The Best of Sci-Fi-5

“You know, I was wondering how the whole idea was working out. So I called up your assistant personnel manager and asked to see the records. He told me to come over and help myself.”

There was a pause. “He shouldn’t have done that, Doctor,” Mr. Melchior said. “Not without consulting me first. Those records are confidential.”

Colles said he could understand that. He apologized, hoped it would not make any trouble for the assistant personnel manager. “I have a feeling, Mr. M.,” he said, “that he was not fully aware of the implications of the testing scheme, anyway. May I elaborate? Thank you … I do appreciate your not reminding me that you are a very busy man. Well.” He cleared his throat. He waited, but as nothing else was offered, he continued, “Now, in regard to my own especially constructed test: only certain particular questions were used in the marking, as you know, the others being either window-dressing, or designed to lull the testee into a state of unawareness, so that the chances of getting true answers to the others were increased. What were the results? Thirty-three individuals scored above the ninetieth percentile, showing marked psychopathic tendencies. Of these, eleven were women, and I rather imagine that they were sent packing pretty damned quick—though I hope in such a manner as not to hurt their feelings. The Mad Bomber and all that, eh, Mr. Melchior? Now, of the remaining twenty-two—a check of the records is in your personnel office, Mr. Taylor being fortuitously absent— twenty are still employed. What happened to the other two?” he shot the question.

“Quit,” said Mr. Melchior. “We’re planning to get rid of the others as soon as we can manage for them to get the treatment.”

“Oh, I don’t think you are,” Colles said. There was a pause.

“No? Well … what do you think, Doc?”

“What do I think?” Dr. Colles asked. “I combined the information I’ve just mentioned with certain intelligence gleaned from the newspapers, and I think that you, Mr. Melchior, are an Emperor of Crime—if I may wax a trifle purple in my prose—and that your purpose is not to weed the psychopaths out, but to weed them in.”

The tycoon smiled a thin, cold smile. “Doc, you speak the most beautiful English I ever heard. But you flatter me. I’ll level with you. An emperor? Not even a king. Maybe,” he shrugged modestly, “a grand duke, let’s say.”

The doctor slowly let out his breath with a sound like that which Yoga calls Sitali, or serpent-hiss. He looked the other in the eyes. “But you will rise,” he said. “You are bound to.”

The grand duke said, calmly, that he hoped so. “Believe me, Doc, it isn’t easy though. I got rivals. People with other territories would like to have mine. People who work for me would also like to have mine. But I figure I’ll be OK. I move with the times. My father rode a mule. I ride a Cadillac.” And he proceeded to explain.

Melchior Enterprises (he said) might be compared to an iceberg of which the greater mass is submerged. There were many similar icebergs in the country, some smaller, some bigger. They generally avoided coming in collision with others, but ships were not always so fortunate. In the crime business, of course, disputes could not be settled by an industry-wide arbitrator. In which case …

“I’m not the only one who has personnel trouble, Doc,” Melchior explained. “Lots of times the others get in touch with me: ‘Anthony, I need somebody. Send somebody good.’ Well, one hand washes the other, I like to help out. But it’s hard, you know, Doc, to get somebody really good.”

Dr. Colles said he could appreciate that.

It used to be, Melchior went on, that the syndicates got the tough boys from the slums. But they did not really suit the tempo of the times. They were not so dependable. They were conspicuous. They got into fights over matters which had nothing to do with business. Right after the war there had been a supply of combat veterans available, they had been generally satisfactory, but there weren’t many around anymore. The turnover was rather high.

“You know what I want, Doc?” he said. “Or, better, what I don’t want? I don’t want guys who’re outstanding. Guys with criminal records. Guys who kill for the fun of it, or to pay off grudges or they have no control of their tempers, and another acrobat grabs their girl in the wrong place. Not them.

“What I want are steady fellows. Dull types who live in tract houses and have small families. I don’t care what their religion is, but only small families. Shows what I call prudence. Or maybe they live with a mother, or with a brother or sister who has the family. Now, people like this are working for me right along, on the legitimate. Or applying for jobs with me. But how do you know who’s suitable? How? You can’t just ask a guy right out.”

Colles said, “And so you came to me to help you find them. Exactly as you go to business school to find accountants. And I know just the type you mean.” He nodded, smiled faintly.

“I pay a flat salary,” Melchior said. “Plus a bonus in negotiable bonds. That’s good for everybody, nothing shows on the books for taxes. But nothing spectacular. These men I want, they’re not for the spectacular and it isn’t for them.”

“How right you are,” Doctor Colles said.

The type Melchior wanted (Colles went on) was the distillation of the average man, except, of course, that he was killer-prone. Why will he kill? Why will he kill perfect strangers? “We were speaking, at our first meeting,” he said, “of ‘lack of communication.’ We might add, ‘lack of religion’—’lack of love’—of the capacity to really love. These men are the men who lack. There is something dead in them. They don’t kill because a fire burns in them, but because no fire burns in them. The potential was always there—men like your Grubacher, who shot his rival for the foreman’s place—but it took my test to discover it, to channel it.” He paused. “My test,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I know the type. Men who will calmly and coolly kill to get another twenty dollars a week. Who’ll kill rather than cut down on their American Standard of Living, rather than change their way of life. Why, yes—I imagine that my twenty little discoveries were quite willing once it was shown how safe and profitable it was … Yes, I imagine they perform their missions with dispatch, with no more excitement and as much efficiency as they would in repossessing a car, reading a gas meter, or serving a summons—and then try to cheat a little on their expense account—but just a little.”

“So what now, Doc?”

“So what now? Melchior, when I’d calculated all this, and your role in it, I decided that you were by way of being one of those men-who-lack, yourself.”

“Yeah?”

“And then, do you know what?”

“What?”

“Then I came to the conclusion that I was by way of being one of them, too.”

The grand duke raised not only his eyebrows, but his eyelids. He made a little noise resembling a giggle. And again he asked, “So now what, Doc?”

“Why—” The psychologist considered. “Now I suggest that we discuss how I may be of further use to you. I rather think I will enjoy the Professor Moriarty bit. Is Taylor privy to—He is? Yes I see it now, never mind, he’s young, and lacks what I—But before that, my dear Anthony: shall we discuss that bonus, payable in negotiable bonds? In advance, of course: you are certain to attain kingly rank, perhaps even imperial, but—the hazards of the chase, you know—so: in advance.”

Toward the close of that year, at late of night, two men came down the steps of Mr. Melchior’s club. It was cold, and there was a noisy wind.