It was my time she was using up, so I was only too glad to hurry over to her, see what I could do.
I groped clumsily through the slanting lines of the things that blurred my sight like rain. She was on one side of them, I on the other.
“Here, at my wrist,” she said. “Take hold and see if you can—”
Our four hands met in a sort of bowknot, with the things all messed around them. Instead of making it better, I seemed to be making it worse. Something stung the bade of my hand unexpectedly, seemed to hang on for a minute, like when you get a splinter in you, then slid out again. I couldn’t see what it was; there were three other hands and all those beaded drippings in the way, and all of them moving around in one place.
I pulled the one it had happened to out of the beaded tangle, blew on it. There was a tiny blue dot there, too small for blood to come through. “What was that?”
“I am so sorry,” she purred contritely. “A pin on my sleeve must have scratched you.”
But she was free again, I noticed, as mysteriously as she had become snagged. She dipped her knees to me once more, hurried off into the gloom with little midget steps.
I stood there a minute, idiotically looking at the back of my hand, then in the direction in which she’d vanished. Like the chump I was. Then I turned and went back to my futile tinkering with the roll-top desk.
I noticed a change coming over my efforts presently. There was something easier, less strenuous about them. First I thought that it was the roll-top that was resisting less. But it was still down fast, hadn’t gone up, so then I could see that it wasn’t that. It was my own arms that were using less energy, going at it easier, tricking me into thinking I was having less trouble with the job. I started to feel lazy. What am I doing this for; what’s the use? Before I knew it I’d come to a full stop; I was just standing there with my hands on it, but not doing a thing any more.
A little leftover spurt of energy came trickling out after the main reserve had been siphoned off, like a chaser, and I gave one last tug. Like a muscular hiccup. Then it evaporated and I quit and just stood there, inert.
I was starting to feel dizzy. I swayed a little, and instead of trying to open the desk now, I was just using it to help me stand up. It wasn’t very steady any more; it kept going over one way, and I’d go over the other; then it would come back my way, and I’d go over the other. We couldn’t get together.
I nearly lost my balance altogether, but I managed to hang onto it a moment longer by giving the desk a tight hug from a sprawling position over its top.
The beads split open with a catlike ejaculation, and four men came into the room, one behind the other.
So here they were, and here I was, and time was up.
The fat Tio Chin was foremost. Behind him there was a hard-bitten, skull-faced, birch-blond individual, about six feet tall, wearing a peaked cap somewhat similar to mine and a skimpy pea jacket that looked like it had shrunk in the rain: this time the real launch captain. He looked like a Scandinavian who has been buried three days and dug up again after decomposition has already set in. Behind these two there were a couple of anonymous plug-uglies: I suppose the hands they used to load and unload the stuff. They were whites, but under deep burns that made their faces look as though they’d been smoked and shriveled for a long time by equatorial head-hunters.
But the big change was in Chin himself. This was behind the scenes now, and the feeble-minded celestial act had been discarded, just as I’d suspected when I first saw the room itself. He wasn’t wearing his hands plaited together, and when he opened his mouth it was to shoot out better English than I used. The pigtail mustache had vanished, and so had most of the sleepiness and all of the benevolence. The only thing he still had the same was the fat stomach.
They ranged themselves around me, robot-like, matter-of-fact, deadly in their sluggishness. No dramatics, no violence; just sort of an amused superiority that even extended to the two stevedores. They weren’t going to be tough; they were going to be playful. They were going to have some sport with me. Cat-and-mouse stuff. With the mouse already very groggy and almost down for the count.
I blinked, and there were eight instead of four of them. Then I blinked again, and they condensed back to four again.
Tio Chin said, “Well! Well, well, well! A customer. What do you think of that, boys? A customer. And after closing hours, too!”
The aluminum-complexioned sea captain furled his lips back to show two white teeth and three black ones. Ten years before, when he did that, it had probably turned out to be a smile; it didn’t now any more. “And no von to vait on him, either. You should give better service than this, Chin. You lose money this vay.”
Chin said, “Well, we’ll take care of that right now.” He bowed in his best store-front manner. “Were you looking for something?” He rapped his palms. “A chair for the customer. Where are your manners?”
A chair seat bit suddenly into the rear hollows of my legs, and I folded down onto it. I sat there looking up at them dully. My eyelids felt like they were putting on weight, kept trying to close. I didn’t feel much like repartee. “All right,” I said. “All right. You’ve got me.”
The two seamen had lounged back against the wall, grinning, to watch their bosses. The captain sat down on one of the other chairs, facing me. He was too big to sit down like most people, just straight up and down; he took up some of the slack by folding one leg flat across the knee of the other. He was still trying to be coy, and with the kind of face he had, it was ghastly. I guess he didn’t get much relaxation; he seemed to be enjoying this. “Maybe he came here looking for somevon,” he chuckled. “Vy don’t you ask him who he’s looking for? I know who he’s looking for, I bat you. Show him. Go ahead, show him.”
Chin snickered. “Our policy is always to accommodate the customer. Never let him walk out dissatisfied.”
“Never let him walk out at all be batter.” The launch captain couldn’t even laugh right any more; it came out in sputters and burbles, like a leaky steam joint. I expected to see the front of his face blow off. It would have improved his looks, anyway. “Go ahead, show him vat he came to see,” he urged. “Don’t keep him vaiting.”
“You make me give away all my trade secrets, Paulsen.” Chin took out a key, opened the front of the clothespress. He pulled the two halves out and stood aside to give me a good look.
The hanging figure looked vaguely familiar, but I wouldn’t have been able to identify him for sure, the state they had him in now. “Peek-ture, for the señor and lady to show their friends?” came back to me. But it was just association of ideas more than anything else; you couldn’t tell who this was any more. He was all crisscrossed with rope, and they had him dangling by a sort of halter arrangement from under the arms to a hook on a stout rod that ran across the top of the clothespress.
He wasn’t dead yet; I could see his chest rising and falling even from where I was. He was either unconscious or else stunned with abuse. There were purplish discolorations under each eye, and his whole face was lumpy, as if he had the mumps, and his lips were split. I wondered for a minute how it was he hadn’t suffocated inside that thing, but then when I looked up I saw that the top was off; there was a wire mesh roofing it instead.
“Is that who you were looking for?” Chin chuckled.
“No,” I glowered. “I came here looking for the rat who Stuck a knife through my... my—” I couldn’t finish it.
Chin closed the wardrobe slabs, gestured emptily. “No sale.”
Paulsen smote his knee. “Oh, now I know! Vy didn’t you say so sooner? Look, I show you a picture of him. How you like to see a picture of him?”