Frank Belknap Long

“ Macklin said. "It's one of the oldest mistakes in the world—and the most foolish. You're taking it for granted that there has to be something unusual, abnormal, different, about an imaginative young writer, or an old one, for that matter. Or a creative artist in any field. No, I'm not putting it in just the right way. There is something different about them, or they wouldn't be creative artists. But that difference doesn't reside in their sanity—or lack of it. It is my contention that creative artists are—if you wish to drag abnormality into it—almost abnormally sane." ”

“ Her lips were shaking now and she could scarcely breathe, but she continued to dig and wrench at the weapon with her fingers until the butt was firmly in her clasp and the long black metal barrel, capped with a bulky-looking silencer, was pointing directly toward the slope.
If the killer had materialized before her at that moment at the base of the slope, ghostly and threatening, she would have screamed in terror and fired and fired again, not caring at all that deep in her mind another voice, also her own, would be screaming at her that it was only a specter and that she was completely alone. ”

“ But nothing like a war of the worlds was taking place about her and the only really ominous thing about the pit was its proximity to the scene of a brutal slaying.
In the depth of the excavation the sunlight seemed deeper and redder than it should have been, the shadows so thickly clustering that they seemed to be conspiring together to cast a pall upon her spirits. But she refused to allow the dismalness of the pit to upset her. Any deep, hewed-out hollow in the earth was dismal, with the damp smells of freshly-turned earth conjuring up a cemetery-like atmosphere. ”

“ It's your gun, Macklin. A war souvenir gun with a long black barrel, the kind of gun some men, with your kind of war record, like to show to friends. Possibly you showed it to her once, but that's also something we'll never know unless you tell us. But she must have known it was your gun or she would not have attempted to hide it. If she'd found a stranger's gun—the gun of someone she had no reason to respect or like or want to protect, she'd have gone straight to the police with it. She must have felt you were justified in killing Helen Lathrup. ”

“ Should she go to the police? Dared she tell, did ... did she really want to send Lathrup's slayer to the electric chair?
Supposing it had been a solitary crime, brought on by a wrong so terrible and cruel and heartless that the killer hadn't been a tiger at all? Was there not a killer in everyone, if the provocation was great enough, if all the civilized layers of the human mind were to be stripped away by the inhuman conduct of someone who was bent on destroying you, with no mercy shown, no slightest trace of compassion, no yielding at any point? ”

“ No one could be that perfect an actor. She had liked him ... she still liked him ... and she hoped that he would call at the office again, when the horror had become just a dim, receding memory—could it ever be quite that, she wondered—and he would ask her to lunch and she would look at his new drawings and all fear, all suspicion would be banished from her mind. ”

“ If he could look at Lathrup that way, at her thighs and bourgeoning breasts—the more bourgeoning because of the wanton way she'd constricted their swelling roundness—and her hair and lips and eyes ... he could look at any woman that way, feel the same way about any woman attractive enough to catch his eye and even some who were the opposite of attractive, but who had something about them that stirred men of primitive instincts to a frenzy of desire. The more coarse and slatternly the woman the more some men seemed to be stirred. ”

“ He leaned across the table and slapped Helen Lathrup on the right cheek, putting such force into the blow that the smack was audible to everyone in the cafe.
There was complete silence for an instant; no one moved or spoke. Helen Lathrup sat rigid, an ugly redness suffusing the right side of her face from temple to throat.
Then a woman gasped and a man muttered: "Why doesn't somebody kill the bastard?"
It was exactly what Ralph felt like doing and he made no attempt to control the impulse. ”

“ Eaton asked.
"Simply this. He has a fifty percent chance of winning that struggle because a man of creative genius has much more than the average person's inner strength. Don't kid yourself. He has, or he'd go down fast. Few people could survive the kind of battle he wages with himself every waking hour for ten minutes at a stretch.
"Life itself, just the terrible kind of punishment that life inflicts—illnesses, misfortunes of every kind, tragic accidents, death—can hurt him much more than you or I can be hurt, simply because he has the emotional sensitivity which goes with genius. ”

“ The clicking of typewriters in two of the offices almost drowned out the sound of the shot. It was just a faint zing, with a released-pressure kind of vibrancy about it. A ping-pong ball striking a metal screen might have produced such a sound.
It was strange and unusual enough to make Lynn Prentiss look up from the manuscript she was reading and wrinkle her brow. If a fly had alighted on her cheek she might have paused in much the same way, startled, incredulous—asking herself if it really could be a fly. A fly in an air-conditioned office, with all of the windows shut? ”

“ Was not that kind of violence one pathway to intimacy? A murderer was intimate with his victim in a quite terrible way, even when physical love-making was completely absent. This was not that kind of intimacy. But in defending her and trying his best in a moment of savage rage to injure the man who had struck her, hadn't he come close to her in much the same primitively intimate way? The only difference was—he hadn't come close to her with the intention of doing her harm. But the same savage currents had flowed for an instant between them, bringing them very close. ”

“ A little whimsical fun, on the part of a dangerous killer. You enter one door and you meet a charming individual, light-hearted, brimming over with a friendly interest in you, your problems, your daily concerns. You enter another door and you meet the same individual, but only for a moment. There's suddenly a tiger close to you, with an odor of death everywhere and long, quivering flanks move in and out, in and out, and, low-crouching, you see death creeping toward you with bared fangs. ”

“ What if they were the eyes of a man who had killed once and would not hesitate to kill again—a man with the murder weapon still in his possession, a man who would feel no qualms about putting a bullet in her heart if he suspected that she knew more than she did about Helen Lathrup's murder? ”

