From what he was going to escape he wasn't quite sure, but he felt that
the details would be in the body of the news story. Headlines didn't
tell everything, did they?
Within a foot of the door he turned casually and took one last look at
the little man who was staring so intently at him. Then, with a sudden
slithering motion, he slipped through the door.
He collided heavily with a small figure.
"I'm sorry," he stammered. "I'm in a bit of a hurry."
He turned and started away, but he had barely taken three strides when
he jerked to a stop. An expression of dazed amazement stole over his
face and his sleepy eyes opened wide.
Wheeling suddenly he stared back at the small figure he had collided
with. The man was still standing in the corridor that led from the bar,
regarding Reggie with a fixed, thoughtful expression.
And he was the same dark little man Reggie had left _inside_ the bar
room seconds before!
Reggie gulped audibly. His adam's apple bobbed in his throat like a
mouse in a sock.
_How had the dark little man gotten out of the bar ahead of him?_
Reggie didn't know and he had no inclination to wait and ask questions.
With one last incredulous look over his shoulder he wheeled and loped
across the lobby, down the marble steps, through the club's revolving
doors and into the street.
He walked swiftly, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.
The experience had been an unnerving one. When he reached the end of the
block he hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of another bar.
As the cab rolled across the Loop Reggie settled back and gnawed
nervously at his finger nails. Thoughtful meditation and analysis were
not his strongest suits; in fact any thinking at all was an annoying
chore to him, but he felt now that he had better bend his brain to the
problem of the dark little man whom he'd seen at the club.
The chap was obviously interested in him, but why? There was no
reasonable answer to that question, and there was no explanation to the
way the little fellow had popped up _outside_ the bar, when Reggie had
seen him, a split-second before, _inside_ the bar.
* * * * *
Reggie was still stewing over these matters when the cab came to a stop
before a swanky glitter joint which catered to afternoon revellers and
jitterbugs of both sexes.
Inside the smoky, dimly lighted den of din and discord Reggie forgot his
troubles long enough to order a drink, his fifth of the afternoon. He
was conscious of a vague buzzing between his ears and there was a
pleasant mellow glow in the region of his solar plexus.
Had it not been for his disturbing experience at the Midland club, he
would have been feeling very, very fine.
When his drink arrived he sipped it appreciatively and glanced about the
crowded bar, looking for a familiar face. In one corner of the room he
saw a tall young man in tweeds lounging against the wall with a drink in
his hand. With a glad cry Reggie scrambled from his bar stool and
lurched across the crowded floor, weaving his way with drunken dexterity
through the jitterbugging maniacs.
"Hi!" he cried, when he reached the tweed-clad young man's side. "How've
you been, Ricky? Have a drink?"
"Been fine," the young man answered. "Got a drink. Name isn't Ricky."
"Not Ricky?" Reggie shook his head frowning. "Could've sworn you were
good old Ricky Davis, chap I knew at school. Well, how're things?"
"Good," the young man answered. "Have a drink?"
"Got one," Reggie said. "Got to go now. It's been nice seeing you again,
Ricky."
He started to weave his way back to the bar. Suddenly he stopped, his
eyes focusing in fascination on the figure of a man at the bar. A man
who had appropriated the seat which Reggie had vacated.
The man was small and dark. His eyes were narrow and inscrutable. He was
the same person Reggie had seen at the club.
The breath left Reggie's lungs in a rush.
Obviously the man had followed him here!
As he stood, transfixed, in the middle of the floor, the man turned and
looked straight at him, a peculiar thoughtful expression on his dark
face. After studying Reggie for a long interval he turned slowly back to
the bar.
Reggie swallowed what was left of his drink in one gulp, but the liquor
had no effect on him. After the shock he'd received it would take liquid
dynamite to bolster him up.
He reeled back to the tall young man who was leaning against the wall.
"Ricky!" he cried hoarsely. "I'm being followed. Axis agents are after
me."
"Name isn't Ricky," the tall young man said. "Why?"
"Why what?" Reggie said blankly. He seemed to have fumbled the
conversational ball. He wished the young man would speak with more
clarity and add a few articles and pronouns to his sentences.
