by Frances
“No,” Pam said. Since this seemed unduly final, she smiled to complete it.
“Gee,” the boy said. “That was Mr. Beck. You know—Mr. Dan Beck? My old man says he’s the greatest—”
But Pam was not listening. She stopped suddenly. She stared down the corridor. Mr. Beck must have gone in under the third red light which marked a door of some kind. Perhaps she could find him if she hurried.
She hurried. The little boy stared after her.
“Gee, lady,” he said, in an awed whisper. “You hadn’t ought to bother Mr. Beck. Not now.”
There was nothing to do but to wait and keep trying. Dorian thought they might as well wait at home, but she realized her husband’s uneasy impatience, and did not suggest it. But she did, idly, snap on a small radio on the window sill, and switch from the police calls on which it was set to the broadcast band, and turn the dial at random.
“—and how do you answer that, Mr. North?” the radio inquired, conversationally.
“I don’t know that it needs answering,” Jerry North’s voice said. “I’m not sure it doesn’t, essentially, answer itself.”
Jerry North did not sound as if he cared much. He sounded as if he were thinking of something else.
Bill Weigand was on his feet by then, and Dorian’s slim fingers had twitched off the radio. Bill remembered all of it, and cursed himself for forgetting. This was the night of Jerry’s broadcast. Which meant that he and Pam would be at the Transcontinental’s towering building on Madison Avenue. Bill moved, and Dorian, not asking needless questions, moved with him. But in the car she had reassurance.
“Anyway,” she said, “Beck won’t be there, if that’s what you’re afraid of, Bill. He’s through for the night. Don’t you remember—we heard him.”
“He does a repeat later,” Bill said. He opened the Buick up, with its red lights flashing a warning. He let the siren growl gently at intersections. “For the West Coast.” He whirled the car recklessly east through Twenty-eighth. “If he gets the chance—” Weigand went around a bus and Dorian decided she had better not talk, because if he was going to drive like this he needed all his concentration. She wondered why Beck might not get a chance to do his repeat broadcast, but decided that there would be a better time to bring it up. If they lived.
Pamela North went through a door under the red sign, which said “Keep Out. Rehearsal.” All the red signs said that, but the first room she had entered, timidly, had been empty. Nobody was rehearsing anything, and it was not where Mr. Beck had gone. So now Pam entered with more assurance.
She went down a short corridor and opened another door. She walked into a small studio—much smaller than the one in which Jerry was broadcasting. Mr. Beck was in it, sitting at a small table on which there were two microphones. The floor was of some substance which deadened sound, but Pam must have made some noise because Dan Beck looked up. He looked up with irritation.
“Well?” he said. He had a wonderful voice, but it was not suave, as Pam had expected. “Well, what do you want? I got the others out of here because I wanted to be by myself. Just”—he looked up at the clock—“just eighteen minutes by myself. Before I go on. Now what do you want?”
“I—” Pam began.
“Anyway,” he said. “This is the standby studio. You ought to know that, if you work here. You ought to know nobody’s allowed in the standby studio except the announcer and the engineer. Even I’m not allowed in here, under the rules.”
That made the rules tremendous. Even rules which should have barred Dan Beck from somewhere, and had understandably failed to bar him, were tremendous rules. Even trying to bar Dan Beck from anywhere was a tremendous thing. That, somehow, was all in the voice.
“Well,” Pam said, “where are they?”
“I told them to get out,” Beck said, succinctly. “Now I’m telling you to get out. My God, girl—don’t you know who I am?”
“Yes,” Pam told him. “You’re Mr. Beck. Or you say you’re Mr. Beck.”
“Then you ought to know—” Beck began. He stopped suddenly and looked at Mrs. North. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded. The voice was anything but suave now. “Who says I’m not Beck?”
“Nobody,” Pam said. “Everybody says you are Mr. Beck. You say you are—everybody says you are. Are you?”
She had not meant it to go this way at all. She had meant it to be subtle, indirect.
“Look,” Dan Beck said. “Are you crazy? Do you work here?”
