The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Copyright info

“The Two-Faced Corpse” was originally published in New Detective, April 1952.

“As I Lie Dead” was originally published in Manhunt, February 1953.

“I’ll Kill for You” was originally published in Giant Manhunt #2 (1953).

“A Long Way to K.c.” was originally published in Giant Manhunt #3 (1954).

“Heels Are for Hating” was originally published in Manhunt, February 1954.

“Murder of a Mouse” was originally published in Verdict Detective Story Magazine #5 1955.

“Points South” was originally published in Manhunt, June 1954.

“Two Little Hands” was originally published in Manhunt, December 1954.

“Handy Man” was originally published in Manhunt, February 1956.

“Loose Ends” was originally published in Manhunt, August 1958.

“The Witness Was a Lady” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1960. Copyright © 1960, renewed 1988 by Davis Publications.

“She Asked for It” was originally published in Manhunt, August 1960.

“Tune Me In” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1960. Copyright © 1960, renewed 1988 by Davis Publications.

“The Spent Days” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1961.

“Bonus Boy” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1963. Copyright © 1963, renewed 1991 by Davis Publications.

“Mrs. Dearly’s Special Day” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1963. Copyright © 1963, renewed 1991 by Davis Publications.

“Six Reasons for Murder” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964. Copyright © 1964 by Fletcher Flora.

“How? When? Who?” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1964. Copyright © 1964 by Fletcher Flora.

“The Satin-Quilted Box” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1964. Copyright © 1964 by Fletcher Flora.

“My Father Died Young” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Fletcher Flora.

“Wait and See” was originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Fletcher Flora.

“Obituary” was originally published in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, March 1966. Copyright © 1966 by Fletcher Flora.

“The Happenstance Snatch” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1966. Copyright © 1966 by Fletcher Flora.

“Cousin Kelly” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1967. Copyright © 1967 by Fletcher Flora.

“Refuge” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Fletcher Flora.

“Something Priceless” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Fletcher Flora.

A note from the publisher

Fletcher Flora (1914–1968) was born in Kansas and served in the U.S. Army in the Far East during World War II, where he rose to the rank of Sergeant. He married Betty Ogden in 1940, and in 1945 was appointed Education Adviser to the Department of the Army, a position he held till 1963.

Beginning in the 1950s, he wrote a string of 20 novels — mysteries, lesbian novels, suspense, and three pseudonymously as “Ellery Queen.” He wrote more than 160 short stories for the leading mystery mystery magazines of the day, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, Manhunt, and many more.

Wildside Press purchased his copyrights in early 2015 and has been working to bring his classic material back into print.

Enjoy!

— John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

The Two-Faced Corpse

Originally published in New Detective, April 1952.

“Hank Torgen’s got a place called the Zero Club,” Malory told Lonigan. “We’ll go there.”

The place was locked up tight. Malory banged and waited. After a minute, he banged and kept on banging. A key rattled suddenly in the lock on the inside, and the door was jerked violently inward away from Malory’s persistent knuckles. A Galento-type guy with shirt sleeves rolled back off hairy forearms stood in the opening.

“What the hell’s the idea, trying to knock the door down? You looking for a fat lip, maybe?”

“We’re looking for Hank Torgen, goon. Now tell us he’s not here.”

“Okay. He ain’t here.”

“That’s a good boy. Now we’ll just come in and look around.”

The fat guy cocked a hairy arm and moved forward. Malory waved a badge under his flat nose, and the cocked arm came down.

“Oh. Coppers.”

“Yeah. You must be new around here, goon.”

“That’s twice you’ve called me goon. Lay off.”

“Sure, goon. Take my advice. Learn to recognize the right faces.”

Malory pushed in, Lonigan at his heels. They went down a short hall, past the check stand, into the main room of the club. Later on, at playtime, it would be soft-lighted and crammed with ersatz gaiety. Now it didn’t have its makeup on. Glitter washed out in gray light. About as gay as a crutch.

In a back hall that abandoned all pretense of luxury, Malory knuckled a door and pushed in without waiting for an invitation. From behind a desk, a man with a broad, rocky face looked up from under craggy brows. His eyes were the color of slate and looked about as hard. When he saw who his visitors were, he stood up. Five feet eight or nine, vertical. Horizontal, there wouldn’t have been much difference. Built to last.

“Hello, Malory. You didn’t give me time to say come in.”

“I knew we’d be welcome.”

“Sure. Any time, Malory. Find a chair.”

Malory did. Lonigan stayed by the door, standing. Sitting behind his desk again, Hank Torgen reached for a bottle.

“Drink?”

“No, thanks. Ask me some time when I’m not official.”

“I never see you when you’re not official.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s right. It’s hell to work for a living, isn’t it?”

A smile brushed Torgen’s lips. Really just the shadow of one. There wasn’t any humor in it.

“I know my line. I’m supposed to say I wouldn’t know. You might be surprised. I might work harder than you think.”

“Maybe. There are lots of ways to make a living. I guess you could call any of them working. Seen Trixy Vincent lately, Hank?”

The slate-colored eyes were suddenly very still. So was the blocky body. Only the lips moved.

“Come off, Malory. Trixy took a powder over a year ago. You know that.”

“Sure. I know. Right after the Cornelius Jewelry Store heist, wasn’t it? I always had an idea Trixy might have crossed someone on that job. You sure you haven’t seen him?”

“I haven’t seen him. I haven’t been looking.”

“No? Neither have I. But I’ve seen him just the same. In an apartment out on Eighteenth. He’d had a job of plastic surgery done. Didn’t look like the same old Trixy at all. It was him, though. Right here in town all the time, Hank.”

“This a joke, copper?”

“Not to Trixy. He’s dead. Someone gunned him.”

A long sigh hissed between Torgen’s stiff lips. He stirred in his chair, and a little life returned to his eyes.

“Tough. Thanks for telling me, Malory. I’ll want to send flowers.”

“I thought you would. You with friends all last night, Hank?”

“You’re wasting your time. I’ve always got friends around.”

“Sure,” Malory said, getting up. “A guy as popular as you never has to worry about being lonely. Or guilty. Thanks, Hank. See you around.”

He went out, collecting Lonigan at the door. In the car, he took the wheel himself and drove slowly around the block. Not quite all the way. On the side street coming hack, he pulled to the curb and stopped.

“Hank’s black Cad was at the curb,” he said. “Heading this way. He’ll he crossing the intersection pretty soon. We’ll wait.”

Hank Torgen sat quite still at his desk for a long time, looking across the room at nothing with blank eyes. He was thinking that Trixy Vincent had got a facial. Now Trixy was dead. Murdered. The way Hank saw it, you could go three ways from there. One: Trixy was killed by a new connection. Someone he’d met after changing his identity. Two: he was killed by someone who had caught up with him from behind. Three: he was killed by someone who had been in on the fade from the beginning. Someone who’d known him with both faces all along.

It was the third way that appealed to Hank. It put a name in his head. It gave him someone to start with. Getting his hat, he went out of the office and down the short hall into the large main room of the club.

The goon was behind the bar, mixing himself a drink. Hank was tempted to give him hell for letting the coppers through but decided against it. After all, it was a lucky break that the coppers had made it. They had put him back on the trail of half a million bucks worth of ice that he’d just about kissed good-by. Without speaking, he went on through and out to the Cadillac at the curb.

Driving across town, he pulled up in front of an apartment house that had the name Corinthian Arms chiseled in stone above the front entrance. Inside, he rode to the fifth floor and knocked on a door. When the door opened, he entered without speaking. He was in a nice room, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. The blonde who followed him in from the door was even nicer. Tall. Wearing soft satin pajamas that let the softer curves of her body show off. A face that fell into the beauty class if you didn’t object to eyes and a mouth on the hard side. She was called Pepper. That wasn’t her real name. Trixy Vincent had tagged her that because her last name happened to be Minter. Trixy always had a taste for the cute.

Hank turned in the middle of the room and looked at her. There was usually a certain light in the eyes of men who looked at her. There was one in Hank’s too, but it wasn’t the right light.

“Hi, baby.”

“Hello, Hank. Long time no see.”

“Yeah. I’ve been busy. I guess you have, too.”

“Not especially.”

“No? I’d call gunning an old boy friend being busy.”

“You’re going too fast, Hank.”

“Okay. I’ll play games for a minute. Trixy Vincent has turned up. Dead. No news to you.”

“It is, Hank. I swear it is.”

He took two quick steps to reach her. The back of his heavy hand smacked her mouth, flattening red lips against white teeth. She took it without flinching, watching him with eyes that slowly filled with hate as a drop of blood appeared on her lower lip. The tip of her pink tongue slipped out to remove it.

“Don’t bother to lie anymore, baby. I’ve got it figured. You were in the fade with Trixy. You’ve known all along that he had his face changed and stayed right here in town. After Trixy peddled the ice, you were going to take a powder together. That’s what Trixy thought. Not you. Maybe you didn’t like Trixy so well with a new face. More likely you just liked the money Trixy got from the ice better than any face. Pretty smart, letting him peddle the stuff for you before you did the job. You killed him, baby. You have the idea that no one would recognize the body? A smart cop caught the facial right away.”

“You’re all wrong, Hank. I didn’t know anything about Trixy’s facial.”

He hit her twice more. Once on the left side of the head with his right hand. Again on the right side with his left hand. Hank’s hands were big and hard like rock. Her knees buckled a little inside the satin pants, and a whimper escaped her bruised lips.

“You’re lying, baby. You’re a cheap little liar. You know what happens to dames who lie to Hank Torgen.”

“I’m not, Hank. I swear I’m not.”

He spun away from her and went to work on the apartment. Looking everywhere a smart dame might have cached a wad of skins. Not carefully. Not bothering to leave anything as he found it. When the living room was a shambles, he moved into the bedroom.

Pepper stood in the middle of the living room and listened to him work. The hate inside her was almost more than she could bear. There was a .38 in the drawer of the table beside her bed. She wondered if he could get it and kill him, but she shook her head and stayed in the living room. She’d always had a level head. Smart. She’d figure a way to get him. Later and good, without any danger to Pepper.

He came out of the bedroom and stopped in front of her. His eyes were burning with fury, but his voice was slow and patient, as if he were reading a lesson to a dumb kid “I’ve just started. If those rocks have gone through. I’ll find out. If they have, it means a lot of lettuce is somewhere around. Hank Torgen’s lettuce. You say you didn’t have anything to do with it. If you didn’t, you’re lucky. If you did, I’ll be back. Don’t bother to run. One rat got away from Hank Torgen. It won’t happen again. The facial Trixy bought himself was nothing, baby. Nothing to the one you’ll get. For free.”

Wheeling, he went over to the door and out.

Pepper stood in the wreckage of her apartment and went on thinking from where Hank had left off. She was smart. Smarter than Hank. He had got as far as her and bogged down. She was already way down the line. The minute he’d mentioned the facial, the perfect answer had jumped into her head. Hank’d get to it later. The smart cop, too. In the meantime, a smart girl could sew it up. A smart girl could always use the money Say — two hundred grand, maybe. She said it and liked the sound of it.

Pouring herself two fingers of rye, she slugged it down neat. In the bedroom, she got out of the satin pajamas and into street clothes. From the floor where Hank had dumped it, she retrieved the .38. Rejecting her purses with zippers, she found one with a simple catch and slipped the .38 into it. Then she went out to the telephone in the living room and rang the garage downstairs.

“Miss Minter speaking,” she said into the mouthpiece. “Please get my car ready to go out. I’ll pick it up, myself, in the garage.”

She went down the service stairs at the rear of the building. Half an hour later, she was standing before the front door of a brick house in a fashionable suburb. Beside the door was a neat little, bronze plate that said: Maurice Connerly, M. D. Pepper had been here before. The night Trixy Vincent had to have a slug dug out of his leg. She opened the door and stepped into the hall.

No one was around. Ahead of her, the right side of the hall took to the stairs and went up to the second floor. The left side was the low road, going straight back to a closed door at the end. She took the low road to the door and knocked. A voice told her to come in.

The man she found on the other side of the door had a thin, dark face below thick, dark hair that was turning silver at the temples. He lifted an eyebrow and waited, looking at her.

“You’ll remember in a minute,” she said “Minter. Pepper Minter. I came here once with Trixy Vincent.”

“You seem to have something on your mind. I’ve no idea what it is.”

She followed him to the desk, standing close enough to watch his hands.

“It’s no use, butcher. You don’t have to be smart to figure this one. A year ago Trixy Vincent took a powder with half a million dollars worth of ice. For that much he was willing to do it right. Knife work and everything. But it didn’t work. Last night he was murdered. Either Hank Torgen or I would have loved the job, but someone beat us to it. You, butcher. Trixy finally peddled the ice, and you killed him for what it brought.”

“You must he insane.”

She took the .38 out of her purse and pointed it at him.

“It had to be someone who knew Trixy with his new face. You’re the one. You knew because you gave it to him. There was even a chance that no one would recognize the corpse. Tough luck for you that a smart dick was on the case, he spotted the stiff for Trixy right away. Tell me, how much did Trixy get for the ice?”

He laughed again and lifted his shoulders. He’d already decided that it wouldn’t do to let her go away alive.

“You know how it is with a fence. You’re lucky to get half.”

“It’ll be plenty for a mink coat. Get it.” Placing his thin hands flat on the desk, he started to rise slowly.

“I think not. And you can put away the gun now. I don’t like it. Even with a beautiful girl behind it, I don’t like it.”

She shot him in the right shoulder. The force of the slug slammed him back into the chair.

“You’ve made mistakes, butcher. You’re making your biggest one right now. Or would you enjoy being shot to death by inches?”

He lay back in the chair, holding his smashed shoulder and looking up at her with a sick pallor in his thin face. When he nodded wordlessly at the top right drawer of the desk, she went around quickly and jerked it open. It was there. Just lying there like so much paper. Four thick packets. One by one she dropped them into her purse. Then she lifted the .38 again.

“I said fifty percent. I meant of the value. Sorry, butcher.”

This time she shot him in the head. Without waiting until he had slipped out of the chair onto the floor, she dropped the .38 into the purse with the money and moved swiftly toward the door.

Putting the gun away was a mistake. She didn’t have time to get it out again when Malory stepped in and waved his own at her. He stopped just inside the door and looked at her bitterly.

“I wish you hadn’t done that. Killed him. I mean. I don’t like sending pretty women to the chair. It makes me feel bad.” Pretty, he said. As far as anyone could see, she was. But not inside. Inside, she was suddenly old and incredibly ugly. Like death. He kept on looking at her, shaking his head a little and sighing.

“I had a doctor in mind from the start. But I didn’t know which one. I thought maybe Hank Torgen would get the same idea and show me the way. I should have known better. Hank’s too dumb. Not you, honey. You’re smart. As soon as you got in the game, I had it won.”

She found her voice then. It fitted her inside better than her outside. Hoarse and ugly. Killed with a desperate fear.

“Look, copper. There’s plenty in this bag. Cops don’t make much money. Half of this would be a lot of money for a cop. Just for letting me get out of here. No one would know you didn’t come too late.”

He shook his head again. Regretfully. “Sure. No one but Lonigan out there in the hall. It’s tough that Lonigan has to be along. Sorry, honey. Thanks just the same.”

As I Lie Dead

Originally published in Manhunt, February 1953.

Chapter 1

I rolled over in the hot sand and sat up. Down the artificial beach about fifty yards, the old man was coming toward us with a bright towel trailing from one hand. He was wearing swimming trunks, and with every step he took, his big belly bounced like a balloon tied up short on the end of a stick. Dropping the towel on the sand, he turned and waded into the water.

“The old man’s taking a swim,” I said.

Beside me on the beach, Cousin Cindy grunted. She was stretched out flat on her belly with her head cradled on her arms and her long golden legs spread in a narrow V. Her white lastex trunks curved up high over the swell of her body, and the ends of her brassiere lay unattached on the sand. When she shifted position, raising herself a little on her elbows, my reaction was not cousinly. Not cousinly at all. “Hook me in back,” she said.

