All The Bells on Earth Read Online Free PDF

afloat. “I can’t help you,” he said, and he knew it was only partly right even as he said it. The flesh was weak.
    “Name your price.”
    “I’m not talking about price. I mean to say that I’ve never helped you. What you’ve done, you’ve done alone.” This was wrong too. He himself was as blameworthy as a felon.
    “You know, Mr. Flanagan, I don’t think so. If I thought so, I wouldn’t have called you. What have you taken from me over the years, twenty thousand?”
    “I don’t keep accounts.”
    “Of course you do. We both know the truth.”
    “The truth is, I’m not in that line of work any more, so never mind the past. You might say that I’ve changed; I’ve gone over to the other side.”
    “The other side! And yet you answer to the same name and at the same old number. I wonder if some things haven’t changed. How about the color of money? Has that changed, too?”
    “I recommend that you ask God for help.”
    “Let’s not drift off the subject,” the man said. “I’m willing to pay you a hundred thousand dollars, any way you like—through Obermeyer, cash in a briefcase, trust fund, you name it. I have a certain naive faith in you. Can you believe that? You’ve kept your word to me in the past, and I’m willing to take a gamble on you again. What do I have to lose? Stay near the phone while you think it over. I’ll call back.”

5
     
    W HEN A RGYLE HUNG UP the telephone his hand was shaking. He stood by the desk for a moment, getting a grip on himself, then stepped across and turned up the stereo. The children out on the playground had just come out for their midmorning recess. The sound of them shouting and screaming and laughing gave him a headache, or worse, and he’d found that tapes of special-effects type noises—train sounds, ocean waves, thunderstorms—served to drown out their voices better than music did. And these days the sound of music was nearly as intolerable as the sound of children. Nothing was free. Everything had its price.
    He realized that his phone was ringing, his personal line, and he turned the stereo volume down slightly and picked up the receiver, sitting down at his desk. “Robert Argyle,” he said. He listened a moment. It was George Nelson with news about Murray LeRoy—good news; LeRoy was dead.
    “When?” Argyle asked. His momentary enthusiasm for LeRoy’s death started to wane as Nelson went into detail, and he found himself staring at his desktop, recalling the conversation he’d had a few moments ago. Probably he should have offered Flanagan more money, pushed all his chips into the center of the table. “What did the police say? Did they have any kind of explanation for it?”
    “They found the metal parts of a Bic lighter in the alley and the presence of gas from the manhole that’s right there. One theory is that the lighter leaked butane gas into LeRoy’s pocket, and then when he lit his cigarette the gas followed his hand to his mouth and ignited. Apparently it happens more often than you’d guess. If he was wearing flammable clothes, he could have gone up like a torch. All of this is just conjecture, of course, since there aren’t any clothes left to examine except one of those damned white patent leather loafers that he wears, with the tassels. Everything else burned to ash. Even his shirt buttons vaporized. The heat was incredible.”
    “And the fire investigators buy this? The butane lighter and all?”
    “There was the manhole, too. Apparently gasses might have built up out there in the alley. A spark can set them off. They think it’s some kind of combination of this stuff, perhaps aggravated by chemicals like deodorant and cologne. I suggested kids—punks, skinheads, street gang, something like that—but they didn’t like the idea. The city doesn’t need that kind of talk. There’s also a good possibility that it was a suicide, that he doused himself with flammable liquids and lit himself on fire. There was no gas