The Early Ayn Rand Page 9

  “Are you hungry?” Laury asked briskly. “If you want something to eat, I can . . .”

  “No, I do not. Have you got a gang? Or are you a lonely mastermind?”

  “If there’s anything you want . . .”

  “No, thanks. Have you ever been in jail yet? And how does it feel?”

  “It’s getting late,” Laury said abruptly. “Do you want to sleep?”

  “Well, you don’t expect me to stay up all night, do you?”

  Laury arranged the davenport for her. For himself he had fixed something like a bed out of a few chairs and an old mattress, in the kitchen.

  “Tomorrow,” he said before leaving her, “I’ll have to go out for a while. You’ll find food in the icebox. Don’t make any attempts to run away. Don’t make any noise—no one will hear you. You will save yourself a lot of trouble if you will promise me not to try to escape.”

  “I promise,” she said, and added with a strange look straight into his sunny gray eyes: “In fact, I’ll do my best not to escape!” . . .

  Laury’s heart was beating louder than the alarm clock at his side when he stretched himself on his uncomfortable couch in the dark kitchen. The couch felt like a mountainous landscape under his body and there was an odor of canned chili floating from the sink above his head. But he felt an ecstasy of triumph beating rapturously, like victorious drums, over all his body, to his very fingertips. He had done it! There had been no one in that dump of a town bright enough to commit a good crime. He had committed it; a crime worthy of his pen; a crime that would make good copy. Tomorrow, when the Dawn’s headlines would thunder like wild beasts . . .

  “Mr. Gunman!” a sweet voice called from the living room.

  “What’s the matter?” he cried.

  “Is it an RCA victrola you have there in the corner?”

  “Yes!”

  “That’s fine. . . . Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  ——III——

  The headlines on the Dicksville Dawn were three inches high and blazed on the front pages like huge, black mouths screaming to an astounded world:

  SOCIETY GIRL KIDNAPPED

  And an army of newsboys rolled over Dicksville like a tidal wave, with swift currents branching into every street and an alarming, tempestuous roar of hoarse voices: “Extray! Extra-a-ay!”

  The eager citizens who snatched from each other the crisp, fresh sheets, with the black print still wet and smearing under their fingers, read, shivering, of how the charming young heiress, Miss Juliana X. Winford, had disappeared on her way home from a visit and of how her sports car had been examined by the police on a lonely road two miles out of town. The sports car had two bullet holes in its side and one in a rear tire; the windshield was broken, the upholstery ripped and torn. Everything indicated a grim, desperate struggle. The sports car had been discovered, the Dicksville Dawn proudly announced, by “our own reporter, Mr. L. H. McGee.”

  There was a big photograph of Miss Winford, where all one could distinguish were bare legs, a tennis racket, and an intoxicating smile. The thrilling front-page story that related all these events was entitled: “Society Beauty Victim of Unknown Monster”—by Laurence H. McGee. It started with: “A profound sorrow clutched our hearts at the news that our fair city’s peace and respect for law, of which we had always been so proud, was suddenly disturbed by a most atrocious, terrifying, revolting crime. . . .”

  The old building of the Dicksville Dawn looked like an anthill that somebody had stepped on. The presses thundered; the typewriters cracked furiously like machine guns; a current of frenzied humanity streamed down the main stairs and another one rolled up. City Editor Jonathan Scraggs dashed around, sweat streaming down his red face, rubbing his hands with a grin of ecstatic satisfaction at the thought that the Dawn had received the great news two hours before its rival, the Dicksville Globe. Laury McGee sat on the Editor’s desk, his legs crossed, calmly smoking a cigarette.

  “Great stuff, that story of yours, Laury, my boy!” Mr. Scraggs repeated. “Never thought you had it in you!”

  The telephones screamed continuously, calls from all over the town, anxious voices begging news and details.

  Chief Police Inspector Rafferty himself dropped in to see the City Editor. He was short, square, and nervous. He had a big black mustache, like a shaving brush, and little restless, suspicious eyes always watching for someone to offend his dignity.