I readied over and brought the loose ends of her brassiere together below her shoulder blades, letting my fingers wander oft lightly down the buttons of her spine. She sat up, folding the golden legs Indian style and shaking sand from the ends of her golden hair. She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Out in the lake, Grandfather was swimming toward the raft that was a small brown square on the blue surface of the water. He was swimming breast stroke, as many old men swim, and the water bulged out ahead of him in smooth, sweeping undulations.

“The old man’s strong as a bull,” I said.

Cindy didn’t answer. She just handed me a bottle with a white label and a white cap and some brown lotion inside. I unscrewed the cap and poured some of the lotion on her shoulders and back, rubbing it in gently with my fingers until it had disappeared and her skin was like golden satin to my touch.

Looking over her shoulder, past the soft sheen of her hair and out across the glittering blue lake, I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He’d made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn’t look like he was ever going to die.

“It’s hot,” Cindy said, her voice slow and sleepy like the purring of a kitten, “but it’s not as hot as it gets in Acapulco. You ever been in Acapulco, Tony? It’s beautiful there. The harbor is almost land-locked, with mountains all around, and the ships come right up against the shore.”

I didn’t say anything. My hands moved across her shoulders and down along the soft swells of-flat muscle that padded the blades. The perfumes of her hair and the lotion were a strange, exotic blend in my nostrils. Out on the raft, Grandfather still sat with his legs in the water.

“I was there for two weeks once,” Cindy said. “In Acapulco, I mean. I went with a man from Los Angeles who wanted me to wear red flowers in my hair. He was very romantic, but he was also very fat, and the palms of his hands were always damp. It would be better in Acapulco with you, Tony. Much better.”

My hands reversed direction, moving up again into her hair, cupping it between palms as water is cupped. The raft, out on the lake, rose and dipped on a slight swell. Grandfather rode it easily, still resting.

“He just sits,” I said bitterly. “He’ll be sitting forever.”

Her head fell back slowly until it was resting on my shoulder, and her golden hair was hanging down my back, and I could look down along the slim arch of her throat into the small valley of shadow under the white band she wore. Behind dark glass, her lids lowered, and she looked dreamily through slits into the brash blue of the sky.

“Acapulco, Tony. You and me and Acapulco. It’s hot and beautiful there by the harbor in a ring of mountains, but it wouldn’t be good unless you and I were hot and beautiful, too. It wouldn’t be good if we were too old, Tony.”

“He’s strong as a bull,” I said. “He’ll live forever.”

A shiver rippled her flesh, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out and around her oiled lips.

“It’s a nice day, Tony. A hot, dreamy day with a blue sky and white clouds drifting. If I were old and ugly, I’d like to die on a day like this.”

She remained quiet a minute longer, lying against me with her hair splashing down my back, and then she slipped away, rising in the hot sand.

“I want a drink,” she said. “A long, long drink with lots of ice and a sprig of mint. You coming, Tony?”

I stood up too, and we stood looking at each other across the sand of the artificial beach that had cost Grandfather a small fortune.

“I’ll be up in a little,” I said. “I think I’ll swim out to the raft and back.”

Her breasts rose high against the restraint of the white band and descended slowly on a long whisper of air. She wet her lips again.

“I’ll have your drink waiting,” she said.

I watched her walk away up the beach, her legs moving from the hips with fluid case, even in the soft sand, and after she was gone, I went down to the water and waded out into it to my waist. The water was cool on my hot skin and seemed to make everything clear and simple in my mind. Swimming with a powerful crawl, I was nearing the raft in almost no time. A few feet from it, treading water, I stopped and looked at Grandfather’s motionless back. I wasn’t worried about his hearing me. He’d been partially deaf for years and usually wore a little button attached to a battery. After a few seconds, I sank in the water and swam under the raft.

The first time I reached for his ankle, my fingers barely brushed it, and it jerked away. Reaching again, I got my fingers locked around the ankle and lunged down with all the force I could manage in the buoyant water. He came in with a splash, and even under the water I could see his veined eyes bulging with terror as my hands closed around the sagging flesh of his throat.

He was strong. Stronger, even, than I’d thought. His hands clawed at mine, tearing at my grip, and I scissored my legs, kicking up to a higher level so that I could press my weight down upon him from above. My fingers kept digging into his throat, but he put up a hellish threshing, and when I broke water for air, it was all I could do to hold him below the surface. It was a long time before he was quiet and I could let him slip away into the green depths.

There was a fire under my ribs. My arms and legs were throbbing, heavy with the poisonous sediment of fatigue. I wanted to crawl onto the raft and collapse, but I didn’t. I lay floating on my back for a minute, breathing deeply and evenly until the fire went out in my lungs, and then I rolled in the water and crawled slowly to shore.

On the white sand where he had dropped it, Grandfather’s towel was a bright splash of color. Leaving it lying there, I crossed the beach and went up through a sparse stand of timber to the eight room house we called the lodge.

Cindy was waiting for me on the sun porch. She had removed the dark glasses but was still wearing the two scraps of white lastex. In one hand was a tall glass with ice cubes floating in amber liquid and a green sprig of mint plastered to the glass above the amber. Her eyes were lighted hotly by their golden flecks. Between us, along a vibrant intangible thread of dark understanding, passed the unspoken question and the unspoken answer.

“Tell me more about Acapulco,” I said.

She set the glass with great deliberateness on a glass-topped table and moved over to me. Still with that careful deliberateness, she passed her arms under mine and locked her hands behind my back. There was surprising strength in her. I could feel the hard, hot pressure of her body clear through to my spine. Her lips moved softly against my naked shoulder.

“Was it bad, Tony? Was it very bad?”

“No. Not bad.”

“Will anyone guess?”

“I had to choke him pretty hard. There may be bruises. But it won’t matter, even if they do get suspicious. It’s proof that hurts. All we have to remember is that we were here together all afternoon.”

“What do we do now?”

“We have a drink. We wait until dusk. Then we call the sheriff and tell him we’re worried about Grandfather. We tell him the old man went swimming and hasn’t returned.”

“Why the sheriff?”

“I don’t know. It seems like the sheriff should be the one to call.”

“The will, Tony. Are you sure about the will?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s all ours, honey. Every stick, stone, stock and penny, share and share alike.”

It was only then that she began to tremble. I could feel her silken flesh shivering against mine all the way up and down. Her lips made a little wet spot on my shoulder. Under my fingers, the fastening of her white brassiere was a recalcitrant obstacle, thwarting the relief of my primitive drive. Finally it parted, the white scrap hanging for a moment between us and then slipping away. My hands traced the beautiful concave lines of her sides and moved with restrained, savage urgency.

Her voice was a thin, fierce whisper.

“Tony,” she said. “Tony, Tony, Tony...”

Chapter 2

Out on the lake, they were blasting for Grandfather. All day, at intervals, we’d heard the distant, muffled detonations, and every time the hollow sound rolled up through the sparse timber to reverberate through the rooms of the lodge, I could see the bloated body of the old man wavering in terrible suspension in the dark water.

On the sun porch, Cindy stood with her back to me, staring out across the cleared area of the yard to the standing timber. She was wearing a slim black sheath of a dress without shoulders. Beautiful in anything or nothing, in black she was most beautiful of all. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she lifted it to her lips, the smoke rose in a thin, transparent cloud to mingle with the golden haze the light made in her hair.

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Almost an hour.”

“What’s been almost an hour?”

“Since the last explosion. They’ve been coming at half-hour intervals.”

“Maybe they’ve raised him.”

“Maybe.”

She moved a little, lifting the cigarette to her lips again, and the sunlight slipped up her arm and over her shoulder. I went up behind her and trailed my hands down the black sheath to where it flared tautly over firm hips and then back up to her shoulders. I pulled her back against me hard, breathing her hair.

“Nervous, Cindy?”

“No. You?”

“A little. It’s the waiting, I guess.”

She turned to face me, her arms coming up fiercely around my neck.

“Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?”

I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, “No, I’ll never be sorry,” and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.

I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round checks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he’d been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.

“Hello, Mr. Wren. It’s a hot walk up from the lake.”

I opened the screen door and told him to come in. “My cousin’s on the sun porch. She’ll mix you a drink.”

We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a glass and handed it to him. He took the drink eagerly.

“We’ve been listening to the blasting,” Cindy said. “We haven’t heard any now for an hour.”

He looked at her over the rim of his glass, his face and voice taking on a studied solemnity.

“We’ve brought him up. Poor old guy. I came to tell you.”

Cindy turned quickly away, looking again out across the yard to the timber, and the little sheriff’s eyes made a lingering, appreciative tour of the black sheath.

“He’ll be taken right into town,” he said. “Twenty-four hours in the water, you know. Didn’t do him any good. We thought you’d prefer it that way.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He lifted his glass again, draining the bourbon and soda off the cubes. He let one of the cubes slip down the glass into his mouth, then spit it back into the glass.

“The coroner’ll look him over. Just routine. An old man like that shouldn’t swim alone in deep water. Maybe a cramp. Maybe a heart attack. Never can tell with an old man.”

“Grandfather was always active,” I said.

He looked wistfully at his empty glass for a minute and then set it down on the glass-topped table.

“Sure. Some old men never want to give up. Ought to know better. Well, time to be running along. Lucky to get him up so soon. Can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

I took him back to the front door and watched him cross the veranda and go down across the cleared area into the timber. Turning away, I went back to Cindy.

She was facing me when I came in, black and gold against the bright glass. Her lips were parted, and her breasts rose and fell with a slow, measured cadence.

“Everything’s all right, Tony. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Sure. They can’t touch us, honey.”

“He was an old man. We didn’t take much of his life away.”

“Don’t think about that. Don’t think about it at all.”

“I won’t, Tony. I’ll just think about the time when we can go away. I’ll think of you and me and more money than we can spend in a dozen lifetimes. You and me and the long, hot days under a sky that’s bluer than any blue you’ve ever seen. Oh, Tony...”

I went over and held her tightly until she whimpered with pain and her eyes were blind with the pleasure of suffering.

“It won’t be long, honey. Not long. After the will’s probated. After everything’s settled.”

She snarled her fingers in my hair and pulled my face down to her hungry lips, and it must have been a century later when I became aware of the shrill intrusion of the telephone in the hall behind me.

I went out to answer it, and when I spoke into the transmitter my mind was still swimming in a kind of steaming mist. The voice that answered mine was clear and incisive but very soft. I had to strain to understand.

“Mr. Wren? My name is Evan Lane. I have a lodge across the lake. I see the sheriff’s men have quit blasting. Does that mean they’ve found the old man?”

“Yes,” I said. “They found him.”

“Permit me to extend my sympathy.” The country line hummed for a long moment in my ear, and it seemed to me that I could hear, far off at the other end, the soft ghost of a laugh. “Also my congratulations,” the voice said.

A cold wind seemed to come through the wire with the voice. The warm mist inside my skull condensed and fell, leaving my mind chill and gray and very still. Inside my ribs, there was a terrible pain, as if someone had thrust a knife between them.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

The laugh was unmistakable this time, rising on a light, high note. “I offered my congratulations, Mr. Wren. For getting away with it, I mean.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. You see, Mr. Wren, you made one small mistake. You made the mistake of acting too soon after your lovely friend had been sun bathing on the beach. A girl like that is an open invitation to a man like me to use his telescope. I have a clear shot from my veranda. Now do you understand, Mr. Wren?”

“What do you want?”

“I think you’ll find me a reasonable man. Perhaps we’d better meet and discuss terms.”

“Where?”

“Say the barroom of the Lakeshore Inn.”

“When?”

“Tonight? At nine?”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I cradled the phone and went back through the living room to the sun porch. Cindy was standing at a liquor cabinet in the corner, moving a swizzle stick in the second of two drinks she’d mixed. She stopped stirring and looked across at me, becoming suddenly very quiet. “Who was it, Tony?”

“He said his name’s Evan Lane. He has a lodge across the lake.”

“What did he want?”

“He wants to meet me at the Lakeshore Inn. Tonight.”

“Why?”

“He has a habit of watching you on the beach through a telescope. He was watching yesterday. He saw me and the old man in the lake.” She took two stiff steps toward me, her slim body rigid in its black sheath. Bright spots were burning in her cheeks.

“Blackmail?”

“It looks like it.”

“What shall we do, Tony? What shall we do?”

“Find out what he’s after, first of all. After that, we’ll see.”

“He’ll bleed us, Tony. He’ll bleed us white.”

“No,” I said. “It won’t be like that. It won’t be like that at all.”

Then she came the rest of the way to me, but her body was cold and rigid in my arms, and it was a long time before it got back the way it was before the telephone rang.

Chapter 3

The Lakeshore Inn was on an arm of the lake that was almost at a right angle to the main body. In the barroom, they’d tried to make an effect with rafters. After they’d finished, the effect was just rafters, but you felt friendly because they’d tried.

I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn’t look any different from the way I’d looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.

The bartender said, “Good evening, Mr. Wren,” and cocked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.

“The usual,” I said.

He put a couple of cubes in a glass and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I’d interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.

The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.

“You don’t look like a blackmailer,” I said.

An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. “Thanks. You don’t look like a murderer, either.”

“It’s a funny world,” I said.

We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, “You’re a little previous. Right now I’m a poor relation. So’s Cindy. You know Cindy, don’t you? She’s the girl you peep at through a telescope. We’re just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won’t have any money for blackmailers until the estate’s settled.”

The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.

“You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you’ll get from Grandfather.”

“In that case, what the hell are you after?”

Our eyes came together, locking in the glass, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn’t come from compassion or conviction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.

“Nothing that need worry you, if you’re reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die.” He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. “I’m a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I’ll use any available means to get what I want. In the light of yesterday’s events, you should be able to understand that.”

“You’re talking all around it,” I said. “The point, I mean.”

The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. “I’m thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her.”

I guess I’d known all along what was coming. I guess I’d known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it’ll be easy. This time it’ll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.

“You can go to hell,” I said.

His white teeth showed pleasantly. “My friend, you are the one in peril of going to hell. I can send you with a few words.”

Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, “You’re lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl.”

I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.

“Since she’s involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to hell. In case she isn’t, I’ll be here until eleven.”

“You can stay forever,” I said. “You can stay forever and to hell with you.”

I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn’t resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.

In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.

I’d kill him, of course. I’d kill him, and it would be a pleasure. It would be the greatest pleasure I’d ever have on earth, except the pleasure that Cindy brought. Thinking of it clearly that way made me feel better, almost uplifted, and I got out of the convertible and went into the lodge and up to the room with the light burning.

Cindy was in bed with a book open, but I could tell she hadn’t been reading. I stood leaning against the door, looking across at her, and pretty soon, she said, “I heard you drive up several minutes ago.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been sitting down there thinking. I’ve been thinking about how to kill a man.”

“No, Tony. Not again.”

“It’s the only way. I’ve always heard that one murder begets another, and I guess that’s the way it is.”

“We’ll have money, Tony. Lots of money. We can pay.”

“Like you said, he’d bleed us. He’d bleed us as long as we lived. Besides, he’s got money. He isn’t interested in getting any more.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants you.”

Her eyes dilated, and the breath rattled in her throat. I watched her lips come open and bright color creep under gold, and I thought again of the pleasure of killing Evan Lane.

“What do you mean, Tony?”

“Just what I said, honey. He wants you. The same way I want you. The same way any man who looks at you this side of eighty must want you. He’s the guy with the telescope. Remember?”

She came out of the bed in a mist of white nightgown that barely existed, and I went to meet her. Against my shoulder, she said, “What now, Tony? What’ll we do?”

“I told you, honey. I’ll kill him before the night’s over.”

“No. We’ll find another way, Tony. There is another way.”

“There is, honey. The way he wants. Is it the way you want?”

“It’d be better than prison, Tony. Better than the death house.”

I dug my fingers into her arms until she gasped with pain.

“Don’t say that, Cindy. Don’t.”

“I’m thinking of us, Tony. You and me and the big dream. Are we going to throw it all away because some louse wants a cheap experience? We can’t do that now.”

“We won’t throw anything away. If he wants an experience, he can die. Dying’s the biggest experience of all.”

