The Second Fable

Bill feared Joe with an unceasing persistence of watchfulness and wariness that prompted in others suspicions of mental disease. As he expected Joe's arrival, Bill reflected:" If his right front pocket bulges, he's trying to kill me. The bulge will be caused by a snub-nosed Beretta like one of those you see in gangster movies." When Joe entered with no bulge, Bill reflected:"He's using a weapon that doesn't cause a bulge, like a poisoned needle. But where would he get the poison? Ah; I've noticed the pharmacy near where he lives. Sinister atmosphere. Pharmacist leers like an ape. Deserted by normal people." Bill hired a private detective who staked out the pharmacy and after three weeks reported that Joe never went there.

"He's buying poison somewhere else," reflected Bill. So he compiled a list of all the pharmacies in the city and for each tabulated indications, positive and negative, relative to its being frequented by Joe. Was there a full line of baby care products such as appeal to maternal and paternal love and might be expected to repel someone with murder on his mind? Were patterns like the tread of Joe's tennis shoes seen in the dust near the entrance? Was Joe's favorite shaving cream on the shelves? 20 such questions times 7 pharmacies times half-a-dozen inspections of each produced a mass of data.

Bill took these home and subjected them to a statistical analysis that revealed no pattern whatever; all was random. There was no reason to think Joe was buying poison. In his mind's eye, Bill saw the high glittering tower of his fear, its stratagems and counterstratagems like buttresses and battlements, crumble to nothing like one of those apartment buildings you see on television, imploding into a cloud of dust after the detonation inside them of many scattered charges of dynamite. "What a life I can have now, not creating new and still new plans to outsmart a killer," reflected Bill. He must go outside and savor his freedom on a bright spring day. The elation continued as he walked down his front path and turned on the sidewalk where Joe stepped silently up behind him, pulled a snub-nosed Beretta from his right front pocket, and shot him in the back.