*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79794 ***




The Stop at Nothing

by Mark Dane

[Pseudonym of Michael Avallone]




The wire was brief, urgent, postcardish.

    SAM POTTER

    CROWN HOTEL, PROVIDENCE, R. I.

      YOUR TIME IS UP stop
      TAKE TWELVE MIDNIGHT TRAIN stop
      TRACK NINE stop
      WILL MEET YOU AT NOTHING stop

                               CHARON

It was quite a gag. A rather elaborate one, too. Of course, it was
convention time and a whole army of tired representatives of the Allied
Meats Mftrs. had gathered in the friendly environs of Providence to
spread their annual havoc through the best hotels and night clubs.
Convention time usually meant all kinds of nonsense like squirt guns
and trick costumes, loaded cigars and aged business demons wolfing
after anything that even looked feminine and susceptible. It was also
the season of--fake telegrams.

“Hurry up. Come home, your house is on fire!”

It was just a new wrinkle on that old one. He idly wondered who could
have sent it. Carl? Max Barrett? That new kid, Wesley, who was after
his desk job in New York and had done a bad job of hiding it? He
shook his head sadly. Whoever it was should have known him better.
Sam Potter would never tumble to an oldie like that one. He’d been
the best salesman in the meat line for too many years. After all that
time on desk jobs, fighting for security and the comfortable rut, Sam
Potter was too old and wise a hand to be falling for fake telegrams of
emergency.

He crumpled the yellow square into a ball and shot it into one corner
of his hotel room with exaggerated scorn. That finished the matter so
far as he was concerned. Someone would be awfully disappointed that’s
all when he didn’t fly down to the station, bag and hastily-stuffed
baggage to puff onto a train. He laughed aloud. Where the blazes was
Nothing, anyway? It wasn’t a place like Denver or Chicago, was it?

But a frown ran tracks across his forehead.

Charon. The name that had been signed. It was clearly a mistake on the
joker’s part--someone who had heard his wife’s name and misspelled it.
A real practical joke is only effective when the name of someone you
know is used so that you are easily misled by the printed lie. That is
the real trap to the thing.

    COME HOME, I NEED YOU

                       KAREN

Now that, in spite of his experiences with convention humor, would have
stood a better chance of duping him. His wife was named Karen. Not
Charon--

It was hot and the walls of the hotel held the heat like some outsized
oven so he thought no more about it. He mixed himself a stiff one
from the array of bottles on his dinner table and drank it down with
one motion to get the most out of it. After that, he moved to the bed
where his tails and white tie were laid out as if on display. Quite
a shindig tonight. It was the last evening of the Convention, the
wrap-up, all-out, turn-out. Real gone but after twenty years of the
damned shoulder-rubbing affairs, he was ready for this one too. Oddly
enough, he did want to get home. The drink he had had was warming him
all over so that Karen’s face and devoted body were close to him. Damn!
he thought. Even after all this time, his wife still had some appeal
for him. He wanted her ... he had forgotten all about the telegram.

The elevator doors closed softly and the gradual descent of the cage
put Sam Potter in a ruminative mood. He leaned against the bright metal
sides of the thing and thought of Karen again. How she worried about
him.

Poor, sweet Karen. She wanted to come, to keep watch over him but
he talked her out of it on the time-worn grounds that she hated
conventions. After all, it was only for a few days at best, and her own
work at the Volunteer Relief Organization would demand her time and
effort. That was Karen. Sweet, charitable, kind.

His thoughts guided his fingers into his coat pocket for the letter he
had received from her on the second day of his stay in Providence. He
chuckled in satisfaction. She always worried about him.

As he fumbled for her letter, the elevator halted and the doors whirred
apart with a low hum of electrical power.

He stepped between them, still exploring in his pockets with sudden
annoyance as his impatient feet carried him out into the plush lobby.
Where the devil was the thing? He was sure he had kept it--

Hidden from view, his hand abruptly found something that wasn’t a
letter, or his keys or anything that should be in the pockets of his
coat from his last memory. He muttered a curse and brought the object
out. He spread his fingers fan-wise to look at it. He stared down at
the object he had found for one long, uncomprehending minute.

It was the telegram. The one he had wadded into a shapeless ball and
thrown away upstairs. It was still rumpled, balled and indescribable.
But now it was here, in his hand. And he was downstairs--

He shivered involuntarily so that the bellhop gliding by with a tray of
cordials stopped with a show of servile concern.