  “Cats and rats!” he shouted. “What’s all this? Now, I ask you, what the hell is all this?”

  “It’s quite an unexpected occurrence,” agreed Jonathan Scraggs.

  “Occurrence be blasted! That any scoundrel should have the nerve to pull that off in my town! Cats and rats! I’ll be hashed into hamburger if I know who the lousy mongrel could be! It isn’t Pug-Nose Thomson, ’cause he was seen stewed like a hog in some joint, last night!”

  “The affair does seem rather mysterious and . . .”

  “I’ve sent every man on the force to comb the town! I’ll fire them all, each goddamn boob, if they don’t pull the bum out by the gullet!”

  That afternoon, Mr. Christopher A. Winford’s gray automobile stopped before the Dawn building and the tall gentleman walked up to the city room, with a step that implied a long acquaintance with respectfully admiring eyes and news cameras. He was cool, poised, distinguished. He had gray eyes, and a mustache that matched his eyes, and a suit that matched his mustache.

  “Yes, it’s most annoying,” he said slowly, his eyes half-closed as one used to conceal his superior thoughts. “I wish my daughter back, you understand.”

  There was a slight wonder in his voice, as though he was unable to see how his wish could be disobeyed.

  “Certainly, certainly, Mr. Winford,” Mr. Scraggs assured him. “You have all our sympathy. A father’s heart in a misfortune like this must . . .”

  “I came here personally to arrange for an announcement in your paper,” Mr. Winford went on slowly, “that I will pay a reward to anyone who furnishes information leading to the discovery of my daughter’s whereabouts. Name the sum yourself, whatever you find necessary. I will pay for everything.”

  He had the calm tone of a man who knows the surest means of attaining his desires and does not hesitate to use it.

  “There’s an extra for us!” Mr. Scraggs cried enthusiastically when Mr. Winford left. “Rush to your mill, Laury, old pal, and fix us a good one! ‘Heartbroken father in Dawn’s office’ . . . and all that, you know!”

  “You seem to be in an unusually happy humor, today,” Mr. Scraggs chuckled, watching Laury’s sparkling eyes and swift fingers dancing on the typewriter keys. “So am I, boy, so am I!”

  When Laury went home, late that evening, there was under every streetlamp an enthusiastic newsboy yelling himself hoarse with:

  “Extree-e! Big ree-word for missin’ goil! Here’s yer cha-ance!”

  And the headlines announced:

  DESPERATE FATHER OFFERS $5,000 REWARD

  That, in Mr. Scraggs’ eyes, had been the most sensational sum he could name. . . .

  Laury’s heart missed a few beats when he walked up the steps to his apartment and turned the key in the door lock. Was everything all right?

  As he entered, Jinx dashed gaily to meet him. He gasped. She was wearing his best violet silk pajamas! They were too big for her and she draped them gracefully in soft, clinging folds around her little body.

  “Hello, darling!” she greeted him. “Why so late? I’ve missed you terribly!”

  “Why . . . why did you put these on?”

  “These? Pretty, aren’t they? Well, you didn’t leave me anything to change and I was tired of wearing the same dress for two days!”

  She led the way into the living room, and he stopped short with another gasp. The living room had been thoroughly cleaned, and not a single object stood in its former place. The whole room had been rearranged to look like a very impressionistic stage setting. The window curtains were hanging over
the davenport, forming a cozy, inviting tent. The sofa cushions were capriciously thrown all over the floor. Jinx’s colored silk scarf hung on the wall over his desk, like an artistic banner. The fishbowl stood at the foot of the davenport, and some incense that she had unearthed in one of his desk drawers was burning in it, a long, thin column of blue smoke swaying gracefully like a light, misty scarf.

  “What did you do that for?” he muttered, amazed.

  “Don’t you like it?” She smiled triumphantly. “Your room looked as though it needed a woman’s influence badly. I thought that you ought to have a little beauty in your hard life, to relax after a day of danger and gun-shooting!”

  Laury laughed. She looked at him calmly, with a sweet look that seemed too innocent to be trusted.

  “By the way,” she said casually, “you better disconnect that phone. You left it here and I might have called up the police, you know!”

