of them are dead."
"I was cleared, you know damned well! Self-defense."
"You're too handy with that pistol. Anyway, I didn't file this
complaint. It was the child's mother, and she made it stick with the
chief. Give me the gun, Erd."
"You got a warrant for my arrest?"
"No, but I will have in an hour if you insist."
"I got a perfect right to protect my property."
"Not with a gun. Not any more."
"I just get these punks convinced, and now you want to turn loose on
me again. Who put you up to this Collin?"
"You did. When you shot that pup. I'm not here to debate it. You're
breaking the law from this minute on if you don't hand over the gun."
"Dammit, Collin, you know how much money I got in there? You know how
much I pack around on me sometimes?"
"That's your business. You can use the bank and bonded
messengers--they get along with dogs."
"Telling me how to run my business?"
"I'm telling you to give me that gun. You'll get the same police
protection as any other citizen."
Neff sneered openly. "I'd a been dead thirty years ago depending on
cops."
"I don't doubt that a minute. You're easy to hate, Erd. Are you going
to give me that gun?"
"No."
"You like things the hard way, don't you?" Burns got back in the squad
car and drove off. Neff spat a crater in the wheat-littered dust and
got into his own car.
* * * * *
Two minutes later he turned up Main Street and stopped before city
hall. Inside the tiny police station he dropped his pistol on the
counter. Bud Ackenbush looked up from his desk. "You could have saved
Collin some trouble."
Neff stalked out without a word and crossed the street to the Palace
Cafe. He ordered a double-thick steak, fried potatoes and pie. He
liked the way the waitresses scrambled for the chance to wait on him.
Women didn't like him. He was ugly and smelled of sweat, and on the
street women looked the other way when they met him. All but the
waitresses at the Palace. When he came in they showed their teeth and
tongues and wiggled their hips. He was a 50-cent tipper.
The important thing was it got him his steak, really double thick and
double quick. People could be real efficient. Like brown John. Prod
'em where they live and they'll do anything. Even talk to you.
"You look kinda naked tonight, Erd," Gloria kidded.
Neff wiped steak juice from his chin and stared at her breasts. It
used to excite him, but now it was just habit. It was better than
looking at red-smeared lips that smiled and eyes that didn't, eyes
that said, "Don't forget the tip, you filthy bastard!"
Funny. Hang a gun on any other citizen in town and people would stare.
Take the gun off of Erd Neff and people make cracks.
He did feel naked.
"I didn't order this damned succotash!"
"It's free with the steak dinner, Erd."
Go ahead, pinch my leg like the harvesting crews do. I'm free with the
dinner, too. Like the ketchup. Like the mustard and the salt and
pepper and the steak sauce and the sugar and the extra butter if you
ask for it, just don't forget the tip.
Clarence Hogan, the fry-cook, came around the counter and leaned on
the booth table beside Gloria. "You don't like succotash? How about
some nice peas, Erd?"
Clarence was Gloria's husband.
Pimp!
"Put some ice-cream on my pie," Neff said. He looked up at Clarence.
"No, I don't want any goddamned peas!"
They brought his pie and left him alone. He finished it and felt in
his pocket for the tip. He changed his mind. To hell with Gloria and
her fat leg! The steak was tough.
He paid the check and went out. The sky was pink yet. Later in the
week the sunsets would be blood-red, as the great combines increased
in number and cruised the rippling ocean of wheat, leaving bristly
wakes and a sky-clogging spray of dust.
Neff's busiest season. Damn that dog! Damn Collin Burns!
His hand brushed his leg where the leather holster should be. Damned
laws that men made. Laws that acquitted him of homicide and then
snatched away his only weapon of self-defense because he shot a
yapping dog.
As he got in his car Collin Burns came out of the station. He tossed
Neff's gun through the open window onto the seat. "Here's your
property. The Marshal came in, and he changed everybody's mind. It's
going to cost you a hundred dollars and a new pup for the little girl,
probably. Here's the subpoena. Tuesday at ten."
"I don't get it."
"The Marshal said to let you fight your own battles."
* * * * *
Neff started the car and let the clutch out. The Marshal knew his way
around. The transient harvesting crews were a wild bunch. If word got
out that Neff was unarmed, packing thousands of dollars the length of
the county, the enforcement people would have a lot of extra work on
their hands.
He parked behind the warehouse, next to the railroad tracks.
He came around front, unlocked the big door, pulled it shut behind him
and bolted it. The warehouse was jet black now, but he knew every inch
of the place. He could fire his pistol almost as accurately at a sound
as at a visible target.
He practiced on rats.
Holding a pocket flash, he worked the combination. As the final
tumbler fell silently, a faint, raspy screech came to his ears, like a
board tearing its rusty nails loose under the persuasion of a wrecking
bar. He listened a minute, then he levered the bolts back, stepped
into the vault-room, closed the door and shot the mechanical bolts.