“Anything wrong, Mr. Potter, sir?”

“Uh--no.” He shrugged and laughed hastily. “I guess I had one too many,
Tommy. Seeing pink elephants, you know. Do me a favor?”

The youth, eager to please, wagged his capped head quickly.

Potter handed the rolled-up scrap of paper to him along with a
contrastingly sleek dollar bill.

“Take this, Tommy. Do what you please with the dollar but throw that
wad of paper away somewhere. Anywhere. Eat it if you like. Got that,
now?”

Tommy grinned slyly with what he thought was complete understanding.
Shifting his tray, he pocketed both items with remarkable ease.

“You bet, Mr. Potter.”

Potter waved a broad palm at him and headed toward the street. The
brief exchange of pleasantry with the youth had put him back in a
better frame of mind. Still, it was damn confusing. He was sure he
had--oh, hell! Maybe, these Conventions were beginning to get him,
after all.

Outside, the lights of the city were on and there were street sounds
and routine sights and as he beckoned to the uniformed doorman for a
cab, he silently prayed that the party this night, this once, would be
worth while.

The long stretch of dining room was a madhouse. Over the disarranged
plates and half-eaten food, the champagne glasses were in every degree
of filling, the mass babble of a thousand separate conversations ran on
like some gargantuan record that would never run down. Balding heads,
some black, some grey, bobbed up and down like corks over the wilting
starch of collars that had been proudly erect a scant few hours before.
Boiled shirt fronts had buckled past the will of their owners under
the influence of rich food and the paralysis of constantly filling
champagne glasses. It was a big party, a bubbling champagne feast, all
expenses paid with the magnanimity of the hand that controlled these
arms and legs of the ALLIED MEATS phantasmagoria. Give our agents, our
salesmen, our representatives, the best. After all, this is the last
night of the Convention.

Cigar and cigarette smoke settled over the immense banquet hall as if a
titanic battle was in its final stages of ferocity, indecision....

Sam Potter blew a smoke ring and sat back, his stomach full of royal
food and comforting champagne.

“The Old Man certainly takes care of his own,” he heaved with ponderous
pleasure.

Next to him, Max Barrett was busily scribbling on the soiled
tablecloth, outlining some meat data to the studious young fellow
peering owlishly around his elbow.

It was spectacles, horn-rim absurdities and a wavy crest of hair that
made Wesley Wells look studious. But the scholastic look was rapidly
disintegrating under the damaging uncertainty of one cocktail too many.

“That’s how it lines up, Wes, my boy,” Max was saying, unmindful of the
awful din on all sides. “To sell a steak, you have to sell the sizzle.
Not the steak.” He grinned widely as he said it, his famous suavity and
professional ease of manner made boyishly lax by the party.

“Remember those words,” gurgled Sam, happily sarcastic, “and you might
graduate to the baloney packing department.”

Max roared his approval of the joke but Wes shot him an offended glare.

He only glares at me cause he’s half-loaded, thought Sam. The young
squirt hasn’t any real guts.

“At least, Mr. Barrett knows the line and tries to help me!” blurted
Wesley.

Now I know he’s drunk, thought Sam again. He’d never bark at me sober.

“Wesley, I’m disappointed in too many people too often, especially
in you,” he chided mockingly. “I thought we were really getting on
together.” He spilled some of his drink laughing.

Max Barrett lay a hand on his arm. “Easy, Sam. Wes is only trying to
learn the business.”

“I’ll say he is. He’s a real go-getter he is, that Wes. Regular little
pen wiper. I hear he even sorts the Old Man’s mail.”

He was getting a little drunk himself. But who the hell cared! It was
Convention time and that’s the same thing as Mardi Gras.

Wesley was spluttering indignantly now and Max Barrett, his face
crookedly grinning back at Sam’s close-to-home remarks was softly
placating him. Sam snorted and refilled his glass from one of the
ridiculous magnums that had been set at each diner’s place. That had
been one of the prime gags at the Convention, too. The magnums actually
had false bottoms like wine glasses and contained just the normal
amount found in a champagne bottle.

Farther along the table, Carl suddenly came awake from his own pillow
of folded hands and began to murmur drunkenly, “Speech ... speech ...
somebody make a speech. La ... ies an’ gen’man....”

