'All right. Now this is the plan.' I was getting rather excited myself. I was leaning over the side of the bed, resting one hand on the little table, waving the other about in the air as I spoke. 'We will set up immediately an organization and we will call it... what shall we call it... we will call it... let me see... we will call it "Vengeance Is Mine Inc."... How about that?'
'Peculiar name.'
'It's biblical. It's good. I like it. "Vengeance Is Mine Inc." It sounds fine. And we will have little cards printed which we will send to all our clients reminding them that they have been insulted and mortified in public and offering to punish the offender in consideration of a sum of money. We will buy all the newspapers and read all the columnists and every day we will send out a dozen or more or our cards to prospective clients.'
'It's marvellous!' George shouted. 'It's terrific!'
'We shall be rich,' I told him. 'We shall be exceedingly wealthy in no time at all.'
'We must start at once!'
I jumped out of bed, fetched a writing-pad and a pencil and ran back to bed again. 'Now,' I said, pulling my knees under the blankets and propping the writing-pad against them, 'the first thing is to decide what we're going to say on the printed cards which we'll be sending to our clients,' and I wrote, 'VENGEANCE IS MINE INC.' as a heading on top of the shee
t of paper. Then, with much care, I composed a finely phrased letter explaining the functions of the organization. It finished up with the following sentence: 'Therefore VENGEANCE IS MINE INC. will undertake, on your behalf and in absolute confidence, to administer suitable punishment to columnist ..................... and in this regard we respectfully submit to you a choice of methods (together with prices) for your consideration.'
'What do you mean, "a choice of methods"?' George said.
'We must give them a choice. We must think up a number of things... a number of different punishments. Number one will be...' and I wrote down, '1. Punch him one the nose, once, hard.' 'What shall we charge for that?'
'Five hundred dollars,' George said instantly.
I wrote it down. 'What's the next one?'
'Black his eye,' George said.
I wrote down, '2. Black his eye... $500.'
'No!' George said. 'I disagree with the price. It definitely requires more skill and timing to black an eye nicely than to punch a nose. It is a skilled job. It should be six hundred.'
'O.K.,' I said. 'Six hundred. And what's the next one?'
'Both together, of course. The old one two.' We were in George's territory now. This was right up his street.
'Both together?'
'Absolutely. Punch his nose and black his eye. Eleven hundred dollars.'
'There should be a reduction for taking the two,' I said. 'We'll make it a thousand.'
'It's dirt cheap,' George said. 'They'll snap it up.'
'What's next?'
We were both silent now, concentrating fiercely. Three deep parallel grooves of wrinkled skin appeared upon George's rather low sloping forehead. He began to scratch his scalp, slowly but very strongly. I looked away and tried to think of all the terrible things which people had done to other people. Finally I got one, and with George watching the point of my pencil moving over the paper, I wrote: '4. Put a rattlesnake (with venom extracted) on the floor of his car, by the pedals, when he parks it.'
'Jesus Christ!' George whispered. 'You want to kill him with fright!'
'Sure,' I said.
'And where'd you get a rattlesnake, anyway?'
'Buy it. You can always buy them. How much shall we charge for that one?'
'Fifteen hundred dollars,' George said firmly. I wrote it down.
'Now we need one more.'
'Here it is,' George said. 'Kidnap him in a car, take all his clothes away except his underpants and his shoes and socks, then dump him out on Fifth Avenue in the rush hour.' He smiled, a broad triumphant smile.