Sure. Someone was out there, but they'd get damned tired before
morning. He flicked on the light and touched the other wall switch
beside it. The powerful blower and sucker fans cleared out the musty
air and rat-stink.
John rustled in the cage, blinking at the sudden light. "Hi, Neff!
Meat! Meat! Meat!"
Smart little devil! Neff sometimes brought him a scrap from his
dinner, but he hadn't thought to tonight. He sucked at his teeth and
pulled out a tiny string of steak. "Here. Bite my finger and I'll poke
both your eyes out."
John picked the thread of gristle from Neff's finger with his
fore-paws and devoured it, trembling with pleasure. Neff lifted the
cage. "Okay, now let's have a few tricks."
At once John made for the can of wheat. "Get outta there!" Neff
scooped him up and dropped him on the desk, snapping his tail with a
forefinger. John whirled, laid his ears back and opened his mouth. At
bay, the brown rat, Neff knew, is the most ferocious rodent of the
2000 species, but Neff held his hand out daring John to bite.
Neff knew all about rats. More than anybody in the world knew about
rats. When you live among them for three decades you find out about
their cunning wariness, fecundity, secretiveness, boldness, omnivorous
and voracious appetites. Fools reviled them as predators and
scavengers. Neff appreciated them for what they really are: The most
adaptable mammal on earth.
John was smart but no smarter than the rest. Neff had proved this by
teaching every rat he captured alive to talk.
Impossible they had told him. Even parrots and parakeets only imitate
sounds in their squawking--yes, and pet crows. Animals don't have
thinking brains, they said. They react, trial and error, stimulus and
response, but they don't _think_.
Neff didn't know about the others, but he knew about rats.
Keep them hungry and lonely for a mate. Hurt them. Torture them. To
hell with this reward business. Rats are like men. Mentally lazy.
They'll go for bait, sure, but they'll go faster to escape pain--a
thousand times faster.
And rats have lived with man from the first. They have a feeling for
language like the human brat. Between partitions, inches from a man's
head when he lies in bed talking to his wife, under a man's feet while
he's eating, over his head in the warehouse rafters while he's
working. Always, just inches or feet away from man, running through
sewers, hiding in woodpiles, freight-cars, ships, barns,
slaughter-house, skulking down black alleys, listening, hiding,
stealing, always listening.
Yes, rats know about man, but rats had never known a man like Erd
Neff, a man who hated all mankind. A man who chose a rat for a
companion in preference to one of his own kind. Rats named John
learned about Neff. They learned that his tones and inflections had
specific meaning. They learned very fast under the stabbing prod of
the marshmallow fork. With just enough food to keep them alive, their
blind ferocity changed into painful attention. They learned to squeak
and squawk and form the sounds into a pattern with their motile
tongues. In weeks and months, they learned what the human brat learned
in years.
"Stand up like a goddamned man!"
* * * * *
John stood up, his tail the third point of the support.
"Say the alphabet."
"Eh--bih--fih--dih--ih--eff--jih--etch--"
Neff lit a cigar and watched the smoke float away from the ceiling
blower and vanish into the overhead vent in the far corner. He bobbed
one foot in time to the squeaky rhythm of the recitation. He took no
exception to John's failure with "I," "s", and "z". The other Johns
had been unable to handle them, too.
"Hungrih, Neff. Hungrih!"
The big man picked out three grains of wheat. He noticed the can was
almost empty. One by one he handed the kernels to his pet, waiting for
John's "Tinkoo!" in between.
"Mur! Mur!"
"Lazy tongue! It's _more_, not mur!"
John dropped to all fours and retreated. Usually Neff slapped him in
the belly when he used that tone. But Neff was bemused tonight. He
kept listening for sounds, sounds that he knew could never penetrate
the thick walls.
They were out there, he was sure. Another damned fool or two, flashing
a light around, trying to figure out something. Neff remembered one
pair who had even tried nitroglycerin. He saw the burns on the outside
of the door the next morning.
Amateurs! Nobody knew for sure just how much money Neff kept in the
old desk, and big-time pros wouldn't tackle a job like this without a
pretty fair notion of the loot. For all they knew, maybe he mailed it
to an out-of-town bank.
"Okay, fetch the pencil."
John jumped from the desk and moved toward the open door of the
shower-stall where Neff had thrown the pencil stub. He paused by the
wheat can, then scurried on to get the pencil. He climbed Neff's leg
and dropped the pencil into the open palm.
"Smart punks up at State College. So you can't teach a rat anything
but mazes and how to go nuts from electric shocks, eh? Wouldn't they
be surprised to meet you, John?"
"Hungrih!"
"You're always hungry!"
"Meat! Meat!"
"Yeah. You can sound your "e's" real good when you say, 'meat.' Some
day I'll cut off your tail and feed it to you." He laughed, grabbed
John by the coarse hair of his back and slipped him back under the
cage.
