Mourn the Hangman by Harry Whittington

people. Now, about that South American job. I don’t speak Spanish in the first place. Oh, an Ybor City smattering of Cuban Spanish, but that’s all. I can tell you to get that knife out of my back. That’s about the extent of it. I don’t know enough about your firm to be worth ten thousand dollars a year to you.”
    “You couldn’t learn?”
    “How long would I have to learn? You want me out of this country, isn’t that it? You know that as Robert Cole I worked in your plant. You know that I undoubtedly have found out quite a few embarrassing truths. And you’d like me out of the country.”
    Arrenhower looked pained. “That would be the simple way. The easy way. That’s what I’m offering you first, Blake. You’re a fool to refuse.”
    “I’ve already told you. All I want is to find who killed my wife.”
    “Your wife is dead. If I sound brutal, it’s because I’m an old man. You’ve got to go on living.”
    “Well, thanks. I’ll go on living right here. I’m not taking ten grand to carry me and what I might know out of this country.”
    “You might well wish you had listened to me, Blake. An older man. A wiser one. I’m willing to up my offer.”
    “You couldn’t offer me enough.”
    Arrenhower pulled himself painfully up from the chair. “You have your price! Every man does. Show some sense. You’d better make up your mind to name your price. We’ll come to terms, or what is ahead of you will leave you worth nothing — even to yourself.”
    “I won’t haggle with you over what my life is worth to me, Arrenhower. I got into this thing knowing it was dangerous. This is a hazard of my job. Suppose we get on with it.”
    For a moment, Arrenhower just looked at him. Then he hobbled across the room and pulled a cord. Alder Harrison, the lawyer, came in immediately. Blake knew he must have been listening outside the library door.
    “Will you get Dr. Lowering?” Arrenhower said quietly.
    Harrison looked at Blake and then nodded at his boss. He withdrew from the room, closing the door quietly after him.
    Arrenhower seemed to forget that Blake was in the room. He went over to his desk and riffled through some papers on top of it. When the door opened again, he glanced up only briefly. Two of his company police stepped inside. One of them crossed to the double windows and stood there, a big man with thick shoulders and, Blake supposed, a thick head. The other, matching him like minted coins, stood beside the door.
    Two hospital orderlies came in next. Harrison, Al White and Arnoldson followed and sat silently at the end of the room.
    Blake decided the whole business wasn’t real anyway. It was a nightmare out of Dali. “Joe Stalin would envy you,” he said to Arrenhower. But Arrenhower didn’t even look up from the papers on the desk.
    The orderlies moved without speaking. A small white table was brought out into the center of the room, a straight chair placed beside it. “Sit down,” one of the orderlies said to Blake.
    Blake looked at them for a moment. They stood stolidly, waiting for him to sit down. One of them appeared to be the Hollywood-inspired version of the virile he-man. The other fellow could have been his wife. This little fairy simpered, moving a limp wrist. The other was the hairy-chest type, the aggressive homo, the fellow who looked like a football hero but was the most sickening type of fruit as far as Blake was concerned.
    Everyone in the room was watching him. Blake turned from the pair of deuces to Arrenhower. He was looking at Blake now, passively. Blake shrugged and sat down beside the table. There was a time to act like a hero, he thought cynically, and a time to bow to superior forces. Blake was making his bow.
    The pansy pair worked deftly. They removed his coat and his shirt. The big one held Blake’s right arm out rigidly. His helper set a board under it and bound it tightly in place with gauze. They told Blake to rest his arm on the table then. The bigger of the