"What are you going to do with it?"
"I'm going to trade with Mario when he gets tired waiting out there and comes back inside. Guns or bullet, baby, there's going to be a swap."
"No!" she cried. "No, Cassidy. No more killing." She moved close to him, swiftly, imploringly. "Mario's coming back for you. That's the truth. You must believe me, you have a chance to get out of here with your life. Take it while you still have it. That's all that matters now. You're right about the gun; it's the one. I knew you'd find out sooner or later. That's why I wanted you to have it, to put an end to all this rottenness. Take it or leave it, it doesn't really matter so much, only get out of here before Mario gets back."
"Who're you really worried about?" Fleetwood asked. "Mario or me? Or do you know yourself?"
"Why should it matter so long as you stay alive? If you don't go you'll only be engraving your own tombstone. Mario won't give you a chance. He's probably got you spotted from outside right now."
In all justice, Fleetwood's reaction to these words came quite by reflex. It was simply that his newly-awakened sense of survival had responded to the lady's admirable logic in the same quick manner of a coiled spring answering the touch of release. His reply leaped from his lips before he had time to properly weigh and consider.
"How do I get out of here?" he said.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, however, than he realized what he had done; the lady, Evelyn, stood before him an unreal, life-sized paper doll. Fleetwood permitted himself a cough of chagrin.
"Oops," he said mildly, then went on to qualify, addressing himself to the ceiling in the same way a simpler soul might direct a conversation to the heavens. "I'm sorry, Dermitt, but after all, you did have to go and build up all that sticky suspense. And I warned you, you know, that my nerves aren't reliable."
He waited a space, not knowing quite what to expect. The silence grew and thickened. The room faded as before into hazy obscurity.
"Well," Fleetwood shrugged. "We tried, but I guess it's just no good, old man." He started toward the fuzzily outlined doorway. "No hard feelings, I hope."
Then suddenly he stopped as the room jolted back into sharp focus and the door opposite the one toward which he was moving swung open to permit the entrance of a girl in maid's regalia. She was a singularly undistinguished young woman both in face and figure. Her hair was sand-colored and her complexion was dull. Fleetwood started feverishly.
"Kitty!" he yelped.
Kitty appeared neither to notice nor to hear. She addressed herself to the restored Evelyn.
"You rang, madam?" she enquired nasally.
"Yes, Kitty," Evelyn said. "I need a drink dreadfully if you don't mind."
"Yes, ma'm," Kitty said and turned away.
"Hello, Kitty," Fleetwood said tensely.
Though there was much in Kitty's glance as she passed Fleetwood she gave no sign that she had heard him. Her eyes met his only with an expression of restrained disdain, much the sort that a sophisticated cat might bestow on a mechanical mouse which had snapped its spring. With a lift of her chin she left the room.
"Hey!" Fleetwood yelled. "Hey!" He addressed himself again to the ceiling. "Now, look here, Dermitt, you monster," he said, "you can't go doing this sort of thing. Besides, you're only ruining your own story; the dame already said the maid wasn't here tonight. You can't come running new characters into the thing now. It doesn't make sense!"
"I don't know why I keep that dismal child around," Evelyn said flintily, quite unmindful of any interruption. "For laughs, I suppose, or contrast. A bit of comic relief never hurt anyone."
Fleetwood ran to the doorway through which the aloof Kitty had disappeared and found himself in a hall. He caught a glimpse of her skirt as she passed from sight into a lighted room at the back of the house and took out in hot pursuit.
The room, when he got there, proved to be a kitchen, and Kitty was at the far end, busily transferring liquid by careful measure from a full bottle into an empty glass. Fleetwood approached her uncertainly. She finished her chores with the glass, then turned to him, apparently not at all surprised at seeing him there. She picked the glass up from the counter.
"A drink, sir?" she said, and forcibly and quite without warning flung the liquor into his face. "Get outa here and leave me alone, you flat-footed bum."
"Kitty!" Fleetwood bubbled through the cascading bourbon. "Kitty, don't talk like that!"