That had everyone in the immediate area roaring with glee and the
little _contretemps_ was temporarily averted. Carl, a middle-aged
broker for ALLIED MEATS was a notoriously weak drinker. He often drank
too much and now he had gone to sleep after his third one.

Max ground out his cigar and reached for a fresh one from the scattered
supply on the table. He had to grope past the clutter of cups and
dishes and an ornate fruit bowl to do so but it was all part of the
general confusion, the grand informality. He eyed Sam warmly. “Light
me, will you, boy?”

Sam dug into his breast pocket for his lighter, the twenty case Ronson
dream that Karen had given him only last week for his birthday. He was
still at that stage of birthday-present-pride when you got a whack out
of showing off the gift. It came out of his pocket with a sweep of
grandeur. But something else did too.

A ball of crumpled, yellow paper scooted onto the tablecloth and found
a clearing where it rested like a jewel in a proper setting.

That looked like a gag too. Max laughed.

“Taking up magic tricks, Sam?”

Sam stared down at it, confused. Something tried to piece itself
together in his dizzying head. He blinked stupidly. It couldn’t be....

“Well, how about my light?” Max demanded with the asperity of kings.

“Oh, sorry, Max, I--” He fanned the thing into flame and lighted Max’s
cigar.

Cursing, he dropped his lighter and grabbed the balled wad of paper.
He tore at it with clumsy fingers and a cold sweaty fear and spread it
into shape. A cold feeling transferred itself from the fingers that
held the rumpled square of paper into his vitals. It was the telegram.
But it couldn’t be! He had flung it away angrily into the corner of the
room back at the Crown. Yes, he had even handed it to the bellboy to
throw away--

Max was regarding him curiously “Something wrong, Sam? It’s yours,
isn’t it? Some note you forgot to throw away, probably. Do it myself
all the time.”

Wesley Wells was watching him too.

He ripped out an oath and pounded the table.

“Damn it! This has gone the limit! Which one of you sent me this fool
thing?”

Carl was asleep again, mumbling in his stupor but Max Barrett and
Wesley Wells were all blank stares and head-shaking negatives.

“Send you what? You drunk or something, Sam?” demanded Max, his
wire-haired head bent forward belligerently.

“What are you talking about, Mr. Potter?” Wesley asked slowly as if
afraid to lengthen Sam’s tirade.

Wordlessly, he thrust it at them as they exchanged glances. He followed
their every nuance closely as they hunched over to read it. He could
read faces; selling customers for years had taught him more about
people and tricks of the trade like reading into all physiognomy than
any planned instruction would have. Intensely, impatiently, he waited
for the guilty flash, the betrayal of eye movement but it never came.

With a shrug of his lean shoulders, Max handed the telegram back to him.

“Not me, sweetheart. I never saw it before.”

“What about it, Wells?” Sam bullied the younger man. “Is this your idea
of humor?”

“No, no, Mr. Potter! I don’t go in for that sort of thing.” Wells
flushed embarrassedly but he could see it wasn’t the same thing.

He was frightened and bewildered, now. You just don’t get telegrams
out of nowhere. Somebody had sent it to him. But who? Who of all this
drunken, bloated assembly?

“Then who did send it?” he wondered out loud, conscious of a ragged,
jagged sense of fear tearing through him. He sat there turning the
thing over and over between his sweaty fingers. It was beginning to
become unreal. Like the future you pick for yourself when you’re a kid.
The one you never fulfill.

“Seems to me you’re building this thing up, Sam. Hell, it’s only a gag.
This is a businessmen’s convention, remember? That means everything
from false alarms to false arrests. You ought to know that.”

“But look, Max,” he didn’t know where he got the feeling or where he
got the idea but he seemed to be pleading. “If it is a gag why plant
a name on it that I never ever heard before? That makes the joke
valueless since the only worth to be had is my actually going home
before the Convention is over. That way--it’s funny, see? But it’s a
cinch I won’t respond to a name unknown to me.”

“That’s true,” admitted Max past his cigar. Beyond that he didn’t say
because it was obvious that he didn’t think a phony telegram was worth
worrying about. But Wells came to life with a triumphant start, his
lean, bony young face showing self-approval as though he had been the
one who discovered the Pacific Ocean and not Balboa.

“Charon--of course! Don’t you fellows remember your Mythology in
school?”

Sam looked at him dumbly, the telegram still clutched between numbed
fingers.

