The Delegate from Venus by Henry Slesar, Science Fiction, Fantasy

Jerry Bridges, sitting in the chair opposite his employer's desk, chewed on his knuckles and said nothing. One part of his mind wanted him to play it cagey, to behave the way the newspaper wanted him to behave, to protect the cozy Washington assignment he had waited four years to get. But another part of him, a rebel part, wanted him to stay on the trail of the story he felt sure was about to break.

"I didn't mean to make trouble, Mr. Conners," he said casually. "It just seemed strange, all these exchanges of couriers in the past two days. I couldn't help thinking something was up."

"Even if that's true, we'll hear about it through the usual channels," Conners frowned. "But getting a senator's secretary drunk to obtain information-well, that's not only indiscreet, Bridges. It's downright dirty."

Henry Slesar (1927 - 2002) was an American author, playwright and copywriter. He is famous for his use of irony and twist endings. After reading Slesar's "M Is for the Many" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock bought it for adaptation and they began many successful collaborations. Slesar wrote hundreds of scripts for television series and soap operas, leading TV Guide to call him "the writer with the largest audience in America." In 1955, he published his first short story, "The Brat" (Imaginative Tales, September, 1955). While working as a copywriter, he published hundreds of short stories-over forty in 1957 alone-including detective fiction, science fiction, criminal stories, mysteries and thrillers in such publications as Playboy, Imaginative Tales and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; he was writing, on average, a story per week. Alfred Hitchcock hired him to write a number of the scenarios for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He wrote a series of stories about a criminal named Ruby Martinson for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and later worked on Rod Serling's Twilight Zone series. He also penned the screenplay for the 1965 film Two on a Guillotine, which was based on one of his stories. His short story "Examination Day" was used in the 1980s Twilight Zone revival. His first novel-length work was 20 Million Miles to Earth, a 1957 novelization of the film. In 1960, his first novel, The Gray Flannel Shroud (1958), a murder mystery set in an advertising agency, earned the Edgar Allan Poe Award.