With no warning at all he reached inside his coat, and I dove for cover behind Mademoiselle Markoff. When I didn't hear any shots, I cautiously raised my head above her ample flanks to see what was going on.
The Rodent was carefully dabbing at his face with a delicate white handkerchief.
“Damn it all, you got to stop making sudden moves like that!” I snapped, rising to my feet and brushing myself off.
“My deepest apologies,” said the Rodent, hiding his face behind the handkerchief. “I had no desire to scare or startle you. Now, I believe we were talking about my salary?”
I was half inclined to argue the point with him, but I figured if I did he'd just go reaching into his coat again and since no one could ever be quite sure what he'd pull out, it made more sense to put him back on the payroll.
“But with one stipulation,” I told him.
“Yes?” he said gently.
“You shoot anyone else who doesn't take a shot at you first and you're fired. You understand?”
“I understand,” he said in a way that led me to think that there was yet another question to be asked, like did he agree, but I decided to let it pass.
“Where do you know him from?” asked Mademoiselle Markoff when the Rodent had left the room.
“Oh, I knew him back in Dar-es-Salaam a couple of years ago,” I said. “He tried to get me to finance a highly illegal operation, but being a man of strong moral character I managed to resist the temptation.”
“How clever of you,” she purred, taking another deep drag on her cigar. “Wouldn't you care to join me again on the rug?”
“I'd sure love to do that, Mademoiselle Markoff,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back, “but it really wouldn't look too good, me being a man of the cloth and all.”
“So who's to know?” she whispered, shooting me a wink that would have given a lesser man nightmares for a month.
“Well, for starters, you got two of your young ladies standing right here swiping at your fair body with their fans,” I said.
“That's all right,” she said. “The one on the left is totally trustworthy, and the other one is inattentive to a fault.”
“I'd still feel bad about it, this being my first night on the job, so to speak,” I said. “Besides, I still got lots of work to do.”
“Such as?”
“Well, first of all, starting tomorrow the Cock and Bull signs are all coming down, and this place will be going under the name of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke. Then I've got to hunt up Lieutenant Nigel Todd and make such arrangements as may be necessary to hush up this unfortunate act of self-defense that the Rodent was undoubtedly forced into against such meager will as he possesses. And finally, I left a couple of little ladies at the front door to scare away undesirables and the like, and I want to make sure they know they'll be welcome any time they want to come around here. So as you can see, I'm just gonna be too busy for any romantic entanglements tonight.”
“Perhaps tomorrow, then,” she said, licking her lips with a tongue that could have taken the hide off a rhinoceros.
“Why not?” I said as I left the room. I was still coming up with reasons why not when I got hold of Lieutenant Todd and made such restitution as was required to keep the whole unhappy affair of the Rodent under his hat. Then I introduced myself to the bartender, a cadaverous Armenian named Irving, and told him to get a sign painter out the first thing in the morning.
I took a room in the New Stanley Hotel, tried unsuccessfully to buy the painting of Nellie Willoughby that they had hanging over the bar, and finally turned in for a good night's sleep. It seemed like a waste of money, since I owned about twenty rooms with beds over at my tabernacle, but I just had a feeling that I'd be much happier in the New Stanley until me and Mademoiselle Markoff came to an understanding betwixt ourselves.
When I showed up the next afternoon I saw that the signs were already changed. When I went into the bar to tell Irving what a good job he had done, Mademoiselle Markoff was waiting for me, wearing a red gown that would have been roomy on most Siamese triplets, but that fit her so snugly that I could see the huge mole on her left thigh right through it.
“Good morning, Lucifer,” she breathed.
“Good day to you,” I said.
“I was wondering if you'd like to come up to my office for a few minutes so we can go over some figures?” she tittered in a voice like unto an opera baritone.
“Well, I'd like to, I truly would,” I said, “but being a man of the cloth and all, I think it would be more appropriate for me to start setting up my tabernacle now.”
