The Project Gutenberg eBook of Double Identity, by Charles F. Myers.

He demonstrated again that rangey reach of his and slammed a fistful of hard knuckles into the putty face in front of him. Mario went down on the thick carpet, his fat nose spurting blood like a drinking fountain for vampires. He was just another one of those larded slobs and, true to the type, he began to blubber. The blonde in the corner froze in place like a lead statue in a snow storm.

"Wait!" Mario whined. "Wait a minute, Cassidy. I'm not stalling. I just want to make a deal, that's all."

"You've made a deal," Fleetwood snapped. "How do you like it, fat boy? Now where's the stuff?"

Mario lolled his head to one side, holding his hand to his nose. Fleetwood raised his foot, and he came around fast.

Fleetwood kept them both covered and crossed to the mantle. He picked up the box and flipped back the lid. Expensive fire, the cold kind of fire that comes from stones, flashed out at him. He closed it again and dropped it into his pocket.

"Look, Cassidy," Mario said, still sitting on the floor, "look, I took the rocks, I admit that, but I didn't rod Blanchard. Somebody else cooled him before I ever got to the dump...."

"Sure, Mario, sure," Fleetwood nodded, "you're the neat type. You just ran over in your dust cap to tidy up the death room. My client will be tickled to pieces to find out what a nice orderly vulture you turned out to be." He swiveled around toward the blonde. "And you'd better get yourself a new playmate, lamb-chop. This one won't even be able to keep you in rompers from now on." He gave Mario one last glance, to warn him to stay down, and legged it for the door. This was the kind of place and the kind of people he loved to leave behind.

She must have pole-vaulted across the room to have made it so fast; he was just reaching for the knob when her perfume pressed in on him from behind. He turned around, left his hand resting on the knob.

"What you said," she drawled in a lazy, boudoir voice, "I mean about me getting myself a new playmate. You're right about that, Cassidy...." She held the idea out to him, waiting for him to take it up on the beat. He let it lay. She smiled, but her eyes turned as hard as a bride's biscuits. "Anyway, you could be right."

The smile stayed fixed, but she shrugged. "So maybe the music we'd make together wouldn't exactly be Brahms. But it wouldn't be Guy Lombardo, either. You've got the rocks, but your client doesn't know a thing about that unless you tell her. I have ... other things. And I can be sweet when I want." She moved closer and planted an arm around his neck, leaning in to make herself comfortable. "I can be so sweet you almost couldn't stand it. Almost."

"So can a cyanide soda," Fleetwood said dully. "Sweet and final." He lifted her arm away from his neck, and it might have been a noose. He let it drop.

The hallways of the Grande Apartments were carpeted as thickly as the living quarters. It was the only place in town where you could sneak up on someone at a dead trot. Fleetwood plushed along in the direction of the elevators. He was nearly there, just abreast of a drinking fountain, when it hit him, just like it had those other times before. He stopped and reached out a hand to steady himself against the fountain.

In a moment his head began to clear a little and he straightened, running a lean, trembling hand through his carrot-colored hair. Even so he clung to the fountain a bit longer and when he finally let go it was only to free his hand so he could check his pulse. The attacks were coming closer together now, he reflected. But so were the events which usually led up to them—the incidents of violence, the sight of blood.

It was crazy, a sort of general softening and mellowing, the kind of thing that makes you bait for the boys with the cushiony couches and the expensive ears. It was downright absurd. He had to get hold of himself.

He searched his mind warily for his own thoughts, as an agent might search for saboteurs. He looked for those innermost stirrings of the soul, the ones that breathe of fear and anxiety. But there was nothing. And that was crazy too. It was as though he'd never had a thought in his life, or even an experience from which to draw a thought. It was like amnesia, and yet it wasn't amnesia at all. He knew that he was Fleetwood Cassidy and he knew that he was a private investigator who worked independently. But that was where he ran into the wall. But the really frightening part of it was the veiled feeling that even if he should manage to scale the wall and look behind it, he'd find—exactly nothing!

Of course, he told himself, the thing to do was to think back to that place in time where the spells—the softening—had begun. There lay the real clue. But it was so much easier said than done. He could project his thoughts backwards, after some effort, to the day before when he had jumped into a taxi, shouted to the driver to "follow that car," then found himself in a nervous panic lest they were travelling at a rate of speed in excess of the legal limit. But that was just another small, humiliating example—by no means the beginning.

He forced his thoughts back still farther, but it was rather like ramrodding a rifle with a ballbat. He arrived finally, by dint of the most extreme concentration, back in the apartment of that sloe-eyed, full-lipped and tempestuous beauty, Dolores Nobella. He had given her a hundred dollars for evidence against her mother, and she had lifted her skirts with a graceful, crimson-taloned hand and inserted the bills deftly in the top of her stocking. All of a sudden it had come to Fleetwood that Dolores, even for a girl with long legs, wore disturbingly tall stockings—and he had turned away, coloring at the collar. He, Fleetwood Cassidy, had blushed, and what was more, now that he thought of it he blushed again.

That was the end. Or rather the beginning—the beginning of Fleetwood's strange new emotional pattern.

At any rate he felt better having at least established the point of departure, even if it didn't make the riddle of his growing metamorphosis one whit clearer. He boosted himself away from the drinking fountain and continued along the hallway with the eerie feeling that he was moving toward some prearranged meeting with Destiny.

He was still a soul adrift, so to speak, when he pushed his way out of the Grande and stood pondering in the afternoon sun. The sidewalk, the street, the traffic, the confused and crowded skyline—all of these things, in turn, presented new problems of identification and orientation, as though he was seeing them all for the first time and didn't know quite what to make of them. And yet.... And yet—what? It was as though his mind had made another sudden turning and again brought him up against the blank wall. The past, even the immediate past that included the events in the Grande Apartments, slipped away from him and were lost. When he tried to think back there were only words in his mind in place of faces, places, events—words like caper, rod, dame, murder. They brought with them no mental association with anything real or experienced. He passed a hand slowly over his eyes. Surely he was losing his mind.

With heavy concentration he forced his attention to the row of automobiles along the curb. He had the feeling that one of them belonged to him, but he hadn't the slightest idea of which one it might be. He closed his eyes and waited. The spell would pass. The others had.

He opened his eyes and hopefully surveyed the row of cars for a second time. There was something about the blue convertible. He moved forward, thinking to check the registration slip, when a smart-looking woman in green tweed walked up to the car, got inside, glanced at him curiously and quickly started the engine. He edged back, coloring about the neck and ears.

He waited a bit longer but the lost feeling didn't leave him. If anything it only grew stronger. He turned aimlessly back toward the Grande Apartments, then started with a gasp of dismay.

The Grande Apartments were gone, and in their place was an establishment called The Handy Drug Store! Fleetwood tried to think clearly, more clearly than he ever had before. It wasn't any good; there wasn't any logical answer. Warily, he approached the store and went inside.

He by-passed the cigarette counter and the magazine racks, noted their contents curiously, and climbed aboard a stool at a long counter. At least it was a place to sit down and rest. A girl approached from the other side of the counter and made a quick pass at the area in front of him with a paper napkin.

Fleetwood turned and looked at her, and it happened. His eyebrows shot up, his heart stood still. He felt faintly ill in a surprised, elated sort of way. Never had he dreamed that there could be such a creature. This girl, this ... this fragment of heaven! She couldn't possibly be real. She was so extraordinarily ordinary!

"What would you like?" the girl said, and Fleetwood tingled anew just at the sound of her voice; its tone was so enchantingly flat and nasal. Never had he dreamed that it was possible for any woman to speak with so little innuendo. He was shaken to the very core. He realized that because of this girl something very important was happening to him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. The mystery of the disappearing Grande Apartments faded from his mind.

"I beg your pardon?" he murmured in an effort to induce the girl to speak again.

"I said, what do you want?" the girl repeated, and her grey-brown eyes looked into his unconcernedly.

It was too good to be true! Here she was, this extraordinary female person, apparently eager, even impatient, to fulfill his slightest wish, just for the naming. Fleetwood took a firm grip on the edge of the counter. If this was a dream he didn't want to interrupt it by being too rash. His eyes dwelt on her hair, tabulating the exact measure of its fascinating dullness.

"Bourbon and water?" he said cautiously. "Double?" He couldn't remember exactly what it meant, but it seemed a likely entry.

Fleetwood's heart sank; he'd said the wrong thing, and the first crack out of the box, too. Obviously, he had blundered somehow into a strange land where people spoke in prepared dialogues, and the moment he'd opened his mouth he'd gone up in his lines. There was a proper response to the question, "what do you want?" but "bourbon and water" was not it. He glanced around nervously as two young women arrived at the magazine racks behind him and simultaneously picked up copies of the New York Toast. Neither returned his glance or even gave the slightest indication that they were aware of his existence, much less his dilemma. He looked back at the girl who had now begun to eye him rather curiously. Plainly she was waiting for him to get on with it; he had to try again, no matter how much he might disappoint both of them.

