No Fire Burns by Avram Davidson (Playboy, July 1959) opens with a Mr Melchior and his personnel manager, Mr Taylor, driving to lunch with a psychologist, Dr Colles. Melchior tells Colles about an otherwise normal man who murdered a rival just to secure a promotion, and goes on to ask Colles to produce a test that will weed out such individuals from his company.
Inserted into this strand of the narrative is a section about an employee of Melichor’s called Joe Clock, who has borrowed money from a workmate but, as we see, has no intention of paying it back. Joe later completes the psychological screening test that Colles develops:
There are lots worse crimes than murder. Probably . . . Sure. Lots worse. The average person will do anything for money. Absolutely right they would. Why not, if you can get away with it? Sure. And the same way, that’s why you got to watch out for yourself.
There are worse things than losing your home. What? Catching leprosy?
And then the way to answer the question changed. Now you had to pick out an answer. Like, Most people who hit someone with their car at night would (a) report to the police first (b) give first aid (c) make a getaway if possible. Well, any damn fool would know it was the last. In fact, anyone but a damn fool would do just that. That’s what he did that time. (c)
Now, a dope like Aberdeen: he’d probably stop his car. Stick his nose in someone else’s tough luck. Anybody stupid enough to lend his rent money— p. 38-39 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)
The story develops further (spoiler) when Colles notices, having completed the work some weeks before, problematic mentions of Melchior and his ex-employees in the newspapers. He then discovers that nearly all the company men shown by the test to have psychopathic tendencies are still employed.
Colles confronts Melchior with this information—and then asks to work for him (there are a couple of earlier hints in the story that Colles is fairly amoral). The story finishes with a biter-bit ending where the personnel manager Taylor (another one of the story’s many psychopaths) has Melchior and Colles shot by Joe Clock and another man.
This is well enough told, and interesting enough, but the idea is barely credible. And some will see where the plot is going, or be unsurprised when they get there.
** (Average). 6,350 words.