The Sinful Ones

by Fritz Leiber

  Marcia—

  She was real. She represented the businesslike normal side of things.

  She’d be home now.

  Of course he’d insulted her pretty badly the last time he’d been with her, leaving her that way at the Pendletons’.

  Still, she was fair. She’d listen. She’d understand. She’d relieve his haunting anxiety.

  He got up and rapidly put on his shoes and coat. He tried not to let his thoughts or emotions wander. His purpose was to get to Marcia before he lost the feeling of confidence with which he had awakened—the saving conviction that all his hideous delusions had been nightmarish fancies.

  He met no one on the stairs except his slinking counterpart in the mirror. The entrance hall below was also empty, and dark. Then he pulled open the door and stepped out into what he assured himself was not a city of automatons.

  A man was passing by at the foot of the steps, a little old man in a brown coat and hat, with deep-set eyes that scowled ahead and lips that worked as if he were muttering to himself.

  Carr had the impulse to call out to him, to engage him in conversation, to assure himself at once of the falsity of his delusion.

  But strangers sometimes ignored you when you spoke. Especially crazy-looking ones.

  No, it must be someone closer, someone who couldn’t ignore him.

  Marcia—

  He walked rapidly. The sky was almost dark and a few stars could be seen. Soft glows from apartment windows made grotesque shadows. At intervals, streetlights glared. Narrow passageways between buildings were vertical black slits, except where side windows spilled illumination over brick walls a few feet away. Little shrubs crouched back against basement walls.

  It was quiet. There were few figures on the streets. He tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at the eyes of those he passed.

  But people were that way in the city, he reminded himself. They’d pass you a foot away and not by the faintest flicker of their gaze betray an awareness of your existence.

  This was Chicago, he told himself. Over three million inhabitants. A bustling metropolis.

  Only tonight it was very quiet.

  He had only one more street to cross before he came to Marcia’s apartment—that corner just ahead where there was a small cluster of lighted signs. On this side, a restaurant and a cleaner’s, the latter closed, both in an apartment hotel. On the other side, across the street, to his right, a cocktail bar decorated by scalloped banks of small electric lights.

  He wasn’t fifty feet from the corner—in fact he had almost entered the pool of light under the last street lamp—when he saw Marcia. She was wearing a dark dress with a white flower pattern. She was carrying a square black handbag. She turned north toward her apartment.

  Carr stood still. There was the person he most wanted to see, but now that he’d fond her, he hesitated. Just as with the little old man passing the apartment steps, something held him back from making the move, from speaking the word that would relieve him.

  He watched Marcia cross the street, walk into the pool of light on the other side, walk out of it.

  He still hesitated. He felt a growing agitation. He looked around indecisively.

  His glance took in a figure standing across the street, its slim, college boy form and cropped hair silhouetted by the bright glow of the scalloped lights, its face in shadow.

  There was something familiar about the man. Carr automatically stared him, trying to recall where he’d seen him before.

  The man glanced behind him as if to reassure himself that Carr wasn’t looking at someone else. Then he turned back. There was a tiny flash of white from the lower part of his shadowed face, as if he had shown his teeth in a smile. He waved to Carr jauntily.

  As he did so, Carr realized that he did want to be with Marcia, walking at her side, in his proper place, accounted for, not alone in this dreadfully empty city.

  For only a bit of hooked metal came out of the upraised cuff across the street.

  Everything stood out sharply as an engraving to Carr. He knew without counting that there were sixteen bulbs in each of the scallops, that inside the bar were walls stenciled with nymphs and satyrs, three nymphs and two satyrs to each panel, that the wide sidewalk in front of the bar was divided crosswise into blocks of three.

  The handless man started toward him, entreating him to wait with another jaunty wave.

  Carr pretended not to see. He turned north. Marcia was a small silhouette a quarter of a block away. He started after her at as brisk a pace as might still seem natural.

  “Hold on a moment, would you?” The handless man called after him. The voice was rather high, but cool and pleasant, with an Eastern accent.

  He knew he must not answer. Once give them proof that he was alive—

  He pretended not to hear. He gained the opposite curb, thankful that an approaching car had allowed him to lope for a few steps.

  “Stop a minute, please,” the handless man called. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  Carr’s gaze clung to Marcia’s flowered dress. Thank God, she was walking slowly. He went through a little pantomime of recognizing her, to justify a further increase in his pace.

  “Please stop,” the handless man called. “I’m sure I know you.”

  It was a dark stretch. The apartment Carr was passing boasted a hedge. Parked cars, gleamingly washed but filled with gloom, made another wall.

  The footsteps behind him were gaining. Marcia was still some distance off. Carr fought to keep from running.

  “You’re not very polite,” the handless man called. “After all, I’m a cripple, though it doesn’t slow me down.”

  The footsteps were very close now. Although Marcia was hardly twenty feet away, it seemed to Carr that there might as well be a trench deep as the world between him and her.

  The footsteps were just behind him. A toecap flicked the lower edge of his field of vision. A voice said in his ear, “Do stop now,” and he felt his shoulder brushed by something like a talon.

  Carr darted forward a few steps, slide his arm around Marcia’s and said in as gay a voice as he could manage, “Hello, dear!”

