The Sinful Ones Read Free Page B

sudden spasm of extreme terror seized him. As if something huge and hostile were poised behind him, he dared not lift his head, look up, make a move.
    It was like the momentary chill he had felt hen no one had reacted to the slap. Only much more intense.
    His feelings were a little like those of a man in a waxworks museum, who speaks to a guide only to find that he has addressed one of the wax figures.
    His paralyzed thoughts, suddenly working like lightning, snatched at the analogy and worried it morbidly.
    What if the whole world were like a waxworks museum? In motion, of course, like clockworks, but utterly mindless, purposeless, mechanical. What if he, a wax figure like the others, had suddenly come alive and stepped out of his place, and the whole show was going on without him, because it was just a machine and didn’t care or know whether he was there or not?
    That would explain the dumpy man going through the motions of an interview—one mechanical toy-figure carrying on just as well without its partner. It would explain why Tom and Dr. Wexler had disregarded him
    What if it really were true?
    What if the ends of the earth were nearer to you than the mind you thought lay behind the face you spoke to?
    What if the things people said, the things that seemed to mean so much, were something recorded on a kind of phonograph record a million years ago?
    What if you were all alone?
    For an instant longer his thought-train—it had taken only a few moments—held him paralyzed. Then he came to himself with a start.
    Life flooded back into the office. People moved and spoke. He almost laughed out loud at his ridiculous spasm of terror.
    Why, what an idiot he’d been to get alarmed because Tom, who doubtless felt huffy toward him because of their last conversation, had momentarily ignored a mumbled, perhaps unheard, question? Or because the same thing had happened with Dr. Wexler, whose deafness and preoccupation were both notorious!
    And how silly of him to lose his nerve just because he had got an applicant who was something of a psychotic!
    He straightened himself and walked back to his desk, warily, but with self-confidence.
    The dumpy man was still muttering at the air, but his face had assumed its original color. He didn’t look violent. Carr disregarded him and glanced at the application blank Miss Zabel had brought a few minutes earlier: “Jimmie Kozacs. Age 43.”
    The dumpy man looked about that age.
    A little farther down on the blank, his eye caught the words, “Magnetic Inspector.” If he remembered rightly the duties of the job in question, they fitted with the things the dumpy man had been saying.
    The dumpy man got up. Again he plucked something from the air. “So all I got to do is show ’em this at the gate?” he remarked gravely. “Thank’s a lot, er…” He glanced at the nameplate on Carr’s desk. “…Mr. Mackay. Aw, don’t get up. Well, thanks a lot.”
    Heartily the dumpy man shook hands with nothing, turned and walked off. Carr watched him go. A smile that was half nervous amusement, half relief, flickered around his lips.
    Miss Zabel came limping by with a stack of file-folders.
    “I swear I’m going to cut them off and donate them to medical research,” she moaned to Carr.
    Carr chortled. His sense of normalcy was restored.

Chapter Two
The Stopped Clock
    CARR TOOK THE brass-edged steps three at a time, crossed the lobby, pushed hurriedly through the revolving door which always made him feel like a squirrel in a wheel. He joined the crowd streaming toward Michigan Boulevard.
    Street lights were beginning to supplement the canyoned twilight. Newsboys were shouting. Bus stops and islands of dubious safety were crowded, likewise the stairways leading to the long El platforms. From the wide doorways of multi-storage garages, cars were edging forward by stages, bluffing their way into the thick traffic. Other cars were being honked at while they paused to pick up riders. Lone pedestrians