"Why are they following you?" the young man said peevishly. "Nothing
better to do?"
"That's just it," Reggie said. "I don't know why I'm being followed. But
everywhere I go this little man sticks to me like a postage stamp."
"Where is he now?"
Reggie pointed dramatically at the dark little man.
"At the bar. He took the stool I left. He's right between that fat old
man and that young girl with the red hair."
* * * * *
The tweed-clad young man stared in the direction of Reggie's pointing
finger, then he frowned and glanced down at Reggie.
"Any pink elephants, yet?"
"I'm not drunk," Reggie said indignantly. "That man has been following
me like a conga partner all afternoon."
The tall young man patted Reggie patiently on the shoulder.
"Sleep and rest will make a new man of you," he said. "Go home. Go to
bed. You've got hallucinations."
"Hallucinations!" Reggie cried over the din of the orchestra. "What do
you mean? Don't you see the man I mean? Right between the fat old man
and the girl with the red hair?"
The tweedish young man shook his head.
"The stool between the fat old man and the red-haired girl is completely
unoccupied," he said in the patient voice of a man instructing a very
young child.
Reggie shook his head bewilderedly. There was a sudden cold hollow in
the pit of his stomach. He opened and closed his mouth several times
without producing a sound.
"Are you serious?" he finally managed to gasp.
"Certainly," the young man answered. "There's no one on the bar stool
you left. You're just seeing things. Take my advice and go home. You've
had too much giggle water."
Reggie set his drink down hastily. For a long deliberate moment he
studied the back of the dark little man at the bar. Then he shook his
head dazedly. Maybe this was all some wild product of his imagination.
Maybe he _was_ having hallucinations....
He shook his head again and then he shook hands with the young man in
the tweed suit.
"I'm going home, Ricky," he said firmly. "Say hello to all the gang for
me."
"Name isn't Ricky," the young man said, sipping from his drink, "but
I'll tell the boys you were asking."
"Good," Reggie said.
He left the crowded bar by a back entrance. The warm sunshine was
pleasant and reassuring. People hurried past him, traffic surged in the
streets, and everything was quite normal. He breathed a deep sigh and
hailed a cab. He gave the driver the address of his apartment and then
settled back against the soft leather cushions.
Sleep was all he needed. That was all.
* * * * *
When he reached his apartment on the near North Side he had succeeded in
convincing himself that his peculiar experiences of the afternoon were
only products of his fevered imagination.
As he let himself into his apartment he had firmly resolved to strictly
ration his reading of comic strips and spy magazines. They were pretty
strong meat if they weren't handled with discretion.
The pleasantly furnished living room of his apartment was shrouded in
late-afternoon semi-darkness and, when he closed and locked the door
behind him, he switched on the lights.
The first thing he saw when he walked into the room was the little dark
man whom he'd seen at the Club and at the bar a few minutes previously.
The dark little man was sitting in a straight chair, his hands resting
on his knees. There was a faint smile on his face as he studied Reggie
with calm, inscrutable eyes.
Reggie staggered back a few steps, clapping one hand hysterically to his
forehead. He couldn't believe his eyes. He had left this man at a bar in
the Loop, but here he was now, sitting calmly and unconcernedly in the
living room of his apartment.
"How did you get in here?" he gasped.
The dark little man stood up and smiled.
"Is that important?" he asked softly. "I am here and that is all that
matters."
Reggie swallowed loudly. There was something disturbing about the calm
ambiguity of the man's statement. He rubbed his damp palms together
nervously.
"Can I get you a drink?" he blurted.
The dark little man shook his head slowly.
Reggie looked at him uneasily, noticing him in detail for the first
time. He was small, hardly more than five feet two and he was slenderly
built. His hair was jet black and it combed straight back from a high,
delicate forehead. He wore severely tailored black clothes that fitted
his small frame without a wrinkle. But his eyes dominated his entire
personality, for they were a cold chilling black, lusterless and
unwinking, as unrevealing as twin diamonds.
Reggie shivered slightly and looked wistfully toward the door of the
apartment. He coughed nervously.
