D. Champion - Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)

Sackler said, “What is it?”

“I want you to find out who said: Love is the isthmus which joins the continents of Heaven and earth .”

Sackler blinked at him. That was a beautiful thought with capital letters and our office was unaccustomed to such sentimental touches.

Sackler said slowly: “You want me to find out who said that?”

Fleming nodded. “I have long wanted to know the author of such a profound saying. But I am very bad at research.”

Sackler scribbled once more on his pad. As he did so Fleming thrust a hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a wallet and two long envelopes. Sackler and I regarded him curiously.

From the wallet he withdrew three bills. I craned my neck and saw that there were two of five hundred dollar denomination; the third bill was a hundred. Sackler stared at the money like a little boy watching a conjuror.

“Now,” said Fleming. He put the two five hundreds into one envelope, sealed it and, picking up Sackler’s pencil, scrawled across the face of it the one word: Dworkin. He put the hundred dollar bill into the second envelope and wrote gravely across its face: Quotation .

He handed both envelopes to Sackler and said with an air of a man who has just finished some arduous business, “There!”

Sackler took the envelopes and said: “There what?”

“It is simple,” said Fleming. “I do not intend to pay for something I do not get.”

Sackler sat still silent. Usually he went right to the heart of the matter immediately a client entered. First he discussed money; then, and only then, would he hear the customer out. But Fleming somehow nonplussed him. He now sat uncertainly with the two envelopes in his hand.

“If within seventy-two hours,” went on Fleming, “you have definite information for me regarding the whereabouts of this Donald Dworkin, the envelope containing the two five hundred dollar bills is yours. That information is worth exactly one thousand dollars to me. If within the same period of time you have discovered for me who wrote the line: Love is the isthmus which joins the continents of Heaven and earth , the second envelope containing the hundred dollars is yours. For this second task I set you is worth but one tenth of the first task. Do you understand clearly?”

Sackler nodded weakly.

“As I have told you,” said Fleming, “I am eccentric. I must insist that you do not bank this money until it has become yours. It belongs to me until you have done what I have asked you to do. You will keep both envelopes in your desk for three days. Then I will call again. If you have succeeded you keep the money, if not you will return both envelopes to me. Is that clearly understood?”

Sackler nodded again. But this time he made some protest.

“But what if I fail? Surely my time is worth something.”

“Your time is worth nothing to me,” said Fleming curtly. “You will either accept my terms or hand me back my money.”

Even the thought of returning money caused Sackler to wince. He jerked the envelopes out of Fleming’s reach and stashed them away in the desk drawer. “I accept,” he said.

Fleming nodded and stood up. “Very well, then. I shall call again in three days to see what you have done.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sackler, picking up a pencil. “What’s your address?” Fleming said abstractedly: “Twenty-four s—” Then broke off shortly on the sibilant. “You won’t need my address. I told you I’d call back in person within three davs.”

He walked slowly to the door and let himself out into the corridor.

I eyed Sackler with envy and distaste. I said: “You are one lucky thus and so.”

“Lucky? Why?”

“Any idiot can find a quotation in the Public Library in twenty minutes and you get a hundred bucks for doing it.”

“True,” said Sackler. “But can any idiot track down Donald Dworkin? That’s where the money lies.”

He leaned back in his swivel chair, fixed his eyes on a spot on the ceiling and gave himself over to deep thought. Once I said: “What are you doing? Looking for Dworkin in a trance?”

He did not answer me. He continued his contemplation of the plaster for a full ten minutes. Then he sighed. He brought the chair back to its normal position and with an abstracted expression on his face fumbled in his pockets.

My heart leaped as he produced a little bag of tobacco. I held my breath as he fished a cigarette paper out of another pocket. What he was doing was almost reflex action. He had gone through these same physical actions fifty or more times a day for the past twenty years. Now he repeated it completely unaware of what he was doing.

He rolled the tobacco in the paper in his usual clumsy fashion. He thrust the end of the cigarette between his lips. He fumbled in his pockets for a match. Swiftly I whipped a packet from my pocket, struck a light and held it for him. He leaned forward his cigarette toward the flame and I felt the snappy crumple of a hundred dollar bill in my wallet.

But I had enumerated the chickens an instant before they were hatched. Perhaps, he caught sight of the expression of gloating triumph on my face. Anyway he uttered an exclamation of utter horror, snatched the cigarette from between his lips and flung it on the floor.

Then he leaned back in the chair looking like a man who has just missed being hit with an atomic bomb. I shook out the match ruefully and returned to my own desk.

Sackler aimed a trembling forefinger in my direction. “Rat,” he said, “you tried to trick me into lighting that cigarette. You are wilful and wicked. Get out of my sight.”

I stood up and donned my hat. I said, “Do you mean that I have the rest of the day off?”

“I do not. Go to the Public Library and check Fleming’s quotation. While you’re doing that, which should be a simple task for even one of your moderate intelligence, I shall check on this Donald Dworkin. Perhaps by sundown we shall be some eleven hundred dollars the richer.”

The we was rhetorical. Invariably the firm was a plural entity until the payoff came, then I was given to understand I was strictly a paid employee who should be grateful for my weekly salary without trying to cut in on management’s profits.

We’d argued this so often I didn’t bother to bring it up again. I went out of the office silently hoping that no one in the Metropolitan area had ever heard of Donald Lionel Dworkin.

Rather to my surprise I spent the better part of the day in the 42nd Street library. I came out into the street again at half past four, hopped a bus and went back to the office. He was grinning behind his desk as I came in.

“Joey,” he said, “for once I’ve been lucky.”

“For once?” I said bitterly. “You were born with a pair of golden and loaded dice in your mouth.”

He was far too happy to dispute that point.

“This Dworkin,” he said, “I got him.”

“Do tell,” I said sourly.

“The super of the house at the address Fleming gave me knew nothing. Naturally, I went to the post office to see if he’d left a forwarding address.”

“And,” I said, “he had.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Because you’re lucky. Because once in your youth you doubtless sold your miserable soul to the devil. Because—”

But he was too spiritually high to argue with me. “Yes,” he said. “Dworkin left a forwarding address of a place upstate. I phoned them and spoke to his sister. He’s now living in Texas. She hears from him regularly. She gave me the address. One afternoon’s work and we’ve made eleven hundred dollars.”

“You,” I corrected him, “have made a thousand.”

He looked at me and faint alarm came into his eyes. He said slowly and fearfully, “You mean—”