"Out!" Kitty snarled, cinching her faded eyebrows a notch closer together. "Beat it, Sherlock!"
"Kitty," Fleetwood pleaded, "you don't understand. This isn't real, none of it. You don't belong here at all. It's Dermitt who's doing this to you, making you act this way. He's just trying to get even with me for messing up his continuity. You don't really hate me, Kitty, you like me. Think, Kitty, think hard. You said so."
By this time Kitty had progressed to the cutlery drawer in a markedly purposeful manner and was in the act of withdrawing a carving knife, the blade of which gleamed in cold, brilliant concert with her angry eyes.
"Sorry you have to leave so abruptly, Mr. Cassidy," she said with lethal sweetness. "But we all have to go sometime, don't we?" She brandished the knife so that it cut the air with a menacing whoosh. "My kid brother had to, when you helped put him in the chair."
Fleetwood saw the point, but only momentarily, for he was already on his way back to the hall and safety. Taking cover behind the frame of the door he peered around its edge.
"I forgive you, Kitty," he said sadly. "I realize that this is none of your doing and I still hold the knowledge in my heart that you're really quite fond of me."
"I'll cut your heart out, if you don't fade outa here," Kitty gritted back at him. "Scat!"
Fleetwood scatted. But not in a mood of docile acquiescence. Fate had handled him quite nastily during the last several minutes and, therefore, deserved to be dealt with in kind. He addressed himself to Fate, using the surname.
"Dermitt," he said between clenched teeth, "now you've gone too far. Far, far too far. I told you to leave Kitty out of this. If you have trouble now you've only got yourself to blame. Remember that."
He retraced his steps through the hallway and back into the living room, where he seated himself solidly on the divan. Favoring Evelyn, who was still in evidence, with the most perfunctory of glances, he folded his arms adamantly across his chest and crossed his legs.
"I refuse to make another move," he announced haughtily, "until both Kitty and I are released from this preposterous narrative. And you may take that as an ultimatum. I don't care if we're all left dangling by our participles until we rot like grapes on a vine." And with that he settled into an attitude of stolid resistance, breaking the silence only once more for a terse sign-off. "Besides," he added, "your writing smells like a large dead fish."
Stillness overlayed the room like a dense and redolent mist. Evelyn, still vividly defined, remained fixed in position like a figure in a waxworks tableau. A moment passed. Then it happened.
The room jolted, with the swift shock of a train compartment yanked forward by a sudden start from the engine. But that was all, just a jolt with an immediate settling. Evelyn moved slightly, but Fleetwood contained his surprise in a slight lift of the eyebrows. He knew without question that this somehow heralded a counter action from Dermitt, but he couldn't guess what it might be. He tensed himself determinedly against whatever might follow. It followed swiftly enough.
Evelyn swung about, drawing her hand to her mouth.
"Mario!" she cried.
Mario, his mouth drawn down in a grim line, stood in the doorway, gun in hand.
So that was Dermitt's maneuver, Fleetwood reflected complacently; he meant to push the action forward by sheer force of will.
"It won't do any good, Dermitt," he said. "I won't budge."
He glanced around, pleased to note that both the gun and Mario's murderous gaze were directed toward the place which he had deserted when he'd left the room to follow Kitty.
"Move, Cassidy," Mario grunted. "Get goin' before you turn out to be a mess on the lady's rug."
"Hah!" Fleetwood snorted unconcernedly. "Go on and shoot a hole in the wall, you big imaginary fathead. See if I care."
But even as he said it, the sensation came over him; it was the qualm in reverse, a subtle drain on his reserve of resistance. Dermitt retained more of a hold over him than he had believed. The terror of this sudden realization compelled his attention to such a degree that it was a moment before he realized that he had actually risen from the divan and was moving toward the spot that would place him directly in range of Mario's gun. With an almost superhuman effort he forced himself to stop.
"No," he panted. "No, Dermitt, you can't make me do it. I won't." He dragged himself heavily back toward the divan, as though struggling against a powerful wind. But after only a few steps he slowed, then stopped altogether, unable to move even an inch further. His will was stalemated against Dermitt's.
