The Nail and the Oracle by Theodore Sturgeon

there seemed as usual. It was about then he remembered to breathe again. He turned to follow the girl along the gallery.
    She had opened a door and was waiting for him. “In here.”
    It was black dark in there. If he thought anything at all, it was that she would follow him and light a lamp.
    The instant he was clear of the door, it was kicked shut with the girl still outside, and he found himself in total blackness. Hands came from nowhere, took both arms, wrenched them behind him. “Whut—” he yelled, and got a stinging blow in the mouth before he could make another syllable. He kicked out and back as hard as he could, and his heel struck what felt like a shinbone. He heard a curse, and the red lightning struck him twice more on the cheek and on the ear.
    He stood still then, head down, hauling uselessly at the relentless grip on his arms, and breathed hoarsely.
    A blaze of light appeared across the room. It was only a match, but it was so unexpected it hurt him more than fists and made him grunt. The flare dwindled as it stroked the wick of a lamp, and then the lamp-flame came up, yellow and steady.
    The room was fixed up like an office. There was a bookcase and a cabinet and, on the wall, a claims map. A big desk stood parallel with the far wall with a heavily curtained window behind it. The lamp stood on the desk, and seated behind it was a thin man with pale gray hair and the brightest blue eyes he had seen yet. The man wore a black coat and a tight white collar and an oversized black Ascot, from the top bulge of which gleamed a single pearl. The man was waving the match slowly back and forth to put it out.
    He was smiling. His teeth were very long, especially the eyeteeth.
    “So, Mr. Bronzeau,” he said in a soft, mellow voice. “We meet at last.”
    Younger Macleish was far too dazzled to respond. He pulled suddenly at the arms which held him, glanced right and left. He got a blurred picture of one man, heavy-set and running to fat, who smelled of beer and sweat, and another, much younger, with the crazed, craven face of one who can be frightened into being snake-dangerous. One thing was certain: the two of them knew how to hold a man so he couldn’t move. To them he said, “Turn me loose.”
    At this there was a movement in the shadows and a fourth man moved out of the corner. He was a wide man with a wide hat on, and small eyes, and he put two big white hands in the pool of light under the lamp and began to fiddle with a big black and gold signet ring with a black-letter B on it. He was smiling. Younger Macleish said again, “Turn me loose.”
    “Oh,” said the gray-headed man pleasantly, “we will—we will, Mr. Bronzeau. But first Mr. Brannegan here will relieve you of anything sharp or explosive or which in any way might disturb the peace and quiet of our little conversation.” He smiled, and then waved his hand in a small flourish at the man with the signet ring. He said, like one politician introducing another politician, “Mr. Brannegan.”
    The big man came over. Macleish tensed. “Hold real still, sonny,” said Brannegan, and went over Macleish rapidly and with an expert touch. He checked everything—even his boot-tops, where men have been known to stash a knife. In the process he got Younger Macleish’s money, his cigars, his matches, and even a walnut he had borrowed from Miz Appleton’s alcove. These things he put neatly on the desk.
    “I shall now show you, Mr. Brannegan, that even you can at times be careless; and you, Mr. Bronzeau, that I know a great deal more about you than you thought I did. Our young friend,” he informed Brannegan, “has been seen to reach up as if to scratch his ear, and suddenly hang a weighted throwing knife he carries in a four-by-four thirty yards away. If you will be good enough to look, I think you will find the knife in a sheath between his shoulder blades.”
    Brannegan swore and reached over Macleish’s shoulder, to pound him heavily on the back.