The fear makers, p.1
The Fear Makers, page 1
THE
FEAR MAKERS
by
DARWIN L. TEILHET
POCKET BOOKS OF CANADA LTD.
MONTREAL
Contents:-
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
BEING THE POSTSCRIPT TO ELIZABETH WERNER
THE PRINTING HISTORY OF
THE FEAR MAKERS
D. Appleton-Century edition published July, 1945
1st printing…May 1945
2nd printing…June 1945
3rd printing…August 1945
Labor Book Club edition published April, 1946
Pocket Book edition published July, 1946
1st printing…April 1946
2nd printing…June 1946
THIS POCKET BOOK INCLUDES EVERY WORD CONTAINED IN THE ORIGINAL, HIGHER-PRICED EDITION. IT IS PRINTED FROM BRAND-NEW PLATES MADE FROM COMPLETELY RESET, LARGE, CLEAR; EASY-TO-READ TYPE.
Printed in Canada
This Pocket Book edition is published by arrangement with
D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc.
COPYRIGHT, 1945, BY DARWIN L. TEILHET
This one is for Captain Lawrence Bachmann, U. S. A. F,
FOREWORD
As should be expected in a novel of this sort, of adventure, of entertainment, none of the characters herein mentioned have any relation to actual persons, living or dead or homesick or in a war; and the Jews in this story aren’t real Jews but merely imaginary Jews, and the Negroes in this story obviously aren’t real Negroes or taken after real Negroes because only a Negro writer could write the true and honest talk of his own people; and, as far as the author of this adventure is aware, the town of Pont Dulac does not exist, and certainly there is no intention of having it exist; and as for the city, the place, the locality of Washington, D. G., anyone who has been there or who has been so fortunate as to reside there will know, as it is and as it exists, with the broad, noble streets and the tall, noble buildings and the intelligent and noble inhabitants, that it is not nor can be the place and the locality named and described in this adventure also as Washington, D. C. It would be a monstrous thing to have in real life any of the things indicated in this adventure and the author is very pleased, accordingly, to make it clear that this is an adventure, to be read for entertainment.
= CAST OF CHARACTERS =
IN THE ORDER OF THEIR APPEARANCE
Captain Allen Eaton, amnesiac war veteran, who only wanted to go home…
Mr. Brown, who met him on the train and was too friendly…
Megassum, Eaton’s employee before the war, who bit the land that bred him…
Bernard Bond, a statistician who knew how to frighten people efficiently…
Miss Nelson, who wore a dead man’s perfume…
Rodney Hillyer, a newspaper reporter who killed a good story…
George Godspeed, who was trying to write the music he couldn’t play any more…
Dr. Nathan, who hated his job and loved mankind…
Elizabeth Werner, who finally got to wear a sea green evening dress…
Mrs. Weil, who had lived in Washington D.C., for fifteen years without understanding it…
Norman Werner, Elizabeth’s brother, who had been frightened by experts…
Colonel Rolland, who had been with Eaton on a beach in Normandy and regretted it…
Senator Walder, who did not believe in Gascism…
Harold Loder, just a big good-natured guy who hated everybody…
Vivian Eschlauer, who turned from fine art to forgery…
Major Bowman, a staff officer, who was willing to kick hell out of any field officer…
CHAPTER I
As the train pulled out all except one waved. Captain Smallens, who was the psychiatrist making the final recommendation, even ran a few steps, shouting something probably meant to be jolly and of good cheer, if I could have heard it through the window, pleased with me as much as himself, and tremendously sincere; and the only one who didn’t wave or smile was the little Colonel gent with the gray beard, and he just stayed where he was, hands behind his back, watching the train go out, not showing anything on his face at all.
Because the idea of sleeping with nobody else in the same room seemed wonderful, I’d bought a pullman compartment ticket. For a time I stayed in the compartment, thinking how good it was to be going home. I had nearly a thousand dollars from back pay. When I saw Clark in Washington, D. C., and explained how it was with me, I’d have all the rest I needed to loaf a year or so, as long as was necessary around Half Moon Bay, going into that San Francisco hospital for the once-a-month check-up. Once I was home, it’d be all right. I’d be fine. I’d even explain about the headache.
Along about 2000 hours I realized I was hungry. In ten or fifteen minutes the steward located a table-for me. Opposite me was this party, in a checked or striped suit—I don’t remember. He had the kind of face one sees in photographs of faces in a crowd. It was the usual face with the mouth and the nose and the ears. The waiter brought the first course. And the quart of milk. By the time we were going into the dessert, we were talking. You know. The way any two people start talking across a table in a dining car. After the coffee, I found I’d forgotten my cigarettes. He handed me one of his.
As the train rolled into the night, putting more miles between Boston and me, I felt even better than before. As long as I was smoking his cigarettes, I suggested perhaps he’d permit me to buy him a drink in the club car?
We got up. I felt so good I forgot my cane. My leg didn’t feel that good. I grabbed on to the table, pulling the cane from where I’d dropped it between the chair and the side of the car. The other party waited for me. He followed right behind my heels all the way, too, as if he expected me to go on my pan. So I didn’t feel quite so wonderful, then, walking through half a dozen pullmans, having to use that cane.