“It’ll point. Oh, Tony, can’t you see? Two deaths like that, the location of his lodge, all the things together. Together, they’ll point right back at us. They’ll dig it all out. Besides, maybe he’s already on his way to the sheriff.”

I shook my head. “No. He’s at the Inn waiting for you. He said he’d wait until eleven.”

“I’d better go, Tony. I’d better go see him. Maybe we can work it out short of what he really wants.”

“No. Not a prayer. If you saw him, you’d know.”

“Give me a chance, Tony.”

“There isn’t any chance.”

“I don’t want to die, Tony. I don’t want you to die. If we have to kill him, let it be later. Let it be when the time’s exactly right. Oh, Tony, give me a chance to save us.” Her golden flesh burned through the white mist, but I was suddenly spent and impotent, and I turned and went away to my own room and lay down in the darkness.

After a while, I heard the convertible come to life below my window and move off down the drive.

I kept on lying there in the darkness.

Chapter 4

There was no warmth in the sun, and the wind blowing in across the lake was very cold. The timber stood naked against the sky above its fallen leaves.

In her room, Cindy was packing. I went in and closed the door and stood leaning against it.

“Going somewhere, Cindy?”

“Yes. Back to town. Summer’s over, and it’s getting cold, and it’s time to go back.”

“Going alone, Cindy?”

“Please, Tony. We’ve been over it all so often. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” I said. “Like you said a long time ago, you’re saving us. Two months ago, Cindy. A long time.” She kept going back and forth between the closet and her bag, not looking at me. She was wearing brown velvet pajamas with six inches of golden skin between the pants and the top, and the effect of the brown velvet and the golden skin was a matter of shading that made my heart ache.

“You’re going with Evan. Evan, the pretty blackmailer.”

“It’s for us, Tony. For you and me.”

“I know. That’s what I keep telling myself. She’s making a big sacrifice, I keep telling myself. But now maybe it’s time to let Evan Lane start sacrificing. Maybe it’s time now to let him make the big sacrifice for us, the same way Grandfather made it.”

She stopped halfway to the bag and turned toward me, holding in her hands a scarlet cashmere sweater that was like a great soft splash of blood against the brown velvet.

“He’s got us, Tony. However much we hate him, he’s got us, and you know it.”

“I should’ve killed him the first night.”

“He’ll get tired of it pretty soon, Tony. I know he will. Then it’ll be you and me again.”

“Sure. You and me and Acapulco. You and me and the hot nights.”

“It will, Tony. It will.”

I went over to her fast and took a handful of her golden hair. I pulled her head back hard until her slender throat was a tight arch and her lips were pulled apart.

“Is that the truth, Cindy?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Say it. Say it’s the truth and the whole truth, so help you God.”

“It is, Tony. It’s the truth and the whole truth, so help me God.” I let go of her hair, and her head came forward and down until her mouth was warm and alive on the base of my neck, and her arms came up around me.

“I love you, Cindy. I’ve murdered for you, and I’d die for you, and there’s no place to go without you but hell.”

“It won’t be long now, Tony,” she whispered. “Not long now.” Then I went out of her room and downstairs. From a desk in the den behind the living room, I got a .38 calibre revolver and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Outside, I angled down through the naked timber to the artificial beach and turned right along the shore.

The grass around the lake was dying, but it was still long and tough and hard to walk in, and in spite of the chill, the shirt under my jacket was soon wet with sweat. It was a small lake, but it took me well over an hour to walk around it to Evan Lane’s lodge.

The lodge sat among the trees. I went up the slope and across the front veranda to the door and knocked, but there was no response. I thought at first that I’d come too late, but when I went around back, I saw his car still in its shed, so I returned to the veranda and sat down on the top step.

From where I sat, I could look at an easterly angle and see the timber growing west of our lodge across the lake. Swinging my eyes a little farther east, I saw more trees, but they were thicker and closer and growing on a kind of little peninsula that jutted out into the water from the end of the lake. I got up and went down to the west end of the veranda, where the angle of vision was sharper, but I still couldn’t see anything but the heavy growth of scrub trees on the little peninsula. I went back to the top step and sat down again.

Except for the soft sighing of the trees, there was no sound. Under the pale sun, the lake was quiet. My mind was quiet with the quiet that comes when things are accepted.

Down by the lake, beyond the trees, there was suddenly the faint sound of whistling. The whistling grew louder as it came nearer through the trees, and pretty soon Evan Lane appeared on the slope, dressed in a bright plaid shirt, open at the throat, and corduroy trousers. When he saw me sitting on the step, the whistling broke for a moment and then resumed.

A few steps from the veranda, Lane pulled up, saying, “Well. Mr. Wren. Your neighborliness is appreciated, but it comes a little late. I’m returning to town tonight.”

“I know,” I said. “Cindy’s home packing.”

“Yes? I still have mine to do. I know you’ll understand.”

“Sure. I’ll only stay a minute. I was just sitting here admiring your view. You could improve it, you know, by having the trees cut off that little peninsula. If you had the trees cut down, you could see our place across the lake. You could even see the beach and the raft.”

He turned slowly to follow the direction of my gaze, and when he turned back, his eyes were alive with that swimming, cynical amusement I had seen in the Inn’s barroom.

“Oh, yes. I did say I spotted you from the veranda, didn’t I? But, of course, it no longer matters.”

“Sure,” I said. “It no longer matters. As far as you’re concerned, nothing will ever matter again.”

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. The bullet struck him just under the nose, and he went down like an empty sack.

I sat there a little longer, looking with a kind of cold detachment at the crumpled body, and then I got up and went back down the slope and around the end of the lake. By the time I got back to our side and the beach, the afternoon was almost gone. Crossing the beach toward the timber in front of the lodge, I thought for a moment that I saw Grandfather’s bright towel lying on the sand where he’d dropped it over two months ago, but of course the towel wasn’t really there at all.

I went up through the timber and into the lodge, and Cindy was in the living room with a glass in her hand. She was still wearing the brown velvet pajamas, and when I looked at her, there was still in my heart, in spite of everything, the pain of my love and the sadness of a great loss.

“It’s late, Tony. You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I went around to the other side of the lake,” I said. “I called on Evan Lane.”

The glass moved sharply in her hand. “Why, Tony? Why?”

“He wasn’t home when I got there,” I said, “and I sat on the veranda until he came. I learned something while I was sitting there, honey. I learned that you can’t see our beach or the raft at all from his place. He never used a telescope, as he said he did. He never saw me drown the old man. I kept trying to think how he could have known, and the only thing I could think was that you told him.”

I waited a few seconds, and she tried to speak, but no sound could pass through her constricted throat. After a while, I went on talking in a quiet kind of way with no anger in my voice, because there was really no anger in me.

“Yes, honey. You told him. You told him because you were hot for each other, and he could move in with a new kind of blackmail, and there would be nothing I could do about it because he knew I was a murderer. You talked about the big dream. The dream was there, all right, but I was never in it. When the time came, you’d have gone away, all right, but never with me. He was the one, honey. He was the one from the beginning, but first you had to have Grandfather dead. You had to have him dead for his money, because you wanted his money in addition to Evan’s. He didn’t have the guts to do his own killing. He didn’t have the guts, and you didn’t have the strength. So you drafted me. Well, the old man’s dead now, as you wanted him, and Evan Lane is dead, too. He’s lying on the slope in front of his lodge, and he’s dead forever.”

She tried again to speak, but nothing came from her throat except a dry sob.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll never know how sorry.”

I took out the gun, and the glass fell from her hand, and her voice came at last with a hot rush.

“I don’t care if he’s dead, Tony. Honest to God, I don’t. We can still go away together. We can still have the dream.”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll go away together, honey. I’ve got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way.”

“No, Tony. For God’s sake, no.”

I pulled the trigger then, and there was only a little bang that wasn’t very loud at all, and a black spot appeared as if by magic in the golden area of skin just below the place where her heart lay hidden. Her legs folded slowly, lowering her to her knees, and she pressed one hand, with the fingers spread, over the black spot. A thin trickle of blood seeped out brightly between two of the fingers. The gold-flecked eyes were wide with shock and terrible supplication.

“Please, Tony. Please, please...”

Then she lay quietly on the floor, and I turned and walked out onto the veranda. I leaned against the railing, looking off into the timber where night had come, and from one of the trees came the crying of a crazy-voiced loon. I put the barrel of the gun into my mouth until the sharp sight was digging into the roof, and even then, when there was no reasonable alternative, I was a little surprised to realize I was actually going to do it.

I’ll Kill for You

Originally published in Giant Manhunt #2 (1953).

She got out of the yellow cab in front of the apartment building and stood for a few seconds at the curb as she searched her purse for the fare. I stood at the corner beside a public trash can and watched her until she had paid the cabby and crossed the sidewalk. Her spike heels rapped out a brisk tattoo on concrete. The pneumatic catch on the apartment door gave a sharp gasp, trailing off into a long, expiring sigh.

I waited until the cab had whisked its red tail light around the far corner, then I went down to the entrance and in after her. Behind me, the door gasped and sighed again. It was a sad sound. A lost and damned sound. It was like a last whimper of regret at the doorway to hell.

Inside, the lobby was empty. From the elevator well came the soft, pervasive whine of the ascending car. I went across the lobby quickly and stood watching the arrow of the floor indicator move around to six. It stopped there, not quite half way around the circumference of the dial, and above me, echoing with hollow faintness down the deep shaft, was the distant sound of doors opening and closing.

Turning away, walking fast, I started up the stairs, taking them two at a time, but not running. The stairs were wide, about eight feet, for the first two flights. Above that, they narrowed to four and continued upward in an economy of light. On each landing, where the angle of ascension turned back on itself, there was a single red bulb. When I passed under the bulbs, my abbreviated shadow leaped ahead of me with startling suddenness, dying in shadow as abruptly.

I paced myself, two steps to a stride, until I came up off the stairs into the sixth floor hall. I stood there at the head of the flight, one hand on the steel post of the railing, and listened to the echo of my heart in my brain. It was a kind of accelerated tom-tom beat that was not arhythmic but was much too fast. I waited until the cadence subsided, and then I walked down the hall to a door that bore on its bleached surface the arabic identification six-o-three in chaste chrome.

The knob of the door turned under the pressure of my fingers, releasing the catch without sound, and I stood motionless for maybe three minutes, palming the knob and listening. There was no sound within the room. Cracking the door enough for passage, I slipped through into a small vestibule and pushed the door shut behind me. The catch slipped into position with the tiniest of oiled clicks. Moving swiftly, I took three long strides to the entrance to the living room and looked in.

She was standing almost in the middle of the room, just at the end of the sofa, with her back to me. Even from a distance, I could see that her muscles were as still as wood, that her flesh, to the touch, would be as cold as ice. She stood with her head bent forward and her eyes focused on the floor beyond the sofa, the light gleaming on the pale, silken cascade of her hair.

I stirred, made a sound, and she whipped around with a shrill intake of breath that tore at her constricted throat and must have hurt like the hacking of a dull blade. Her eyes flared in her drawn face, and scarlet lips that were all paint and no blood opened on the shape of a projected scream. But the scream never materialized. Closing in on her, I slashed my open hand across her cheek with a flat smack. She swayed, choking on the scream with a little animal whimper, but her feet didn’t move on the carpet. The marks of four fingers were livid on her flesh.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t scream.”

She stared at me with her eyes wide and dry and hot and the marks of my fingers like a brand on her face. She didn’t speak or make another sound until her breasts rose finally on a deep, ragged breath that held them for a long moment high and tight against the thin stuff of her dress. They descended on a long, controlled exhalation. I knew then that there was no more danger of hysteria, and I moved around her and beyond the sofa and stood looking down at the body on the carpet.

He lay sprawled on his face with one arm stretched out beyond his head with the fingers clawed, as if in the last instant he had been clutching for the light that had escaped his brain through a matted mass of hair and blood and bone and soft gray matter. Beyond the reaching fingers, lying on its side in the thick pile of the carpet, was a highball glass. A wet stain spread out from the lip of the glass, and in the stain there were still two tiny fragments of melting ice cubes.

“A good, thorough job,” I said, hearing behind me the soft hiss of her breath as the brutal remark slugged home.

Turning back to her, I saw that blood had returned to modify the livid smear of paint on her lips. Feverish stains were spread under the taut skin over the high bones of her cheeks.

“Why?” I said.

“Why?” She repeated the word on a suction, giving it shrill, rising inflection.

I gestured downward at the sprawled body. “Why did you kill him?”

“Kill him? Me?” Comprehension seemed to filter into her mind slowly, in a slow seepage, as water soaks through the pores of old brick.

I shrugged angrily, and my voice sounded loud, needlessly harsh, in my own ears. “Look, honey. He’s dead. He’s lying there with the back of his head blown off. I come in and find you standing over him, and his bourbon not even dry on the floor where he spilled it. What the hell am I supposed to think?”

“I didn’t kill him. I loved him. I would never have killed him.”

“Loving and killing aren’t incompatible. Sometimes, under the right circumstances, killing is a natural development. It’s happened more times than you or I could count.” Her hot eyes seemed to cloud with confusion, as if her mind were groping dumbly for a convincer, and then they cleared suddenly, acquiring a glittering intentness.

“Where’s the gun?”

The question was like a short jab to the solar plexus. I stood very still, not breathing, watching in her face the slow signs of returning assurance. After a few seconds, I dropped to my knees and looked under the sofa. Getting up, I prowled the room, looking in all the places a gun might have been dropped or thrown or placed. When I’d worked back to her, she hadn’t moved. Her eyes, still hot and dry, had completely lost their dilation, shining now with that bright intentness. Her lips were parted, fluttering very slightly with the passage of long, deep breaths. The tip of her pink tongue flicked out and around them. Reaching out, I separated her stiff fingers from the suede purse they were clutching. I rummaged for a minute and gave it back.

“Okay,” I said. “No gun. The killer must have taken it away.”

She said abruptly, “What are you doing here?” Her voice broke.

I shrugged, looking into her dry, fever-infested eyes. “What’s the difference? It makes no difference now.”

“Maybe not. Unless you’ve been here before.”

I laughed harshly. “To kill him, you mean? So then I come right back and show myself. Don’t be a fool, honey.”

Her head jerked around under a sudden strong compulsion, and her eyes dropped again to the husk on the door. She may have experienced, in that instant, an intense sensory recollection of the look and smell and feel of him in the neural rand glandular riot of the passion they had shared. However it was, when she turned back to me her eyes had lost their bright wariness and were filled instead with an incredible, flaring anguish.

I felt, all at once, very tired. “You’d better get out of here,” I said. “You’d better get the hell home in a hurry.”

“What about you?”

I turned my back and fumbled in my coat for cigarettes. The smoke of the tobacco was caustic in my lungs, leaving an acrid taste on my tongue.

“There’s a dead man on the floor, honey. Someone killed him. It adds up to cops. When you leave, I’ll call them.”

I stood there with my back to her, and for quite a while there was no sound at all. Then there was the silken rustle of movement and, from a long, long way off, maybe the distance to the end of everything, the faint, oily click of the door catch. My ear drums picked up the sound and amplified it, rolling it around the interior of my skull like the thunder of artillery around a rim of enclosing hills.

The telephone was on a table beyond the body. The outstretched arm seemed to be pointing to it, showing the way like a sign on a map. Making a careful detour, I went over and called the police.

“I want to report a murder,” I said.

I waited until the call was channeled to Homicide and a tired voice came on. We went through a weary-routine of question and answer.

Name?

Address?

Sit tight and don’t touch anything.

I cradled the phone and went out into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, I sat on a tall stool and lit another cigarette. The faucet was dripping in the sink. I figured that it took about three seconds for a drop of water to form on the lip of the faucet and fall off into the sink. The drops struck the porcelain with almost mathematical regularity, making small tapping sounds. Tap... tap... tap. I started to count the sounds of the drops striking the porcelain, and I had counted four hundred and six when there was movement in the living room. I got off the stool and went in.