"I don't know," Fleetwood said and attempted what he hoped was the sort of glance that pleads understanding. "I mean to say...."

"Are you being funny about a cup of coffee, or do you really think you're in a bar somewhere?"

"Coffee?" Fleetwood said. He seized upon the word as a drowning man might snatch at a drifting life preserver. Besides, it dinged a small bell of recognition somewhere in the back of his mind. "Yes," he murmured, "coffee, please."

Fleetwood reflected on this exchange in a thickening mood of perturbation. Retracing, haltingly, its tangled bypaths, it seemed to lack in retrospect those bright glimmerings of reason that one looks for in a friendly conversation. The end result appeared to be that he was merely about to receive coffee, which his confused faculties identified only as something murky and brown, of undetermined usefulness. He had hoped for more. As he thought on it, however, voices reached to his inner ear. The girls at the magazine racks had tuned up conversationally. Chit-chat was their medium, of the sort that, for all its lack of substance, takes on a certain penetration after a time. In the end, Fleetwood found himself slipping, no matter how unwillingly, into the role of the eavesdropper. As it was, though, he couldn't have selected a more illuminating moment in which to fall from grace.

"I've been following him for years," one of the girls said as Fleetwood dialed in full strength. "I watch for him every time he comes out."

"Fleetwood Cassidy?" the second girl responded. "Oh, sure. I'm always watching for him."

At this exchange, the back of Fleetwood's neck could not have bristled more smartly had someone begun currying operations with a pair of spiked boots. He straightened rigidly on his stool, twitched significantly about the ears and nose and, in short, affected all the most usual aspects of a beagle alerted to the first whiff of a super-scented fox. Coming as it did in the exact moment of his greatest befuddlement, this overheard snatch of conversation had a telling effect. All at once it posed questions, suggested half-answers and plunged him headlong into a whole new field of bewildering conjecture. It all came too suddenly, however, for him to know how to react to it. For a moment he simply froze to his stool and stared straight ahead like a hypnotized hen.

It was this reactional delay, then, which bogged him down at the decisive moment. By the time he jarred himself into action and twisted around on the stool, the girls had already moved away. One of them, in fact, was well along in the act of handing over the cash for a copy of the Saturday Morning Call to the cashier by the door.

But time had drained out. The girl completed her transaction with the cashier, joined her friend at the door, and the two of them legged it in unison out to the sidewalk and into the burgeoning sunset. By the time Fleetwood had reached the doorway they had lost themselves in the crowd.

"Hey," Fleetwood murmured with limp regret and turned back to find that the girl had returned to the counter and placed a steaming cup at his place. She was watching him with worried interest.

"Yes," Fleetwood said, settling himself and gazing dully into the cup. "Yes, I want it." He lifted the cup and sampled the coffee which suddenly tasted quite familiar to him. But the greater part of his mind was concerned with other things. He looked up at the waitress who was still standing before him.

"I wonder," he said, "did you notice those two young women who were just here? The ones standing there at the magazine racks?"

"Well, that's their names, Clare and Connie," the girl said. "That's all I know."

"But what do they do?" Fleetwood said, trying it another way. "Have you ever heard?"

"Oh," the girl said. "They're telephone operators. They come in here all the time."

"Telephone operators?" Fleetwood did his best to digest this patently indigestible piece of information. No matter how he chewed it it still didn't fit with what had just happened. He drummed his fingers on the counter for a moment. "Are you sure you couldn't be mistaken?" he asked. "It couldn't be that maybe they work for some sort of investigator or the government, could it?"

"Well," Fleetwood said, watching her closely, "I overheard them talking just now, and they were saying something about following someone called Fleetwood Cassidy."

"Oh, sure," the girl said and smiled in a way that didn't in the least degree mar her expression of profound placidity. "Everyone follows him."

She broke off as an elderly man hailed her from the other end of the counter. "Hey, Kitty," he pleaded. "I haven't got all night, you know."

Fleetwood furrowed his brow and pondered her last words. The call ... she had said. The call. The call of what? The call to what, for that matter. Then it struck him like a coarsely threaded bolt flung out of the blue.

The Call! Of course! The Saturday Morning Call! The very magazine which one of the girls, Clare or Connie, had bought and tucked so conspicuously under her arm on leaving the store. Fleetwood's mind raced. It was perfectly plain, cut and dried like an apricot in season. The Call was the signal, the emblem of some secret society or organization which, for their own sinister purposes, was keeping tabs on him. The members made themselves known and communicated with each other through displaying the Call under their arms. But why? It was absurd; by his very profession he was supposed to be a watcher, not a watchee.

As he pondered this latest and newest equation he turned his gaze automatically to the magazine racks and the several issues of the Call which were on display there. He looked, and fell back aghast, unable to believe his eyes But there it was nonetheless, in spite of his disbelief:

BEGINNING IN THIS ISSUE! the banner across the cover gasped breathlessly, FLEETWOOD CASSIDY AND THE KIPPERED CAPER!

As well he might, after taking this in, Fleetwood went limp on his stool, washed through with conflicting emotions. It was plain that either he or the world had lost all sanity. He closed his eyes and commanded his head to stop reeling. Even so, it was some moments before he regained sufficient composure to reopen his eyes and bend down to take up one of the magazines for a closer inspection. And when he did, it rattled and flapped about in his grip like a struggling egret in a blizzard.

He maneuvered the magazine to the counter and eased an elbow onto it to hold it still. He gazed at it hollowly for some moments before, taking his courage in his hands, he opened it and churned through it to the first page of THE KIPPERED CAPER.

He stared in silent wonder. There, rendered in natural tints, staring back at him with all the sweep and grandeur purchaseable from the hand of a top flight commercial artist, was his own face.

"Awrr!" said Fleetwood. "Uphh!" And for the moment that comprised his entire comment on the discovery.

Time lost all meaning to Fleetwood. For all he knew whole hours might have slipped by as he sat there staring down at the illustration. There was one thing, though, about which he was positive; he had never posed for the portrait in the magazine. But then how could they have gotten such an exact likeness? And there was his name too. Something more than weird coincidence was involved here, he was certain of it. He started violently as the voice sounded in his ear.

The girl Kitty was standing before him again, the Silex poised expertly over his cup. Fleetwood stared up at her with haunted eyes. His mouth worked loosely for several moments before he produced intelligible sound.

"L—look!" he said, twisting the magazine around in her direction. "Look at that!"

Kitty put down the Silex and studied the picture with grave interest. "Seems familiar," she murmured. Then she made a quick clucking noise of recognition. "Of course! That's Fleetwood Cassidy, the fellow in the story. But just for a moment it looked like somebody else I've seen around...." She looked up at Fleetwood. "It's you, isn't it? You pose for Fleetwood Cassidy!"

"No," Fleetwood said despairingly. "That's just the trouble. I don't pose for Fleetwood Cassidy. I've never heard of Fleetwood Cassidy. I mean I am Fleetwood Cassidy. Anyway...."

But Kitty's attention had already gone back to the illustration. "I always thought this fellow, Grant Dermitt, just made you up out of his head. You a good friend of his?"

"The guy who writes about you," Kitty said. "Oh, you know; you're kidding me." She smiled down at the illustration, unaware that just beyond her nose its flesh-and-blood counterpart had become distorted with a look of slack-mouthed stupefaction. "Just listen here to what it says about you." She began to read from the page opposite the illustration:

Fleetwood shoved Caroline away from him, and she plumped down on the sofa like a mail bag heaved off a passing train, soft and sullen.

"Save it for the next sucker," he drawled. "When I'm ready to go shopping for coffins I'll let you know. But I'm not ready, not just yet."

Her face became a white mask of anger. "I'll kill you, Cassidy!" she shrilled. "You can't push me around and not bleed for it sooner or later. I'll kill you, damn you!"

"You'll try," Fleetwood nodded with a wry smile. "But take a tip, sugar, when you come gunning for me don't wear that negligee. It doesn't give you any place to hide the weapon. In fact it doesn't give you any place to hide anything."

When he sauntered out the door she was still staring at him, her face twisted and mottled in the firelight like an artist's paint rag.

But Fleetwood didn't hear her. Suddenly a lot of things were falling into place and it was like deciphering a coded letter only to find out that the message you'd been working so hard to unsnarl was one telling you you'd never been born, that you were just a figment of your own imagination. He remembered the face in the firelight—and the negligee—and all the rest of it. But it wasn't a real memory. It was only the shadow of something that hadn't really happened at all, merely the phantom remembrance of a reverie or a dream.

Suddenly a dazed, trance-like expression clouded his eyes. He shoved himself away from the stool, turned and started toward the door.