  Laury’s face went crimson, then white; with one jump, he snatched the phone and tore the wires furiously out of the wall. Then he turned to her, puzzled.

  “Well, why didn’t you?” he asked.

  She smiled, a smile that seemed at once indulgent, cunning, and perfectly naive.

  “I wanted to,” she answered innocently, “but I had no time, I was too busy.” And she added imperatively: “Take off your coat. Dinner is ready.”

  “What?”

  “Dinner! And hurry up, ’cause it’s late and I’m darn hungry!”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “Come on, now, help me pull that table out!”

  In a few seconds he was seated at a neatly arranged table covered with one of his pillowcases, there being no tablecloth in the house. And Jinx was serving a delicious dinner, hot, steaming dishes whose tempting odor made him realize how very tired and hungry he really was after this exciting day.

  “Now, don’t look so dumbfounded!” she said, settling down to her plate. “I’m a good cook, I am. I got the first prize in high school. I don’t care much about cooking, but I like first prizes, no matter what for!”

  “I must thank you,” Laury muttered, eating hungrily, “although I didn’t expect you to . . .”

  “I bet you haven’t had a homemade dinner in ages,” she remarked sympathetically. “I bet you’re used to eating in dingy pool parlors and saloons, where you meet to divide the loot with your gangsters. See, I know all about it. They must have pretty tough food, though, don’t they?”

  “Why . . . y-yes . . . yes, they do,” Laury agreed helplessly.

  After dinner, she asked for a cigarette, crossed her legs in the violet silk trousers, like a little Oriental princess, and leaned comfortably back in her chair, sending slowly graceful snakes of smoke to float into space.

  “Get me a drink!” she ordered.

  “Oh, sure!” He jumped up, eager to serve her in turn. “What do you wish? Tea, coffee?”

  She smiled and winked at him significantly.

  “Well, what do you wish?” he repeated.

  “Well, now, as though you didn’t understand!” She frowned impatiently.

  “No, I don’t understand. Surely, you don’t mean to say that . . . that you want . . . liquor?”

  “Oh, any kind of booze you’ve got will do!”

  Laury stared at her with open mouth.

  “Well, what’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I never thought that you would . . . that you might . . . that you . . .”

  “You don’t mean to say that you haven’t got any?”

  “No, I haven’t!”

  “Well, I’ll be hanged! A crook, a real crook, with nothing to drink in his house! What kind of a gangster are you, anyway?”

  “But, Miss Winford, I never thought that you . . .”

  “You’ve got a lot to learn, my child, you’ve got a lot to learn!”

  Laury blushed; then remembered that he was the kidnapper and had to show some authority.

  “Now, don’t disturb me,” he ordered, sitting down at his desk before the typewriter. “I’ve got something very important to write. . . . Here,” he added, “you might be interested in this!” And he threw to her the day’s newspapers.

  “O-oh! Sure!” she cried. “The papers!”

  She jumped on the sofa, the cushions bouncing under her, folded her legs criss-cross, and bent eagerly over the papers, her tousled hair hanging down over her face, almost touching the wide sheets.

  He attacked the typewriter furiously, pounding the keys energetically in an attempt to write the important message he had in mind. But it was not so easy. The words did not seem to him impressive enough. He started one sheet after another, and tore them to pieces, and flung them into the wastebasket.

  Jinx interrupted him every few seconds with a gasp of sincere delight: “Oh, look, my picture! . . . Oh, what a fuss for the old town! . . . Aren’t they dumbfounded! . . . Don’t worry, they’ll never find you out, not that bunch of saps! . . . Lizzie Chatterton’s going to chew her nails to the bone from envy—she’s never been kidnapped! . . . Say, what’s this about my car? Who wrecked it and why?”

  “Some reporter must have done it,” Laury answered disdainfully. “It makes better copy.”

  “Oh, listen to this!” she laughed happily. “ ‘Every heart in our town is convulsed with anxiety at the thought of this helpless young beauty in the cruel claws of some pitiless beast. . . .’ Oh boy! Who wrote that? Gee, what a sap that McGee fellow must be!”

