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Read Ebook: Latest Magic Being original conjuring tricks by Hoffmann Professor
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Ebook has 159 lines and 5337 words, and 4 pages
Transcriber's Note:
Brown John's Body
Erd Neff wanted as little to do with his fellow men as possible. So he lived alone in his big cash-vault. Alone, except for John....
Erd Neff dropped a thin bundle of currency into the 0 bill drawer of the flat-top desk and kicked the drawer shut with a dusty boot.
He flicked the drip from his hooked nose, which was chronically irritated by the wheat dust of the warehouse, then he wiped his fingers down the leg of his soiled denims. Across the 12 X 12, windowless room John stirred awake from the noise and began nosing in the debris of his filthy cage.
"Time for supper, John?" Neff tugged at the twine at his belt and examined his watch. He pinched a dozen grains of wheat from a two-pound coffee can and let them sift through the wires of the cage. John pounced on the grain hungrily.
"Wait a minute! What do you say, dammit?" Neff's hand reached for the marshmallow-toasting fork that hung from a hook on the wall. He touched the points, filed needle sharp. "What do you say?" he repeated, twanging the tines like a tuning fork.
John skittered to the far corner, tearing new holes in the old newspaper with frantic claws. Cowering against the wires he spat half-chewed flecks of wheat trying to say the magic words that would spare him from the fork. "Tinkoo! Tinkoo!" he squeaked, straining to make the two syllables distinct.
Neff hung up the fork, and John turned to lick at the old scabs clotted from earlier jabs, taking sullen inventory to be sure there were no new crimson leaks in his louse-infested hide. Until two months ago, he had been just one more gregarious specimen of Mammalia Rodentia Simplicidentata Myomorphia Muridae decumanus. Now he had another name. Like each of his predecessors in the cage, he was a large, brown rat called John--after Erd Neff's despised and deceased father. Neff named all his rats John.
"Well, don't get fat."
John finished the grain, pawed the air and squeaked, "Mur!"
"More, hey? You talk fine when you're hungry."
"Peef, mur, mur!" John begged. He did well with his vowels, but "I" and "s" sounds were beyond him. He said "f" for "s". "L's" he ignored entirely.
He turned to the door, lifted the inside, mechanical latch, shoved with his foot and snatched his revolver from his hip-holster. The vault door opened ponderously revealing an empty warehouse. Neff peeked through the crack between the hinges to clear the area concealed by the door itself.
One hoodlum hopeful had hidden there. Spotting him through the crack, Neff had simply beefed into the foot-thick slab of fireproof steel. Inertial plus surprise had disposed of that one. Neff hadn't even had to shoot.
Tonight there was no one. Funny. The wheat country was getting tame, or else the tin-horns had learned their lesson. It was no secret that Erd Neff never visited the local bank, yet it had been more than six months since anyone tried to hold him up.
The local bank hated him plenty. He was costing them. His five loan offices in the rich wheat county skimmed the cream of the mortgage loan business. Of course, nowadays most people paid off their loans, and the low interest rates he charged to lure the business barely paid expenses. Yet, he still picked up an occasional foreclosure. Farmers still got drunk, divorced, gambled, broke legs or committed suicide once in awhile, and Neff's loan documents were ruthless about extensions of time.
The vault, tucked away in the front, left-hand corner of the old frame warehouse expressed Neff's distrust and contempt for mankind. Concrete and steel. Bed, shower, toilet and desk. In this walk-in cash box he was fireproof, bomb-proof, theft-proof and, most important of all, people-proof. There he consorted unmolested with the one mammal on earth he found interesting--John, the brown rat.
He slid the broad warehouse door closed behind him with a cacophony of dry screeches and padlocked it. The dusty street was deserted except for a black sedan which two-wheeled the corner a block away and sped toward him. Neff dropped his pistol back in its holster. "Now, what the hell--?"
He waited on the splintery platform, a huge man, ugly of face, shortlegged and long-bodied with a belly swollen from regular overeating. His shaved head swivelled slowly as the police car leaned into a skid-stop.
Officer Collin Burns got out and stared up at the motionless statue in sweat-dust stained denims. Burns was half Neff's 56 years, tall and thin. He wore gray, a silver star and a big black hat. He said, "I'll take your gun, Erd."
"Now what? I got a permit."
"Not any more. It's revoked."
"For why?"
"There were witnesses this afternoon."
"Witnesses? What in hell are you--oh, no! Not that damned dog?"
"The puppy belonged to a little girl. You can't claim self-defense this time."
"He was coming down here chasing the cats away every day."
"So you shot him, like you did Greeley's collie."
"Cats count for more. You know well as I do, you can't control the rats around a warehouse without cats."
"You've shot five men, too, Erd. Three of them are dead."
"I was cleared, you know damned well! Self-defense."
"You're too handy with that pistol. Anyway, I didn't file this complaint. It was the child's mother, and she made it stick with the chief. Give me the gun, Erd."
"You got a warrant for my arrest?"
"No, but I will have in an hour if you insist."
"I got a perfect right to protect my property."
"Not with a gun. Not any more."
"I just get these punks convinced, and now you want to turn loose on me again. Who put you up to this Collin?"
"You did. When you shot that pup. I'm not here to debate it. You're breaking the law from this minute on if you don't hand over the gun."
"Dammit, Collin, you know how much money I got in there? You know how much I pack around on me sometimes?"
"That's your business. You can use the bank and bonded messengers--they get along with dogs."
"Telling me how to run my business?"
"I'm telling you to give me that gun. You'll get the same police protection as any other citizen."
Neff sneered openly. "I'd a been dead thirty years ago depending on cops."
"I don't doubt that a minute. You're easy to hate, Erd. Are you going to give me that gun?"
"No."
"You like things the hard way, don't you?" Burns got back in the squad car and drove off. Neff spat a crater in the wheat-littered dust and got into his own car.
Two minutes later he turned up Main Street and stopped before city hall. Inside the tiny police station he dropped his pistol on the counter. Bud Ackenbush looked up from his desk. "You could have saved Collin some trouble."
Neff stalked out without a word and crossed the street to the Palace Cafe. He ordered a double-thick steak, fried potatoes and pie. He liked the way the waitresses scrambled for the chance to wait on him. Women didn't like him. He was ugly and smelled of sweat, and on the street women looked the other way when they met him. All but the waitresses at the Palace. When he came in they showed their teeth and tongues and wiggled their hips. He was a 50-cent tipper.
The important thing was it got him his steak, really double thick and double quick. People could be real efficient. Like brown John. Prod 'em where they live and they'll do anything. Even talk to you.
"You look kinda naked tonight, Erd," Gloria kidded.
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