Then, quite suddenly and most surprisingly, he felt himself released. He fell forward, caught himself against the arm of the divan and swung around into it. He leaned back panting and waiting. Dermitt hadn't given up, he was sure of that; he had simply switched methods.
"Drop that rod, sucker," Mario snarled. "It's empty." He laughed. "Boy, do you look silly, Cassidy. Drop it before I drop you."
"No!" Evelyn screamed. "It's loaded, Mario! He found out! Mario! Don't!"
Mario didn't even give her a glance on that one. "So's a fountain pen," he said. "Okay, Cassidy, this is the last time I'm tellin' you."
Fleetwood watched this interplay with careful interest. As silly as it seemed, possibly Dermitt meant to just go ahead with the thing without him. Then he knew better, as Kitty appeared from the hallway, crossed the room with somnambulistic precision and placed herself solidly in the projected line of fire. Fleetwood felt a new thrill of terror; Dermitt was using Kitty as a hostage. Either he would go ahead with the planned action and trade gunfire with Mario or Kitty was going to be killed.
He reached quickly into his pocket where he had put the gun. It wasn't there. Then he remembered that it naturally wouldn't be; he was out of the story and the weapon, being fictional, existed only in the story. The only way to return it to his possession was to enter into the action again. He cast off his moorings and leaped forward with a fleeting picture of Mario's finger closing in on the trigger.
The ensuing moments were characterized by a series of crashes which began in a quiet sort of way but rapidly mounted to a nerve-shredding climax. The first crash was really only a thud occasioned by a collision of bodies as Fleetwood threw himself against Kitty. The second instantly grew out of the first as Kitty toppled to the floor. The third was the natural result of Mario's finger pressing down on the trigger. The rest of it, the screams and random dialogue, was lost to Fleetwood as hot pain licked through his hands and up his arm.
"You've hit him!" Evelyn screamed. "He's bleeding!"
"Just winged him." Mario growled. "He'll bleed a hell of a lot more than that before the night's out."
There was a clattering at Fleetwood's feet and he realized that he had let go of the gun without knowing it. He looked down at it. The blood dripping from the tips of his fingers was splashing against the barrel. That's what he got for letting a dame take his attention when he was on the spot. Business before pleasure, they always said. He'd have to remember that from now on—if he lived to remember anything.
"Fleetwood!"
The scream jarred Fleetwood out of the stream of events which included Mario and Evelyn. He looked around and almost shouted for joy. Sitting on the floor, Kitty was staring up at him, her eyes wide with wonder.
"Where are we?" she asked frightenedly. "What's going on?"
It was miraculous! Apparently the recent violence had snapped her back into the realm of reality; after all she was not originally a fictional creation like the others. Smiling down at her, Fleetwood realized that the pain had gone from his hand, the wound had vanished; he too had escaped Dermitt's world of fiction through Kitty's awareness. The action had been broken just enough. He looked about. The room had begun to fade, Mario and Evelyn were slipping out of dimension. Together, they could make it; two wills were stronger than one.
"Hurry!" Fleetwood said, helping her up. "We've got to get out of here while we've got the chance."
"But, what?..." Kitty murmured dazedly. "Who are those strange looking people?"
"Never mind them," Fleetwood said. "Just hurry." He bustled her along toward the doorway, around the frozen figure of Mario and out into the entry.
"I don't understand ..." Kitty said.
Reaching the outer door Fleetwood grasped the knob and threw it open. Then he stopped, so abruptly that Kitty collided against him. Before them, blocking the way, stood a small, hammered-down looking man in enormous black-rimmed glasses. He was holding a gun in his hand which he advanced to Fleetwood's chest.
"Dermitt!" Fleetwood gasped. "What are you doing here?"
"Get back in there," Dermitt said grimly, wagging the gun.
"You can't do this, you two-bit hack," Fleetwood said. "You can't be in this story too."
"It's my story, isn't it?" Dermitt said nastily. "I can be in it if I want to. I wrote myself in just to be on hand to keep an eye on you."