But Fleetwood continued to the door, stepped out to the sidewalk, and glanced purposefully down the row of parked cars....

"No," Fleetwood murmured. "No." He looked up at her, beyond her, his eyes filled with a shocking realization. "No, I'm not real. I...."

The grey coupe ground to a stop in the drive and Fleetwood got out. As he rounded the shrubs he could see that there were lights on in the house. That was good; Evelyn was home. It was a nice lay-out, swank and beautiful but very refined, like Evelyn herself. He could hear the wash and roll of the ocean from somewhere beyond and below. He patted his pocket, felt the box, and legged it up the steps.

Maybe Evelyn wouldn't exactly fall in his arms—her good training would blow the whistle on that one—but maybe she'd lean in his direction a little, especially when she saw that the stones were still all there. He reached out and put his finger to the buzzer.

As he waited, a qualm crossed his mind, the ghost of something he couldn't quite remember. There was a dim, fleeting glimpse of another world, a world made up of a counter, the face of a girl, a magazine.... But it wouldn't focus properly; his memory couldn't make the hurdle. The door opened and Evelyn Anders was standing before him.

"Fleetwood," she said. She held her hand out to him and smiled. "Please come in, won't you?"

Maybe it was something in those cool blue eyes of hers, or maybe it was just that the harsh light over the door made her look pale; he got the idea that behind her gracious manner there was a sharp edge of nervousness. He got it stronger as she released her hand and made one of those small, miscellaneous gestures toward her hair.

"Hello, Ev," he said. "I know it's not manners to just drop in like this, but I've got something to show you."

She didn't answer as she moved aside to let him in. He stepped into the hallway and waited for her to close the door. As she did so, he took in the jade green dinner gown and reflected that it was the kind of yardage that gave you the idea but let you think you'd gotten it all by yourself. Evelyn had class with a soft "a," but it wasn't stuffy, not on her.

"My maid's off tonight," she said, putting her arm through his and leading him toward the living room. "You can talk freely."

She maneuvered him to the divan in front of the fireplace and managed it so that they sat down in graceful unison. She leaned back and suddenly the dinner dress had a neckline. The qualm flipped again on the surface of Fleetwood's mind, like a minnow breaking the mirrored calm of a mountain pool. He edged away from Evelyn. She was saying something, but suddenly her voice had a senseless, clattering sound.

"... so I hope you have something nice to show me," she was saying as his senses suddenly cleared. "I could use a dash of something nice just now."

"Oh, yes," Fleetwood said and reached into his pocket. He took out the ivory box and held it out to her.

"The case!" she said, and he noticed that her hand trembled as she took it. "Are they ... are the stones all right?"

"They're all there," Fleetwood said and waited for the touch, the glance that he had hoped would be his reward. "You may jump a little, though, when I tell you where I got them."

"Mario," Fleetwood said. "He lifted them the night of the killing." He sat back and waited.

There wasn't a touch or a glance. There wasn't even a flicker of surprise. He should have gotten it straight right there, but it wasn't until she turned and glanced back over her shoulder that he really tumbled. He jumped up, but Mario was already in the doorway. The gun in Mario's hand was only the companion piece to the cold ruthlessness in his eyes.

Evelyn got up from the divan and faded back into the shadows beside the fireplace. She still had class, cowering there in the dimness, but you could sound the "a" through your nose.

"So that's how things match up," Fleetwood said. He turned away from Mario and stared at Evelyn, a dumb move, the kind of thing a guy does when he finds out that the angel in his life got her halo from the local tinsmith. "You're wasting yourself, Ev," he said softly. "You didn't have to team up with a rotten slob like that, not a gal like you. It's like pitting platinum buttons on a suit of flannel drawers—"

He stopped short and swung about. It was more than a qualm this time; it was a full-blown mental flip-flop. What the hell was he thinking about, turning his back on a guy with a loaded gun in his hand? Maybe it was romantic as the devil to stand around orating to a beautiful woman on manners and morals in the face of death and destruction but it certainly wasn't good sense. And now that he came to think of it, what in heaven's name was he doing in a preposterous situation like this anyway? Whatever was going on it certainly couldn't be allowed to go any further.

"Now, look, fella," he said soothingly, turning back to Mario, "let's cut out all this nonsense before someone gets hurt."

Mario came toward him, his putty face impassive. Evelyn started from the shadows.

"No, Mario!" Fleetwood said with a feeling of complete madness. "No. You musn't get yourself worked up like this!"

"Shut up!" Mario snapped. "Maybe you gave out the invitations, honey, but it's still my party."

"How stupid can you broads get?" Mario sneered. "You think I'm going to let him talk?"

"She's right, Mario," Fleetwood said, nodding in vigorous accord. "You should listen to her. Besides I won't talk. I wouldn't even know what to say."

Fleetwood fully realized by now that he couldn't possibly make himself heard to them, but the situation demanded at least a try. He turned to Evelyn. "Talk to him," he urged. "Do something. Call the police!"

"Mario!" Evelyn cried, and covered her face with, her hands. "Not here! Please don't do it here!" She began to cry hysterically.

There was a pause, then a grunt from Mario that might have meant anything. A battalion of ants began to crawl up and down Fleetwood's spine. Mario's plodding footsteps sounded directly behind him. He tensed against whatever was about to happen. Then, in a rush, a small whirring sound descended swiftly behind his ear and his head split with pain. The floor opened into a black abyss in front of him and he plunged toward it headfirst.

In the same moment, the counter, the girl, the magazine, and the world that contained them became blindingly vivid and real. His mind suddenly cleared and he picked himself up from the floor in a mood of fretful indignation.

Of course he hadn't dropped into any black abyss of unconsciousness; he'd merely stumbled and fallen from sheer nervousness. And a damned thick bit of business it was too. It made you look like a fool. As a matter of fact, now that he had a moment to collect his thoughts, he'd had quite enough of this prosey nonsense and he was fully prepared to assert himself against it. He got up, brushed himself off with careful deliberation, and turned defiantly to his companions.

"Look, you two," he said firmly, "I'm sick and tired of this childish sketch, and it's about time you knew it. You can go on with all the melodramatic clap-trap you like, but for my part I'm...."

The two were not listening; in fact they were no longer in any condition to listen, even if they wanted to. They stood frozen, transfixed in positions of action—and jarringly two-dimensional! They were precisely like life-sized cardboard cut-outs of themselves. They stood, supported by heaven only knew what means, staring at the spot where he had fallen.

But that wasn't the worst of it. They were incomplete representations of themselves into the bargain. Neither of them had mouths; the woman's face was simply a sketched outline, Mario's a drawing of an irregular lump of putty. Fleetwood stared at them; he didn't know what he had expected—perhaps that they would be transformed like himself. The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. He looked about.

The room had become a vague, unreal area in time, containing only a fireplace, a divan and two doorways. Looking on its clouded grey confines, he felt himself hovering crazily between fact and fancy. But this time he wasn't puzzled or frightened by the sensation. Turning, he forced himself to move against the room and away from it, out of the house. It was hard to make progress in a world where space and distance stretched and contracted in alternate convulsions, where substance did not exist upon which to gain a footing....

Fleetwood glanced up and shook his head. She was gazing at him from across the counter.

"Well, you still owe me ten cents." She held out her hand. "The way you pop in and out of here like you were magic, I'm not taking any more chances. Pay up."

Fleetwood fished about in his pocket and, much to his own surprise, withdrew a coin. He held it out for Kitty's critical inspection.

"Four bits," she said. "I'll bring you your change." She went to the cash register and, after the necessary manipulations, returned with three smaller coins. "I had you figured for a deadbeat," she said. "I'm sorry."

"What's the matter?" Kitty asked. "You look worried. You looked kind of dopey before, but now you look worried too."

"I don't know why I enjoy talking to you," Kitty said. "It never gets us anywhere. What do you want to know about this Grant Dermitt? Not that I can tell you anyway."

"Why don't you call him up on the telephone? He lives somewhere here in town. I heard at the Towers. What do you have to see him about?"

"Yeah, I guess I am," Fleetwood reflected. He left the counter and crossed to the phone booths. Picking up the directory he turned to the T's. He looked back at Kitty.

Finding the listing for the Towers, Fleetwood turned to the telephone and reached toward it. Then he checked himself. He left the booth and returned to the counter where Kitty and the coffee were waiting for him.

"Yeah. Only all of a sudden I feel funny about it. It's something I've got to do, only I don't know just how to do it, to make it come out right. It's awfully important." He looked up at her quite suddenly. "Do you like me, Kitty?"

"No," Fleetwood said, shaking his head. "That's not what I mean. Do you like me?"

Her gaze moved thoughtfully over his face. "You're funny, like I said," she murmured. "You act—well, kind of daffy. And your ears stick out. But...." She nodded with sudden decision. "Sure, I like you, Fleetwood. I like you fine."

