I must have nodded, because there was the sound of a shot. I let out a yell and jumped up, and Charlie jumped up too. He looked sober.
He said, “Hank, you had that thing on. Are you—?”
I was looking down at myself and there wasn’t any blood on the front of my shirt. Nor any pain anywhere. Nor anything. I quit shaking. I looked at Charlie; he wasn’t shot either. I said, “But who—? What—?”
“Hank,” he said. “That shot wasn’t in this room at all. It was outside, in the hallway, or on the stair.”
“On the stair? ” Something prickled at the back of my mind. What about a stair? I saw a man upon the stair, a little man who was not there. He was not there again today. Gee, I wish he’d go away.
“Charlie,” I said. “ It was Yehudi! He shot himself because I said ‘shoot yourself’ and the pendulum swung. You were wrong about it being an—an automatonic autosuggestive whatzit. It was Yehudi doing it all the time. It was—”
“Shut up,” he said.
But he went over and opened the door and I followed him and we went out in the hallway.
There was a decided smell of burnt powder. It seemed to come from about halfway up the stairs because it got stronger as we neared that point.
“Nobody there,” Charlie said, shakily.