  Marcia did not turn her heard. Not by the slightest break in her stride did she betray that she was aware of his existence. Even her arm, under his hand, was like a stick of wood.

  The other footsteps dropped back a little.

  “Please don’t cut me,” Carr whispered urgently. “I know how you feel about the way I behaved last night, but I can explain.”

  She turned, pulling away from him. He realized they had reached her apartment hotel.

  The footsteps behind him speeded up.

  Carr followed her up the walk. “I must come in with you.”

  Still she did not recognize his presence. She jerked at the door before he could reach it. He ducked through after her.

  They crossed the lobby together. The clerk was leaning on the counter, chin in hand, so that his gold seal ring gleamed and his coat sleeve fell back, exposing the gold cuff link.

  His eyes ogled them. He opened his mouth—there was the flash of a gold filling—and said, elaborately, “Good evening, Miss Lorish.”

  “Good evening,” said Marcia, curtly.

  Carr heard the door open and close behind them. Then the footsteps, crisp on the tiling, soft on the carpeting, swiftly over-taking them.

  The elevator was waiting. Marcia stepped in and jabbed quickly at the seven button. Carr barely slipped through as the door started to close. Swiftly turning, he saw a hook blotted out by the closing door. The cage started up.

  Carr felt a surge of partial relief, but then instantly the bigger fear closed in.

  Marcia was ignoring him so utterly. She hadn’t given him a single sign. As if, behind that beautiful impatient face, there was nothing, absolutely nothing…

  No, that couldn’t be true, he told himself. Mustn’t be—not with her so close and the two of them locked in this little cage.

 
; And as for Marcia, she was just being cruel. There’d been times before when she’d ignored him as a punishment.

  “Darling,” he began.

  The cage stopped. Marcia jerked at the door and darted out. Carr hurried after her down the hall.

  Marcia had her key out and the door to her apartment open in a single movement. The latter was almost slammed in Carr’s face.

  She must be aware of him, or she wouldn’t be acting this way, he tried to assure himself as he pushed in after her. Her quick, angry movements pointed at her realization of his presence.

  “Marcia, please stop acting so childish,” he managed to say.

  She tossed her handbag in a chair, hurried into the kitchen. He started after her, hesitated, moved around nervously.

  She came out of the kitchen. She had a highball in her hand.

  She set the drink down on the small table at his elbow, and went on into the bedroom.

  Carr could hardly realize it for a moment, his relief was so great.

  She was aware of him. Bu that simply action she’d admitted his presence.

  All the rest of her behavior had been just temperament, her peculiar captiousness.

  He picked up the drink and took a grateful gulp.

  But as he did so, he noticed a piece of notepaper near it, covered with Marcia’s handwriting.

  His own name was at the top.

  Transferring the drink to his other hand, he picked it up.

  Dear Carr:

  I recognized the power in you, Carr, the fiery cleverness, the talent for the grand gesture. But you would not use them. You could have been a prince. But you chose to be a hireling. Many times I guided you into situations where you would have the opportunity to find your real self. Again and again I got only the equivalent of a slap in the face for my pains. I was patient. I knew you’d been in a rut for a long time and I made allowances. But this last incident was too much for me. When you coldly turned down Keaton Fisher’s magnificent offer—the offer of a man who has got to the top with no more ability than you, without your looks, and in spite of a lot more hindrances than you’ve had to cope with—when I watched you rudely reject that man’s generous offer, I knew it was the end of things between you and me.

  Here’s a word of advice, if in the future you should ever decide that you’re tired of being a hireling and would like to attempt the bigger role. If you want a woman to think you a prince, you must act like a prince in all ways. If you want to be with big people, you must be a big person. If you want life exciting and dangerous, you must be the size of danger and excitement.

  But don’t try to use that advice to win me back, for it can’t be done. Save it for some other girl. Keaton Fisher isn’t handsome, but he knows how to use what he has and he isn’t afraid of taking risks.

  And now, dear, the best of luck

  Marcia

  When supernatural terror prefaces an emotional wound, the latter is deadened. Still, as the letter dropped from Carr’s hand and he heard Marcia coming from the bedroom, he felt a stab of mingled jealousy and self-pity hard to endure.

  Her hand brushed the table beside him, she hesitated a moment, then stood at the center of the room.

  Now that she knew he knew, he told himself, she must be waiting for him to go, perhaps preparing herself to reject some final appeal, setting her expression in obdurate lines.

  But instead she was smiling. Smiling in a particularly unpleasant, animal-like way.

  And gesturing in a peculiar fashion with her right hand.

  And still not looking at him.

  Carr felt a mounting horror as he watched her.

  He tried to tell himself that he didn’t understand what her gestures meant.

  Tried to tell himself that they weren’t the movements of someone sipping from a highball glass that wasn’t there.

  Tried to tell himself that when her hand had brushed the table, it hadn’t been to take up the drink she had left there.

  Because that would mean she hadn’t made the drink for him, but for herself; that she hadn’t recognized his presence; that the terrible delusion that had tortured him back at his room was true.

  And that mustn’t be.

  “Marcia!” he called sharply.