“No,” Pam said. “I don’t work here. I came to see you. I saw you going down the corridor like a Tenniel ra—I saw you going down the corridor. And I wanted to see you so I just came.”
Beck stood up. He was not really an imposing figure, but still he was formidable. It suddenly occurred to Pam North that he was very formidable, with the two of them alone in the small studio.
“But if I’m disturbing you, I can come back,” she said, and began to back toward the door. “I’ll come back later. Some time. With Bill and—”
Dan Beck moved fast for a man with short legs. He moved, it seemed to Pam, with a kind of scuttling motion. He was around the table and beside her. He put a hand on her arm. It was a strong hand.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. Who are you?”
“Mrs. North,” Pam said. “Pamela North. I’ll go now.”
She moved, but the hand tightened.
“Who’s this—Bill?” he said.
Pam hesitated a moment. But it would be better if he knew that she was a friend of Bill’s.
“Lieutenant Weigand,” she said. “He’s a—”
“Yes,” Beck said. “I know who he is. And he sent you here. To ask if I’m really Beck?”
“No.” Pam said. “That is—yes. He’s—he’s right outside.”
Beck pushed her out of the way and was at the door. He turned a catch which took the place of a key.
“We’ll keep him outside,” he said. He turned and looked at Mrs. North. “All right,” he said. “What do you want, Mrs. North? I’m Dan Beck. What do you want?”
He did not look like a rabbit any longer. Certainly he did not sound like a rabbit. Pam tried to keep her voice light and steady.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all—if you’re really Mr. Beck. And not just a—just a voice.”
She was not, after she had said it, clear why she had said it just that way. Perhaps, she eventually thought, she had had, subconsciously, a glimpse of the way things really were; perhaps her subconscious had chosen the words for her. But, then, she was not prepared for the effect upon Dan Beck of what she said.
He stood for a moment staring at her, measuringly. His eyes seemed to grow smaller and his brows came together; although for a moment he did not move, there was still a kind of thrusting forward of his short, compact body. Without actually moving his feet, he came nearer. He came nearer threateningly.
“So,” he said. “You did guess. Or was it Weigand who guessed?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Both of us. It was—it was obvious, Mr. Beck. If you want me to go on calling you Beck?”
He looked a little puzzled.
“What would you call me?” he said. “I’m Beck—I’m still Beck. What would you call me?”
It was hard to understand what he was getting at. He seemed to make an admission; now he seemed to withdraw it. But Pam decided she must not show that she did not understand.
“Jones,” she said. “Smith. Anything.” She met his threat steadily. “Because, whatever you say, you’re not Beck. Not really. I knew that last night. I ought to have known it all the time, probably.”
The last was bluff. She could think of no reason she should have known it all the time.
“All the time?” he repeated. “But—but Elliot was alive until yesterday. And I didn’t run out until yesterday. We kept ahead, you know.”
He was talking less to her than to himself, Pam North thought. She was authentically puzzling him; someho
w they were talking at cross-purposes. But there was no lessening of the menace he presented—his face set hard with the brows drawn together, his body a little forward on his short legs. He was grotesque, as he stood there, Pam thought. Grotesque—and dangerous. And she was alone with him in a room with a locked door behind her.
She tried to speak lightly, and it was harder, because now she realized fully her danger. Because whatever was obscure and unclear in the situation, the situation still was dangerous. Pam began to move backward, slowly, toward the door which had let her in.
“You couldn’t have known before,” Beck went on, explaining it to himself. “Not from the broadcast. Because we kept ahead, you see. As a margin of safety. In case Elliot was ill some day, or couldn’t—” He broke off and looked at her and saw her backing away. Then he smiled. It was an ordinary smile, doing ordinary things to lips and cheeks. And it was horrible. It was horrible because it was ordinary. It was horrible because Beck was a squat little man, almost grotesque, and smiling—and moving toward her to kill her. Because that’s what he’s doing, Pam thought. That’s what he’s doing!