We were lucky. We found a seat at the end of the club car. After whiskey and soda I was beginning to feel more normal again when this man reached over and took the cane. He remarked, “It looks new,” and glanced at me. He asked, “Germany?”
I didn’t see any reason to hide the truth. Besides, he was too sharp a guesser. Perhaps he read Sherlock Holmes. I couldn’t say. Probably he put together the new army cane and my leg and the headlines in today’s papers. I replied it •hadn’t been that recent. It had been last June, only a mile or so into France on one of those Normandy beaches.
He said, “I thought I recognized your face. You’re Captain Eaton?”
I said I wasn’t calling myself “Captain” any more. For me, that was finished.
He introduced himself as Brown—James or William. I don’t remember. Perhaps he didn’t give a first name. I don’t know. As I say, he was the unobtrusive type. He was the man who walked into a room and stayed two hours and walked out again without anyone noticing. He was good. I’d guess now, he was a professional at not being noticed. Everything about him was neutral, and quiet.
He said he was a magazine representative on his way home to San Francisco, after visiting in Boston. Of course, right away that did something. I said I was shoving for home, too. I said I was stopping in Washington, D. C., for twenty-four hours and then picking up my car and driving back to the Coast.
It was like finding a friend in a strange land. Unless one comes from the Coast, it’s difficult to explain how it is living on this side of the country. This fellow understood. He said a week or so at one time was all he could stand. We agreed it wasn’t entirely the climate, either. Partly, it was the people. Perhaps it was because there were too many of them.
He said, “Most of them are foreigners.”
I felt that way, too, only I guess the way I felt it wasn’t exactly the way he felt it because he added, “There are too many Jews and niggers and Wops and God knows what else,” and what I’d meant was everyone back here was a foreigner. They acted differently. They weren’t the same. They weren’t my people. I’d felt it for nearly ten years in Washington, D. C., and tried to shove out—and for one reason or another I’d stayed. I’d felt it in Boston. Now I didn’t have to stay any longer. I was on my way. I was going where mountains were close to a sea, where a sun didn’t quit shining six months out of the year. California, here I come. I’d been away ten years too long. Clark would understand. It wouldn’t take over a day to arrange the deal with him.
So this stranger and I talked. We talked about the rotten weather the East was having. From weather we got on the black market and from there to last November’s elections. He was about as confused there as I was. He asked what the soldiers would do when they came home and voted for congressmen in 1946 and I said I didn’t know what any soldier would do when he got home. Maybe he’d find he wasn’t home even when he got home.
The stranger said, “How’s that?”
I said what was home? Did it stay a home after one left?
And this man Brown, or whatever his name was, looked at me hard for a minute. Next, he smiled. He said, “I must get off at New York. I don’t want to keep you up.”
I wasn’t sleepy. I had ample time to turn in later. So we must have spent a good hour longer trying to arrange the state of the wor ld, and particularly the United States. That stranger had some facts which worried me. He told me how the number of strikes was increasing. He said newspapers were afraid to print the truth. He explained he was worried about the war in the Pacific. He said with capitulation of some sort expected in a few weeks from Germany, our people over here didn’t seem to realize we still had a man size war ahead in the Pacific. He claimed labor had made big dough for a couple of years and was sore because factories might be closed down and we were in for a series of strikes and trouble which would impede our Pacific effort.
When I thought of what our guys were going through beyond and away, over the world, and he told me examples he’d seen of young punks hauling down more money in a week than they’d ever seen before in a year, I guess I burned a little.
I’m not trying to explain anything away. He had facts. While I’m not from way down, suh, in regard to that ten per cent of our population who never asked to be imported here in the first place, I could surmise how some of our G.I.’s would react if they ever heard Brown giving the statistics on the number of Negroes deliberately catching syphilis to evade the draft.
Toward midnight, Brown happened to enquire where I was planning to stay in Washington. I didn’t know where I was staying. For all I knew, Clark might have tossed out his phonograph record collection and at last installed a wife for himself in the apartment. Clark didn’t write letters. Although during the past months I’d expected a letter from him, he’d done as he always did when I was away.
Perhaps it griped me a little—that he hadn’t written, while I was in the hospital. Anyway, we hadn’t exchanged letters. I was still confused where I’d stay.
Brown said, “If you haven’t wired ahead to a hotel, I might help you. It’s tough getting hotel rooms in Washington, D. C. I have a great friend there who rents a room now and then. Why don’t I wire him for you?”
I replied I couldn’t have him go to that trouble.
“Nonsense.” He smiled. “After all, I’ve read enough about you to feel as if I know you. Besides, we come from the same place. My friend isn’t from California but he is from Arizona. If you can’t get a hotel, you’ll have something.” He added, “There’s one disadvantage. It’s not close in.”
I told him as far as I was concerned, for the one night I expected to stay in Washington, D. C., I could take a place outside the city that was quiet.