"It's anybody's story by the looks of it," Fleetwood said. "And you're just another inconsistent character. Of course you've already made such a hash of the thing I don't suppose it really matters."
"I'm Mario's henchman," Dermitt said firmly. "My name is Lester, and I'm here to help him handle you. And believe me, Cassidy, I'm already so sick of your interference I don't care much what happens to you. Now get back in there and do what I tell you."
A curious intensity emanating from behind the eccentric spectacles caused Fleetwood to give ground. He turned to Kitty to warn her to stay behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words shriveled on his tongue as she met his gaze darkly, with a look of extreme loathing, then turned on her heel and marched back into the living room. Fleetwood whirled back to Dermitt.
"It's no use," Dermitt said smoothly, "she's back in character. And you'll follow her lead if you know what's good for you—and her."
Fleetwood turned and followed Kitty back into the center of the room, toward the divan.
"Kitty ..." he said, but she gave no sign that she even heard him.
"Hi, Lester," Mario said.He was restored to dimension.
"Havin' a little trouble?" Dermitt said from the corner of his mouth. "I heard a shot."
"Boy, are you corny," Fleetwood said spitefully. "You're all this stinker needed." Dermitt swiveled his gun in his direction.
"He got a rod from the lady," Mario smiled. "I had to slap his wrist with a bullet to get him to let go."
"He won't act up any more," Dermitt said. "If he does he'll be a dead character."
Across the room Fleetwood swung around in a paroxysm of pain and grabbed his wrist. Blood began to drip again from the ends of his fingers. At his feet lay the gun, just as before. He had slipped back again into Dermitt's pattern of action. The writer had tricked him with the sudden pain.
"How about it, Cassidy?" Mario said. "You comin' outa here on your feet or by your heels? It doesn't matter a damn to me, you know."
"Okay," Fleetwood said. "Have it your way, Mario—for just a little while."
"For long enough," Lester snarled.
Fleetwood started forward, but the struggle within his mind, the straining effort to focus his mind in the direction of reality, did not cease. The pain throbbing in his hand, however, interfered badly. He bit his lip hard to provide a counter irritant. He stopped; the pain disappeared.
"Now, dammit, Dermitt!" he said with final exasperation, "that doesn't even hold water, and you know it. Why would any guy in his right mind just shrug his shoulders and take off with a couple of murderous rats as calmly as though he were on his way to the garden to pick lilacs? Any guy would give himself a last chance and make a break for it. How in the devil can you expect your readers to swallow swill like that? I wouldn't even...."
There was something in Dermitt's round face—a dangerous angry red—that warned him to stop. The little man was on the verge—perhaps beyond.
"So!" Dermitt exploded with a high scream. "You've not only ruined my story, now you're going to give me a lecture on writing! That does it absolutely, Cassidy, that's the end! I created you and, by God, I can destroy you too!"
As he spoke, he made fumbling preparations with his gun. "You'll never get out of this yarn alive! You'll die on paper just where you were born!" The glitter in his eyes, amplified by the glasses, was unmistakably that of a man who had snapped his bolt.
"Did you ring, madam?" Kitty said suddenly, with idiotic unconcern.
Evelyn turned in response to this incongruity and smiled warmly. Then she went limp against the back of the divan. "Eeeeeeeee!" she screamed with shrill hysteria.
"Gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat ... gotta gat." Mario began to chant, rolling his eyes insanely.
"Madam, did you ring, madam?" Kitty chimed in. "Madam?... Madam?... Madam?"
"Gotta gat," Mario said, grinning crookedly. He stepped back two paces with jerky rapidity and pointed his gun at the ceiling. "Gotcha covered, shamus."
These stunning proceedings, occurring as they did in overlapping rapidity, had a startling effect, even on Dermitt. He looked up from his gun distractedly.
"Did you ring, madam?" Kitty said, persisting with the same old refrain. "Ring-a-ling-a-ling, madam?"
Mario fired three shots into the ceiling in rapid succession. "Gotcha," he tittered. "Gotcha with my gat, yuh rat, yuh."
