Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin Read Free Book Online Page A

pushing around but hardly anybody was trying to get in, and I caught on right away. They didn’t have tickets and they couldn’t even buy one any more. Then a skinny guy with a big beak grabbed my arm and said, ‘Buddy, got an extra ticket?’ and I pulled away before I remembered I did have an extra ticket and it would go to waste. It didn’t matter. I was getting close to Al Judge and that was the big thing. I wanted to get everything over and done with, and besides it made me jumpy to have anybody grab my arm that way.
    I was near the guard and I got the tickets out. Before I could shove one away, another man grabbed my arm and pointed at it. He said, ‘If that’s an extra, I’ll pay plenty for it,’ and it hit me all of a sudden that the extra ticket was worth plenty of money and maybe it would come in handy. I mean, suppose Al Judge took it into his head to go around in a taxi somewhere. Then I would have to grab a taxi too, and I would need money for it. All I had was the nickel left from the bus fare.
    The man who stopped me was wearing very good clothes, you could see that right off, and under his hat you could see red hair, and he had a little bristly red moustache too. He looked all right to me so I said, ‘How much?’
    I don’t know if it happens to other people but it happens to me sometime. I mean, now and then you meet a guy, you take a look at him, and you know he’s all right. It sort of shows through.
    That’s the way I felt about this man. Maybe it was because he looked so clean. He looked like he scrubbed an hour and then put on a brand new suit. Everything on him was clean and flat and pressed right, the way my father liked it. Only he didn’t wear a hat like my father. He wore a pearl-grey fedora without any dent in it except the one down the middle, and the brim turned up all around. On somebody else it might look corny, but on him it looked all right. I thought he would say right off how much he would give me for the ticket but he didn’t. He said, ‘Let’s see the ticket and I’ll make you an offer.’
    I showed him the ticket and he whistled. ‘Hey, that’s all right. Is it a deal for ten bucks?’
    I said, ‘Okay,’ and he opened his wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill like you would expect him to carry around. It was so new it was hardly wrinkled. I stalled a second to look at it before I folded it up, and that’s when it happened. Somebody slammed a hand hard on my shoulder, and said in my ear, ‘Okay, big boy. You’re it.’
    All I knew was Al Judge had grabbed me when I wasn’t ready. I almost yelled, it shocked me so much, but at the same time I twisted around as hard as I could and grabbed for the gun. Before I got my hand on it, I saw it wasn’t Al Judge at all. It was a big fat red-faced guy, and he was plenty sore because I knocked his hat off when I twisted around. He grabbed at the hat with one hand, and got it on, and with the other hand he started to wrestle me away to the wall. I didn’t even argue about it, I was so glad it wasn’t Al Judge even if he was almost pulling my arm off. Everybody was getting in his way too and trying to look at us and he didn’t like that either. He shoved right along until he got me in a corner where nobody was standing and then he flashed a badge at me so I knew he was a cop.
    I didn’t know what to do then. I couldn’t run what with all the people blocking the way out, and I could hardly get at the gun because he had me crowded in so, and he might get suspicious if I made a quick grab for it again. I figured he must have seen the gun or felt it or something and that was why he pinched me, and then my mind started to go around like crazy trying to think of a good lie to tell him.
    But he didn’t frisk me. He didn’t say anything about the gun. All he said was, ‘How much did you get for that ticket,