“That sort of man isn’t going to do Harry any good,” Bill said.
“I mentioned that to him once, but he became quite angry and said that any man who was a friend was worth having around,” Lynn said. “Harry doesn’t have many friends, not people who really like him, anyway. Everyone respects him and his abilities, but there aren’t many who are truly close to him.”
Later that night, quite late, Bill was sitting in his room, unable to fall asleep. His thoughts were concerned with Harry Lawrence. He was thinking about Korea. What kind of man had Harry really been then? Harry had been strange, cold, aloof; a friend only because the accident of circumstances had thrown them together. He realized now that he hardly knew the man. He felt that he should not have come. He did not like Harry Lawrence, nor did he like what the man was doing. Bill felt himself feeling increasingly resentful.
A knock at the door interrupted his reverie. He answered the knock and Harry came in. There was a certain brusqueness to the man, the same old aloofness, as if he had come here on distasteful business rather than to have a reunion with an old friend.
“I guess you’ve found out what I’m doing,” Harry said abruptly, unceremoniously.
“I was at the rally tonight,” Bill said. “You limped quite impressively.”
“I thought you would think something like that. I knew the moment you walked into the office this morning you were bringing trouble.”
“I’m not bringing any trouble, Harry.”
“Then you’re leaving town?”
“When I’m ready.”
“And when will that be?”
“I told you — when I’m ready. I don’t know when that might be. Your campaign interests me.”
“Don’t start anything, old friend,” Harry said, intoning the last two words with obvious sarcasm.
“I wasn’t planning to, but seeing you, hearing you, thinking about what you’re doing, it’s given me a damned sick feeling and maybe the only remedy is a good dose of truth,” Bill said.
“You’re giving me a damned sick feeling myself and maybe the remedy is not truth.”
“Am I to take that as a threat?”
“Take it any way you choose,” Harry said. “But I don’t intend letting any ghosts from the past come in now and upset what I’m doing. I hope you’re listening with both ears, Billy boy. You never were overly bright, but I hope you’ve gotten smarter with the years. Don’t involve yourself in something that’s out of your league.” Harry headed for the door. He paused to say, “There’s an eight o’clock train tomorrow morning. Do us all a favor and be on it.” And he left.
For the next hour Bill paced his room, chain smoking cigarettes, restive and resentful. Slowly an anger built in him. What had been quiet resentment before now flared into anger. He had been threatened. He did not like that. It was ugly. It made Harry and what he was doing the uglier, the more reprehensible. Harry was not merely a charlatan and an opportunist, he was something worse. He was a dangerous, scheming man. The recent scene in this room convinced Bill of that, convinced him that he had to do something about it.
He put on his jacket and left the hotel. An idea had come into his mind, vaguely at first, but the more he dwelled upon it the more it seemed to be the right thing to do. He did not ask himself why it was the right thing, nor why he was doing it. He simply accepted it. He had made a judgment and now he was going to act upon it. Right and wrong seemed clearly defined in this case and, like a man following an instinct, Bill hurried along the deserted late night streets toward the newspaper office — the other one, the one supporting Harry’s rival — when a car pulled up to the curb next to him. Harry was at the wheel.
“Get in,” Harry said.
“Why?” Bill asked suspiciously.
“I want to talk to you.”
Suppressing his suspicions, Bill got into the car. Not until he had closed the door, and was sitting next to Harry in the front seat did Bill notice the man, Fancy, sitting like a statue in the shadows of the backseat.
“Where were you going, Bill?” Harry asked as the car pulled away.
“Frankly?” Bill asked candidly.
“Of course,” Harry said. “You’re talking to an old friend.” There was a faint, almost mysterious smile on his lips.
“I was going to tell about you,” Bill said. He was too vehemently filled with indignation toward Harry, and with the righteousness of his decision, to lie about anything now, even though he felt it unwise of him to have made this admission.
“I’d rather hoped you wouldn’t, though I was afraid you might,” Harry said.
They seemed to be driving away from town. The passing houses were becoming less and less frequent. The car’s headlights were cutting a wide path down the lonely highway.
“Where are we going?” Bill asked.
“Out of Phillipsburg,” Harry said. “We don’t want you in this town.”
“You’ve decided that, have you?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “I’ve decided.”
Bill looked back over his shoulder at the mute, stolid figure in the back. Fancy stiffened at the movement and Bill sensed the man was poised and prepared to move against him. For the first time he had a genuine feeling of fear. He looked back at Harry.
“What is this all about?” he demanded.
Harry said nothing. They drove silently for another few miles, and then Harry turned off the highway and followed a dirt road into a dark, heavily wooded area. After a few minutes of bumpy going he stopped. He turned off the motor and ordered Bill to get out. Fancy slid like a cat from the back seat and was facing Bill when the latter got out of the car. The three of them walked around to the front of the car and stood in the glare of the headlights.
“So this is the way it’s to be,” Bill said, squinting through the fights at the two men who faced him like accusers.
“Yes,” Harry said. “You couldn’t mind your business. So it has to be this way.”
“And you’re going to go on, faking your way.”
“Perhaps,” Harry said. “But it’s no longer going to concern you.”
“You mean he’s just going to pull the trigger and that will end it?” Bill asked. “It’s going to be as simple as that?”
“Fancy knows how to take care of these things. He’s a very skillful man.”
Bill looked at the dapper little gunman who was watching him with steady unblinking eyes. A revolver had appeared in Fancy’s hand. Never had Bill seen a colder face, a more gross mouth, deader, more lightless eyes. There was no question that Fancy would, when Harry gave him the nod, pull the trigger of that gun; and somehow, too, Bill knew that Fancy would indeed know how to take care of the rest of it. The man looked born for assignments of this nature. Harry had chosen him well.
Bill was going to say, ‘But you’re running for a seat in the Congress of the United States, and here you are in the woods at night, about to commit murder.’ He would have said it, had he thought it would help. But it would not help. Harry was no more interested in ethics, or moral responsibilities, or serving his country now than he had been in duty or personal responsibility, or serving his country in Korea. Harry was simply and ruthlessly out for personal aggrandizement, and you did not mention the question of ethics.
“And what will you do about him, Harry?” Bill said nodding toward Fancy. “He’ll know something about you. Perhaps one day he’ll be tempted to talk too.”
“Fancy knows the value of silence,” Harry said.
“How much does he know about you now?”