"No, he isn't," I confessed, "but he'll be back in about fifteen minutes. If you'd care to wait--"
"That's all I wan'ed t'know," he said, his nose twitching like the nose of an Easter bunny Hellwig had given me when I was ten years old.
"Gimme yer money," he said, standing directly in front of the desk and staring at me with terrified, pink-rimmed eyes.
"My--my money?" I repeated.
And now I was the one who sounded like a frightened child.
There was a hundred and fifty dollars in the house, about sixty of it in the desk drawer--too much money to be bluffed into handing over to a--
And then I saw his gun.
He held it in one trembling white hand.
My mind was suddenly a maelstrom, offering up weird, useless suggestions for tricking or attacking the man, reasons why I should or shouldn't hand over every cent quietly, and churning with totally unrelated thoughts and ideas--with a bit of a review of my past life thrown in for good measure.
I wouldn't give him the money. I'd pretend not to understand and he'd get exasperated and go away, to come again some other day, that was that old nursery rhyme I used to sing or something. The telephone, that was it, the telephone, if I could get to the telephone I could call the police and then stall him till they got here. I'd say excuse me, I have to make a phone call, and then ... His eyes. The rims are red, like he'd been crying, or rubbing them, or hadn't had enough sleep. They're funny eyes--scared to death. I'm scared to death too. Maybe I should give him the money. When people are scared and upset they're apt to pull the trigger. Maybe I should do what he wants. After all, it wasn't the brave-looking tortoise who finally won the race, it was the hare, even if he did look pretty rabbity and scared. He had a gun, after all, and who wouldn't win a race if he was carrying a gun? Or wait--wasn't it the tortoise who won? While I was trying to figure this out I saw far below me, as though through a mist of clouds, a pair of hands stuffed with money.