Max swiveled around in his chair to eye the young sycophant keenly.
“Well, out with it, Wes. Is it a game you play--like charades?”

“No, don’t you see?” ran on Wells excitedly. “Charon--the River Styx.
Like when you die. Charon is the ferryman who carries the lost souls
over to the dark shores. Uh--the infernal regions.”

Max grunted. “Damn unfunny joke if you ask me.”

“Isn’t it?” asked Sam, only to be saying something.

Wells shrugged in disappointment. “I thought it was rather--good.”

Max was staring at Sam now.

“For Pete’s sake, Sam, forget it! We sent worse lemons than this in our
day. A sense of humor is just like people, you know. It’s got to grow
up too.”

Sam smiled, hiding the sensation of uncertainty that locked him in his
chair. The buzz of voices around them seemed to unify in one tremendous
outpour of sound. It was becoming unbearable. His hands were moist, his
collar burned the tired flesh of his neck and he wanted to be somewhere
else. Beneath his dark dinner jacket, his heart was beating irregularly
with slow, spasmodic thuds. Karen, Karen, he wanted to hear her voice
once more. He had to get to a phone.

“Look, boys. It’s awfully stuffy in here--I think I’ll run along--”

“But Sam,” protested Max. “It isn’t even twelve yet. You don’t want to
duck now. The main event is at one. The committee’s got some strippers
coming over after they finish their act downtown.”

Not even twelve yet. Sometimes words, prosaic words you’ve heard and
used a million times have such a different meaning, such greater
meaning. Was that the theory of relativity too? He felt like laughing
in their faces. Maybe he was drunk, maybe he’d dreamed it all up. Maybe
he didn’t care anymore.

He had pushed back his chair and was standing. Max looked him up and
down with mounting scorn.

Wells started to blurt something but Max motioned him to silence. “Let
him go, Wes. The strippers may be too much for his blood pressure!”

He walked away from them stiffly, down the long aisle, past the noisy
revellers he had known and worked with. No one seemed to see him leave
except Max Barrett and Wesley Wells. No one rose to halt him. Everybody
was so drunk, so delightfully uninhibited, so wonderfully alive. What
did it matter anyway? They had no place to go. They had no appointment
at twelve. He did though.

Directly below the entrance to the banquet hall, he paused to look at
the giant circular face of the clock handsomely mounted there. The
racing minute hand was silently gliding past the numerals ... 9, 10, 11
... and then Twelve!

Bong! The first boom of the twenty-fourth hour’s death volumed through
the hall as he stepped across the threshold into the outside foyer.
Bong!

Bong! He closed the door and turned.

Bong! He blinked, unbelieving.

Bong! Bong! Bong! His heart triphammered violently. Rose and fell.

Bong! A stabbing pain knifed his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.

Bong! His eyes stared out from his head. What he was seeing couldn’t be
real, couldn’t be there but it was....

There was no lighted hallway, no long, velvety carpet running out to
the street entrance that all the tuxedoed guests had laughingly entered
so many hours ago. There were no hall mirrors, no huge chandelier
dangling from the vaulted ceiling. But there was something else.

Bong! The throat of the clock, hidden yet ear-filling, hung over the
scene.

He was alone. Alone on a long, dark platform that stretched into miles
and miles of darkness. At the extreme end of the platform and his
sanity, a shrouded string of cars, connected to the self-identifying
shape of a locomotive that trickled black smoke upward into nowhere,
silently waited with all the evidence of a darker journey. He was on a
railroad platform, a station depot....

Bong!

The unseen voice of the clock poised for its final stroke. A shadowy
figure, a blob of darkness just to one side of the phantom train,
detached itself from the gloom and beckoned toward him with a
commanding wave of one angle of darkness. Unfeelingly, he stumbled down
the long ramp of wooden platform, his feet making no sound.

Bong! It was twelve and he was on the train sitting somewhere inside of
it. He wanted to leave now, get up, scream and halt the madness but--

_The train was moving._

Max Barrett shook his head wonderingly at Wesley Wells:

“I didn’t think he’d fall _that_ hard for it. It was a good
gag--planting copies of that telegram all over the place was a terrific
idea but--did you see his face--?”




Transcriber’s Note:


  This etext was produced from Tales of the Frightened, Spring 1957
  (vol. 1, no. 1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.

  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
  public domain.


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79794 ***