Fleetwood grinned at her and realized by the strangeness of it that he was enjoying the sensation for the first time in his life. It was nice to grin at someone. And all at once he knew quite certainly what he had to do—and that it was the right thing to do. He spun around on the stool and started away. Then he stopped and turned back for a moment.

"Well, for Pete's sake!" Kitty said and turned and looked at herself unbelievingly in the mirror behind the register. "Gee whiz!"

The Towers was apparently the sort of establishment which believes in bending every effort to prevent the telephone and the English language from going any further than they have to as a means of communication.

"And who shall I say is calling?" the supercilious voice of the Towers enquired.

"I did," Fleetwood said. "And tell Mr. Dermitt it's a matter of life and death."

"I see," the Towers mused with modulated forebearance, "it's a little joke, eh? Who shall we say is really calling?"

"Never mind," Fleetwood said. "Just say it's a friend on a matter of extreme urgency. Snap into it."

A silence followed, punctuated by several non-committal clicks and an intermittent buzzing. Finally the voice of the Towers resumed.

"Mr. Dermitt will speak to you, sir," it announced regretfully. "Please hold on while he changes instruments."

There was a final click and the voice of the Towers was supplanted by the voice of Grant Dermitt. It expressed an even blend of harassment and vexation.

"Now, look here, Paul," it said, getting right down to brass tacks, "this isn't the time for you to be calling up with your bum jokes, telling the clerk you're Fleetwood Cassidy. I'm in a jam with this yarn and I haven't got time to be cute. Now, what's on your mind?"

"I don't know Paul," Fleetwood said, "so I'm in no position to speak for him. But I'll be very happy to tell you what's on my mind. And that's plenty. In fact I'm only calling to warn you I'm on my way over to tell you about it right now."

"Fleetwood Cassidy," Fleetwood said, "that's who. And don't tell me I can't be, because I am."

"Now, just a minute," Grant Dermitt broke in. "Whoever you are, you've got a lousy sense of humor. And if you've got anything important to say, which I dismiss as a serious possibility, you'd better get on with it before I hang up, which I am just about to do."

"Okay," Fleetwood said. "I'll run over the facts, touching lightly on the high spots. We'll shoot in the details later when I see you. My name is Fleetwood Cassidy. I'm six feet tall, have red hair, grey-green eyes and ears that noticeably protrude. I've been going through a lot of damnfool nonsense for quite some time because of you and I'm fed up to the teeth with it. I'd like to see you in order to turn in my resignation in person, but if you prefer, I'll be just as pleased to send it to you through the mails. If you don't believe...."

"Just a minute," Fleetwood said firmly. "There's more and it gets more interesting as it goes along. I've just come from being deceived by a woman named Evelyn who has class, alternately pronounced with a hard and soft 'a', slugged behind the ear by a putty-faced gunman named Mario and pitched headfirst into a black abyss. But I decided the whole sequence was too corny, so I got up off the floor, dusted myself off and called you up just to say hello. Does any of that ring a bell with you, Dermitt?"

"What!" Dermitt yelped. "How do you know about all that? You couldn't.... Why, I just this minute.... Who are you?"

There was a sputtering sound at the other end of the line, then a wash of confused silence.

"Y-yes," Dermitt said in a greatly reduced tone of voice. "I guess so." There was another beat of silence, then a spate of false laughter. "Of course I still think this is all just a gag."

Grant Dermitt lived on the ninth floor of the Towers, where, as Fleetwood observed, the swank began in the foyer and increased, from floor to floor, as you went up. The brocaded elevator attendant glided in for a smooth landing, slid back the doors and confided in muted tones that Mr. Dermitt's digs lay due north and could best be reached by taking a steady heading in that direction. Fleetwood nodded with thanks and proceeded on schedule and according to plan.

He presented himself at the door marked 9-B and pressed the buzzer, not, however without a pause first for a deep meditative breath. There was no question in his mind that his next step, the one that would take him across Mr. Grant Dermitt's door-sill, would be the most decisive in his entire life. He poised himself, therefore, in an appropriate attitude of semi-military vigilance and waited for the encounter to take place.

There was hardly any lapse between the sound of the buzzer inside the apartment and the echo of rapidly approaching footsteps. The footsteps, however, for all their orderly progression, stopped abruptly just short of the inner side of the door. In the pause that followed, Fleetwood reflected with understanding sympathy that he was not alone in the need to brace himself against the impending interview, and he found courage in this fact. Then the door opened and zero hour had arrived.

Never had Fleetwood seen a larger, blacker pair of spectacles, nor indeed had he even suspected that there was such a pair in existence. In fact it was not until he had recovered from the shock of these spectacular glasses that he was able to give their wearer so much as a thought. It was only then that he came to the decision that perhaps it wasn't so much that the glasses were large but that Grant Dermitt was small.

Dermitt could not have been over five and a half feet tall, and his head was large and flat on top so as to give him an odd, hammered-down appearance. Though he was obviously somewhere in the mid-thirties, his face had retained the alarming pinkness of adolescence. Through his glasses he peered up at Fleetwood with a sort of thoughtful horror.

Fleetwood understood perfectly; it was probably quite a shock to the little fellow. He nodded in affable reply and filtered through the door into the entry.

As his host finally managed to rattle the door into a closed position, he made his way into the living room which was straight ahead. A wall of glass, to the left, afforded an unbroken and dramatic view of the city. The furniture was functionally modern, and to the right was a sort of alcove containing a desk, typewriter and three file cabinets. The over-all effect was very glittering, very urbane.

Quivering visibly in the doorway, his host, however, was in no frame of mind for conversational hanky-panky about interior decoration.

"Oh, my word!" Grant Dermitt made his way to the nearest chair and plumped himself down into it. "My word!" he repeated. He stared at Fleetwood lengthily, plainly engaged in an inward struggle with his own senses. "But it's only a resemblance," he said finally. "That's all it could be, just a fantastic coincidence." His gaze entreated Fleetwood. "Isn't it?"

Fleetwood shook his head and settled himself comfortably into the chair opposite. "Shall I tell you the plot of your present story?" he drawled. "Or would the experience be too painful?"

"Oh, dear!" Grant Dermitt said, making a small random gesture with his hand. "There is that, too, isn't there? No one could have known those things you told me on the telephone...."

"I simply don't know what to make of it," Dermitt moaned. "It's too crazy to believe, but...." He looked up at Fleetwood. "When did this happen?"

Fleetwood told him of the qualms, the spells, the small awakenings which had culminated in the final, major one that evening.

"I see," Dermitt said when he had finished. "In a way it begins to make sense. It checks with all the trouble you've been giving me lately."

"I've been giving you trouble!" Fleetwood said self-righteously. "What about the trouble you've been giving me? And not just lately. To date, under your gentle auspices, I have sustained twelve broken noses, seventeen crushed ribs, nine bullet wounds in the shoulders—five right, four left—three skull fractures and a sprained thumb. As for the black eyes, superficial lacerations, burns and random bruises, we'll just pass those by as too numerous and picayune to inventory at this time. However—and I wish to make this abundantly clear—I'm stuffed to the glottis with the whole muggy business. In fact, to be perfectly honest with you, Dermitt, my nerves won't stand any more of it. You can't imagine how it shakes me to face a loaded gun anymore, let alone turn my back on one, as you had me do this evening. If I should ever have to repeat such a performance I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I broke down and had a severe attack of the vapors. You may call me a sissy if you like, but the wear and tear on my nervous system is beginning to tell in my emotional reactions and I don't want any more of it."

"Yes," Dermitt said, momentarily overwhelmed. "I suppose I have been a little rough on you, but I...."

"Exactly," Fleetwood cut in. "And never a hint of any sort of compensation or old age retirement. Not that that's the main consideration. If you had made me into one of those gentleman, garden-party type detectives, that would be an entirely different matter. Those boys go to all the best places, rub elbows with the cream of society and live off the fat of the land. They have a chance to improve themselves socially and prosper in the bargain. But this other routine, this rowdyism and mucking about with the absolute scum of the earth—well, let me tell you, it takes it out of a man and puts nothing back in return. So you'll understand when I say I'm quitting and getting out."

"Quitting!" Dermitt half rose from his chair, his eyes large enough to almost fill the circles of his enormous glasses. "Do you mean you actually intend—"

"I do," Fleetwood nodded emphatically. "Now that I have the chance to get out of the thing and take up a real life for myself I mean to do so. I felt it was only fair, though, to look you up first and explain my reasons."

"But you can't!" Dermitt squeaked. "You're just a fictional character! You can't do that to me!" He swallowed excitedly, held out a hand of supplication. "I didn't mean to be so hard on you, Cassidy. Believe me, if I had only known...."