“But you know now, don’t you, Mrs. North,” he said, and he gave up any pretense that he was not moving toward her. “And they sent you to—what would you say, Mrs. North? Probably you know the words too, Mrs. North. Like Elliot. Elliot knew a lot of words, Mrs. North. He died just the same.”
“I don’t know!” Pam said, and now her voice went up a little. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just thought you weren’t Mr. Beck—that you were only pretending to be Mr. Beck. That somebody had kidnapped the real Mr. Beck. But I think you are Mr. Beck.” She was almost against the door, now. Her fingers were reaching up behind her for the catch on the door. “Truly, I think you’re Mr. Beck,” she insisted.
He did not answer. Instead he lunged toward her, his hands up and the fingers spread out. They came at the level of her throat. Pam North screamed. More quickly than she would have thought she ever could, she leaped to the side. She half jumped, half ran, past Dan Beck. One of his hands caught the shoulder of her dress and the silk tore and she went on, the dress falling from her shoulder.
But there was no place to go. He was between her and the door. Then at the other end of the room, at one side, she saw another door and ran toward it. Behind her she heard Beck laughing. He was laughing and running and still trying to talk.
“You thought you’d fool me, didn’t you?” he said. But the words did not come evenly, as in a sentence. They came jerkily. “Thought I wouldn’t know you knew about Johnny. Cute little Johnny, with all the pretty words …”
Pam reached the door and clutched it open. It opened on a passage which ended in a blank wall. But at her right was another door. There was no place else to go, so she went through the door, although she knew it was leading her into a trap. It led her into the control room. There was a slanting table with a chair behind it, and another chair, and on the walls some sort of electrical equipment in cupboards. There was no other door.
The door had opened inward and Pam tried to shut it behind her. But Beck had reached it, and he was heavier, and the door opened against her easily. It seemed terrifyingly easy for Beck to force the door.
Before he could reach out and grab her, Pam leaped back into the control room. She hit the chair and it clattered, dully, on the floor. She pressed back against the slanting table, covered with switch keys, which it had fronted. Pam put her hands behind her against the table and faced Dan Beck. Beck stopped hurrying and came in and closed the door. He was smiling again—the same horribly ordinary smile.
“But you didn’t fool me, Mrs. North,” he said. “So I can’t let you go, can I? Because you’d try to stop me, Mrs. North—you’d try to end all I’m doing. I know you would, Mrs. North—like the others. Like Ann. She didn’t know it was so important—so much more important than she was. It’s more important than you are, Mrs. North.”
He had stopped and that was more frightening than anything else. Because it meant he was sure. So sure that he no longer had to hurry.
It was as if he had read her mind.
“Twelve minutes still, you know,” he said, as if he were making conversation. “Then, of course, I have to go on again. I have to talk to the people.” He stopped and looked at her. “My people, you know,” he said. “Not Elliot’s people. My people. I was the one who talked to them. Elliot only helped. The ideas were all my ideas.”
Pam got it then, although still she did not fully understand it.
“But Elliot wrote what you said,” she told Beck. “It wasn’t really you who said those things. You were just—just an actor. All the time you were just an actor.”
A strange grimace came over his face.
“That’s what Ann said,” he told Pam. “Just before she died Ann said that—that I was just an actor. I hadn’t been sure what I would do to her before. Not really sure. It wasn’t important either way, but I’m not sure I would have killed her if she hadn’t said that. It—it annoyed me, I’m afraid.”
It came over Pam North then that Dan Beck was mad. Not mad in an ordinary sense. Not mad in his logic. Only mad in his premises. She started to scream, but almost before Beck laughed she realized the futility of a scream.
“Perfectly soundproof, Mrs. North,” Beck told her, and now he was smiling again in quite an ordinary fashion, as he moved forward to kill her. “Control rooms have to be, you know. They’re made to be. The walls will keep sound in—any sound.”
Keep sound in, Pam thought. Keep sound in. But it wasn’t that—really. It was all to let sound out. It was all a cunning, skillful way of trapping sound and then letting it out. Letting it go everywhere. And the control room was where you let it out. You—
Faster than she thought, Pam moved. Her fingers groped behind her. There had been a switch larger than the others somewhere on the panel. Perhaps it was the switch which let sound out. Trying not to move her body, groping desperately, she sought the large switch with her fingers. Fumbling frantically, she felt other switches move under her fingers. Maybe that was wrong; maybe it was all wrong and hopeless. But nothing could be more hopeless for anything she did now than what she had already done had made it. She found the large switch and it moved under her fingers.
Now she could scream. She screamed. Beck laughed.
“Very effective, Mrs. North,” he said. “Very effective. And nobody can hear you. I can hear you, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Ann screamed too, you know—Ann started to scream. It’s too bad we aren’t on the air, Mrs. North, so that everybody could hear such an effective scream. If we were on the air, now—and out at the microphone. Instead of in here where nobody can hear you.”
That was it, Pam realized, and knew what she had to do. The sounds were let loose from the control room. But they had to begin in the studio. She had to—
In one movement she stooped, grabbed the light chair and threw it. She was stronger than she had dreamed she could be. But she was not strong enough, and not quick enough. Beck’s hands flew up in front of his face and the chair banged into them. He held it there. But he was surprised and staggered slightly and now Pam North moved as she had never moved before.
In master control the sound engineer saw the light flash from the standby studio. It was unexpected; it meant that somewhere in the world all hell had broken loose. It meant that, without warning, a news bulletin had come through of such vital importance that no other program mattered. His hand reached automatically for a switch and threw it. But instead of a bulletin there was silence from the standby studio. The engineer’s fingers moved another switch. In Studio 3C a panel on the wall lighted up dimly. It said: “On the Air.”
In Studio 3A, Humphrey Creighton opened his mouth. He was now about to tell how it occurred to him to write “Beyond Yesterday.” He had his extemporaneous remarks on this subject so well in mind that he hardly needed to look at the paper on which he had them well typed. In the guest booth of Studio 3A Mr. C
reighton’s agent leaned forward with a slight enhancement of interest, approaching a receptive ear to the radio receiver. He hoped old Humpty-Dumpty would knock them dead with this one. Old Humpty-Dumpty hadn’t been so damned hot so far, but you couldn’t tell.
Pam North got to the door before Dan Beck could let go the chair. She was almost through it before he grabbed for her and got the collar of her dress. It parted. Thank God, Pam thought, running, they make them out of old movie films or something—thank God they come apart. She went out into the studio, and as she ran, panting, she began to scream again.
“I was sitting under a tree at my little place in the country,” Humphrey Creighton said, with the casual air of a man who also has big places in the country, and can sit under half a dozen trees when he likes. “When suddenly—”
Suddenly was the word for it.
“Help,” Pam North’s voice said, rising in crescendo. “Help. Help everybody. Dan Beck’s trying to kill me. Dan Beck’s trying to kill me—just like he killed the others. Help. Oh—help!”
It was afterwards estimated that at least half a million book lovers, from coast to coast, had been about to hear about Mr. Creighton under the tree. There was a little group of them in an apartment in Kansas City; they met every Thursday evening to loiter in the world of books. In Memphis, the Book Forum was reaching an even larger group, composed of the ladies of the Forward Club—and four of their husbands—over loud speakers. In Jersey City, there was a small, scattered but devoted audience and Schenectady contributed, on an estimate, more than five hundred. (It was snowing heavily in Schenectady.) Milwaukee, Louisville, Keokuk, Iowa, Wilkes-Barre, New Orleans and St. Paul had each its quota of listeners, and all of them thought something odd must have happened. It was, they agreed in talking it over, a very funny thing for Mr. Creighton to say at just that point. About Mr. Beck, too.
Half a dozen receivers were open in the Transcontinental Building, including one near the reception desk, at which Bill and Dorian Weigand had just stopped. That was why Bill Weigand, with half a dozen attendants following him, was first to reach the standby studio. It was fortunate, as it turned out, that it could always be opened from outside, in case of emergency, by pressing a concealed button. It was fortunate that one of the attendants knew where the button was.
