7

But Sammy Wales has made a mis-Sammy Wales, as you will see, is per-take—he has told about what happened, and fectly willing to fight single-handed against neglected why it happened. Perhaps that is anything he dislikes, or for anything he likes.

not Sammy’s fault. He knows me only from That has been my creed, too. I had the what he saw me do. He knows the whole fortune, or misfortune, to receive an odd world, really, only from what he has seen it training as a youth. My father, victimized by do to him and to others. You’ll have to look criminals, imagined that he could turn me deep into Sammy to see it, but I think into a sort of modern Galahad who would Sammy has a universal fear.

sally out against all wrongdoers who were Who can blame Sammy Wales for be-outside the law, and who would aid the oping afraid? These are the days when all brave pressed. My father, before his death, outlined men tremble a little for the future of human-a stringent course of training in which I was ity. And no wonder! There has just swept placed in the hands of a series of scientists, over the world an epidemic of unworkable criminologists, physical culture experts, psy-schemes derived from Hitler, Mussolini, a chiatrists—I won’t bore you with an endless poison gas thrown into our minds by theorists list of these experts, but they had me in their and demagogues, by tyrants and rascals.

hands from the time I was fourteen months Wasn’t it Doctor Johnson who wrote, “Patri-old until I was twenty years old—so that I otism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

might be fitted for this career of righting Thirty years ago they were beginning a great wrongs and punishing evildoers. I chose war to save liberty. We have just finished medicine and surgery for specializing, largely another. And yet I dare you to show me a because the understanding of human beings square foot on the earth’s surface where lib-that a doctor has fitted in with the other, and erty is safe today.

because I liked it. This training, foresight of Don’t misunderstand me! I have faith. I my father’s imagination, equipped me with think I know why we are afraid, too. I think it many skills, mental, physical and scientific.

is change that has terrified us. Changes al-There is no point in being modest about that.

ways breed fear, and that is good, because a If you study and practice many things, you change is a dangerous thing, not to be become adept at many things. The only re-avoided, but to be approached warily. And markable thing about me is that I have any kind of changing that destroys is particu-worked like the dickens to master some larly vicious. Destruction, like death, is so skills. You’ll be surprised at what patient and permanent. And the professional wreckers of continual trying can accomplish.

houses are almost never the men who build You see, I believe in trying.

homes.

There is where Sammy Wales missed Have you heard anybody, when speak-the boat in this account he has written. He ing of crime, of deplorable government, say: has not painted me as an individual who has But what can just one guy do? Certainly earned whatever abilities he has the hard you’ve heard that. You’ve heard it many way—and there is no other way—by repeat-times. And each time it was the voice of edly trying. Sammy seems to frankly believe cowardice that spoke. Speak out, my friend, that the strong things in life are passed out and speak out firmly, and you will find that ready-made, instead of being created by the you are the multitude. When you let a bad individual within himself.

thing happen to you, you have it coming to Sammy should have told more about you.

why things happened. Sammy himself is a One thing I can say for Sammy changed man—not yet changed as much as Wales—he speaks and acts with the courage might be desirable, however. He hardly men-of his convictions. I admire that in him, al-tions this change in himself, possibly because though Sammy has certain other deplorable he does not fully grasp it—yet surely he traits.

could understand such an important thing as a man acquiring a purpose in life, when the 8

DOC SAVAGE

man is himself. But Sammy glides over this; like that and to such a question, what was he is too much interested in the action of there to say?

events, rather than their causes.

“It could be, Miss Fenisong. It could He should at least have stated the phi-be.” “Are you free this afternoon, Mr.

losophy that society prepares the crime and Wales?”

the criminals only commit it, and that each “Is there a moon in the afternoon?”

individual is a part of society, and indeed he She laughed heh-heh to show that she is that society. . . .

didn’t think I was very funny, but she was CLARK SAVAGE, JR.

willing to be agreeable. “Say about three, then. Is that satisfactory?”

THE SAMMY WALES

“Why not lunch? Why wait?”

MANUSCRIPT

“Well . . .”

While she was considering, I saw my Chapter I pants hanging over the back of a chair, the right hip pocket weighted down by a big fat billfold that was stuffed, as my billfolds usu-THE telephone had a voice like a truckload of coal banging down a tin chute, ally are, with everything but money. There straight into my ear. My head felt just about were nine one-dollar bills in it, and there big enough to hold a truckload of coal, too.

weren’t any more in the world, I was begin-It was probably a beautiful morning ning to figure.

“Maybe we’d better skip the lunch,” I outdoors, for the sunlight stood through the hotel room window in bright hard bars and said. “

dust mice rode up and down them. I rolled Very well,” she said. “Three o’clock, over and took hold of the telephone very gen-then.” “

tly, before it killed me, and answered. The What address?”

“The Parkside-Regent,” she said.

voice that came out of the receiver was as “Goodbye.”

sweet as honey on ice cream. It said: “I want the moonlight man.”

“Who?”

There was some kind of a conference I PUT the telephone on its cradle and at the other end of the wire. I thought that a laid my headache back on the pillow as gently as possible. The headache was a dog. It male voice addressed lovely-voice sharply.

was one of those things where your temples Then lovely-voice said, “Hello?”

“Yeah?”

bulge out about a foot each time your heart “Is this Mr. Samuel Wales speaking?”

beats. But it wasn’t an entirely unforeseen “Who wants to know?”

headache, because missing three meals in a She did not have to confer about that, row invariably produces such an effect on me. The trouble was, the cheapest meal I but it stopped her short for a moment and put had seen on a menu last night was a dollar a bit of vinegar in her honey voice. About a drop of vinegar to a barrelful of nectar. She forty. With only nine paper dollars between said: “This is Miss Fenisong speaking. Is Mr.

me and poverty, I wasn’t shooting any dollar Wales there?”

forty on dinner.

“

So now I was an expert on moonlight. .

Partly so, I would say,” I said.

. . This very unusual fact wouldn’t let me I didn’t know any Miss Fenisongs yet.

“May I speak to Mr. Wales?” she said.

sleep again. I tried going into the bathroom “You are.”

and getting a drink of water that tasted from “Oh,” she said. “Oh, indeed! . . . You standing in pipes, then sitting on the edge of are Mr. Wales, the expert on moonlight?”

the bed and holding my face with both hands.

“

It didn’t help. No good. I would have to eat.

Expert on what?”

“

The telephone operator was coöpera-Moonlight.”

That sort of had me going. It couldn’t tive when I got hold of her a minute later. She be a gag because I wasn’t aware that I knew said: “Mr. Samuel Wales is in four-twelve.

anyone in New York City. To a lovely voice Oh! . . . Oh, that’s you, isn’t it?”

“What about another Mr. Samuel Wales? Have you got another one of us?”

NO LIGHT TO DIE BY