"I know," Fleetwood said. "And I don't bear any grudges. As far as that goes I'm exceedingly grateful to you in a way. After all, if it weren't for you I might never have seen the light of day at all. In fact, if you don't mind, there are moments when I'm somewhat inclined to regard you in much the same way as a son might regard his father."

"Oh, my God, no!" Dermitt exploded, leaving his chair entirely. "This is madness! It can't be happening, it simply can't!" He whirled about suddenly and fixed Fleetwood with an anguished eye. "Who sent you here to do this to me?"

"Oh, hell," Fleetwood sighed dejectedly, "now we're right back where we started."

"You'd better tell me who sent you," Dermitt said shakenly. "You've got to, because I can't stand any more of it!"

"I'll go crazy! I'll go to pieces right here in front of you! I'll shatter like a crystal! Would you like that?"

"No," Fleetwood said. "Doesn't sound pleasant at all." He looked at Dermitt with speculation. "Do you mean you actually could disintegrate right here at my feet? Is it really possible for people to do that sort of thing?"

"I really don't know what to say," Fleetwood sympathized. "I'd love to tell you this is only a joke, since it seems to mean so much to you, but I honestly can't. I'm strapped by the facts, if you see what I mean."

Fleetwood's tone seemed to soothe Dermitt a trifle, for he returned to his chair and fell limply into it. For a space, he sat staring down at the carpet in a markedly haunted way, his hands twitching in his lap. Finally he looked up.

"I don't believe you," he murmured, and if he had anything more to say he was obviously quite beyond saying it for the moment. There was a prolonged silence in which Fleetwood became restive. He cleared his throat. Dermitt jumped.

"Look," Fleetwood said, seeing that any further negotiations were entirely up to him, "we've got to settle this business one way or the other. I want to get out of this fiction racket. In fact, I must. That's why I came here. But, obviously, if I'm going to quit successfully you're going to have to extend a certain amount of cooperation. At least you're going to have to stop using me in your stories. Along those lines I can't see any possibility of an agreeable settlement until you are convinced beyond any doubt that I am actually me. I suppose I'm going to have to prove it to you."

Dermitt rallied a bit at this. "And you'll never do that," he said, "not to my satisfaction. I just won't believe it. I refuse."

"You'll see." Fleetwood paused for reflection. "Now, then, in that last scene you have me diving into a black abyss. That was the last bit of it, wasn't it?"

" ... the floor opened into a black abyss in front of him," Dermitt quoted, "and he dived in headfirst."

"But you must have some idea. Suppose you go over there to your desk and write it out right now—just as an experiment?"

"Just try it and see what happens. I'd rather like to know myself as a matter of fact."

Keeping his eyes on Fleetwood, Dermitt got up slowly and crossed to the desk in the alcove. "You're mad," he said uncertainly. "You're out of your mind."

"No," Fleetwood said with a wry smile. "I'm out of your mind. Besides, you dwell too much on insanity. That's morbid in a fellow your age." Dermitt said something under his breath, but Fleetwood didn't hear it. "Now just sit down and write the next line as it comes to you. And watch me, too, while you do it. I think we may both learn something interesting."

Dermitt sighed deeply and seated himself before the typewriter. "Oh, well," he sighed, "what have I got to lose now?" His face however held the expression of a man who was on the verge of losing everything; he was whistling in the dark. He turned to the typewriter and pressed a trembling hand to his left temple.

"The way I'm feeling," Dermitt muttered, "I'll be lucky to do that much." He lowered his uncertain fingers to the keys and began to type:

Through the cushiony darkness that engulfed him, a voice called out to Fleetwood with metallic shrillness ... (At the very first tap of the keys, Fleetwood felt himself falling into black unconsciousness. He smiled with satisfaction and let it happen.) ... like a silver cord plucked by a skeletal hand.

Fleetwood awoke slowly as the keys stopped tapping and the room grew still. He was still seated in the chair. He stretched himself and glanced across at Dermitt, whose eyes were now even larger than his glasses. The little man, lost in sputtering inarticulation, merely pointed at Fleetwood.

"You ... you ... you!" he managed finally. "You faded! Right in front of my eyes, you vanished!" He quivered emotionally. "Oh, my God!" He boosted himself unsteadily away from the desk and out of the chair. He came tottering across the room toward Fleetwood. "Wha ... what happened?"

Fleetwood shrugged. "It's perfectly plain, isn't it? You transferred me to paper."

Dermitt moved back to the chair and executed another collapse. It is not likely that the stock crash of '29 could have produced a more vivid picture of the Ruined Man. His arms hung slack at his sides.

"No wonder the story's been going so badly lately," he groaned. "No wonder you haven't been consistent in print." He looked up slowly. "What are you going to do?"

"Nothing special," Fleetwood said. "Live a little, I suppose. I haven't made any definite plans yet. Maybe I'll just do something quiet, like raising flowers."

Fleetwood nodded. "But I'd really prefer it if you wouldn't look at it just that way."

"But you can't, Cassidy, you just can't. Not just now anyway. I need you. I've got to finish that story. I've got to have the money from it. I'm up to my ears in bills and obligations. I can show you if you don't believe me.... My—our last one, The Kippered Caper, is going awfully well on reactions and they've already promised me a better price on this one...."

"But you can't!" Suddenly he stopped, and a look of inspired shrewdness came into his cherubic features. Magnified by his enormous glasses, the new light in his eyes was hard to miss. Fleetwood didn't like the look of it.

"I won't let you," Dermitt went on in a much calmer tone. "I'll put you on paper, and you'll have to stay there until I'm done with you. You can't dictate to me. I'll write night and day. I'll take pills to keep me awake, and...."

"I was afraid you might take this tack," Fleetwood said. "But it won't work. As you've said yourself, you've been having all sorts of trouble with me lately. That means I've developed a will of my own, even on paper. If you shove me back into that story you're going to have more trouble than you ever dreamed of. You'll never get the story finished. I meant it sincerely when I said I bear you no ill will, but you've got to remember I'm here to fight for my life."

"I see," Dermitt said, deflated. He leaned back, then sharply forward again. "Look, Cassidy, why can't we just make a friendly deal over this thing? There isn't much left to do on this yarn, hardly anything at all really. It's just a matter of finishing up. Why don't you stick it out with me until I'm finished? I'll never write about you again, I swear. I'll develop a whole new character." He looked to Fleetwood hopefully. "I'll pay you a regular salary, too, so much an hour—retroactive."

Fleetwood shook his head. "Huh-uh. I'm tired, Dermitt. If I have to mix it up with any more gunmen or double-dealing dames I'll have a nervous breakdown. I'm not kidding." His gaze moved to the window and the glittering vista stretching out into the eternal distance of the night. "Besides, I've met a girl...."

"A girl?" Dermitt said, incredulous. "How could you meet a girl? When did you have the chance?"

"My God, you work fast, don't you? You didn't do anything unprintable, did you?"

"Of course not," Fleetwood said with sudden primness. "Besides, it's none of your business what I do outside of working hours."

Nonetheless, Dermitt pursued the subject further. "What's she like?" he asked. "Limpid eyes, full of subtle invitation? Green flecked with gold?"

"I should say not," Fleetwood said, shuddering at the thought. "Kitty's eyes, as nearly as I can remember, are more mud colored. Flecked with sand, if they must be flecked with anything. They're astonishing."

"Huh?" Dermitt said, taken aback. "But I'll bet her mouth is something to wire home about, eh? Petulant and full? Soft and warm?"

Fleetwood shook his head. "Narrow as a string," he said reminiscently. "Hard and cool. Kitty is no ordinary girl, you understand."

"Are you sure she's any kind of girl at all?" Dermitt asked hesitantly. "What about her nose? She has a nose, hasn't she?"

"Of course," Fleetwood said. "Two openings at the end for air, of course. It's just a nose, I suppose, but she's got one all right."

"She got that too," Fleetwood affirmed. "Lusterless, it is, and sort of brownish. I've never seen anyone like her. She's absolutely tremendous."

"Fat, too, huh?" Dermitt murmured, "on top of everything else." He shook his head regretfully.

"Oh, no," Fleetwood put in. "You misunderstand. Her figure, I should say, could be described as definitely so-so."

"Holy smoke!" Dermitt cried. "So that's the kind of dame you pick out—you, Fleetwood Cassidy, who, thanks to me, has been in constant and close contact with some of the most fascinating females in fiction!"

"Oh, those tomatoes." Fleetwood sighed a jaded sigh. "I'm tired of all those sexy dames. They get so ordinary after a while. When you've seen one of them you've seen them all."

"Ordinary!" Dermitt said, outraged. "All of my women are unique artistic creations! And you're darned lucky to have been in the same stories with them. At least they...." He controlled himself with an effort and forced a smile. "But getting back to this—this Kitty of yours, what I had in mind was that maybe I could work her into the story too. God only knows how I'd do it, but what if I did? Then would you be willing to finish it out?"

