William Tenn: The Tenants

He insisted on Miss Kerstenberg’s listening to the entire story, despite Professor Scoggins’s stern injunctions against overfraternization with the minor clerical help. She cluck-clucked and tsk-tsked and stared earnestly at him through her thick glasses.

“Cranks, wouldn’t you say, Miss Kerstenberg?” he asked her when he’d finished. “Hardly legitimate clients, eh?”

“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Blake,” she replied, inflexibly unpresumptuous. She rolled a sheet of letterhead stationery into her typewriter. “Do you want the Hopkinson mailing to go out this afternoon?”

“What? Oh, I guess so. I mean, of course. By all means this afternoon, Miss Kerstenberg. And I want to see it for a double-check before you mail it.”

He strode into his own office and huddled behind the desk. The whole business had upset him very much. His first big rental possibility. And that little man—Bohu was his name?—and that bulging pocket—

Not until quite late in the afternoon was he able to concentrate on his work. And that was when he got the phone call.

“Blake?” the voice crackled. “This is Gladstone Jimm.”

“Yes, Mr. Jimm.” Blake sat up stiffly in his swivel chair. Gladstone was the oldest of the Sons.

“Blake, what’s is this about your refusing to rent space?”

“My what? I beg your pardon, Mr. Jimm, but I—”

“Blake, two gentlemen just walked into the home office. Their names are Tooley and Booley. They tell me they tried unsuccessfully to rent the thirteenth floor of the McGowan Building from you. They tell me that you admitted the space was vacant, but that you consistently refused to let them have it. What’s this all about, Blake? Why do you think the firm appointed you resident agent, Blake, to turn away prospective tenants? I might as well let you know that none of us up here in the home office like this one little bit, Blake.”

“I’d have been very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to them,” Blake wailed. “Only trouble, sir, you see, there’s—”

“What trouble are you referring to, Blake? Spit it out, man, spit it out.”

“There is no thirteenth floor, Mr. Jimm.”

“What?”

“The McGowan Building is one of those buildings that has no thirteenth floor.” Laboriously, carefully, he went through the whole thing again. He even drew an outline picture of the building on his desk pad as he spoke.

“Hum,” said Gladstone Jimm when he’d finished. “Well, I’ll say this, Blake. The explanation, at least, is in your favor.” And he hung up.

Blake found himself quivering. “Cranks,” he muttered fiercely. “Definitely cranks. Definitely not legitimate tenants.”

When he arrived at his office door early next morning, he found Mr. Tohu and Mr. Bohu waiting for him. The tall man held out a key.

“Under the terms of our lease, Mr. Blake, a key to our main office must be in the possession of the resident agent for the building. We just had our locksmith make up this copy. I trust it is satisfactory?”

Sydney Blake leaned against the wall, waiting for his bones to reacquire marrow. “Lease?” he whispered. “Did the home office give you a lease?”

“Yes,” said the tall man. “Without much trouble, we were able to achieve a what-do-you-call-it.”

“A meeting of minds,” the tiny man supplied from the region of his companion’s knees. “A feast of reason. A flow of soul. There are no sticklers for numerical subtleties in your home office, young man.”

“May I see the lease?” Blake managed to get out.

The tall man reached into his right-hand overcoat pocket and brought up a familiar-looking folded piece of paper.

It was the regulation lease. For the thirteenth floor in the McGowan Building. But there was one small difference.

Gladstone Jimm had inserted a rider:…the landlord is renting a floor that both the tenant and landlord know does not exist, but the title to which has an intrinsic value to the tenant; which value is equal to the rent he will pay…

Blake sighed with relief. “That’s different. Why didn’t you tell me that all you wanted was the title to the floor? I was under the impression that you intended to occupy the premises.”

“We do intend to occupy the premises.” The tall man pocketed the lease. “We’ve paid a month’s rent in advance for them.”

“And,” added the tiny man, “a month’s security.”

“And,” finished the tall man, “an extra month’s rent as fee to the agent. We most certainly do intend to occupy the premises.”

“But how—” Blake giggled a little hysterically “—are you going to occupy premises that aren’t even—”

“Good morning, young man,” they said in unison and moved toward the elevators.

He watched them enter one.

“Thirteen, please,” they told the elevator operator. The elevator door closed. Miss Kerstenberg walked past him and into the office, chirping a dutiful “Good morning, Mr. Blake.” Blake barely nodded at her. He kept his eyes on the elevator door. After a while it opened again, and the fat little operator lounged out and began a conversation with the starter.

Blake couldn’t help himself. He ran to the elevator. He stared inside. It was empty.

“Listen,” he said, grabbing the fat little operator by one sleeve of his dingy uniform. “Those two men you just took up, what floor did they get off at?”

“The one they wanted. Thirteen. Why?”

“There isn’t any thirteenth floor. No thirteenth floor at all!”

The fat little elevator operator shrugged. “Look, Mr. Blake, I do my job. Someone says ‘thirteenth floor,’ I take ’em to the thirteenth floor. Someone says ‘twenty-first floor,’ I take ’em—”

Blake walked into the elevator. “Take me there,” he ordered.

“The twenty-first floor? Sure.”

“No, you—you—” Blake realized that the starter and the elevator operator were grinning at each other sympathetically. “Not the twenty-first floor,” he went on more calmly, “the thirteenth. Take me to the thirteenth floor.”

The operator worked his switch and the door moaned itself shut. They went up. All of the McGowan Building elevators were very slow, and Blake had no trouble reading the floor numbers through the little window in the elevator door.

…ten…eleven…twelve…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen…

They stopped. The elevator operator scratched his head with his visored cap. Blake glared at him triumphantly. They went down.

…fifteen…fourteen…twelve…eleven…ten…nine…

“Well?” Blake asked him.

The man shrugged. “It don’t seem to be there now.”

“Now? Now? It’s never been there. So where did you take those men?”

“Oh, them, I told you: the thirteenth floor.”

“But I just proved to you there is no thirteenth floor!”

“So what? You got the college education, Mr. Blake, not me. I just do my job. If you don’t like it, all I can say is I just do my job. Someone gets in the elevator and says ‘thirteenth floor,’ I take—”

“I know! You take them to the thirteenth floor. But there is no thirteenth floor, you idiot! I can show you the blueprints of the building, the original blueprints, and I dare you, I defy you to show me a thirteenth floor. If you can show me a thirteenth floor…”

His voice trailed off as he realized they were back in the lobby and had attracted a small crowd.

“Look, Mr. Blake,” the elevator man suggested. “If you’re not satisfied, how’s about I call up the delegate from the union and you and him have a talk? How’s about that, huh?”

Blake threw up his arms helplessly and stamped back to his office. Behind him he heard the starter ask the elevator operator, “What was he getting in such an uproar about, Barney?”