boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Review Copy 425
Review Copy
The only light in the room was the flame burning inside the pentacle.
The man who kept his face in the shadows said, “But why do you want to
kill him?”
The customer said, “What’s that to you?”
“Let us put it this way,” the man said persuasively. “In order to establish the psychic
rapport necessary for the success of our … experiment, I need a full knowledge
of all the emotional factors involved. Only complete knowing can compel the Ab.”
He hoped it sounded plausible
The customer said, “Once he gave me a mortal wound. I need to kill him
too.”
“And why this method? Why not something more direct?”
“I can’t cross the continent. I can’t leave New York. As soon I cross the river—I
don’t know, it’s like breath going out of me …”
Compulsion neurosis, the man thought; form of agoraphobia. “But men
have been murdered by mail?” he suggested.
“Not this one. He’s too smart. He writes mystery novels; you don’t think
he’ll open unexpected parcels, eat chocolates from strangers—why is it always
chocolates?—he’s too smart, the devil.”
“But surely it should be possible to—”
The customer sprang to his feet and his shadow wove wildly in the light
from the pentacle. “I’m paying you; isn’t that enough? A body’d think you’re
trying to talk me out of it.”
“Nonsense,” said the man in the shadows. Though it was true. He knew that
he had powers and that he could make good money from their use. But he knew
too how unpredictable they were, and he always experienced this momentary desire
to talk the customer out of it. “But if you’d tell me your reason … ?” There was
method to that insistence too. When sometimes things failed and the customer
turned nasty, a bit of private knowledge could often keep him from demanding
his money back.
The customer settled down again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” The light
from the pentacle shone on his bared teeth and glistered off the drop of saliva at
the corner of his mouth. “He reviewed my book. It was a clever review, a devilish
review. It was so damnably wittily phrased that it became famous. Bennett Cerf and
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