Fleetwood sat up sharply. "No!" He fairly yelled it. "Emphatically no! You leave Kitty out of this. If you so much as put her name on paper I'll...."

Dermitt smiled with a certain formidable satisfaction. "You'll what?" he asked quietly. "I've been thinking how logical it is, that if I have the power to transform a fictional person into a live being, then I must also be able to reverse the process and make a live character into a fictional one."

"I might. And suppose I did? Suppose I transcribed Kitty to paper? I might even change her a little while I'm doing it. Then you'd just about have to go back into the story, wouldn't you, if you ever wanted to see her again?"

Dermitt lifted his gaze noncommitally to the ceiling. "She might make an interesting character at that," he mused, "if I used her to the proper advantage." He yawned. "For laughs, that is, and contrast."

"That depends," Dermitt shrugged. "If everything goes smoothly, if I can depend on the full cooperation of my characters, it shouldn't take more than a day. Two days at the outside."

"No more than usual. Maybe a kick or two in the groin. A flesh wound, naturally."

Fleetwood winced. "Is it absolutely necessary? Do I always have to get myself shot in the last chapter?"

"Obviously your readers are from an extremely low level of civilized society. I'm surprised that a bunch of savage, sadistic-minded brutes like that know how to read."

"It's no good resorting to insults," Dermitt said mildly. "In fact, you had better mind your manners or this Kitty of yours is going to get the surprise of her pallid little life."

For a long moment Fleetwood was silent, weighing the alternatives. "Okay," he said finally, giving in to the inevitable. "Okay, you win. All I ask is that you get it over with as soon as possible."

"Fair enough," Dermitt said with satisfaction. "And I'm prepared to be reasonable about the thing, Cassidy. In fact I'm willing to go to work right now, if you like. All I ask, though, is that you subdue those cowardly impulses of yours until I'm finished." He got up, crossed to the desk and sat down before the typewriter.

Watching with apprehension, Fleetwood stirred nervously and started to speak, but Dermitt motioned him to be quiet. The little man flexed his fingers, adjusted his monstrous glasses and regarded Fleetwood thoughtfully. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them with a nod of decision. He began to type.

A shudder of weakness passed through Fleetwood's long frame, and he tried to cry out, but suddenly his voice was only an echo of the clattering keys....

Fleetwood stirred, and consciousness seeped into his mind like a cold, grey fog.

A voice called to him with quiet urgency. He looked up and saw Evelyn's face blur into focus close above his own. Her arm was about his shoulders and she was pulling him toward her.

It was a moment before she spoke, as though she needed time to make up her mind. "He's getting the car," she said. "He'll be back in a moment to take you with him. You've got to get out of here. I want you to."

Fleetwood glanced down at the gun beside her on the floor. "You're going to save me at gunpoint, huh?" he asked.

"He made me take it." She picked it up and held it out to him. "Here, you can have it if you want." She pressed it into his hand.

"How'd you get into all this?" he asked, sitting up. "You make a lousy gun moll. I'll bet you can't even smoke a cigar."

Her smile was bitter. "I needed money," she said. "Gambling debts, that sort of thing. It wouldn't be a new story, not to you. All I had were my jewels, and I didn't really have those; Blanchard took them for security. I had to get them from him. At first I figured I could get them easily enough, if I gave Blanchard the right story. I had it all worked out, and Blanchard always had a yen for me. Anyway, I was going to have Mario sell them for me on the quiet, then I was going to pay Blanchard off and keep the rest for myself. I didn't want Blanchard to know I was all the way down to the bottom. Pride, I guess."

She nodded. "It was his idea to fake the robbery so we could collect the insurance money too. I think I agreed just to get out of facing Blanchard with a lie." She laughed harshly. "That's very funny, isn't it? Anyway, Mario was going to dispose of the jewels through a fence. All he wanted for his services, he said, was fifty percent of the final sale."

And even as he said it the thought flickered in the back of his mind that he was wasting an awful lot of valuable time jawing with this dame when he should be getting the hell out of there. He controlled the impulse. He thought of Kitty.

"Yes," Evelyn sighed. "Really he wanted everything. Me, too. But that doesn't matter any longer. You've got to get out of here." She got up and helped him to his feet. "You'll have to hurry."

He flipped the gun; it was as empty as a chorus girl's head. He looked up at Evelyn.

He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around before she could get away from him. "There's nothing for winning like using a cold deck, is there, honey?" he snapped. He gave the arm a twist and her face registered pain. "Where is it? Where's the ammunition?"

He pulled the arm up behind her and leaned down on it. The cords in her neck came out like harp strings. "Where'd you put it?"

He let her go and went to the cabinet. She hadn't lied. The slugs rolled forward as he pulled out the drawer. He scooped them up and fitted them into the gun. When he turned around she was still rubbing her arm, staring at him with frightened eyes.

"I'm not going to sneak out of here and let your boy friend shoot me down with this rod planted on me. Just how much would you be willing to bet this is the murder weapon the cops are looking for?"

"I'm going to trade with Mario when he gets tired waiting out there and comes back inside. Guns or bullet, baby, there's going to be a swap."

"No!" she cried. "No, Cassidy. No more killing." She moved close to him, swiftly, imploringly. "Mario's coming back for you. That's the truth. You must believe me, you have a chance to get out of here with your life. Take it while you still have it. That's all that matters now. You're right about the gun; it's the one. I knew you'd find out sooner or later. That's why I wanted you to have it, to put an end to all this rottenness. Take it or leave it, it doesn't really matter so much, only get out of here before Mario gets back."

"Who're you really worried about?" Fleetwood asked. "Mario or me? Or do you know yourself?"

"Why should it matter so long as you stay alive? If you don't go you'll only be engraving your own tombstone. Mario won't give you a chance. He's probably got you spotted from outside right now."

In all justice, Fleetwood's reaction to these words came quite by reflex. It was simply that his newly-awakened sense of survival had responded to the lady's admirable logic in the same quick manner of a coiled spring answering the touch of release. His reply leaped from his lips before he had time to properly weigh and consider.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth, however, than he realized what he had done; the lady, Evelyn, stood before him an unreal, life-sized paper doll. Fleetwood permitted himself a cough of chagrin.

"Oops," he said mildly, then went on to qualify, addressing himself to the ceiling in the same way a simpler soul might direct a conversation to the heavens. "I'm sorry, Dermitt, but after all, you did have to go and build up all that sticky suspense. And I warned you, you know, that my nerves aren't reliable."

He waited a space, not knowing quite what to expect. The silence grew and thickened. The room faded as before into hazy obscurity.

"Well," Fleetwood shrugged. "We tried, but I guess it's just no good, old man." He started toward the fuzzily outlined doorway. "No hard feelings, I hope."

Then suddenly he stopped as the room jolted back into sharp focus and the door opposite the one toward which he was moving swung open to permit the entrance of a girl in maid's regalia. She was a singularly undistinguished young woman both in face and figure. Her hair was sand-colored and her complexion was dull. Fleetwood started feverishly.

Kitty appeared neither to notice nor to hear. She addressed herself to the restored Evelyn.

Though there was much in Kitty's glance as she passed Fleetwood she gave no sign that she had heard him. Her eyes met his only with an expression of restrained disdain, much the sort that a sophisticated cat might bestow on a mechanical mouse which had snapped its spring. With a lift of her chin she left the room.

"Hey!" Fleetwood yelled. "Hey!" He addressed himself again to the ceiling. "Now, look here, Dermitt, you monster," he said, "you can't go doing this sort of thing. Besides, you're only ruining your own story; the dame already said the maid wasn't here tonight. You can't come running new characters into the thing now. It doesn't make sense!"

"I don't know why I keep that dismal child around," Evelyn said flintily, quite unmindful of any interruption. "For laughs, I suppose, or contrast. A bit of comic relief never hurt anyone."

Fleetwood ran to the doorway through which the aloof Kitty had disappeared and found himself in a hall. He caught a glimpse of her skirt as she passed from sight into a lighted room at the back of the house and took out in hot pursuit.

The room, when he got there, proved to be a kitchen, and Kitty was at the far end, busily transferring liquid by careful measure from a full bottle into an empty glass. Fleetwood approached her uncertainly. She finished her chores with the glass, then turned to him, apparently not at all surprised at seeing him there. She picked the glass up from the counter.

"A drink, sir?" she said, and forcibly and quite without warning flung the liquor into his face. "Get outa here and leave me alone, you flat-footed bum."

"Kitty!" Fleetwood bubbled through the cascading bourbon. "Kitty, don't talk like that!"

"Out!" Kitty snarled, cinching her faded eyebrows a notch closer together. "Beat it, Sherlock!"