  She licked her lips.

  Mustn’t, he repeated to himself. Nothing could write you a letter to hurt you so and yet be a mindless machine.

  He moved toward her. “Marcia!” he cried desperately and took her by the shoulders.

  Then, under his hands, the moment he touched her, he could feel her muscles go rigid. She began to shake, to vibrate like a piece of machinery that’s about to tear itself apart. He jerked away from her.

  Her face was flustered, her features screwed up like a baby’s.

  From her lips came a mumbling that grew louder. It was, Carr realized with a gust of horror, exactly like the chattering of the dumpy man.

  Or rather, the image sprang into Carr’s mind as he broke away toward the door, like the meaningless noise of a phonograph record running backwards.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bleached Prostitute

  CARR GAZED UP at huge, grainy photogenic enlargements of women in brassieres and pants painted bright orange. A sign screamed, “Girls and More Girls!”

  Around him, lone dreary figures of men slouched purposely.

  He realized that he was on South State Street, and that he had been searching for Jane Gregg through the nightmares of Chicago and his own mind ever since he had fled stealthily from Marcia’s apartment some hours ago.

  Jane was the only person in the world for him now. The only person who would answer when he spoke. The only person behind whose forehead there was an inner light.

  Except for a few others best not thought of.

  He had gone to every place he and Jane had been, fruitlessly. Now he had come to one place he remembered her speaking of.

  Around him the signs glared, the dance music groaned, the automatons slouched through the dirty shadows. Chicago, city of death, mindless metropolis, peopled by millions of machines of flesh and bone that walked and worked and uttered phonograph words and rusted and went to the scrap heap.

  Dead city in a dead universe. Dead city through which he was doomed to search forever, futilely.

  He was glad that the nightmares inside his mind had helped to shut it out.

  For a fleeting moment he had a vision of Marcia’s face as he had last seen it. He expected the stuff behind the forehead of the vision to ooze from the eyes in black tears.

  He passed a slot-like store that said TATTOOING, then a jumbled window with three dingy gilt balls over head. In front of it lounged two figures of men in dark slickers. They somehow stood out from the other dreary automatons.

  As he crossed the street, a taxicab drew up ahead of him at a dull-windowed drugstore. The fat figure of the driver squeezed out and hurried inside. As Carr passed the drugstore, he noticed him dialing at an open phone. A line of dirty collar was creased between greasy-coated bulky shoulders and thick red neck. He heard the motor softly chugging.

  Ahead lights thinned, sidewalks became emptier, as South State approached the black veil of the railway yards. He passed the figure of a woman. The face was shadowed by an awning, but he could see the shoulder-length hair, the glossy black dress tight over the hips and thighs, and the long bare legs.

  He passed a sign that read: IDENTIFICATION PHOTOS AT ALL HOURS. He passed a black-windowed bar that said: CONTINUOUS ENTERTAINMENT.

  He thought: I will search for Jane forever and never find her. I will search for Jane…

  Carr stopped.

  …I will search for Jane…

  Carr turned around.

  No, it couldn’t be, he thought. This one’s hair is blonde, and the hips wing commonly in the tight black dress.

  But if he disregarded those two things…

  The hair had been unevenly blonde. It could be, undoubtedly was, bleached.

  The walk could be assumed.r />
  He was beginning to think it was Jane.

  Just then his glance flickered beyond the shoulder-brushing blonde hair.

  A long black convertible drew up to the curb just this side of the taxi, parking the wrong way. Out of it stepped the handless man.

  On the other side of the street, just opposite the girl in black, stood Miss Hackman. She was wearing a green sports suit and hat. She glanced quickly both ways, then started across.

  Halfway between Carr and the girl in black, Mr. Wilson stepped out of a dark doorway.

  Carr felt as if his heart were being squeezed. This was the finish, he thought. The end of Jane’s long, terrified flight. The kill.

  Unless…

  The three pursuers closed in slowly, confidently The girl in black didn’t turn or stop, but she seemed to slow down just a trifle.

  Unless something happened to convince them that he and Jane were automatons like the rest. Unless he and Jane could put on an act that would deceive them.

  It could be done. They’d always been doubtful about Jane.

  But she couldn’t do it alone. She couldn’t put on an act by herself. But with him…

  The three figures continued to close in. Miss Hackman was smiling.

  Carr wet his lips and whistled twice, with an appreciative chromatic descent at the end of each blast.

  The girl in black stopped.

  Carr slouched toward her swiftly.

  The girl in black turned around. He saw Jane’s white face, framed by that ridiculous blonde hair.

  “Hello, kid,” he called saluting her with a wave of his fingers.

  “Hello,” she replied. Her heavily lipsticked mouth smiled. She still swayed a little as she waited for him.

  Passing Mr. Wilson, Carr reached her a moment before the others did. He did not look at them, but he could sense them closing in behind him and Jane, forming a dark semicircle.

  “Doing anything tonight?” he asked Jane.

  Her chin described a little movement, not quite a nod. She studied him up and down. “Maybe.”

  “They’re faking!” Miss Hackman’s whisper was very faint. It seemed to detach itself from her lips and glide toward his ear like an insect.