“ Even when it is allied with a harsh coldness which is quick to manifest itself, it is so very easy to believe that a miracle will occur, that secret delights are in store for any man bold enough to make light of obstacles which are certain to prove transitory ... if just the right technique is applied.
Though it is impossible to judge beauty by any rigid set of rules, though tastes may differ and the experts disagree, it is doubtful if one man in a hundred would have failed to be dazzled by the absolute perfection of Helen Lathrup's face and figure. ”

“ Oh, damn you to hell!"
"Why, Willard? I mean—why do you feel it's such an indecent question, a question I've no right to ask? You've confessed to a very serious crime. You've confessed to—I'm going to use another police term I hope won't shock your sensitive spirit too much—you've confessed to what we call the Big One. You can't stand on the niceties when you've taken a human life—or question the right of a policeman, sworn to uphold the law, to ask what, under ordinary circumstances, you might consider a damned impertinent question, an invasion of privacy. ”

“ A fist ... nothing more! A fist which had been thrust deeply into the coat pocket of a boy keyed up, embarrassed, uncertain of himself—a hard-knuckled fist making, quite naturally, a weapon-like bulge.
She had a sudden, almost uncontrollable impulse to laugh hysterically, to let herself go, not caring what anyone in the restaurant might think, least of all this crazy kid with his sheaf of drawings. It was a portfolio he'd been carrying, she could see that now. The square, black object was a portfolio and it rested on the table; there was nothing but drawings in it, good, bad or indifferent. ”

“ If the décor was a little on the severe side and there was something distinctly unbending about the woman who now sat facing the door upon which, in gilt lettering, her name was inscribed, a visitor entering the office for the first time would not have felt ill at ease.
Not, at any rate, if that visitor happened to be a man. Great feminine beauty, however much it may be combined with qualities intimidating to the male, is seldom intimidating at first glance. The glow, the warmth, the splendor of it is too instant and overwhelming. ”

“ Fenton unholstered his revolver, snapped off the safety catch and was down the companionway and in the cabin so fast the two kidnappers were taken completely by surprise.
He gave them no time to recover. The one who had struck Hansen was just raising a reversed automatic for another blow and was facing away from Fenton near the base of the stairs. A sudden tensing of his muscles failed to save him. Just as a glint of awareness flickered at the perimeter of his vision Fenton's fist caught him flush on the jaw, and sent him crashing backwards. ”

“ All right, the violence had been there, but in another way the office had seemed the opposite of crepe-somber. It had seemed still filled with her living presence, as if she were still striding back and forth from her desk to the window, or sitting at her desk impatiently talking into the intercom.
That she had been a strong-willed, very determined woman despite her aspect of pulse-stirring femininity he'd strongly suspected the instant he'd entered the office with its costly but severely functional furnishings. ”

“ Fenton sighed and his voice hardened a little. "Would you like to tell us why you killed her, Macklin? I must warn you, though, that anything you say now—"
Macklin seemed not to hear him. He spoke softly, almost gently, as if the violence which had taken two human lives had been long since spent.
"There are two kinds of men in this world—leaving abnormality out of it. One kind, I think, is very rare. The old saying: 'Love is a woman's whole life—to men a thing apart' isn't always true. There are men to whom love is everything. I have always been ... that kind of man. ”

“ But when a man does not in the least resemble a killer in his outer aspect, when he can grin boyishly, and disarm everyone with his blunt forthrightness, his wry humor, his complete absence of even the everyday, garden-variety kind of neuroticism which afflicts nine men and women out of ten—when, in short, he seems more robustly wholesome, normal than a football player with a well-rounded love life, it is very easy for a man to go a little astray emotionally and assume that he can't be too dangerous in an immediate way. ”

“ What if she saw that they were not just the eyes of an annoyer of women, some tormented sex-starved wretch who couldn't resist making an ugly nuisance of himself—what if they were the eyes of a murderer? ”

“ Three young hoodlum girls had captured a man at the point of a gun, taken him for an auto ride and forced him to make love to them. What she'd just said was like telling Roger that, in circumstances like that, he wouldn't have been more than eager to oblige, or found the experience less than exhilarating.
"I asked you to take off your dress and get comfortable," Roger said, still looking at her in that frightening way. "What's got into you, anyway? What makes you think that Helen Lathrup would be so much more attractive to me than you are? ”

“ Macklin said. "To me the one great, distinguishing quality of creative genius is sanity—a sanity that illuminates every aspect of human experience. I'll quote you a passage from Emily Dickinson: 'Pardon me my sanity in an insane world.'
"Well, that makes sense to me, that sums it up. I'll tell you why. A creative artist has superior insights into the nature of reality. Reason, completely rational behavior—common sense on a high level, if you want to put it in another way—is a must with the creative mind, if it isn't to be crippled or completely destroyed. ”

“ She's very careful about how she smiles when she has the knife well-sharpened. It's a wanton smile, but much too ladylike and refined to give her the look of a bar pickup or a hip-swinging tramp. Brains and beauty, delicacy of perception, sophistication, grace. But if she were lying in a coffin just how many of those qualities do you think she'd still possess? Not many, wouldn't you say? Not even her beauty ... if someone with a gun took careful aim and made a target of her face. ”

“ And real love is too precious a commodity for a man to take the other attitude—that jealousy is an annoyance and justifies anger or resentment. But there's one kind of jealousy no man likes, unless there's something wrong with him—unless he's a masochist and enjoys torturing himself. It's the kind that won't listen to reason, that makes no allowances for the fact that a man can look at another attractive woman without bringing the world toppling down about his ears. Or even hold her a little too tightly on a dance floor and kiss her once or twice. ”