A medium-sized guy in a loose brown suit was standing just inside the vestibule. His eyes toured me as I came through the door, moving off to a point of focus on the wall, as if they’d had all they wanted in short order. He had a narrow face with a long hooked nose and flesh that sagged from the bones. His voice was resigned, characterized by a heavy patience that remained as a habit even when it wasn’t appropriate.

“Your name Henry Frost?”

“That’s right.”

“You call Homicide?”

“Yes.”

“I’m it. Dunn’s the name. Detective-Lieutenant.”

Maybe I was supposed to make like a host. Maybe I was supposed to smile and be amiable. His eyes crossed me again to another point of focus, and he waited with that heavy patience and gave me no help whatever.

“The body’s this side of the sofa,” I said.

He moved to the sofa with a kind of easy shuffle and looked over the back. “So it is,” he said.

Behind him, another man materialized from the vestibule and leaned against the jamb. He had something in his teeth and was working at it with a wooden match. He didn’t bother to look at me at all.

“Who is he?” Dunn said.

“His name was Caldwell. Bruce Caldwell.”

“Who’s been here with you?” He stabbed a linger at the body. “Besides him, I mean.”

“No one.”

“You wearing perfume?”

“Do I look like the kind of man who’d wear perfume, for God’s sake?”

His eyes smeared me again with their weary patience. “I don’t know. I don’t know what a man who’d wear perfume is supposed to look like. As far as I’m concerned, you look like a man who’d do anything, even murder. No offense. That’s just a way of saying you look a hell of a lot like every other man I’ve ever seen.” He stabbed again with the finger. “I wonder if he’s wearing it.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

His eyebrows arched hairy backs. “That supposed to mean something?”

“You might figure it to mean something.”

“Lover-boy, you mean? Hot number with the dames?”

“Something like that.”

“You married?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if I could figure that to mean something?”

“You could try, but you’re wasting your time.”

He shrugged and a ragged little sound that might have been a chuckle came out of his throat. “Hell, I’m wasting time right now.” He moved around the sofa, the thin edges of his nostrils quivering. “You smell the perfume? Don’t you?”

I smelled it, all right. A delicate Stringency suspended in cordite It made me sick.

“Yes,” I said.

“You know any dame who wears perfume that smells like that?”

“I can’t think of any. It’s probably a common scent.”

“Sure. Probably. It may have been a dame who got him. If he was the kind of guy you imply, a dame’s a good bet.” He stopped and looked up at me again, and his lips curved in a gentle smile. “Or a husband,” he said.

Kneeling beside the body, he got a handful of hair and lifted the head, looking in at an angle at the exposed profile. When he stood up, his hand was bloody. Taking a white handkerchief from his hip pocket, he wiped the hand carefully.

“Pretty,” he said. “Real pretty. Lay him in a casket so the back of his head doesn’t show, he’ll be a real tear-jerker for those dames you mentioned. Well, we got work to do. You go on back in the kitchen and wait around. I’ll talk to you some more later.”

I went back into the kitchen and crawled onto the stool again. I heard more men come into the living room from the hall. They moved around, talking, and after awhile I heard the explosion of flash-bulbs and caught the acrid odor of powder.

I could also hear the faucet dripping. I started counting the small sounds again, and the higher I counted the louder the sounds got, until finally each drip was like the detonation of a grenade inside my skull. I quit counting then and tried to ignore the drips, but by that time it was impossible, and the grenades kept right on detonating in my head. It was like the old Chinese torture chestnut, and I was about to go out and tell Dunn that I had to get the hell out of there when he came in, instead.

He pulled himself up onto the edge of the cabinet beside the sink and peered at me through a thin, drifting plume of smoke.

“I guess we’re about finished in there,” he said. “We didn’t find much of anything that looks like it would be any help. Way I got it figured, he had someone with him, and they were having a drink. A guy named Henry Frost, say. Just to give him a name, you understand. It simplifies talking about him if he’s got a name.”

“I thought you’d settled for a woman,” I said.

He smiled his gentle smile and looked at me through the pale blue, transparent plume. “Anyhow,” he went on, “the phone rang. This guy Caldwell turned around with his glass in his hand to go to the phone, and that’s when he was killed.”

I felt as if someone had reached inside me and grabbed a handful of entrails. “How do you know that?” I said.

“I got the idea from the way he was lying. Like he’d been heading for the phone, you know. It figures, too. Once Caldwell got on the phone, it might have been too late for murder. Because he might just mention that Frost was there, and that would never do. You know how these phone conversations go. ‘Busy, Caldwell?’ ‘Not particularly. Just having a drink with Henry Frost.’ You see what I mean? Once he said that, there couldn’t be any murder. I’ll check to see if there was a call through the switchboard.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use my name,” I said.

His mirthless chuckle came up again behind the gentle smile. “You shouldn’t be so sensitive. Like I said, it’s just a convenience. How come you came here tonight?”

“I had an appointment.”

“Oh?”

“I’m a lawyer. Caldwell wanted to see me.”

“So that’s it. I guess a guy like Caldwell needed a lawyer pretty often. You ever handle anything for him before?”

“No.”

“Don’t you have an office? You make a practice of calling on clients to do business?”

“I don’t make a practice. Sometimes I make an exception.”

“Well, that’s a fast answer. I can see you’re a lawyer, all right. What was it about?”

“Why he wanted to see me? I don’t know. He was dead when I got here.”

“Sure. DOA. He never put out any hints earlier?”

“None whatever,” I replied.

“Okay. What’s your address?”

I told him, and he wrote it down in a little book. He wrote it very slowly, in tiny characters, with the stub of a pencil. He read it back, and I said it was right, and he put the book and the pencil in the breast pocket of his coat.

“You can go now’,” he said. “Later we’ll want you to make a formal statement and sign it. By that time, I may have thought of something else to ask you.”

I said all right and good-night and went out through the living room. The guy who’d come in with Dunn was sitting on the sofa with his feet up. Everyone else was gone, and some of those who’d come and gone had taken Bruce Caldwell with them. I went out into the hall and down in the elevator and outside.

A police car was standing by the curb. A cool wind was blowing down the deep canyon of the street, and I could see, looking up beyond the faint flush of city lights, the cold and distant stars.

I’d parked my car on a side street.

I walked down to the corner and around it and stopped in the shadow of the building. I stood quietly for a moment with my shoulders braced against brick, then I moved to the corner of the building and looked back at the police car. There was one guy in it, in the driver’s seat, and he had his head down on the steering wheel.

Moving swiftly, I crossed over to the trash can and reached in and got the gun and walked back down the side street to my car. At home, I drove the car into the basement garage and shoved the gun tip on one of the hot air ducts that ran overhead from the furnace. Later I’d dispose of it permanently. Upstairs in the dark kitchen, I found a bottle of rye in a cabinet and took a long pull from the bottle. The whisky burned in my throat and flared like phosphorus in my stomach. I waited in the darkness, gagging, until the heat had subsided to a diffusive warmth, and then I went through the living room to the front hall and upstairs to the bedroom.

Meg was asleep on her side in her twin bed. If she was not asleep, she pretended that she was. Moonlight slanted through the half-shut slats of the blinds and flowed along the contour of her rounded hip. I found pajamas in a drawer of my chest and undressed beside my bed. Lying on my back, I looked up at the ceiling and thought about everything that had happened. There was nothing, even then, that I wanted changed. And that was good, at least, because it was far too late for change, even if I’d wanted it.

I didn’t sleep. I was still lying on my back, in the position I had first taken, when the electric alarm went off beside Meg’s bed. It was the first time I’d ever known her to set the alarm.

I lay silently with my eyes half open and watched her silence the alarm and swing out of bed. She went over to the bathroom door and snapped on the light inside, and I could see against it, through the sheer stuff of her nightgown, the lithe loveliness of her body. She closed the door behind her, and the shower began running in its stall. Alter about five minutes, she came back into the bedroom and turned on the small lights on both sides of her dressing table mirror. Sitting on the bench before the mirror, turned a little to the side so that I was looking at her profile, she began to paint her nails. The sheer robe that had replaced her gown fell open across her thighs from its narrow belt, and she crossed her knees, resting each hand palm down on the upper knee as she painted the nails with the little brush that was fastened to the stopper of the bottle. She worked very slowly and carefully. She didn’t look in my direction at all.

When the paint on her nails was dry, she turned on the bench and began to brush her hair with long, even strokes. She brushed the hair until it shone like white gold in the light. When she lifted the brush to the crown of her head to start the long sweep down the fall of her hair, I could see clearly in the glass the firm protrusion of her breasts against the thin robe.

The stroking done, she lay the brush down on the glass top of the table and picked up a thin gold tube of lip rouge. She applied the scarlet stuff to her lips in a bright smear, leaning forward to look into the mirror, smoothing it with the tip of a little finger and tucking her lips in together to give it the shape of her mouth. Standing, she loosened the robe and let it drift down in a thin cloud over the bench behind her.

Naked, she padded across the room to the closet, gathering clothing. Carrying the garments, she came back to her bed and began to dress. In a couple of frail black wisps, she sat on the side of the bed and smoothed nylon onto her long legs, holding each leg in turn out stiffly with the toes pointed, bending far forward from the hips to draw her hands up slowly from the ankle along calf and thigh. Standing again, she lowered a soft black dress over her head. The dress was slashed low in front, a narrow V between her breasts, and was like lacquer on her hips. In high-heeled sandals, she returned to the mirror and repaired her hair, looking at herself with quiet appraisal in the glass. Then she turned and went out of the room.

She still hadn’t looked at me. Not even briefly.

I kept on lying there in bed, and pretty soon the good smell of coffee came up the stairs and into the room, and for just a second it was a morning like any other morning, with the paper to read and a trip to the office around nine. I lifted my arms back and above my head, stretching, feeling the muscles pull tight along the length of my body. I showered and dressed and went down.

Meg was in the breakfast room. She was standing at the wide window overlooking the back lawn, and I saw that she was holding a cup of coffee in her hands. I went up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders, but she was still as stiff as wood, and the chill of her flesh came through her dress into my fingers.

“There’s coffee on the sideboard,” she said.

“Thanks.”

I went over and poured coffee into a cup. I carried the cup over to the table and sat down. Meg still stood at the window with her back to me, looking out into the bright sunshine of the morning. The steam from my coffee ascended into my nostrils. It was a good smell. It was a smell a man might miss if he were never to know it again.

“You said bourbon,” Meg said. “You said his bourbon wasn’t dry on the carpet.”

I looked down into the black liquid with the steam rising lazily from its surface. “Bourbon’s a word, honey. You see a man taking a drink, you say, ‘Look at that man drinking bourbon.’ It stands for anything.”

She shook her head. “No. You say highball, or cocktail, or just drink. You don’t say bourbon, or rye, or scotch, unless you know for sure it’s bourbon, or rye, or scotch. That’s why you said bourbon, Hank, because you knew it was bourbon. Because you saw him mix it and even had one with him out of the glass that was sitting on the little table at the end of the sofa. That was the first time you were there, Hank. The time you killed him.”

She stood waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say, because there was no use in confessing something she already knew, and there was no use lying when a lie would do no good. After a while, she said quietly, “I’ve been wondering why you came back. I think it must have been because you saw me arrive and didn’t want me to get into trouble. I think it was because you love me very much. I think that’s why you stayed and called the police, too. Because you love me, I mean. Because you thought I wouldn’t think you’d killed him if you did a thing like that. It was an awful chance to take.”

She turned then and faced me, the bright glass behind her, looking at me with eyes that were dead, holding the fragile cup in her hands below her breasts.

“I’ve committed adultery,” she said softly. “You killed Bruce Caldwell because you thought the killing was a way to get me back. I ought to be grateful for such a love.” She stopped, looking at me across the cradled cup, and when she spoke again her voice was no more than a whisper. “But I’m not. I’m very sorry, but I loved Bruce so much that there’s nothing I want now but to see his murderer dead.”

The tiredness inside me was like nothing I’d ever known before. “That’s a lot of love,” I said.

“I’m very confused,” she answered. She shook her head and came beside my chair. “You were wrong in what you did, but you didn’t know you were — and you did it for me. I wonder... I wonder if you would like to have me one more time.”

I looked up at her, at the strange blankness on her face, the beautiful body that was freshly bathed and clothed. I understood the ritual she had performed now, as nearly as such things can be understood. She came to me, and she was stiff and cold, the way a woman can be when she is giving herself in payment for something.

And when it was all over, I was not surprised to find a gun in her hand pointing at my head.

A Long Way To K.C.

Originally published in Giant Manhunt #3 (1954).

Dickie Cosmos went to Greenview on vacation for two reasons. In the first place, he had just enough money to pay train fare that far from Kansas City. In the second place, Greenview was a burg Buck Finney wouldn’t be caught dead in, and this increased Dickie’s chances of not being caught there in an identical condition.

It had started in a poker game in Finney’s hotel room. They were playing five card draw, Jacks or better and no limit, and Dickie drew one card to two pairs and filled a house. He was holding aces and eights. This combination is well-known in the folklore of Americana as the dead man’s hand, and that’s the way it turned out for Dickie. He backed the full house in a succession of raises and counter-raises to the amount of a cool grand in the face of Finney’s straight flush, and he wound up dead. Figuratively, that is, with a good prospect for making it literal.

This was because he’d been betting the hand and nothing else. He didn’t have the grand. He hung on desperately, hoping to recoup, but he only doubled his deficit. When the game broke up, he turned his charm on and his pockets out. His handsome face and the palms of his hands were clammy, but he put on a pretty good front. Unfortunately, however, Big Finney was impervious to fronts, even charming ones. He looked at Dickie across the poker-table, and his own face was like something left over from the Paleolithic Age.

“You welshing, Dickie?”

“No, Buck. Hell, no. I just need a little time, that’s all.”

Finny built a neat little stack of blue chips and then knocked it over with a flip of his thick fingers. The chips clattered and rolled, and Dickie wondered if the gesture was supposed to be significant. He decided that it was, and the cold sweat glistened on his smooth face.

“Sure, Dickie,” Finney said. “I’ll give you time. I’ll give you just twenty-four hours.”

Dickie looked stricken. “Twenty-four hours isn’t much time to raise two grand, Buck.”

Finney shrugged and said, “I’m giving you a break. It’s for the sake of the dames, Dickie. I wouldn’t want to break their hearts if I could help it.”

It was true that Dickie knew a lot of dames. He usually managed to live pretty well on their collective donations, as a matter of fact. None of them had two grand, however, and after eighteen hours had passed without any appreciable improvement in his financial condition, Dickie checked schedules at Union Station and caught the train south to Greenview.

He didn’t even have the nominal price of a room in the town s solitary hotel. It was a dismal clapboard dump, anyhow, and Dickie took a dim view of being its guest, even on a non-paying status. While he was trying to figure an angle, he wandered out of town along a narrow, rocky road. This was Ozark country, and all round him the earth lifted ancient bones bristling with scrub oak. Farm buildings cling precariously to the slopes of hills and ridges.

Dickie walked quite a way, mostly uphill, it seemed, and after a while he was aware that his feet were burning inside his narrow shoes. Moreover, he was as dry as a bag of popcorn, and he wanted a drink of water. Turning off onto a private drive that climbed to the yard of a shabby farmhouse, he labored up and looked around for a well. Spotting it off behind the house a short distance, he went back and helped himself. The water was sweet and cold, and he sat down on the well-cap to smoke a cigarette, feeling somewhat better.

It was then he saw the dame. She came out the back door of the house and stood on the porch looking across the yard at him. She was wearing a man’s blue work shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of jeans that were too big for her and must have belonged to die same man who contributed the shirt. The outfit did nothing for her, but Dickie had a sharp eye for dames, and he could see that there was a nice distribution underneath. She had dark, tangled hair with enough natural curl to minimize its unbrushed condition, and her face was the soft, heavy type that would someday become gross, though now, in its brief prime, it possessed a kind of full, sulky sensuality that was more vital than beauty. Dickie lifted a hand in greeting and projected his charm.

“I helped myself to a drink. Do you mind?”

She came down off the porch and crossed the yard.

“It’s all right. You can have all the water you want.”

Her voice suited her body. Heavily sensual, throaty, it achieved the effect of a caress that was as tangible as the intimacy of fingers. Dickie stepped up the voltage of his smile, flashing enamel and lifting an eyebrow in a practiced boyish expression.

“My name’s Cosmos. Dickie Cosmos. I just walked out from town.”

“I’m Rose Flannery. From Greenview?”

“That’s right.”

She sat down beside him on the well-cap, and he noticed a petulant droop to her full lower lip. She hiked the loose legs of her jeans up over her knees, exposing slim ankles, slightly soiled, that swelled upward in beautiful calf lines.

“I don’t blame you for walking out,” she said. “Greenview’s a damn good town to be from.” Oh, oh, he thought. A discontented dame. A restless rustic lovely. What could be sweeter? Or more vulnerable?

“It didn’t look like much of a place,” he said cautiously.

She laughed bitterly and gave him a sidewise look from under thick lashes. “Not that this rock pile is any improvement. You don’t look like the kind of guy who’d be wasting his time in the sticks. You from Kansas City?”

He wondered if he should play it straight, and decided that it couldn’t do any harm. As a matter of fact, he was getting a fast impression that he might have blundered onto something rare. Not as slick as the chicks around Twelfth, of course, but pretty good compensation for the time it would take a guy to figure a way out of exile.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been to Kansas City. St. Louis, too. I liked KC better. I always planned to go back.”

“It’s a pretty good town, as towns go. Not as good as it used to be, though. Not like it was when Old Tom ran it.”

“Just so, it’s a town. Just so it’s got people and places.”

He let his eyes drift over her obviously, and got a spontaneous reaction, a kind of instinctive stationary strutting of her body. “You look like you do all right in KC, baby.”

“And you look like you might be able to show a girl the way. How come you’re so far from home? Don’t tell me you came just to see the beautiful Ozark scenery, like they talk about for the summer suckers.”

“Okay. I won’t tell you that.”

She shrugged and lay back flat across the well cap. “Don’t tell me anything, if you don’t want to. A fat damn I care.”

He laughed, leaning back against his braced arms. He felt a strange, warm affinity with this big country doll. He decided she’d do to play along with. Up to a point, of course.

“Just say I’m here for my health,” he said.

“You in trouble?”

“You might call it that. Nothing that can’t be worked out eventually. Meanwhile, I need a place to hole up in.”

“You figuring to stay in that flea bag in Greenview?”

“I’m wide open to a better suggestion.”

“Maybe this would be better.” She rolled her head on the well-cap and slanted a look at him from hooded eyes. The pulse in his throat leaped and hammered, and his insides were shaken by silent ribald laughter. Like a school kid, he thought. Like a damn green kid with the first time coming up. “Is that an invitation?”

“Don’t you like the idea?”

“I like it, baby. I like it fine. I’m just wondering, though. It doesn’t seem likely that you live here alone. Who makes the crowd?”

“Luke.”

“Your husband?”

Her full lips curled. “That’s one thing you could call him.”

“How’s Luke going to feel about me being around?”

“Don’t worry about Luke. He just eats and sleeps here, and not too much of that. Most of the time he’s nursing that damn broken-down still of his.”

“Still? You mean they have those things down here yet? I thought they went out with prohibition.”

“Maybe they did in Kansas City. Not here. Luke makes a pile of money bootlegging. Not that it does me any good. He’s a regular miser. He loves the green stuff too much to part with any of it.”

“You sure he’ll let me stay around?”

“Don’t worry about him, I said. I can handle it.”

He stood up. “Okay, baby, you twisted my arm. I’ll just hike back to Greenview and pick up the bag I left in the station there. Few things I’ll need.”

She didn’t bother to get up. She just kept on lying there on her back on the well-cap, and very slowly she extended her arms above her head, arching her spine and stretching.

“Hurry back, Dickie,” she said. “Hurry right back.”

He returned to Greenview, his feet still burning in his shoes, and by a kind of malicious paradox, the road that had seemed mostly up hill coming out of town seemed just as much so going back. When he reached the farm again, carrying his bag, the last of sunlight was touching only the crests of hills and ridges.

Rose was waiting for him on the back porch. Beyond her, in the lighted kitchen, he could see the figure of a man who was bent over the kitchen table spooning something into his mouth.

“Come on in the house,” Rose said. “Luke’s home.”

He followed her into the house and set his bag on the floor inside the screen door. The man at the table stopped eating to look at him with wary little eyes, holding the spoon suspended empty between plate and mouth. Dickie felt a shock of surprise and grinned pleasantly to hide it. He’d expected a young man, but Luke was long way past young. Fifty at least, Dickie guessed. Maybe onto sixty. He had a long, bleak face, almost rectangular in shape, with a broad, square chin. His hair was coarse and bristly, a dirty grey, and it gave more the effect of quills than hair. His voice detoured through his nose, and the nasal twang gave it a mean sound.

“What you want here?”

“I’m looking for a place to stay a few days. Your wife said maybe I could stay here.”

Rose’s laugh, behind him, had a jeer in it. “Luke’s worried about his still. He thinks maybe you’re a state agent. Maybe even a Fed.” Dickie laughed, too, just to show how funny he thought that idea was, but Luke didn’t seem to think it was funny at all. His little eyes slipped past Dickie in the direction of Rose, and his bleak face was suddenly a real and considerable menace. Dickie felt an uneasy chill wriggle its way along his spine, and he realized that Luke was a dangerous man. Just as dangerous in his own way and place as a man like Buck Finney was in his.

“You shut up,” Luke said. “Just keep your trap shut.”

Rose repeated her laugh, but the jeer was gone, and there was something in its place that might have been the tremor of fear. Luke’s eyes came back as far as Dickie and stopped. They stayed there a long time without moving.

“If you want to sleep in the barn, you can stay,” he said at last. “If you don’t, you can move on.”

Dickie took it gracefully. “The barn’s okay. I’ll carry my bag down now.”

Luke’s spoon resumed it’s shuttling between plate and mouth, and Rose said, “There’s a lantern in the harness room, if you want a light. Be careful of the hay.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll watch it.”

He carried his bag to the barn and climbed to the loft on a straight wooden ladder nailed to the inside wall. Opening the loft door, he lay in the hay in front of it and looked out to the ancient hills. He knew nothing of geology, nothing at all of the region’s incredible history, but the dark remnants of earth’s patient violence filled him with an indefinable uncase.

Shrugging it off, he began to think of Rose, and after a while the threat of the hills receded. He found himself listening, expecting the soft sound of her approach up the ladder, but then he remembered the sound in her voice in the kitchen, and he decided that she wouldn’t come. Not tonight. Not any time when Luke was around.

He loves the green stuff too much to part with any of it, Rose had said. The words had lingered verbatim in Dickie’s consciousness. To a guy who needed two grand, they were words of considerable significance. Two grand? Better add a half. It would take a lot of interest to make Buck Finney forget that the principal of the debt was delinquent. Interest on money you owed Finney accumulated fast.

Would a billy like Luke have twenty-five C’s cashed? It wasn’t impossible. Sometimes these hill characters surprised a guy. They were full of surprises. Take the case of a dame like Rose being hitched to a sour, ugly Ozark bootlegger like Luke, for instance. Rose was a doll with possibilities. She even talked as if she’d been to school. Maybe through a consolidated high school somewhere. Knock off the rough edges, polish her up and put her in the right rags, she’d go great along Twelfth.

It just didn’t make any kind of sense, her being married to Luke. Or did it? When you considered the possibility of Luke’s having a nice little green cache, things began to add up. Dickie might not know anything about geology, but he knew his share about dames, and he could recognize the predatory type a mile off. A few grand would go a long way towards getting an ambitious dame out of the hills on the right foot, and he was willing to bet dollars to tax tokens that Rose had been thinking about that when she crawled in with Luke at the start.

Lying there in the hay, looking out to where the moon was beginning to edge a distant ridge, he weighed the pros and cons of collaboration, and pretty soon he went to sleep.

He woke at daylight to sounds below. Without moving, he listened to the opening and closing of the harness room door, the sound of heavy shoes on hard-packed earth, the opening of the barn door on the field side away from the house. Seconds later, Luke came into view, headed for the hills. He was carrying an old bolt-action rifle, and he walked with a long-legged, undulating motion that ate up the ground in a hurry.

Ten minutes passed, no longer, before Rose came up the ladder and over the hay to his side. She leaned back, braced on her elbows, and passed him a slow smile. “Luke’s gone,” she said.

“I know. I watched him leave.”

“You hungry?”

“A little.”

“You come up to the house, I’ll fix you something.”

“Pretty soon. I’m in no hurry.” She looked out the loft window toward the hills into which Luke had gone, but her eyes were blank, as if they were turned inward to focus on her own thoughts. Her full lips pouted softly.

“When you going back to KC?”

He laughed. “How long does it take to get hold of twenty-five hundred bucks around here?”

She turned her head to look at him directly. “That depends on where you look.”

“It would save time to look in the right place.”

“Why you need all that money to get back?”

He lifted his shoulders. “A little debt I owe to a guy who likes to be paid.”

“Oh.” She turned her eyes back to the hills and she was silent for a long time. Finally she whispered, as if to herself, “I know where there’s twenty-five hundred dollars. More than that. A lot more. I know just where it is.”

So there it was on a tentative line. “I’ve been thinking, baby,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, but mostly I’ve been trying to think of the reason why a nice item like you would marry Luke. Now I’m beginning to understand.”

She said bitterly, “Fat lot of good it did me. I thought I could work it out of him, but I was all wrong. I sold out for nothing.” She paused, then said in a rush, “Take me back to KC with you, Dickie.”

He’d already anticipated that plea, and he’d decided that it had points. She’d be an interesting attachment for a while, and later on, when the thing went sour, they’d break it up, and thanks for the ride. Meanwhile, however, the whole project depended on Luke’s green cache.

“I told you, baby. I can’t go back without twenty-five C’s.”

“Luke’s got it, Dickie. He must have eight, ten thousand stuck away. He’s been running bootleg for a long time. You can gather a big bundle that way.”

Dickie whistled softly. “Where is it?”

“In the cave. The cave where the still is. These hills are riddled with caves, you know. This one’s about two miles over the way Luke went this morning, and I’m the only one besides Luke who knows about it. I followed him one day and spotted it. When he left, I went in and found the cache. All that beautiful green stuff.” She held her spread fingers in front of her eyes, and her voice dripped with bitterness. “I fingered it a little. Just fingered it a little and put it back.”

“How come? How come you didn’t take off with it.”

She looked at him, and in her eyes was the visual equivalent of the sound he’d heard in her voice in the kitchen last night. A shiver ran through the flesh of her body.

“For the same reason you and I can’t just take off with it now,” she said. “Because Luke’s got to be taken care of first. Don’t underestimate him. He’s mean clear through. He’s killed before, and he’d kill again. With you for company, though, I’d have the nerve to try.”

“How could we get the dough and get away? Have you got an idea?”

“Yes.” She clenched her fingers and sat looking at the fist they made. “Luke sells bootleg to a road joint a couple of miles south of here. They get Luke’s stuff cheap, and it makes for big profits. I’ll bet you’d be surprised how much of the stuff you buy across the bar is bootleg, even in Kansas City. This joint is Luke’s biggest customer. Every Sunday Luke brings a lot of the stuff in from the cave. Sunday night, while the joint’s closed, he delivers it in the truck. The point is, Luke’s a three-time loser. Another rap means life. But instead, for Luke, it’ll mean death. He carries an old .45 Colt revolver with him in his deliveries, and he wouldn’t let himself be taken alive. You can believe that. I know Luke, and he’d never go back to the pen for keeps.”

He looked at her with growing admiration. “I get it. A word to the right party, and it’s good-bye, Luke. Who? The sheriff?”

She shivered again. “Yes, the sheriff. Rube Wells. He hates Luke’s guts. He’d love to nail him. He’d love the excuse to burn him down.”

“This is Sunday, baby. By moving fast, we could do it tonight. I’d sure like to get back to KC.”

“The sooner, the better.”

“You got a phone here?”

“No. You’d have to go to Greenview.”

“What’s the name of this joint Luke delivers to?”

“The Oaks. It’s just a big frame building, like a barn, but it does a lot of business.”

“How does Luke get the stuff in from the still?”

“He keeps a couple of mules pastured out that way. There’s a cart out there, too. He brings it up in the cart.”

“Okay. I better get to Greenview and back before he brings the stuff in.”

“You can use the truck. Come on up to the house, and I’ll fix you something to cat.”

In the kitchen, he ate fat bacon and bread, washing it down with strong black coffee. Then he backed the truck out of its shed and drove to Greenview. The truck was an old 1948 pickup, shaken into a state of innumerable rattles by the rocky hill roads, and the exhaust kept popping like gunfire.

He found a telephone booth in a shabby café filled with the rancid odor of grease, and finally got through humming country wires to the county seat. He caught Rube Wells himself in the sheriff’s office and put the finger on Luke succinctly.

The wire hummed for a few seconds after he’d finished, and then the sheriff’s voice sounded harshly, “Who the hell’s talking?”

“Never mind that. You want Luke Flannery or not?”

“I want him, all right.”

“Then you’d better be waiting tonight on the road to the Oaks.” The voice was grim.

“We’ll be waiting. We’ll be right there.” Dickie laughed quietly inside himself, and hung up. He laughed all the way back to the farm, and he was still laughing when he crawled out of the truck and went across the yard to the porch where Rose was waiting.

“Luke back yet?”

“No. He won’t be here for a long time yet.”

“Good. It’s all set, baby. Neat as anything you could want.”

“I hope so.” That long shuddery creeping of flesh was apparent again. “I hope to God nothing goes wrong.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re sure, aren’t you? About his making that delivery tonight, I mean?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He makes it regular every Sunday night. He leaves here in the truck a little before ten.”

“Okay. Relax, then. We got nothing to worry about. If he doesn’t go crazy, like you think, and get himself killed, he’ll wind up in the county gaol. Either way, it’ll give you and me the chance to get the dough and get out of here.”

“They got to kill him,” she said. “I’ll never be easy if they don’t kill him. Even with life on him, I won’t feel easy.”

It was beginning to get dusk when Luke returned. Dickie sat in the loft and watched him come in from the hills behind a plodding mule. In the primitive two-wheeled cart, the old bolt-action rifle leaning against his knees, Luke was like something from a long way back, crude and somehow savage. In spite of himself, Dickie felt in his own flesh a shudder like the ones that had worked in Rose’s. He crawled back over the hay and down the wooden ladder and stood in the open door of the barn watching Luke as he drove up and stopped.

“Long day,” he said.

Luke didn’t answer. He swung down off the cart and went around to the back. “You can help me unload,” he said. “Put it in the truck.”

There were ten cases of the stuff. A hundred and twenty quarts of raw, unlabelled, untaxed white lightning. Not expecting so large an operation, Dickie was surprised. That eight, ten grand Rose talked about was seeming more credible all the time. He worked hard at helping to transfer the load, not talking, not looking at Luke, feeling within himself a growing tenseness that was part excitement and part something he couldn’t define.

After the load was transferred, Luke said, “Rose’ll have victuals on the table,” and went off across the yard to the house. Accepting the terse statement as an invitation, Dickie followed.

The three of them sat at the table in yellow light and ate in silence. After they were finished, Luke went into the bedroom and lay down in his clothes. Dickie and Rose heard the sharp screech of old springs under his weight, and they sat looking at each other across the kitchen table with the imminent, precarious future a dark bond between them. Then Dickie shrugged and grinned and went out onto the porch, banging the screen. Sitting there on the steps, he listened to the sounds of Rose moving around behind him, scraping up the dishes.

It was funny how things happened, he thought. Couple days ago he’d been a guy with a debt and a deadly creditor. A guy from KC with a poor prognosis. Now, just like nothing, he had a cute country doll and prospects. Now, by all that was cockeyed, he stood to lift a fat bundle from a hillbilly bootlegger. He grinned in the darkness and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs.

Rose came to the screen door several times, but she didn’t come out or speak. He could feel her there, charged and tense, though she was silent. It was about nine-thirty when he heard Luke’s big clod-hoppers pound slowly across the kitchen floor, heard the screen door bang.

Looking up, he felt something inside him go shriveled and cold in a sudden painful contraction. Luke stood there at the edge of the porch with the yellow light of the kitchen washing his back and edging around onto the long, hard planes of his face. In his hand he held the old .45 Colt revolver. Dickie had seen plenty of guns, but he’d never seen one that looked quite so wicked as this.

“You sleep in my barn and eat my victuals,” Luke said. “I guess it’s only right you do a little work. You better come along and help me unload.”

There was a contingency Dickie hadn’t anticipated. Joke, he thought desperately. Just treat it like a very unfunny joke. He managed a laugh, forcing it through stiff lips.

“I don’t think I’d be much help,” he said. “I’m sleepy as a dog. Just thinking about crawling into the hay in the loft.”

Luke was just holding the .45 casually, but somehow it got twisted around so that the mouth was yawning right in Dickie’s face.

“I reckon you better come,” Luke said.

Under that .45 caliber threat, Dickie stood up with a gaseous sensation of lightness, hysteria clouding his brain, urging him to the insanity of flight. He fought for control, crossing the yard ahead of Luke with reluctant steps, and through the cloud over his brain there penetrated in a thin whisper the words that Rose had spoken in the loft that morning: ... he’ll never let himself be taken alive. And he seemed to see with sudden clarity, as if his vision had achieved ascendancy over distance and night, a dark car in ambush en a dark road. Getting into the truck, he looked back toward the house and saw Rose standing frozen and immobile in the yellow rectangle of the kitchen door. Her terror reached out to him across the yard.

Slumped in the seat, he tried with desperate urgency to figure a way out. The old truck rattled and popped, fighting the hills. After a short drive, Luke wheeled it south onto a road that was a little wider, a little better graded. He handled the wheel in dour silence, the .45 rammed casually under the belt of his jeans.

“How far is it?” Dickie asked.

It hurt him to talk, the pain as actual as if he had tonsillitis. Beside him, Luke grunted.

“Up the road a piece. Not far.”

They climbed a hill, rattled down into a hollow, climbed again. They crossed the crest, and the road dropped away, the truck plunging down with a fusillade of exhaust explosions.

Then, down in the hollow, the glaring spot leaped up, sweeping the truck. In the light, barely discernible, stood a man with a rifle in his hands. Luke cursed viciously, jamming brakes, and Dickie, acting at last under the grim compulsion of his last chance, tore at the door handle beside him and dove out sprawling onto the rocky road. Clawing, scrambling for the ditch in the blinding bath of light, he was aware of a confusion of sounds, shouts and explosions in a discord of violence. Something struck his shoulder, a dull impact, prompting the crazy thought that someone had hit him with a rock. He was slammed over into the ditch, rolling, and he was amazed at the force of so slight a blow.

On the road, stark in the merciless light, a guy who had everything to lose however he played it, Luke stood spraddle-legged and emptied the old Colt of its six bullets. He did it very deliberately, with spaced timing of crashing detonations, as if he were counting a long second between every pull on the trigger. When the chamber had revolved to a dead shell, he let the gun drop to the road, and stood for a moment looking down at it. Then his long body folded in the middle, and went over gently onto his head and shoulders, spinning off into his back with a violent spasm of released muscles.

At that moment, Dickie was up and running. He ran blindly, relying on a sort of desperate instinct to get him back to the farm where Rose was waiting. The anesthetic of shock was gone from his smashed shoulder, and the pain was now there, growing steadily greater, eating its way like a slow fire into the rest of his body. He held the shoulder crumpled forward, the forearm below it clamped tight across his stomach.

Staying away from the road, cursing and sobbing in a waste of precious breath, he ran and fell and scrambled up to keep running, and after an eternity, by a great miracle, he climbed to the farm and stood swaying in the kitchen, looking at Rose in a swirling red fog.

“God,” she said. “Oh, God.”

He sat down very carefully in a chair at the table and let his head fall forward onto his good arm.

He began to cry again, sobs of pain and exhaustion, the crying of a stricken child. At last he raised his head and formed whispered words.

“Luke’s dead,” he said. “He was just like you said. Like a crazy man.”

She didn’t answer, and he saw then that her eyes were not on his face, where they should have been, but rather lower on his body. He looked down and saw that his entire shirt front was soaked with blood. The fear in him was like a swelling icy wind as he became aware for the first time that he might really die.

“The blood,” he whispered. “Stop the blood.”

Apparently she didn’t hear. Her eyes raised slowly, and the red fog at that moment seemed to drift out of his vision, so that he could see the eyes clearly — the compassionless calculation in them, the cold consideration of personal advantage. The advantage of the green cache unsplit.

He was filled, suddenly, with an intense, wild pity for himself. Strangely, on the edge of death, he was homesick.

And it was a long, long way to Kansas City. A way that grew longer by the second, stretching toward infinity.

Heels Are for Hating

Originally published in Manhunt, Feb. 1954.

About a week before the date of his fight with Emmet Darcy, Jackie Brand went home one evening to find his wife Peg at the kitchen table with a pencil in her hand and a big sheet of paper covered with figures in front of her. Peg was a little gal, maybe five-one in heels and about ninety pounds sopping wet, but every inch and every pound collaborated to produce a quality product. Her hair was pale gold, almost white, and it had the same soft glow that got into her eyes when she was excited about something.

When Jackie came in, Peg looked up at him and said, “I drove out on Highway 66 today. That little motor court is still for sale. I talked to the owner.”

“How much?” Jackie asked.

“Twenty-five thousand. Ten would finance it.”

“How much we got in the bank?”

“About a G.”

“Okay, a grand. My guarantee for the Darcy brawl is five more. Expenses will whittle that. You see, baby?”

She crumpled the paper up into a little ball. “Sure, Jackie, I see. I was just passing the time, anyhow. I’d better fix you something to eat.”

That’s the way she was. Never any bellyaches, even though she’d learned quite a while ago that she and Jackie weren’t going much of any place. Jackie was a pretty fair middleweight, as middleweights go, but pretty fair isn’t good enough. Pretty fair means you’re just there for the really good boys to knock over on the way up. In the meantime, you earn a living. You hang around on the edge of Big Time, and you earn a living.

The longer Jackie looked at Peg that night, the worse he felt. After supper, he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he got up and said he was going for a walk. He decided a beer might make him feel better, and he went down the street a few blocks to Happy Sam’s Bar and Grill. Happy Sam’s was a place where a lot of minor sports characters hung out, and when Jackie went in, there was Benny Lester, Emmet Darcy’s manager, sitting at a table with a bottle of Blatz. He lifted a thumb, and Jackie went back.

“Hi, Jackie,” he said. “Sit down and have a brew.”

Jackie sat down, and Happy Sam carried another Blatz over from the bar. Benny sat watching Jackie until he’d had a couple of big swallows from the bottle. Benny was a guy who could bide his time, like a spider in a web. He even looked like a spider. Thin and gray, with a wizened face.

“I been thinking about your match with Emmet,” Benny said. “The kid’s a comer, but he’s green. He needs experience. You been around a long time, Jackie. You know the tricks, and you got a good right. It’s mostly that right that worries me. Green as the kid is, he might walk into it.”

“Maybe I’m supposed to send flowers,” Jackie said.

Benny killed his Blatz and wiped his mouth with the back of a dry hand, looking into the empty bottle as if he’d lost something there. “Time comes when a guy ought to check out, Jackie. It doesn’t pay to hang around after hours. A guy can quit and get into something soft if he’s got a bundle.”

“What’s a bundle?”

“Ten grand, maybe.”

Jackie laughed. “You got ten grand to spend?”

Benny lifted his shoulders. “Not me, Jackie. There’s a guy interested who spends ten grand like nothing. In an investment like this, he wouldn’t even think twice.”

Jackie thought of Peg and the way she was quietly breaking up inside with the wanting of something she couldn’t have. A little motor court. A stinking little outfit out on 66. It wasn’t much to ask, after the years she’d given. Add ten grand to the five grand guarantee, it made a lot of things possible.

Jackie finished his beer. “Talk’s cheap,” he said. “Talk’s not worth ten grand. Not your kind, anyhow.”

Benny leaned forward, his gray little face quiet and closed. “How about Jay Paley? You figure his talk might be worth ten grand?”

Jackie traced the outline of the empty Blatz bottle with the tips of his blunt fingers. He wished there was something left in it. A lot better if it were something stronger than five percent. The name of Jay Paley was enough to make a guy want a quick shot. In its way, it was a name like Emmet Darcy. They were both supposed to be on the way up. In different rackets, though. In Jay Paley’s racket, there wasn’t any breather between rounds, and the only rules were the ones that were made to break. A pretty important guy, Jay Paley. He’d even been on television with some senators and other guys. He’d had a kind of minor part, really, but he’d been there just the same.

“What makes Paley interested?” Jackie asked.

Benny sat back with a thin, dry smile that managed by a physical paradox to look oily. “Come off, Jackie. Who you think owns Darcy?”

“Word is, you do.”

“Don’t be silly. Darcy’s valuable property. I couldn’t buy a couple of his left hooks.”

Jackie took a deep breath that burned in his lungs like the ones he usually started drawing around the sixth. “You tell Paley he can see me if he wants.”

Benny’s thin smile cracked open, permitting an escape of beery air. “You’re getting sillier, Jackie. Jay Paley doesn’t come see people. People go see him. If you’re ready to go, I might be able to find him.”

Jackie started to think again about Peg and the place on 66 and fifteen grand minus expenses. And it seemed to him, sitting there over an empty beer bottle, that Benny’s gray little weasel face dried up completely and blew away, and in its place was Peg’s, the eyes trying to hide their hurt and hunger behind a kind of gallant, small-girl smile. Peg, who asked for so little and got such a hell of a lot less. Peg, who was married to a big stumble bum who tried and tried his level best, God knew, but whose best was never good for more than peanuts here and there. Peg, Peg, Peg. The name was like a crying inside him, and all at once he was standing up.

“I’m ready,” he said.

On the way out, he glanced into the mirror behind the bar, and there was a pair of snotty eyes popping out of the glass at him. They belonged to Spud Perkins, who was hunched like a toad on a stool at the bar. He didn’t turn to face Jackie. He didn’t make any kind of sign.

Spud was a flabby little guy with eyes that were popped half out of his head by an overtime thyroid. His throat was scarred and sunken where a goiter had been removed. He was Jackie’s manager all the years Jackie was in the fight game. He always took good care of Jackie, and he was always strictly honest. Jackie hated him. He hated his guts.

Maybe it was because those popped eyes were always snotty with cold contempt. Maybe it was because Spud always wrapped a sneer around a ten-cent cigar. Or maybe it was because he always said what he thought, and most of what he thought was nasty with the same contempt you could see in his eyes.

Like in the dressing room after the fight in which Jackie upset Joe Donny with a ninth round kayo. When everyone had gone but Spud and Jackie, Spud rolled his cigar to one side of his sneer and said, “So you won. You won because the guy got sloppy and left an opening you could’ve thrown a chair through. You took a hell of a beating for eight rounds just hanging on for a chance to throw the sleeper. You’re a catcher, boy. You take six to heave one. Pretty soon you’ll be punch-drunk. You’ll be a bum. You’d better quit.”

Jackie had cocked the right that had smeared Donny and measured the blur that was Spud’s face. Spud hadn’t moved an inch, and the fist had dropped.

“Look,” Jackie had said. “I’ll take the punches. You just match the fights.”

Spud had shrugged. “I saw Benny Lester in the hall. He wants you for Emmet Darcy. He thinks a Brand-Darcy match will be a step along for his boy.”

“That’s what Donny’s manager thought. You get me Darcy.”

Spud had shrugged again and turned away. “I’ll get him,” he’d said.

And so he’d made the match, the one that Jackie was putting on the market, and now Jackie held his eyes in the mirror for a second and then went on out with Benny. On the street, they legged it a block to Benny’s parked Olds and took a short ride across town to Eddie Malaca’s Elite Billiard Parlor. They went in past a crowd of fringe characters playing rotation and snooker and into a back room. Jay Paley, the big guy around Eddie Malaca’s, was sitting at a round table in a corner with a handful of pasteboards. His little eyes took time to mark the approach of Benny and Jackie and then returned to the consideration of a club flush. He backed the flush and won, teetering back in his chair with smug complacency.

“Something on your mind, Benny?”

“I’ve brought Jackie Brand around. He thought you might be interested in buying some insurance.”

The little eyes flicked over Jackie as if he were another flush. “You selling insurance, Jackie?”

“Just big policies. Nothing less than ten grand.”

Paley laughed and rocked his chair down. Standing, he strolled across the room and dropped at a vacant table. Benny prodded Jackie into motion, and they followed after.

“Sit down, Jackie,” Paley said. “What kind of policy you got?”

Jackie remained standing. “Ten grand in advance and you name the round.”

Paley’s little eyes were twin points of glittering light. “Ten grand’s a lot of lettuce, Jackie, even to a guy like me. I expect my money’s worth. If I don’t get it, you better invest the ten in a policy of your own.”

“I’ll deliver. You just name the round.”

“The seventh ought to do. Not too soon. We’ll want to give the customers something.”

“Okay. The seventh. Now I’d like to see the ten G’s.”

“You’ll see the ten, all right. You think I carry a bundle like that in my pocket? I’ll send someone around to Lefty Jordan’s Gym tomorrow. How about three o’clock?”

“Three’s as good a time as any. I’ll be in the dressing room.”

Jackie turned and looked at Benny, and he could see the contempt was already in Benny’s eyes.

“I’m sticking around for awhile,” Benny said. “Grab a cab.”

Jackie grabbed the cab and went back home. Peg was waiting for him in the living room. Across the room, Martin Kane was throwing some guy all over the television screen.

“Where you been, honey?” Peg said. “I thought you were just taking a walk.”

“I dropped into Happy Sam’s and got talking with some of the boys. I didn’t aim to be so long.”

“It’s okay, honey. I was just a little worried.”

He sat down and watched Martin work on the other guy. He felt sick and dirty. He wished to hell he was the guy catching it on the screen. He glanced at Peg and away. Even his look might contaminate her, he thought. Something dirty might rub off.

Jackie had never quite believed in the miracle of his marriage. A gal like Peg and a guy like him. Spud Perkins had trouble believing it, too. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what Peg saw in a second rate catcher like Jackie. Spud was crazy about Peg. Not gland-crazy, like a young guy who had to do something about it, but crazy in a quiet way, like an old guy who only wanted a kind word and a little company. He liked to come around and talk with Peg. Or maybe just sit and look at her. Once in a while he’d just barely touch her on the cheek or on the hair or some other innocent place like that, very gently, with a funny wet look in his popped eyes. If he caught Jackie watching him, he’d sneer and snarl and light one of his foul cigars.

It’s for Peg, Jackie kept thinking. I’m doing it for Peg.

After he collected the bundle the next day, there wasn’t much use thinking at all. He continued to work out at Lefty Jordan’s, going through the motions, and mostly he wished he could drop dead before the fight came up.

The day before the fight, Spud came in late and stood leaning against the wall, his hands rammed down into his coat pockets and his eyes watching every move Jackie made. It was like being spit on by a pair of eyes. That’s the way Jackie felt, having Spud watch him like that. Later, Spud tagged along to the dressing room and stood around while Jackie showered and dressed. Jackie was tying his tie in front of the mirror when Spud spoke.

“Why bother, tramp?” he said, and his voice sounded just like his eyes looked.

Jackie pulled the knot of his tie up snug against his neck and turned, giving the smoke of quick anger time to clear out of his eyes.

“Maybe you’d better tell me what you mean.”

Spud didn’t crawl a bit. He was a short, soft, nasty little man, and he’d have been a pushover for any fleaweight in the world. But he had guts, and he wouldn’t crawl. In all the years he knew him, Jackie never saw him crawl.

“Sure, tramp,” he said. “You’re selling out. The other night you were bunghole buddy to Benny Lester, and you’re selling out. Benny wouldn’t waste his time on a tramp except to buy something. What round’s it set for?”

“As far as you’re concerned,” Jackie said, “it’s round one.”

Then he clobbered Spud. Right in his nasty mouth. Spud’s feet were lifted clear off the floor, and his flabby body smeared itself against the wall like a blob of putty. His upper plate jumped out onto the cement floor and skittered away in two pieces. He slid down slowly against the wall to a sitting position and slumped over on his side.

Jackie felt sick. Sick to think he’d smeared a guy who wouldn’t have been a good match for a Brownie. He stood there looking at Spud for a long time, wondering if he’d ever move again. After a while, Spud did, pushing himself slowly back up against the wall. When Jackie left, he was still sitting there on the floor, looking down with a kind of stunned wonder at the curve of his fat belly.

Jackie stood on the curb, his stomach a hard knot. For a minute, he was afraid he was going to be sick in the gutter. He stood there with his legs spread and his head back, breathing deeply, fighting the sickness. It was pretty silly. A guy who’d looked into dozens of pairs of glassy eyes and who’d had his own looked into more times than it was pleasant to remember. A pro who’d seen as much blood as he had, both his own and the other guy’s. A guy like that going squeamish over a simple clobbering. It was just one more poke in the kisser, delivered to a snotty character who had it coming. To hell with it.

He wished he could get a drink. He wanted a quick one at Happy Sam’s. But it wouldn’t do for a fighter to be bellying a bar the day before a fight. Loose-lipped characters liked to make something out of things like that. A guy already on the fat end of a fix had to be careful.

Maybe another place. Maybe a little hole-in-the-wall where no one would recognize him. He could pick up a quick one and get on home to Peg. He’d been staying away from Peg as much as possible lately. It sort of hurt to look at her. He couldn’t get over the feeling that he soiled her somehow when he touched her. She’d noticed it, too. She’d been asking him what the matter was.

He started walking and pretty soon he found the hole-in-the wall. Inside, he crawled onto a stool at the rear end of the bar and ordered a neat rye. Just one, he told himself. Just one, and then home to Peg. No need at all to feel like he did about Peg. No need at all to feel like a lousy tramp. Damn it, he was doing it for Peg. Damn it to hell, it was all for the place out on 66.

A voice beside him said, “Well, well. This the way you train for a fight, champ?”

Jackie slanted a look into the face at his shoulder. The face was thin and dark with a dimple in its chin. The eyes were amused, but they didn’t have any warmth. So was the mouth, and neither did it. Jackie looked away into the mirror behind the bar and saw with relief that the face was reduced to a blur with no discernible parts.

He said, “I’m not champ, and I’ll train my own way.”

The guy laughed, and the laugh was like the smile — shallow stuff with no warmth. “Sure, champ. You do it your way. The training, I mean. The actual fighting’s something else.”

Inside, Jackie felt suddenly withered and old. He dumped the neat rye into the center of the feeling, but it didn’t have much effect.

“What the hell you talking about?”

“Let’s move back to a booth, champ. I’ll explain it.”

“I like it here.”

“You might like it even better in the booth.”

It was then that Jackie felt the steel finger prodding his kidney. In his day, he’d taken a few in the kidneys from an inside brawler or two. Nothing, though, like this gentle prodding. Nothing ever that left him so internally cold, so vulnerable to what would follow. He slipped off the stool and moved toward the last booth in the rear of the joint. His feet had the incredible heaviness that they used to acquire in the days when he went fifteen.

They sat across from each other in the booth, and the hood’s lips fashioned the shallow smile above the dimple. “It’s not like a fighter to train in a bar. Conscience bothering you?”

Jackie made a fist in his lap under the table. He wondered how much shoulder he could get into one reaching out from a sitting position.

“I’m not very bright,” he said. “You’ll have to keep it simple.”

The shallow smile spread a little. “Sure, champ. You know Rudy Ryan?”

The question was rhetorical. Everyone knew Rudy Ryan. Or about him. Another TV actor. Not a minor one, like Jay Paley. Big stuff. A real channel attraction.

Jackie said, “Who doesn’t?”

The hood across the booth lit a cigarette, the light of the gopher flaring up across his dark face. “Right. Who doesn’t? You’re lucky, champ. Rudy’s taking a personal interest in you. He sent me around to tell you so. He’s heard that Jay Paley’s laid a lot against you tomorrow night. He says to tell you he believes in you. He says to tell you he’s laying even more the other way. Your way. He says he’ll appreciate it if you do your best.”

Jackie’s lips were stiff, dry, like parchment. When he moved them, he had the feeling that they were going to crack open in a dozen places. “You’re still being too fancy for me. Why the hell would Ryan be interested in a peanut stand like this brawl? It makes no sense.”

The hood’s laugh was brittle, and he snapped it off before it was started good. “You’re pretty smart, champ. For a guy who’s been catching them as long as you, you’re real smart. Here it is on the line. Paley’s getting too cocky. He operates too much. He’s crossing too many lines. Like this fix. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s the principle. For all Paley knows, Rudy might have laid a bundle the wrong way. Rudy doesn’t like that. He figures it’s time to cut Paley back. This is just a beginning.”

“Oh, sure.” Jackie’s voice was harsh. “The beginning of the end for Paley and me both. It’s not hard to figure what would happen to me if I pulled a deal like this.”

“No. You got no worry. Rudy said to tell you that. You don’t seem to get the big picture, champ. I said Paley was due to be cut back. That means way back. All the way.”

“It’d still make me a louse. Nothing doing.”

“I guess maybe you’re already a louse, champ, anyway you play it.” The hood slipped out of the booth. “You go home and think about it. Maybe you’ll see it different when you get home.”

Turning his back, he walked out of the joint, his shoulders swinging lazily under expensive tailoring. Jackie sat in the booth for a few minutes longer, anger disturbing his viscera, making him half sick again. After a while, he got up and went home.

He went upstairs to the apartment two at a time. His eagerness to see Peg had suddenly the strength of hunger. He was hungry to see her, feel her, smell the clean scent of her. He hadn’t felt this way in a long, long time. Not so desperately. He was, in a way, a kid running to his mother.

But Peg wasn’t home. The living room was empty. So were the bedroom, bathroom, dining room, kitchen. He made the tour slowly, wondering where she could be. There wasn’t anything cooking in the kitchen, either. It wasn’t like Peg to be gone when he got home. Usually she was waiting for him. It was late now, too. Later than he ordinarily arrived.

Back in the living room, he sprawled in a chair, thinking that it was a hell of a way for a guy to wind it up. Once, a long time ago, he’d had ideas of being champ. It hadn’t taken too long to learn that he’d never make it. There were too many guys around who were a little better. Too many guys a little faster, a little sharper, a little smarter. Maybe he hadn’t even been a strong contender. But he’d always been a good competitor. He’d taken them as he could get them, the good and the bad, and no one had ever been in the ring with him who hadn’t been in a fight.

Now to end it with a fix. Now to wind it up in a dive for ten lousy G’s.

He squirmed in the chair, swearing softly, and he was suddenly aware that the clock that Peg was so proud of was striking. Soft, musical strokes. Eight of them. Eight?

He was on his feet in one unbroken motion, standing tense, almost in a fighting crouch. He said aloud, “Peg. Where the hell’s Peg?”

Then at last with sluggish perception of significant relationships, he was back in the hole-in-the-wall with the hood’s voice in his ears. Maybe you’ll see it different when you get home. Whirling with a choked, gutteral cry, he lunged out into the hall and downstairs.

On the street, he began to trot, arms up, knees lifting high, as if he were doing roadwork. Blocks along, at an intersection, a cab pulled up, stopped by a red light. Quickly, without thinking, he tore open the rear door on the near side and piled in. The driver twisted under the wheel, peering back.

“In a hurry, Mac?”

Jackie leaned back in the seat, relaxed a little by the exercise of muscles. “Rudy Ryan’s club,” he said.

The driver threaded the cab through traffic, slicing across lanes, timing progress to hit green and slip through yellow. Over on glitter street, public playground number one, he pulled the cab to the curb in front of Ryan’s club. Jackie got out and passed a five and left without his change. Across the sidewalk, he ran into a doorman who appeared silently in the way.

“Sorry, sir. Evening dress is required.”

Jackie let his eyes drift down the black and white barrier. The guy was big — big shoulders, big hands, big feet. His belly was big, too. Jackie thought he could probably bury an arm to the elbow in that belly.

“To hell with evening dress,” he said. “I want to see Rudy Ryan.”

The doorman’s face seemed to flatten, nostrils flaring, and he shifted his big feet to a stance that indicated a knowledge of basic principles.

Behind him, a voice said, “It’s all right, Holly. Let Mr. Brand come in.”

Still polite and friendly, just like he’d been in the hole-in-the-wall, he stood there casually with the shallow smile faintly present above the dimple that must have sent the dames. Just the same as he’d been earlier, except that now he’d qualified himself for the night with soup and fish.

Jackie pushed past the doorman and said, “Where’s Peg? What the hell you done with Peg?”

His voice skidded upward, acquiring volume, and a couple on stools at a small bar beyond an arch turned to stare. The faint smile on the hood’s face jelled a little, displaying a quality no smile should have.

“Don’t be noisy, champ. You ask to see Mr. Ryan, and now you start yelling about someone named Peg. Make up your mind. You want to see Mr. Ryan or not?”

Jackie spread his legs and lowered his chin onto his chest, struggling for control, knowing he was playing a contrived wheel.

“That easy?” he said. “That easy to see the great Ryan?”

The hood’s shoulders lifted. “Why not? Mr. Ryan’s democratic. He tries to see everybody.”

He lead the way through the small bar and on into a hall that was cushioned against sound with a thick carpet and drapes and even a tapestry or two. They went upstairs into another hall and past a succession of rooms to a closed door. The dimpled hood knocked and pushed the door open.

“Inside,” he said.

The man Jackie found himself facing might have been, except for the evening clothes, a middle-class merchant watching the approach of a customer. He had a round, placid face under a naked skull rimmed by a gray fringe. Rimless glasses covered his eyes, reflecting the light in a way to give him an appearance of bright blindness. His mouth was small, like a child’s, and the lips were pink and tender and pleasantly bowed.

The hood said, “This is Jackie Brand. He wants to know where Peg is. Me, I don’t even know who she is.”

Eyebrows raised above rimless glass. “Peg?”

“You know damned well who Peg is,” Jackie said. “And I know damned well you snatched her.”

The placid pink face was not visibly affected. “Kidnapping is a serious charge, Mr. Brand. I’m sure you’ll want to retract it. Perhaps, if you’ll tell me precisely what’s on your mind, I can reassure you.”

“Okay. I’ll play along for a minute. I’m going in a fixed fight tomorrow night with Emmet Darcy. You know that. A little while ago your errand boy served notice that I was to go for a win. You know that, too, because you sent him to tell me. I told him nix, and he told me I’d think different when I got home. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. When I got home, I found out. Peg’s gone. My wife Peg, as if you didn’t know. Like I said, you snatched her to make sure I’d follow instructions.”

Ryan laughed. “I suppose that’s the kind of reasoning one should expect from a punched-out pug. Let’s get this straight. I have a guarantee that you’ll win your fight tomorrow night. If that arrangement is violated, I’ll hold responsible the man who made the guarantee, not you. On the strength of the understanding I’ve invested a considerable amount with the bookies. Although the money is important, it is really incidental. The primary object is to discipline an upstart. I consider the arrangement adequate as it stands, and I’ve taken no steps to reinforce it. In brief, I don’t know where your wife is, and I don’t care.”

Maybe, as Ryan suggested, you couldn’t expect much from the brain of a punched-out pug. But it could still solve elementary problems when someone gave it a hint. It could see, for instance, that the only person who could have dealt with Ryan was Spud Perkins. Nasty little pop-eyed Spud.

But Spud wouldn’t have snatched Peg. Whatever else he might have done, he would never have touched Peg. Not for any reason whatever. Peg was the only person on earth that Spud gave a damn for.

But he might have an idea about it. He’d been mixed in the business from the start, and he might have an idea. Inside all that deceptive thyroid ugliness, Spud had a brain that worked like a fine watch. Standing there in front of Ryan with rage and fear a riot in his entrails, Jackie was aware of a driving compulsion to find Spud right away. Without another word, he spun away to the door.

Spud lived in a single room on the third floor of a dilapidated hotel on the south side of town. He sat slumped in a chair by a window that looked down into the dark well of an interior court. His shirt collar was open around his scarred and sunken throat. His lips were split and swollen, and every time he opened them his shrunken upper gum showed through. He looked old and sick, ready to die. But his eyes, looking up at Jackie, had the familiar expression that made Jackie want to smash his lower plate just the way he’d smashed the upper.

“What the hell do you want, tramp?” he said.

The words came out like mush, leaking air around their edges. Jackie closed his eyes and clenched his fists, cutting off the sight of Spud, fighting the effects of a tumultuous stirring of nausea and hate.

“Peg’s gone,” he said.

Spud just sat quietly in his chair for a minute, as if he were trying to comprehend what Jackie meant, and then he went crazy. He bounced out of the chair with a little squeal and grabbed Jackie by the lapels of his coat, twisting and jerking. His voice was shrill and frightened, like a woman’s.

“Gone? What you mean, gone? Damn you to hell, what’s happened to Peg?”

Seeing Spud go to pieces that way seemed to have a reverse effect on Jackie. He felt calmer and stronger, suddenly very sorry for the ugly little man. Looking down at the hand twisted in his lapels, he said nothing until the hand relaxed and dropped away.

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“Me? You think I’d do Peg any harm?”

“No. I just thought you might have an idea.”

Spud turned and walked away. Across the room, he stood quietly, thinking, rubbing a finger along the hard edge of his upper gum.

“Rudy Ryan sent a gunsel to see me today,” Jackie said. “The gunsel said Ryan wants me to win tomorrow night. Thanks to you, Ryan knows all about my deal with Benny Lester and Jay Paley. At first I thought Ryan might be holding Peg as insurance, but I went to see Ryan, and now I don’t think so. He says he’s got a guarantee that I’ll win and that’s all he needs. A guarantee from you. No one but you could have made a deal like that.”

Spud turned back, and now there was no evidence of his brief insanity. His eyes smeared themselves all over Jackie, and his bruised lips curled back off his gums.

“It’s what I get,” he said softly. “It’s what I get for playing nurse to a second-rate pug who should have been a plumber. You got no talent, you got no brains, you ought to drop dead. Sure, I made the deal with Ryan, all right. I knew Ryan was ripe to cut Jay Paley down, and I thought this would be a good time to begin. You know why I did it, tramp? But that’s a silly question. You wouldn’t know. You haven’t got the brains to know. I’ll tell you why I did it, but first of all I’ll tell you it wasn’t for you. For all I care, you could sell your stinking soul, and I wouldn’t lift a hand to stop you or spend a nickel to buy it back for you. It was for Peg I did it. It was for the only person on this sour earth I give a damn for. And she has to be married to you. Of all the guys available to a girl like her, for some damn reason no sane man could understand, she has to be married to you.”

It was strange, but Jackie wasn’t mad at all. It was as if, at last, Spud had lost the power to affect him. “You did a pretty good job,” he said. “I’ll have to win now. I’ll have to win to save your hide from Rudy Ryan. You made the guarantee, and I’ll have to keep it.”

Spud began to laugh, a soft, hysterical quivering of his flabby body. “No. You won’t win. You won’t win for two reasons. The first reason is, you haven’t got the stuff. Emmet Darcy’s a tough kid coming up. A hard, fast boy headed for the top, if the lice he works for don’t wreck him before he makes it. He’ll cut you to shreds in six, eight rounds. You haven’t got a prayer. It’s a laugh, it’s a great big belly laugh, to think of Benny Lester and Jay Paley buying a fight that was already on ice.”

“If I’ve got no chance, why this fat deal of yours? Why nudge Rudy Ryan into forcing me to go all out?”