"Kitty," Fleetwood pleaded, "you don't understand. This isn't real, none of it. You don't belong here at all. It's Dermitt who's doing this to you, making you act this way. He's just trying to get even with me for messing up his continuity. You don't really hate me, Kitty, you like me. Think, Kitty, think hard. You said so."

By this time Kitty had progressed to the cutlery drawer in a markedly purposeful manner and was in the act of withdrawing a carving knife, the blade of which gleamed in cold, brilliant concert with her angry eyes.

"Sorry you have to leave so abruptly, Mr. Cassidy," she said with lethal sweetness. "But we all have to go sometime, don't we?" She brandished the knife so that it cut the air with a menacing whoosh. "My kid brother had to, when you helped put him in the chair."

Fleetwood saw the point, but only momentarily, for he was already on his way back to the hall and safety. Taking cover behind the frame of the door he peered around its edge.

"I forgive you, Kitty," he said sadly. "I realize that this is none of your doing and I still hold the knowledge in my heart that you're really quite fond of me."

"I'll cut your heart out, if you don't fade outa here," Kitty gritted back at him. "Scat!"

Fleetwood scatted. But not in a mood of docile acquiescence. Fate had handled him quite nastily during the last several minutes and, therefore, deserved to be dealt with in kind. He addressed himself to Fate, using the surname.

"Dermitt," he said between clenched teeth, "now you've gone too far. Far, far too far. I told you to leave Kitty out of this. If you have trouble now you've only got yourself to blame. Remember that."

He retraced his steps through the hallway and back into the living room, where he seated himself solidly on the divan. Favoring Evelyn, who was still in evidence, with the most perfunctory of glances, he folded his arms adamantly across his chest and crossed his legs.

"I refuse to make another move," he announced haughtily, "until both Kitty and I are released from this preposterous narrative. And you may take that as an ultimatum. I don't care if we're all left dangling by our participles until we rot like grapes on a vine." And with that he settled into an attitude of stolid resistance, breaking the silence only once more for a terse sign-off. "Besides," he added, "your writing smells like a large dead fish."

Stillness overlayed the room like a dense and redolent mist. Evelyn, still vividly defined, remained fixed in position like a figure in a waxworks tableau. A moment passed. Then it happened.

The room jolted, with the swift shock of a train compartment yanked forward by a sudden start from the engine. But that was all, just a jolt with an immediate settling. Evelyn moved slightly, but Fleetwood contained his surprise in a slight lift of the eyebrows. He knew without question that this somehow heralded a counter action from Dermitt, but he couldn't guess what it might be. He tensed himself determinedly against whatever might follow. It followed swiftly enough.

Mario, his mouth drawn down in a grim line, stood in the doorway, gun in hand.

So that was Dermitt's maneuver, Fleetwood reflected complacently; he meant to push the action forward by sheer force of will.

He glanced around, pleased to note that both the gun and Mario's murderous gaze were directed toward the place which he had deserted when he'd left the room to follow Kitty.

"Move, Cassidy," Mario grunted. "Get goin' before you turn out to be a mess on the lady's rug."

"Hah!" Fleetwood snorted unconcernedly. "Go on and shoot a hole in the wall, you big imaginary fathead. See if I care."

But even as he said it, the sensation came over him; it was the qualm in reverse, a subtle drain on his reserve of resistance. Dermitt retained more of a hold over him than he had believed. The terror of this sudden realization compelled his attention to such a degree that it was a moment before he realized that he had actually risen from the divan and was moving toward the spot that would place him directly in range of Mario's gun. With an almost superhuman effort he forced himself to stop.

"No," he panted. "No, Dermitt, you can't make me do it. I won't." He dragged himself heavily back toward the divan, as though struggling against a powerful wind. But after only a few steps he slowed, then stopped altogether, unable to move even an inch further. His will was stalemated against Dermitt's.

Then, quite suddenly and most surprisingly, he felt himself released. He fell forward, caught himself against the arm of the divan and swung around into it. He leaned back panting and waiting. Dermitt hadn't given up, he was sure of that; he had simply switched methods.

"Drop that rod, sucker," Mario snarled. "It's empty." He laughed. "Boy, do you look silly, Cassidy. Drop it before I drop you."

Mario didn't even give her a glance on that one. "So's a fountain pen," he said. "Okay, Cassidy, this is the last time I'm tellin' you."

Fleetwood watched this interplay with careful interest. As silly as it seemed, possibly Dermitt meant to just go ahead with the thing without him. Then he knew better, as Kitty appeared from the hallway, crossed the room with somnambulistic precision and placed herself solidly in the projected line of fire. Fleetwood felt a new thrill of terror; Dermitt was using Kitty as a hostage. Either he would go ahead with the planned action and trade gunfire with Mario or Kitty was going to be killed.

He reached quickly into his pocket where he had put the gun. It wasn't there. Then he remembered that it naturally wouldn't be; he was out of the story and the weapon, being fictional, existed only in the story. The only way to return it to his possession was to enter into the action again. He cast off his moorings and leaped forward with a fleeting picture of Mario's finger closing in on the trigger.

The ensuing moments were characterized by a series of crashes which began in a quiet sort of way but rapidly mounted to a nerve-shredding climax. The first crash was really only a thud occasioned by a collision of bodies as Fleetwood threw himself against Kitty. The second instantly grew out of the first as Kitty toppled to the floor. The third was the natural result of Mario's finger pressing down on the trigger. The rest of it, the screams and random dialogue, was lost to Fleetwood as hot pain licked through his hands and up his arm.

"Just winged him." Mario growled. "He'll bleed a hell of a lot more than that before the night's out."

There was a clattering at Fleetwood's feet and he realized that he had let go of the gun without knowing it. He looked down at it. The blood dripping from the tips of his fingers was splashing against the barrel. That's what he got for letting a dame take his attention when he was on the spot. Business before pleasure, they always said. He'd have to remember that from now on—if he lived to remember anything.

The scream jarred Fleetwood out of the stream of events which included Mario and Evelyn. He looked around and almost shouted for joy. Sitting on the floor, Kitty was staring up at him, her eyes wide with wonder.

It was miraculous! Apparently the recent violence had snapped her back into the realm of reality; after all she was not originally a fictional creation like the others. Smiling down at her, Fleetwood realized that the pain had gone from his hand, the wound had vanished; he too had escaped Dermitt's world of fiction through Kitty's awareness. The action had been broken just enough. He looked about. The room had begun to fade, Mario and Evelyn were slipping out of dimension. Together, they could make it; two wills were stronger than one.

"Hurry!" Fleetwood said, helping her up. "We've got to get out of here while we've got the chance."

"Never mind them," Fleetwood said. "Just hurry." He bustled her along toward the doorway, around the frozen figure of Mario and out into the entry.

Reaching the outer door Fleetwood grasped the knob and threw it open. Then he stopped, so abruptly that Kitty collided against him. Before them, blocking the way, stood a small, hammered-down looking man in enormous black-rimmed glasses. He was holding a gun in his hand which he advanced to Fleetwood's chest.

"You can't do this, you two-bit hack," Fleetwood said. "You can't be in this story too."

"It's my story, isn't it?" Dermitt said nastily. "I can be in it if I want to. I wrote myself in just to be on hand to keep an eye on you."

"It's anybody's story by the looks of it," Fleetwood said. "And you're just another inconsistent character. Of course you've already made such a hash of the thing I don't suppose it really matters."

"I'm Mario's henchman," Dermitt said firmly. "My name is Lester, and I'm here to help him handle you. And believe me, Cassidy, I'm already so sick of your interference I don't care much what happens to you. Now get back in there and do what I tell you."

A curious intensity emanating from behind the eccentric spectacles caused Fleetwood to give ground. He turned to Kitty to warn her to stay behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words shriveled on his tongue as she met his gaze darkly, with a look of extreme loathing, then turned on her heel and marched back into the living room. Fleetwood whirled back to Dermitt.

"It's no use," Dermitt said smoothly, "she's back in character. And you'll follow her lead if you know what's good for you—and her."

Fleetwood turned and followed Kitty back into the center of the room, toward the divan.

"Havin' a little trouble?" Dermitt said from the corner of his mouth. "I heard a shot."

"Boy, are you corny," Fleetwood said spitefully. "You're all this stinker needed." Dermitt swiveled his gun in his direction.

"He got a rod from the lady," Mario smiled. "I had to slap his wrist with a bullet to get him to let go."

"He won't act up any more," Dermitt said. "If he does he'll be a dead character."

Across the room Fleetwood swung around in a paroxysm of pain and grabbed his wrist. Blood began to drip again from the ends of his fingers. At his feet lay the gun, just as before. He had slipped back again into Dermitt's pattern of action. The writer had tricked him with the sudden pain.

"How about it, Cassidy?" Mario said. "You comin' outa here on your feet or by your heels? It doesn't matter a damn to me, you know."