“It’s in the country, all right. It’s a couple of miles beyond Hyattsville.”
Hyattsville I remembered. One summer Clark and I had tried renting a farm near Hyattsville to escape the Washington, D. C., heat. That wasn’t too far for me. Well, this Brown tore out a leaf from his notebook. He wrote the address. He said, “You won’t have trouble finding it. The house is a big, square place, painted white, about a block from the end of West Amherst Road. You can’t miss it. It’s the only white house on the block.”
After writing down the name and address for me, he promised to put a wire through as soon as he reached New York. I thanked him. It made everything I’d done today end pleasantly, meeting a stranger, having him become friendly and kind and fixing it so I’d have a place to stay for the night in Washington, D. C. Somehow, I felt he’d keep his word, too. He’d telegraph.
He asked me to look him up when I reached San Francisco. He said, “I’m in the Russ Building,” and it wasn’t until later I realized he’d never given me the name of the magazine he was representing. He smiled again. “If you need a job, we might talk about it, although with all you’ve had written about you this last year I don’t suppose a job concerns you.”
I said I didn’t reckon anything the newspapers had printed meant very much in getting a job. Besides, I wasn’t planning to do any work for a year or so. I was still under treatment.
Because he looked concerned at that, very fast I said the treatment wasn’t important. It was mostly to be sunshine. I was going to Washington, D. C., to settle my affairs with a partner of mine and then shove in a hurry for the sunshine. Once I’d sold my interest in the Clark J. Baker Associates I expected I could take it easy for a year or so without worrying about a job.
“Clark J. Baker Associates—” He paused. “That would be Mr. Megassum, wouldn’t it? You were with him?”
I don’t know why I minded. Megassum was a good man. Only I hadn’t been with him. Clark and I had engaged Megassum. I said Megassum had worked with us.
He said, “It’s a very reliable firm. My magazine contracted for two or three opinion polls from the Clark J. Baker Associates. It has done very well in the past year, hasn’t it? I remember our people were dubious about it when Mr. Baker died last year, but Mr. Megassum persuaded us to renew the—”
I said, “Died?”
Brown said, “You didn’t know he was dead?” and looked curiously at me, as if something was wrong. “He was killed by a hit-and-run driver last July. Didn’t you know?”
= 2 =
The trouble was, I didn’t know whether I’d known or not.
I don’t remember much afterwards of saying good-by to Brown, except that he kept staring at me. I suppose he had a right to be puzzled. I didn’t do any sleeping that night. I couldn’t. Clark—dead? No longer living? Just out of California, we’d started together. We’d planned it at the University, Clark concentrating on business management and economics while I took the social psychology end and statistics.
We’d expected to locate on the Coast. The second summer Clark had taken a trip to Washington, D. C., for one of our congressmen, planning to stay two weeks. At the end of the month he’d wired me. We’d never counted on remaining in Washington, D. C. We’d never counted on making Washington, D. C., our central headquarters and expanding from there into a national organization. Even when the war came we were still talking about getting out. Because of his eyes, he didn’t enlist with me. We decided he’d hold on in Washington, D. C., and keep the home fires going until I returned.
Now, Clark dead? Megassum running the business? I couldn’t believe it. Megassum would have written. Megassum wouldn’t have taken over without writing me. That stranger in the club car had been wrong. He didn’t know. It was another Clark Baker. Clark couldn’t be dead…
The headache came harder. For the past two months I’d been assuring Captain Smallens I didn’t have it and had stuck it out, not asking for medicine. Otherwise, in Boston they might not have agreed. They might have kept me there. Now, I didn’t even have any medicine.
When Monday morning came, I didn’t need a porter to awaken me. By the time I’d shaved and was inside the new ninety-dollar civvies, we were pulling into Washington, D. C.
First thing I did was to find a cab at the Union Station, throw my duffel bag in, and tell the driver to take me to the Tobias Garage on De Sales Street. On the way, I was trying to decide what to do. I suppose when one forgets even a small part of one’s life, there’s always that worry about forgetting more. It isn’t reasonable. But it’s there, the fear. I was afraid I’d been told Clark was dead—and I’d forgotten.
At the garage, the manager had received my letter. The convertible was waiting, batteries in, tires inflated. Best of all, my gasoline coupons were there. The people in Boston had attended to everything. The manager said, “You’ll find the car’s as ready for your trip as it was when you stored it here before enlisting, Captain.”
I looked at the manager. I couldn’t remember knowing him and I was afraid to tell him. Finally, I risked it; I had to know. I asked had he been here when I’d put the car in for storage, nearly three years ago?
It was all right. He hadn’t been here. He was new. He said, “Bill Dobbins was drafted and I took his place. I’m too old. But I got your car fixed just like Bill would want me to.” We shook hands. He said, “Have a good trip, Captain. I’d like to be going West, myself.”
I should have shoved then.
I should have started. I shouldn’t have waited. Instead, I gave myself twenty-four hours to see Megassum and find out about Clark and if it was true Clark had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, arrange for Megassum to continue, and offer him the chance to buy into the business if he wanted it that way.