"Sorry to seem rude," he said, laughing weakly, "but I've got to be
toddling off now. It's been nice--er--running into you. There are
magazines on the table, liquor in the ice box, so just make yourself at
home."
He backed cautiously toward the door, smiling nervously.
"Don't wait up for me," he said. "I've--"
"Wait," the dark little man said quietly, "I must talk with you."
"Some other time," Reggie said, feeling behind him for the door knob.
"Awfully rushed just now. Sorry but--"
"Wait!" the little man said again, but this time his voice cracked like
a whip. "Didn't you hear me? I must talk with you?"
* * * * *
Reggie jumped at the cracking tone of the man's voice. His hand jerked
away from the door knob as if it were red hot.
"Oh, you want to talk to me?" he said foolishly. "I didn't understand
you."
"My name," the little man said, "is," he paused and smiled cryptically,
"Demise."
"Glad to know you," Reggie said. "My name is--"
"I know your name," Mr. Demise said. "I know everything about you,
Reginald Van Fiddler. I know things about you that you don't know
yourself."
"Do you now?" Reggie said, becoming interested in spite of himself. "For
instance?"
"I know that you are about to take a long trip," Mr. Demise said.
"That's not news," Reggie said. "My draft board just classified me 1-A.
I'll be taking a long trip very shortly."
"That is not the trip I am referring to," Mr. Demise said. "You are
going on a trip with me."
Reggie blinked. He couldn't think of anyone with whom he would rather
not take a trip than this dark, sinister little man who called himself
Mr. Demise. What did Demise mean, anyway?
"It's nice of you, and all that," he said, "but I don't think I'll be
able to make it. My draft board might not like it."
"They will understand," Mr. Demise said.
"I don't know about that," Reggie said. He was beginning really to
worry. There was something damnably inevitable about Mr. Demise's calm
statements. "They're pretty ticklish about such things. I think we'd
just better forget the whole idea."
"That is impossible," Mr. Demise said.
Reggie rubbed his moist palms on his trouser legs.
"Who are you?" he asked hesitantly. "Have you been following me around
all day just to sell me on the idea of a trip? Are you from Cook's
tours?"
Mr. Demise smiled and shook his head.
"I am not interested in selling you the idea of a trip. I am simply
telling you that you are going on a trip. I have already made all the
arrangements. There is nothing that can possibly change them."
"Where am I going?" Reggie asked. His voice was a whisper.
"With me," Mr. Demise said.
"That's no answer," Reggie said, clutching at straws. "Who are you?
Where are you going?"
Mr. Demise smiled again, very faintly. He walked slowly to the
mantelpiece and plucked a rose from a vase. His hand closed gently over
the flower as he turned to face Reggie.
"Perhaps this will answer your questions," he said softly.
He opened his hand and dropped the flower to the floor at Reggie's feet.
Reggie's eyes widened in sheer amazement.
[Illustration: Reggie looked at the seared rose, and then he knew...!]
For the soft glowing beauty of the flower was faded forever. It lay on
the floor, a blackened, dead reminder of its former glory.
"It's dead," he said incredulously. "It withered at the touch of your
hand."
* * * * *
Mr. Demise nodded slowly and there was a wistful sadness in his face.
"All living things die at my touch," he said. "For I am Death!"
"Death!" Reggie echoed. For an instant he stared blankly at Mr. Demise.
"Death!" he repeated. "Why that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever
heard." He actually felt a sensation of relief in the realization that
he'd been entertaining some loony instead of an Axis agent as he'd
feared. "You're off your trolley," he said to Mr. Demise. "You'd better
get moving before your keeper finds you. Death! What a gag!"
"I assure you it is not a gag," Mr. Demise said slowly. "Your time is
near at hand and I have been sent to take you to the land of Darkness."
"Think again, chum," Reggie said emphatically. "I'm not going to Harlem
with you or anyone else and that's final."
"It is useless to protest," Mr. Demise said. "Your destiny is sealed.
You must come with me."
"You are plain balmy," Reggie said. "I've never heard a sillier yarn in
my life. So you're Death, are you?"