"Bless yuh," Evelyn said and moved away from the divan with a lighthearted pirouette that delivered her to the center of the room directly between Fleetwood and Dermitt.
"Oh, my God!" Dermitt wailed. It was plain that the little man was no less stunned than Fleetwood at these outcroppings of his own madness. Fact and fancy had gotten so snarled together that the result was roaring insanity. He shook his head as though to clear it.
"Why don't you shoot me, Mario?" Evelyn said, running her hand wildly through her hair. "Kill me, too, and be done with it. God knows it wouldn't be any great loss to the world after what I've done." She turned to Fleetwood in a convulsive movement. "Go, Cassidy, make a run for it. I'll shield you until he kills me. You can use my body to protect yourself. Only promise you'll kill him—after he kills me. That's all I want now, just to die and know that he's going to die too." She smiled crookedly. "And when you check up on that gun you'll find out it's registered in my name. That's right, I killed Blanchard. I went to him to ask him for the jewels and he wouldn't let me have them. We got into a fight over them. It was an accident, I suppose. I don't really know how it happened—I just did it. I lost my head and ran and I had to send Mario back to get the jewels for me. He was the only man I knew filthy enough for that kind of job. And I was frightened half to death...." Her voice trailed off slowly. She sank to the floor like a discarded scrap of tissue paper.
It was only then that Fleetwood noticed that Dermitt had renewed his intentions with the gun. With frenzied eyes he was sighting down the barrel. Fleetwood tried to control the churning sensation in his head. The distinction between reality and imagination was lost to him too. Where, he wondered frantically, did one begin and the other end?
"Okay, Cassidy," Dermitt gritted. "This is the finish. Period!"
"Ring-a-ling-a-ling, madam?" Kitty snickered, presenting herself in front of Fleetwood.
"Get out of the way, Kitty," Fleetwood said.
She looked around at him. "Oh, Fleetwood!" she smiled. "I like you so much." Then with a sudden frown, as though remembering something unpleasant, she dealt him a stinging blow across the mouth and moved rapidly away.
"Period!" Dermitt screamed and curled his finger down over the trigger.
Fleetwood threw himself to the floor in conjunction with the explosion of the gun. It was close timing. The bullet thunked into the wall behind him. Whether it was by accident or some unconscious planning in his mind, his hand slapped down over the grip of the gun on the floor. All in one movement, he grasped the gun, rolled over and fired blind in Dermitt's direction. There was a scream of pain, a beat of silence, then a dull thud. Fleetwood jumped to his feet, holding the gun ready.
"Oh, my God!" Fleetwood gasped.
Across the room, huddled on the floor, Dermitt sat in a spattering of his own blood, clutching his stomach. Fleetwood ran to him.
"Dermitt!" he cried.
"I'm hit in the stomach," Dermitt groaned. "You've got to help me, Cassidy, you've got to!"
"Get out of the story!" Fleetwood said. "Get out of here before you die!"
"I can't. I can't move. Something's gone wrong with my legs."
"Let me help you up," Fleetwood said, slipping his hands quickly under Dermitt's arms. "I'll carry you."
"No!" Dermitt screamed. "No! I can't stand the pain!"
Fleetwood released him. "What can I do?" he asked helplessly.
"Oh, Lord!" Dermitt wailed. "Let me think, let me think!" His face contorted as a spasm passed through his body. Then he relaxed again and opened his eyes. "You get out," he said. "That's it. Get to the typewriter as fast as you can ... rewrite this ... mark out the part where you shoot me ... make it a miss ... or a flesh wound.... It's the only way. But hurry, for Godsake!"
"Okay," Fleetwood said. "I've got to get Kitty, though, and take her with me."
"No," Dermitt put in quickly. "Write her out, too, when you get there. It'll be faster. Hurry, Cassidy, hurry! I can't stand too much more of this."
"All right." Fleetwood said. He whirled about and ran for the door. He turned back once, just before leaving, to look at Kitty, but the room was already in a state of half-dissolve and she was only a dim, grey figure in the distance. He hurried outside.