There wasn't much she could say to that, so she settled for offering to help me, and then there wasn't much
I
could say to that, so I just thanked her and we went down the hall to the large room that she had put aside for my use.
It was kind of dirty, and needed a new coat of paint, and the ceiling was caving in, and there were only two chairs, but it suited my needs just fine, since I thought it might take the preaching business a good four or five years to grow to where I needed better quarters, or even more chairs.
On the other hand, it seemed to be the one place where I was reasonably safe from Mademoiselle Markoff's advances, so I decided to throw myself into its remodeling with a vengeance. She and I worked side by side replastering the ceiling and staining the walls and putting a parquet floor in and building an altar and getting some stained glass to replace the old dirty windows and building a number of pews so that the room could actually hold about thirty people.
This took us the better part of two months, during which time the Rodent didn't shoot anyone else, and business was booming. Lieutenant Todd stopped by for his payoff every other night, and the police left us alone, and the two little ladies kept screaming in glowing detail about what was going on inside the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and pretty soon the editor of the local paper started coming by with Lieutenant Todd and getting an occasional gift of one kind or another, and shortly thereafter we were never again mentioned in the papers.
In fact, everything was going smooth as silk except that I was running out of excuses for keeping out of Mademoiselle Markoff's room and going over figures with her, so I worked an extra week building me a pulpit and when she still kept hanging around I took to preaching a good eight or nine hours a day, interspersing my lectures with the latest race results from Johannesburg and some soccer scores from Cairo so as to appeal to a wider audience. I got to admit that we didn't do much off-the-street business, but most of the girls and some of the customers would wander in from time to time and I'd tell ’em what terrible sinners they were and how carnal knowledge was old Satan's foothold in the world of fast women and shameless men and how they'd well better repent right quick, and then they'd go back to their rooms feeling all refreshed and cleansed of soul. In fact, just so's they'd know the Lord was a forgiving type, I began pardoning them for future sins as well as past ones, kind of getting a couple of pages ahead in the heavenly ledger, so to speak.
It got a little difficult to keep finding new subject matter, especially after I'd whipped through a three-day lecture on Solomon's seven hundred or so wives and what he probably did with ’em, but every time I'd think of slipping out for a little liquid refreshment or some other kind of tension easer, I'd look up and there'd be Mademoiselle Markoff sitting in the first pew, staring unblinkingly at me. I really don't think she missed a single sermon I gave during the whole time the Tabernacle of Saint Luke was in business.
I'd been there almost seven months and had just polished off my two hundredth sermon when Lieutenant Nigel Todd, looking agitated as all get-out, stormed into the tabernacle and pulled me off toward a corner.
“Jones, he's done it again!” he snapped.
“Who's done what?” I asked.
“Your friend the Rodent seems to have fallen off the wagon, so to speak,” said Todd.
“How did it happen this time?”
“He claims it was self-defense as to who was going to use the sink in the men's room first,” said Todd.
“Is the man hurt badly?” I asked.
“l don't believe he felt the last five bullets at all,” said Todd.
“Well, at least he ain't suffering unduly,” I said. “Why not bring him in here and let me run through a little funeral prayer or two for him?”
“You seem to be missing the point of all this,” said Todd. “I'm going to have to arrest the Rodent and lock him up for a good long time.”
“Surely we can work something out,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulder. “It's not as if we want him to keep working here or nothing like that. I mean, if he shoots enough customers sooner or later we're not going to have any live ones left. But I sure hate to see him go to jail, him being an employee and an old friend of mine and such.”
“I'm not a totally unreasonable man,” said Lieutenant Todd, starting to jingle the coins in his pocket. “What exactly did you have in mind for him?”
“Well, it just seems a shame that the government will have to feed and care for him. Surely there must be something he can do to repay his debt to society.”
“What's he good at?” asked Todd.
“Well, now, that's where we got a little problem,” I admitted. “What he's mostly good at, so far as I can tell, is shooting people.”
“It may have escaped your notice, Doctor Jones,” said Todd, “but that is the very talent we tend to arrest people for these days.”
