Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Subconsciousness -- Fiction
The swarthy man closed the door to the storeroom, locked it, and
shaking his head, moved purposefully down the hallway to a door
at the front of the warehouse. He stopped and knocked, and as an
unintelligible grunt issued from inside, he opened the door and entered.
"I got 'em," he announced.
Across the room a portly gentleman with a white mane and great shaggy
black eyebrows looked up from a sheaf of papers on the desk before him.
"Them?" he said. "I told you just to pick up Pillsworth and finish him
off."
The swarthy man glanced away, embarrassed. "I couldn't finish him off,
congressman. He wasn't even started. I went to the hospital, like you
told me, to make sure about Pillsworth--and I was going along the hall
lookin' for this place where they cut 'em up--and all of a sudden there
was a racket like a lot of people runnin' around and yellin', so I
ducked into this closet to keep under cover. Well, I was only in there
a little bit when all of a sudden somebody yanks the door open and this
guy and this dame come shaggin' in with hardly any clothes on. So I
kept quiet and listened."
"I'm not interested in the sordid doings behind the scenes at the
hospital," Congressman Entwerp interrupted. "Stick to the pertinent
facts."
"Oh, no, it wasn't nothin' like that. I just listened and pretty soon
it come up in what they were sayin' that this guy with the dame is none
other than Pillsworth himself. And believe me, congressman, I can't
explain it, but there ain't a thing wrong with him--physically."
"Physically?" the congressman asked. "What do you mean?"
"The guy's mentally a mess," the thug said. "So's this dame with him.
She's a terrific lookin' little job, but crazy as a coot. It's a dirty
shame."
"How do you know they're crazy?"
"Just ask Hank. He drove the car. All the way over from the hospital
they kept talkin' to this guy who wasn't there, and bawlin' him out for
followin' them everyplace. They called him George, and they carried on
a regular conversation with him. It was weird, leave me tell you. But
one thing, this guy George, whoever he is, is lucky he doesn't exist;
the way that little dame kept tellin' him what she was going to do to
him if he didn't show himself and help them out of this jam was enough
to curl your hair. Pillsworth was all the time tellin' this imaginary
character what a ghoul he was to be hangin' around just to see him get
killed. They're both nuts, boss, an' no lie!"
"Maybe it was just an act," Congressman Entwerp suggested skeptically.
"I don't think so. You'd really have to feel mean to say some of the
stuff those two was dishin' out to this George." The thug paused
and withdrew Toffee's thought gadget from his pocket. "Look what I
lifted off the dame in the closet." He placed it on the desk before
the congressman. "She's plenty hot to get it back. You'd think it was
somethin' worth somethin'."
"What is it?"
"I don't know. Some sort of two-way flashlight, I guess. Just a piece
of junk."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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