As he ran forward into the swirling blackness ahead, the house quickly evaporated behind him....
He didn't know how he had gotten back to Dermitt's Towers apartment. It seemed that he had been there all along. He was sitting in the same chair, as though he'd merely dozed there for a time. He shook his head to clear it. Then he remembered.
He turned and saw Dermitt slumped over his typewriter, his hands clutched to his abdomen. Fleetwood frowned. So that was the way of it; the writer had managed to project himself into two separate dimensions simultaneously, a dangerous undertaking even for a sane man. Fleetwood shoved himself out of the chair and hurried to the alcove.
As he approached, Dermitt stirred weakly and opened his eyes and twisted them in his direction. There was no blood, no wound—no visible, physical wound—but still Dermitt was dying.
"Hurry!" he whispered. "I ... I blacked out. I guess I went a little crazy for a while. Please save me."
Fleetwood took him under the arms, and, ignoring his moans of pain, half-dragged, half-carried him to the nearest chair. He eased him into the chair and turned back. Then he stopped and looked around at the little man again. He sucked in his breath with a start of surprise.
Dermitt was losing substance! He was actually fading away into a shadow of himself. The dying fictional projection was carrying away the physical one. The wound was too vital, too real to the writer for him to draw resistance from the fact of its fictional source. There wasn't much time.
"Hurry, Cassidy!" Dermitt mouthed soundlessly. "Hurry!"
Fleetwood pulled himself away from the spectacle of the fading bug-eyed little author who had forced him through volumes of abuse and harassment, who had actually attempted to murder Kitty and himself. He ran to the typewriter.
He sat down and poised his hands over the keys. Then, with one last intense glance in Dermitt's direction, he began to type....
The drug store sparkled from its cleaning of the night before. Morning sunshine, showing through the plate-glass windows, conspired with the indirect lighting to make the displays, the jars, the bottles, the paper clips and snake bite kits gleam like a rajah's ransom. Fleetwood perched himself on the stool at the end of the counter and leaned forward in an attitude of expectation. Presently he was rewarded.
"Fleetwood!" Kitty called, catching sight of him. She came swiftly to dock at the napkin holder in front of him. "I was hoping you'd show up today. I had the goofiest dream about you last night."
"I'll bet," Fleetwood said with a sigh of happy relief. Explanations weren't going to be necessary after all.
"I'd tell you about it," Kitty went on, "but every time I try to get it straight in my head everything just gets all mixed up. I was mad at you, I remember, but at the same time I didn't really want to be."
"That's good," Fleetwood said, "that you didn't want to be, I mean. Otherwise, you might have got up with a chip on your shoulder and you wouldn't go out to dinner with me tonight."
"Huh?" Kitty said. "Are you asking me?"
"That's what I came here for," Fleetwood nodded. "Will you go?"
"Oh, I'll go, all right," Kitty said. "I'll be ready from seven thirty on, any time you're ready. Gosh!" Her smile faded a bit. "You look awfully tired, though...."
"I'll have to get some rest," Fleetwood agreed. "I worked last night."
"All night, you mean?" Kitty asked. "But that reminds me, what do you do anyway? I should have asked you yesterday, I guess."
Fleetwood hesitated. Then, with a deep breath, he took the plunge. "I write," he told her. "Stories."
"No kidding? What kind?"
"Oh, mysteries," Fleetwood said with extreme offhandedness. "About a private detective, a little hammered-down looking guy with big glasses who always gets into a lot of trouble. He gets kicked around and stepped on and shot up until the last chapter when he catches the murderer and they haul him off to the hospital. It's pretty rugged stuff."
"Gee," Kitty said solemnly, "the poor little guy. I feel sorry for him."
A small, private smile touched Fleetwood's lips. "Don't," he said. "After all, he's only a fictional character."
Then, with apparent irrelevance, his glance moved away and took in the gleaming brightness of the morning, the store, the busy world outside. Finally he looked back at Kitty and grinned.
"Gosh!" he sighed ecstatically. "This is really living!"