Then he undressed down to his underwear, turned out the light and lay
on the narrow iron bed. John rustled in his cage for a minute, then
there was only the faint hum of the blower and sucker motors in the
ventilating system. The incoming and outgoing air was baffled and
trapped to kill sounds, and spring-loaded sliding doors poised to jam
shut and seal off the room if anyone tampered with the exterior
grilles in the roof.
The fans hummed softly and Erd Neff slept.
_Sleck-thud, sleck-thud!_
* * * * *
He was awake pawing the wall for the light switch, but even as his
hand found it, and his eyes discovered the closed ventilator doors, a
reddish vapor sank over his body. A single gasp and Neff was clawing
his throat. Sharp, brown-tasting, acid-burning, eye-searing,
nose-stinging!
He fell to his knees and clawed to the far corner, fighting for air,
but the acrid stink stained his throat and nose. His eyes kept
burning. The whole room must be full!
The door-lever! No, that's what they wanted. Blind! Gun's no good now.
God, for a breath of air! Damned tears! Can't open my eyes! Air! _Got
to have it!_
His throat refused to open. The stink, a little like iodine, a lot
like a hospital smell but a million times stronger--raked at the
tender tissues of his throat. Icepicks stabbed from his soft palate,
up into his brain, his temples. He swayed against the door, caught the
lever and heaved convulsively. The door fell away slowly. He stumbled
forward, gashing his knee against the sharp jamb.
A light struck redly through his clenched, tear-soaked eye-lids.
"That did it. Get the gun!" The voice was high, almost girlish. A
young boy?
A slightly heavier voice said, "Got it. Keep an eye on him while I
find out why the fan stopped working."
"He's going no place. You were right. That bromine stuff really did
the business. Lookit his face. Sure it won't kill him?"
"Don't care if it does now. We got the door open."
"What is this bromine, anyhow? Boy it sure stinks!"
"It's a chemical element like chlorine, only it's a liquid. It fumes
if you don't keep it covered with water, and the fumes really get you.
They used it in gas bombs in the war."
"That was chlorine."
"They used bromine, too. I read it."
"Air!" Neff rasped.
"Help yourself if you call this stinkin' stuff in your warehouse air."
From the vault the deadened voice came. "This must be the switch. The
other switch is for the lights."
"Look out! When you turn it on don't get dosed yourself."
"I only dumped a few drops in. There. It'll blow out in a few--phew,
let me outta here. That stuff does--God, it's worse than the dose I
got in the chem lab!" The voice grew, coughing and cursing. "Better
wait a minute or two. How's our big brave dog-killer doing?"
On his hands and knees, Neff was on the verge of passing out, but
doggedly he tried to place the voices. Highschool kids? _Bromine._
Sounded like a chemical they might filch from the highschool
laboratory.
A kick in the ribs reminded him he was still helpless. "All right, get
back in there." They aimed him through the vault door and kept kicking
him until he went. They hauled him up into his chair. He tried to
strike out blindly, but his chest was full of licking flames that
spread pain out to his shoulders.
Now rope whipped around his feet, hands, chest and neck, jerking his
body hard against the castered desk-chair and cramping his head back.
"Tie him good. No way to lock him in with this door."
Neff opened his eyes. The boys were wet blurs rummaging through his
desk. "Look! Just look at that! We can't carry all that."
"Get one of those burlap sacks out there. By the door."
Footsteps went and returned. "Now, just the small bills. Up to twenty.
No, Jerry, leave the big stuff alone. Who'd take one from a kid?"
"Okay, let's make tracks."
"Wait!" Neff said desperately. "My legs and hands. You've cut off the
circulation!"
* * * * *
Something hard like the barrel of a gun rapped down on the top of his
head. "I ought to blow your dirty brains out. Killing my little
sister's dog, damn you. Damn you, I think I will kill you. Damn you,
damn you!" the voice crested.
"Wait a minute Jerry," the other voice cut in. "I got a better idea.
Here. Look at this."
Short silence. "Yeah! Yeah, that's just dandy. Look how thin he is.
That's just what the doctor ordered. Okay, the top's loose. Stand by
the door and don't let him get by you. Wait. Got your flash? Good! In
the dark. That's real good. Which switch is it?"
"Throw them both."
"Okay. Flash it over here. Look out, here I come!"
"Hurry up! Look at that hungry, black-eyed little devil. That ought to
fix up the son-of-a--" ..._Thunk!_ The compression rammed heavily into
Neff's ears. The bolts shot solidly into place from the outside, and
the combination knob rang faintly as it was spun. Silence.
They'd go out the same way they came in and tack the board back in
place. How long before anybody would miss him? Twenty-four hours?
Hell, no. Nobody would bust a gut worrying that soon. Two days? Some
weeks he was gone several days making the rounds of his loan offices.
A week? Maybe. Girls at the Palace would get suspicious. Tell Collin
Burns.
But a week! They'd cut off the blower when they threw both switches.
No ventilation. No air.
Neff strained at the ropes. His legs were pulled under the seat so
tightly that his feet were turning numb. Hands were tingling, too.
Dirty little sadists. Turning John loose thinking--