“Do you ever hang ’em?” I asked as my Silent Partner smacked me right between the eyes with a great big revelation.
“From time to time,” said Todd.
“Any law says you can't shoot ’em instead?” I said.
“None that I know of,” admitted Todd.
“Then why not offer the Rodent a job as your official executioner?” I suggested.
“I have to admit he'd be pretty efficient,” mused Todd.
“He'd work cheap too,” I said. “Especially once you outlined the nature of his job and the alternatives to accepting it.”
“If he's going to go around shooting people, I suppose it does make a certain degree of sense to have him on our side,” said Todd. “But I just don't know...” He jingled the coins in his pocket a little louder.
I pulled out a wad of bills big enough to assuage Lieutenant Todd's doubts (and to choke a fair-sized horse into the bargain), had a little chat with the Rodent, and saw him off on his way to the first honest job he'd had in years.
Nothing much of interest happened for the next couple of weeks and I fell back into my established routine. Then one day I noticed that Mademoiselle Markoff had put aside her satin wrappings and was now wearing a conservative business suit. A couple of days later she started wearing a severely tailored high-necked black dress, and all her facial makeup was missing, a fact which must have thrown two or three notions shops into bankruptcy in one fell swoop. Then, a few days after that, she started singing the hymns so loud that the paying customers began complaining.
I was pleased to see that she was taking my preaching so much to heart, but I still kept my distance whenever I was outside of the tabernacle. One day though, I passed her in the hall and for the first time within my memory she didn't even grab at me.
This turn of events made my life just about perfect and I determined then and there to check out the performance of some of my tenants, just to make sure they weren't being more than normally sinful and to offer them dispensation in case they felt a little adventurous.
So that night, after I had completed my evening sermon (which, as I recall, had something to do with the sin of lusting after your neighbors’ wives when you could be spending your time with some pleasant bachelor ladies at the Tabernacle of Saint Luke), I wandered up to the second floor and, not wishing to spend too much time reforming all these sinful painted women individually, decided to invite three of them into a room at once.
I was just on the verge of showing them what old Onan was missing when suddenly the door burst open and Lieutenant Nigel Todd walked in.
“You ain't real strong on knocking or announcing yourself, are you, Brother Todd?” I said irritably, wrapping a blanket around myself while the girls scrambled for cover.
“I have no choice, Doctor Jones,” he said. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to shutter this establishment.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. “And how come you ain't jingling your change the way you usually do when we get onto this subject?”
“Because this isn't something we can work out between ourselves,” he said. “I've got a court order closing you down.” He tossed it onto the bed for me to see.
“But we got nothing but happy, satisfied customers!” I protested. “Who'd be low and dastardly enough to have the judge sign something like this?”
“I'll take credit for it,” said Mademoiselle Markoff, appearing in the doorway.
“
You?
” I said. “But why?”
“You've shown me the light, Lucifer,” she said with a strange kind of glow on her face. “I've been listening to you preach the Word for more than half a year now, and reading the Good Book every night, and you've shown me the error of my ways.”
“What about all these poor innocent girls who ain't quite seen the error of
their
ways yet?” I demanded. “How are they gonna make a living if you stop them from selling the one commodity they know anything about?”
“I'm starting a soup kitchen on the outskirts of town,” said Mademoiselle Markoff. “I'll be helping poor downtrodden sinners and derelicts on both sides of the counter, praise God!”
“But what will become of my tabernacle?” I screamed.
“You've been blessed with the call, Lucifer,” she said. “You'll find another tabernacle, one that doesn't lead poor young girls and evil lecherous men into a life of sin.”
“What life of sin?” I protested. “It's only just a couple of
hours
of sin!”
“The difference is quantitative, not qualitative,” she said. “Don't you understand, Lucifer? I'm just doing what you've been telling me to do.”
“I ain't never told no one to shut this place down!” I said. “Lieutenant Todd, this is all just some horrible misunderstanding. Let me and the Mademoiselle here talk things over for an hour or so and everything will be back to normal.”