  Laury was working hard, very hard—writing the ransom letter. It was not easy, since it had to be good front-page stuff. And a blissful smile of satisfaction spread on his face when he finished it at last and turned to Jinx.

  “Here,” he said. “Listen—it concerns you.”

  And he read:Dear Sir,

  This is not an offer or a request, this is a command and you will do well to obey it at once or hell itself will seem a sweet baby’s dream compared to the fate I have in store for you. At an hour and place that I will communicate to you later, you will deliver into my hands ten thousand dollars cash, as the price of your daughter’s freedom. Be careful not to oppose me, for you are dealing with the most dangerous enemy that any mortal has ever encountered. You are warned.

  Damned Dan

  Jinx sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing, her body shaking with indignation.

  “How dare you?” she cried. “You cheap scoundrel! How dare you ask my father for ten thousand dollars?”

  She snatched the letter from him and tore it to pieces furiously.

  “Now sit down!” she commanded, pointing proudly at the typewriter. “Sit down and write another one—and ask for one hundred thousand dollars!”

  And as Laury did not move, she added:

  “Ten thousand dollars! It’s an insult to be sold for ten thousand! I won’t stand for my price being that low! Why, it’s only the price of a car, and of not such a very good one, at that!”

  It was a long time before Laury had recovered enough to sit at the typewriter and obey her order. . . .

  “But that is not all, Miss Winford,” he said severely, when he had finished the new ransom message. “You, too, are going to write a letter to your father.”

  “Oh, with pleasure!” she answered willingly.

  He gave her a pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote quickly: “Dear Pop.”

  “What do you mean?” he shouted. “Dear Pop! Do you realize that your letter will be published in all the papers? You write what I dictate!”

  “All right,” she agreed sweetly and took another sheet.

  “Dear Father,” he dictated solemnly. “If there is in your heart a single drop of pity for your unfortunate daughter, you will . . .”

  “I never write like that,” she observed.

  “Never mind, write now! ‘. . . you will come to my rescue at once.’ Exclamation point! ‘I can’t tell you all the suffering I am going through.’ Have you got that? ‘Please, oh! please save me.’ Exclamation point! ‘If you could only see wh
at your poor daughter is doing now . . .’ ”

  “Say, don’t you think that if he could see that, he’d be rather surprised, and not in the way you want?”

  “Go on, write what I say! ‘. . . is doing now, your heart would break!’ ”

  “Most probably!”

  “Go on! ‘I can’t write very well, because my eyes are dimmed with tears . . .’ ”

  “Aren’t you laying it on too thick?”

  “ ‘. . . with tears! I implore you to spare no effort to save me!’ Now sign it! ‘Your desperate daughter . . .’ No! Gosh! Not Jinx! ‘Juliana Xenia Winford.’ ”

  “Here you are,” she said, handing him the letter.

  He read it and frowned slightly.

  “Let’s make it a little stronger,” he said. “Write a postscript to it: ‘P.S. I’m miserable, miserable.’ Exclamation point—two of them! Have you finished? Here, fold it and put it into this envelope. Fine! Thank you, Miss Winford!”

  He put the envelope with the two letters into his pocket. He smiled triumphantly. It had turned out better than he had expected. Of course, he did not intend to take any ransom money from Mr. Winford; he did not even intend to fix an hour and place for it; and he was certain that, anyway, Mr. Winford would never agree to pay ten thousand dollars, much less a hundred thousand.

  He stretched himself with a sigh of relaxation.

  “Well, I’m going to bed. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”

  “Are you going out tomorrow?” Jinx asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’ve got a little errand for you. There are a few things that you’ll have to buy for me tomorrow.”

  “A few things? What things?”

  “Why, if you intend to keep me here for quite a while, you can’t expect me to wear the same clothes all the time, can you? A woman needs a few little things, you know. Here’s the list I’ve written for you.”

  He took the list. It occupied four pages. It included everything from dresses and slippers to underwear and nightgowns to nail polish and French perfume at forty dollars an ounce.