Fleetwood started forward, but the struggle within his mind, the straining effort to focus his mind in the direction of reality, did not cease. The pain throbbing in his hand, however, interfered badly. He bit his lip hard to provide a counter irritant. He stopped; the pain disappeared.

"Now, dammit, Dermitt!" he said with final exasperation, "that doesn't even hold water, and you know it. Why would any guy in his right mind just shrug his shoulders and take off with a couple of murderous rats as calmly as though he were on his way to the garden to pick lilacs? Any guy would give himself a last chance and make a break for it. How in the devil can you expect your readers to swallow swill like that? I wouldn't even...."

There was something in Dermitt's round face—a dangerous angry red—that warned him to stop. The little man was on the verge—perhaps beyond.

"So!" Dermitt exploded with a high scream. "You've not only ruined my story, now you're going to give me a lecture on writing! That does it absolutely, Cassidy, that's the end! I created you and, by God, I can destroy you too!"

As he spoke, he made fumbling preparations with his gun. "You'll never get out of this yarn alive! You'll die on paper just where you were born!" The glitter in his eyes, amplified by the glasses, was unmistakably that of a man who had snapped his bolt.

Evelyn turned in response to this incongruity and smiled warmly. Then she went limp against the back of the divan. "Eeeeeeeee!" she screamed with shrill hysteria.

"Gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat." Mario began to chant, rolling his eyes insanely.

"Gotta gat," Mario said, grinning crookedly. He stepped back two paces with jerky rapidity and pointed his gun at the ceiling. "Gotcha covered, shamus."

These stunning proceedings, occurring as they did in overlapping rapidity, had a startling effect, even on Dermitt. He looked up from his gun distractedly.

"Did you ring, madam?" Kitty said, persisting with the same old refrain. "Ring-a-ling-a-ling, madam?"

Mario fired three shots into the ceiling in rapid succession. "Gotcha," he tittered. "Gotcha with my gat, yuh rat, yuh."

"Bless yuh," Evelyn said and moved away from the divan with a lighthearted pirouette that delivered her to the center of the room directly between Fleetwood and Dermitt.

"Oh, my God!" Dermitt wailed. It was plain that the little man was no less stunned than Fleetwood at these outcroppings of his own madness. Fact and fancy had gotten so snarled together that the result was roaring insanity. He shook his head as though to clear it.

"Why don't you shoot me, Mario?" Evelyn said, running her hand wildly through her hair. "Kill me, too, and be done with it. God knows it wouldn't be any great loss to the world after what I've done." She turned to Fleetwood in a convulsive movement. "Go, Cassidy, make a run for it. I'll shield you until he kills me. You can use my body to protect yourself. Only promise you'll kill him—after he kills me. That's all I want now, just to die and know that he's going to die too." She smiled crookedly. "And when you check up on that gun you'll find out it's registered in my name. That's right, I killed Blanchard. I went to him to ask him for the jewels and he wouldn't let me have them. We got into a fight over them. It was an accident, I suppose. I don't really know how it happened—I just did it. I lost my head and ran and I had to send Mario back to get the jewels for me. He was the only man I knew filthy enough for that kind of job. And I was frightened half to death...." Her voice trailed off slowly. She sank to the floor like a discarded scrap of tissue paper.

It was only then that Fleetwood noticed that Dermitt had renewed his intentions with the gun. With frenzied eyes he was sighting down the barrel. Fleetwood tried to control the churning sensation in his head. The distinction between reality and imagination was lost to him too. Where, he wondered frantically, did one begin and the other end?

"Ring-a-ling-a-ling, madam?" Kitty snickered, presenting herself in front of Fleetwood.

She looked around at him. "Oh, Fleetwood!" she smiled. "I like you so much." Then with a sudden frown, as though remembering something unpleasant, she dealt him a stinging blow across the mouth and moved rapidly away.

Fleetwood threw himself to the floor in conjunction with the explosion of the gun. It was close timing. The bullet thunked into the wall behind him. Whether it was by accident or some unconscious planning in his mind, his hand slapped down over the grip of the gun on the floor. All in one movement, he grasped the gun, rolled over and fired blind in Dermitt's direction. There was a scream of pain, a beat of silence, then a dull thud. Fleetwood jumped to his feet, holding the gun ready.

Across the room, huddled on the floor, Dermitt sat in a spattering of his own blood, clutching his stomach. Fleetwood ran to him.

"I'm hit in the stomach," Dermitt groaned. "You've got to help me, Cassidy, you've got to!"

"Let me help you up," Fleetwood said, slipping his hands quickly under Dermitt's arms. "I'll carry you."

"Oh, Lord!" Dermitt wailed. "Let me think, let me think!" His face contorted as a spasm passed through his body. Then he relaxed again and opened his eyes. "You get out," he said. "That's it. Get to the typewriter as fast as you can ... rewrite this ... mark out the part where you shoot me ... make it a miss ... or a flesh wound.... It's the only way. But hurry, for Godsake!"

"No," Dermitt put in quickly. "Write her out, too, when you get there. It'll be faster. Hurry, Cassidy, hurry! I can't stand too much more of this."

"All right." Fleetwood said. He whirled about and ran for the door. He turned back once, just before leaving, to look at Kitty, but the room was already in a state of half-dissolve and she was only a dim, grey figure in the distance. He hurried outside.

As he ran forward into the swirling blackness ahead, the house quickly evaporated behind him....

He didn't know how he had gotten back to Dermitt's Towers apartment. It seemed that he had been there all along. He was sitting in the same chair, as though he'd merely dozed there for a time. He shook his head to clear it. Then he remembered.

He turned and saw Dermitt slumped over his typewriter, his hands clutched to his abdomen. Fleetwood frowned. So that was the way of it; the writer had managed to project himself into two separate dimensions simultaneously, a dangerous undertaking even for a sane man. Fleetwood shoved himself out of the chair and hurried to the alcove.

As he approached, Dermitt stirred weakly and opened his eyes and twisted them in his direction. There was no blood, no wound—no visible, physical wound—but still Dermitt was dying.

"Hurry!" he whispered. "I ... I blacked out. I guess I went a little crazy for a while. Please save me."

Fleetwood took him under the arms, and, ignoring his moans of pain, half-dragged, half-carried him to the nearest chair. He eased him into the chair and turned back. Then he stopped and looked around at the little man again. He sucked in his breath with a start of surprise.

Dermitt was losing substance! He was actually fading away into a shadow of himself. The dying fictional projection was carrying away the physical one. The wound was too vital, too real to the writer for him to draw resistance from the fact of its fictional source. There wasn't much time.

Fleetwood pulled himself away from the spectacle of the fading bug-eyed little author who had forced him through volumes of abuse and harassment, who had actually attempted to murder Kitty and himself. He ran to the typewriter.

He sat down and poised his hands over the keys. Then, with one last intense glance in Dermitt's direction, he began to type....

The drug store sparkled from its cleaning of the night before. Morning sunshine, showing through the plate-glass windows, conspired with the indirect lighting to make the displays, the jars, the bottles, the paper clips and snake bite kits gleam like a rajah's ransom. Fleetwood perched himself on the stool at the end of the counter and leaned forward in an attitude of expectation. Presently he was rewarded.

"Fleetwood!" Kitty called, catching sight of him. She came swiftly to dock at the napkin holder in front of him. "I was hoping you'd show up today. I had the goofiest dream about you last night."

"I'll bet," Fleetwood said with a sigh of happy relief. Explanations weren't going to be necessary after all.

"I'd tell you about it," Kitty went on, "but every time I try to get it straight in my head everything just gets all mixed up. I was mad at you, I remember, but at the same time I didn't really want to be."

"That's good," Fleetwood said, "that you didn't want to be, I mean. Otherwise, you might have got up with a chip on your shoulder and you wouldn't go out to dinner with me tonight."

"Oh, I'll go, all right," Kitty said. "I'll be ready from seven thirty on, any time you're ready. Gosh!" Her smile faded a bit. "You look awfully tired, though...."

"All night, you mean?" Kitty asked. "But that reminds me, what do you do anyway? I should have asked you yesterday, I guess."

Fleetwood hesitated. Then, with a deep breath, he took the plunge. "I write," he told her. "Stories."

"Oh, mysteries," Fleetwood said with extreme offhandedness. "About a private detective, a little hammered-down looking guy with big glasses who always gets into a lot of trouble. He gets kicked around and stepped on and shot up until the last chapter when he catches the murderer and they haul him off to the hospital. It's pretty rugged stuff."

A small, private smile touched Fleetwood's lips. "Don't," he said. "After all, he's only a fictional character."

Then, with apparent irrelevance, his glance moved away and took in the gleaming brightness of the morning, the store, the busy world outside. Finally he looked back at Kitty and grinned.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Double Identity

DOUBLE IDENTITY

By Charles F. Myers

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE