Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin Read Free Book Online

that’s what tightened me up.
    I tried to figure out if he would know who I was from seeing me in the bar. He might have seen me good but he might have been too excited to get it stuck in his head. I didn’t remember him looking my way, but I was out for a while too, and he might have noticed then. But when a guy is out with his face down on the table, it’s not easy to see what he looks like. I started to figure suppose Sam Schwartz was with him when I caught up to him, Sam Schwartz would know me good. But what would Sam Schwartz be doing with him? It didn’t make sense but it bothered me. All that kind of stuff.
    I walked down Fiftieth to Eighth Avenue where the front entrance of the Garden was, and all the way I kept seeing Al Judge pop up in front of me. Once it was a big guy and he was wearing a white scarf, and then it was a guy who limped but he didn’t have a cane, and the way I was starting and stopping and looking around, anybody who was watching me would have figured I was crazy sure.
    When I got into the lobby of the Garden it was worse than ever. There was a lot of people liked Rocks Abruzzo because he was a killer, but I never figured on so many jamming into that street like, that goes right into the building and up to the ticket doors. Mostly men but with a couple of women and they were all pushing in and out so that you could hardly get through them. In that mob, Al Judge could have shoved right into me and I wouldn’t know it. So all I could do was keep looking around as much as I could and hope it wouldn’t happen like that.
    I knew what Madison Square Garden looked like all right because I was there once before. That was the time Mr Hildebrand from the C.Y.O. took a bunch of kids to the circus and my father gave me money to go along. First we went down in the basement where they had all the freaks sitting around and it was all right. I mean the way there were so many different freaks and you could walk around and look at them and they didn’t even mind. It was a break I was so tall, too, because the other kids had to hop up and down to get a look until somebody let them get up front where they could see.
    But then the kids started acting crazy and saying all kinds of things right out in front of the freaks and that spoiled it. A lot of people laughed and Mr Hildebrand laughed too, and the freaks looked like they didn’t care, but inside of me I remembered how it was when I pulled something dumb in school and the teacher would yell at me and I would sit and look just like the freaks were doing. I mean looking over everybody’s head like they weren’t there and maybe smiling a little bit like it was funny or something. But inside it hurt all the way down.
    So that spoiled it for me, and when we went upstairs to where the real circus was with the acrobats and clowns and stuff I didn’t like it so much. I made believe I did but I really didn’t.
    But I knew what Madison Square Garden looked like and how to get in. What scared me was somebody in the crowd would shove up against the gun and feel it was a gun and maybe start trouble. So I put my hand over it in my pocket as far as I could, and when anybody pushed into me they would only feel my hand.
    The only thing I wished was that I could let them know what I had in my hand without getting into trouble and spoiling everything. If they knew I had a gun there they would give me plenty of room. They would fall over one another getting out of the way, and I would walk up the middle with everybody holding their breath. Just thinking about it like that made me feel real tough and I started to push through without caring what they said or the way they looked at me. The only thing was I kept my overcoat unbuttoned and my hand tight over the gun.
    Near the end of this street in the building was a row of doors and a couple of guards taking tickets and letting a few people in, and that’s where I headed. Everybody was