Spud hammered his forehead gently with the heel of one hand. “Stupid,” he said. “So damn stupid. It was just to make you try. It was just to keep you straight. You really think you could take a dive and make it look legitimate? Not in a million years. It’d stink. It’d stink like the rendering works. And right in the middle of the stink would be Peg. Realizing that you’d done it for her in the only way a dim wit like you could figure to do it. Blaming herself and breaking up in little pieces. I couldn’t let it happen. Not to Peg.”

A trickle of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth and down across his chin. He found a handkerchief and wiped it away, his lips twisting bitterly.

Jackie still couldn’t get mad. He said quietly, “So that’s one reason. What’s the other?”

Spud sat down wearily, staring at his fat belly. “I guess I might as well spell it out for you. It’s the only way you’ll ever get it. Because Jay Paley’s got her, tramp. That’s the only explanation. These things develop leaks always, and he’s learned of my double-cross. Or is it a triple-cross? It’s getting too damn complex to follow. Anyhow, you’ll hear from him pretty soon. Probably he’s been trying to contact you already. To the effect that Peg is his guest, I mean. Soon as you’ve lost the fight, he’ll send her home. Since you’re all messed up in a dirty fix, he won’t worry about you doing anything or going to the cops. You’ve got no call to worry, either, as far as that goes. All you’ve got to do is lose. There isn’t anything else you could do, even if you wanted, so you’ve got no worry.”

Looking down at Spud sitting there in the chair like an ugly little toad, Jackie was suddenly aware of the full significance of the deal with Ryan. The enormity of it swelled in his brain, assuming gigantic proportions.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You promised I’d win. You made the guarantee to Rudy Ryan. If you don’t think I’ve got a chance, even trying, why would you do that? You know what happens to guys who cross Ryan.”

Spud’s eyes raised to Jackie’s face and dropped again. The bloat of his body seemed to deflate, withering and drying against worn velour.

“You wouldn’t understand. That’s something I couldn’t make simple enough. Now get the hell out of here. I’m tired, and I’m sick, and most of all I’m sick of the sight and sound and smell of you. I hope I drop dead before I ever see you or speak to you again.”

Jackie turned and went out. Downstairs in the shabby lobby, he consulted a telephone directory and found the address of the Pawnee Apartments. It was out on North-line Boulevard. A fancy street. People with money lived there. One of them was Jay Paley.

Outside, Jackie flagged a cab and gave the driver the Northline address. He sat sprawled in the back seat, still filled with the strange and purposeful calm that he’d acquired in the face of Spud’s invective. When the cab stopped in front of the massive stack of the apartment building, he got out and went in, wading through thick carpeting to the elevator bank. A kid in a red monkey suit was standing outside an empty car.

“Jay Paley’s apartment,” Jackie said.

The kid looked dubious, so Jackie dug a limp five out of his pocket and fingered it obviously.

“Fourteenth floor,” the kid said, “and I told you nothing.”

They went up to fourteen about one floor ahead of their stomachs, and the kid indicated a blond door down the hall. “That’s it,” he said.

Jackie went down and thumbed a button, hearing beyond the door the spaced musical vibrations of chimes. The door was opened by a man about Jackie’s size with a hard, pocked face. Without waiting for an invitation, Jackie stepped across the threshold with his left foot and brought the lethal right up from the rear. The pocked face didn’t even have time to look surprised. It just disappeared. The body below it lifted off the floor in a short arc and came down on its head and shoulders, making considerable noise.

Jackie stood with his legs spread, massaging the knuckles of his right hand, waiting for a reaction. Down the length of the room, a door burst open and Jay Paley appeared in pink silk underwear. His eyes took in the sprawled figure of the pocked subordinate and flashed up over Jackie, widening with apprehension. Spinning, he dove back through the open door. His legs, Jackie noticed, were thin and hairy, rather repulsive.

In his bedroom, Paley was frantically pawing in the top drawer of a chest. As Jackie drove toward him, he came up and around with a snub-nosed .38. But not soon enough. Jackie’s blunt fingers locked around the wrist behind the gun, snapping it aside and down. The wrist bone snapped like a rotten stick, and Paley screamed. It was a shrill, wavering scream of fear and rage and pain in equal parts. The .38 thudded on the floor, and Jackie transferred his grip from Paley’s wrist to Paley’s throat. With his other hand, he slashed down on Paley’s mouth, driving the scream back into the throat it came from, altering it to a wet blubber. He kept holding Paley like that, by the throat, slashing his face methodically with his free hand. Paley went on blubbering, mouthing incoherencies. His face acquired a sleek red sheen.

“Where’s Peg?” Jackie said. “What’ve you done with Peg?”

He let Paley sag to the floor, a hairy slug in pink silk. The body crumpled, folding up on itself, so Jackie straightened it with a kick in the ribs.

“Peg,” Jackie said. “Where’s Peg?”

Paley lifted an arm and let it fall, gesturing toward the door to the bathroom. The door was open, and Jackie could see through across tile to another door that was closed. The closed door had a key on the bathroom side. Bending over, Jackie got hold of Paley and hauled him up. He smashed a short right to the slack jaw and let the body drop again. Not for pleasure. Just to put Paley out of the way for sure. That done, he walked through the bathroom and unlocked the closed door.

Peg sat on the edge of a double bed, small and lovely and unhurt, her knees and ankles primly together. The glow of her pale hair was in her eyes, the way it always was when things were fine.

“I heard you out there,” she said. “I never dreamed you were so tough. How come you aren’t champ?”

Jackie felt as if someone had tied a knot in his heart. He went over and dropped to his knees in front of her, burying his face in her lap. “Peg,” he said. “Peg, Peg...”

She stroked his head, crooning a little, like a mother with a child. “I know,” she said. “You’re in a mess. I know all about it. But you’ll come clean, honey. You can give that louse out there his money back — the ten grand, I mean — and what he loses on the books is his tough luck. That we won’t worry about.”

She stroked his head a minute longer, and then said, “It’s all my fault, anyhow. Always whining for that lousy dump out on 66. I should have known I’d only get you confused. Come on, now, honey. You’ve got to get home to bed. There’s a fight to win tomorrow night.”

Taking the blame. Just as Spud had said she would.

Jackie stood up, grinning a little, pulling her after him. Tucking the bright head under his chin, he breathed the clean scent of it, wondering how any guy could be so lucky.

The blunt hand that had just done a good job on a couple of bad boys folded into a knot of hard knuckles behind her.

“Yeah, honey,” he said softly, “this one I’ll win. This one I’ll win for an ugly little bastard who loves my wife.”

And that, in the unreasonable way events sometimes have of going against the experts, is what happened. Jackie read the story of the fight aloud to Peg from page umpteen in the next morning’s paper.

Jay Paley, being a more important character, rated a bigger treatment. The story of how his bullet-riddled body was found in an alley on the east side of town was carried on page one.

Murder of a Mouse

Originally published in Verdict Detective Story Magazine #5 1955.

“Justice is blind,” it’s said, and so is vanity. This is the story of a man who learned it for himself.

His name was Charles Bruce, and early in the morning he got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Even barefooted in pajamas he gave, somehow, the effect of almost frightening arrogance and vanity. His overdeveloped ego was apparent in the set of his polished blond head that was hardly tousled after a sleepless night. It lay exposed in the clean lines of a face that might have made him a matinee idol if he had possessed even the rudiments of acting ability. His vanity was, as a matter of fact, almost a disease. It approached narcissism. It was the kind of vanity that, when it has no particular talents to exploit, acquires in frustration a special evil. It is frequently found in criminals.

Moving quietly and quickly, he shaved, brushed his teeth and hair, made all use of the bathroom that he would need to make. When he was finished, he removed a hypodermic syringe from the medicine cabinet and loaded the barrel with a potent anaesthetic he had acquired with considerable difficulty. Carrying the loaded syringe, he went back into the bedroom.

His wife Wanda slept in peace, her lips curved in the slightest smile over protuberant teeth. Her hair, fanned untidily on the white pillow around her head, was sparse and a kind of dun color, the color of a common mouse. It occurred to him, as he stood looking down at her with the syringe in his hand, that she possessed many characteristics that combined to achieve that mouse-like impression — the hair, the teeth, an overall scurrying timidity that seemed to view the world with bright, apprehensive eyes. A strange sort of woman to have a million dollars in her own name. Tragedies sometimes develop from incongruities like that — a woman like Wanda with that kind of money. This thought occurred to him, too, in those final moments before he acted, but the thought stimulated in him no pity, no abortive remorse.

She was sleeping on her back, her left arm curled up around her head on the pillow. Her hand was turned palm upward, which exposed the soft underside of her wrist, and this made the job easier, of course. He could see without difficulty, even standing erect, a linear bulge of pale blue vein. He sat down beside her on the edge of the bed, and she sighed and stirred but didn’t waken. Taking hold of the hand on the pillow and leaning his weight suddenly down upon her body, he slipped the sharp needle of the syringe into the soft flesh of her wrist and forced the plunger down.

She awoke with a sharp little cry, her eyes flying open with almost instantaneous understanding and terror, the understanding that what should have been the beginning of only another day was in fact the beginning of the last day. The initial cry repeated itself over and over, issuing from her throat like a pathetic, stereotyped plea, and her small body threshed futilely against the pressure of his. The anaesthetic injected, he placed both hands upon her shoulders and pinned her firmly, applying no more force than necessary and being careful not to dig into her flesh with his fingers. For he wanted no bruises. No signs of struggle.

The anaesthetic worked swiftly, and it was hardly any time at all until she slipped into an imitation of death that was, for her, a prelude to the real thing. He stood erect again, breathing deeply, sucking in and expelling air in a slow, rhythmic cadence. The needle, he saw, had torn the flesh of her wrist a little, but not seriously. The tiny wound would, as he had planned, be easily included in a later and larger one.

Turning away, he returned to the bathroom and ran cold water into the tub. While the water was running, he unwrapped a new razor blade and laid the shining and deadly bit of edged steel on the lavatory in readiness. Then, watching the water rise slowly in the tub, he considered details. How would she do it? Would she sit in the tub in the water? The idea of the bloody water staining the flesh of her body was repulsive to him, and he was certain that it would be repulsive to her. It was something she wouldn’t do, to sit in the water like that. No. She would be more likely to kneel beside the tub and let her arm hang over the edge. Or, better yet, she would sit. She would sit at one end, sidewise to the tub with her back against the wall, letting the arm hang over into the water. That would be the natural way, the comfortable way, the way she would probably do it if she were doing it of her own volition. Satisfied, he shut off the water taps and went back to her bed.

She was light in his arms. So very light. She must have weighed no more than a hundred pounds. Cradled in his arms, she looked like a sleeping child, her head dropping forward against his shoulder with an appearance of affection. Of this appearance, however, he was unaware. He was unaware of everything except the dominant necessity to do the thing right. In the bathroom, he set her on the floor in the position he had decided upon and recovered the tiny blade from the lavatory. He wiped it clean on a bit of tissue and put it between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. Holding it that way, between the two digits, he made the necessary quick incision in her left wrist and permitted the blade to drop free into the water. That’s what would happen, he thought. She would certainly let the blade drop into the water.

Around her submerged hand and wrist, the water reddened swiftly, the depth of the color fading at its spreading fringe to a sickly pink. He watched for a moment the spreading stain, and then he left the bathroom for the last time. He left her for the last time, too, of course, but he felt no particular sense of parting. Even in the intimacy of marriage, he had been aware of her only vaguely as a person. Primarily as a symbol, a source of supply, a kind of million dollar personification.

He moved unhurriedly around the bedroom, gathering his clothes. He dressed with his usual fastidious attention to details, and the result of all this careful attention was, strangely, an effect of casual perfection, as if he’d just thrown his clothes on anyway and they had somehow assumed just the right drape and lines. When he was dressed, he packed an expensive leather bag with additional items of clothing and set the bag on the floor by the door through which he would leave. Crossing the room from the door, he sat down at a desk between windows and wrote a few lines on a single crisp sheet of paper, the top sheet of Wanda’s stationery, which she’d touched, so that her prints were undoubtedly on it. He already had the lines formulated in his mind, and so he wrote swiftly: Dear Wanda, I’ve tried to be honest with you about Carol, and I’m trying to be honest now. We’ve decided to marry as soon as I can get free. I’m going to a hotel and will send later for the rest of my things. Please don’t try to contact me personally, but I’ll be happy to talk with your lawyer about a divorce. I assure you that I’ll cooperate fully, and I’m very sorry if this causes you any distress.

He signed the note with his first name only and then crumpled the paper in his hand and dropped it on the floor, as it might have been crumpled and dropped by someone in a powerful emotional reaction. By a mousy little woman, for example, whose handsome and adored husband was leaving her. A pathetic little woman, really, in spite of a million dollars, who could find, in the bitterness of desertion and in the distorted satisfaction of a terrible recrimination, the final strength it would take to slash her wrist.

His lips twitched with a touch of irony at the idea of recrimination, and he went over and picked up his bag and left, locking the door of the apartment behind him.

Walking down the hall to the elevator, he was a picture of ease and well-being, one of life’s lucky boys, broad shoulders and narrow hips accentuated subtly by fine tailoring. The rhythmic scissoring of his legs was crisp and certain but managed to convey an impression of effortless motion that contributed to a total effect of thoroughbred arrogance. He was a man whose mind was untroubled by intimations of misfortune or suffering or disgrace. He was a man to whom such things just didn’t happen.

The elevator boy, who secretly hated his guts, smiled pleasantly with a professional regard for the side of the bread the butter was on. “Good morning, Mr. Bruce. Leaving us for a while?”

Charles glanced down at the bag in his hand and nodded shortly. “Yes.”

His incisive monosyllable discouraged further questions, and the operator, watching the straight back, almost military in bearing, cross the lobby downstairs and exit through the street doors, compensated for the feeling of inadequacy Charles always gave him by calling him mentally a conceited bastard.

Outside on the curb, Charles waited a few moments until he caught the eye of a cruising cabby. “Ambassador Hotel,” he said, and relaxed in the back seat. The cabby shot a glance at his reflected face in the rear view mirror, and he also, like the elevator boy, used mentally the word bastard. The term was prompted by a kind of impersonal envy, however, and was qualified by the word lucky instead of conceited. Some guys have all the luck. Looks and dough. Nothing on their minds but spending the next buck on the next beautiful dame.

As a matter of fact, Charles wasn’t thinking of money and women at all. Not that he didn’t think of them quite often. It was just, at the moment, that he was absorbed by another matter that had gained temporary dominance. Sitting there in the back seat of the cab, watching through glass the streets that assumed in the early sun a sparkling, deceptive look of cleanliness, he wondered how long it took for a life to drain away through a neatly opened artery in the wrist. He had for a moment a very vivid vision of darkening water, but he was, apparently, not disturbed by the vision. Looking out at the sparkling streets he didn’t see, he even smiled a little now and then.

He was admitted to the lobby of the Ambassador by a doorman six and a half feet tall (all the doormen at the Ambassador had industrious pituitarics; this gave them a special look; in their vivid uniforms, a kind of Queen’s Guard look) and he was relieved of his bag by a bellhop who looked like a sophomore out of the best frat in a good college, which was another calculated specialty of the Ambassador. At the desk, he was subjected to a cool appraisal by a cool clerk who might have been, from his appearance, a controlling stockholder in the corporation that owned the string of fancy hotels of which the Ambassador was one. Charles did not mind the appraisal. He was hardly aware of it. He was so used to acceptance, even privilege, that the possibility of anything else had ceased to be a concern in his life. He signed for a room and ascended ten floors with the bellhop.

Alone in his room, he unpacked his bag and disposed of the contents neatly. Then he put the bag in the closet and sat down for a cigarette. Reviewing his activity dispassionately to that point, he could think of nothing that he had done or failed to do that was sufficient to crack his calm assurance. He had proceeded throughout with bold strokes. Except for the one major point of murder, he had been perfectly open. He had mentioned Carol in the note, and his affair with her could be verified by several parties, although he had been careful that Wanda herself had known nothing of it. He had been so open that no one, not even the most obtuse investigator out of Homicide, if it came to that, would suspect him of murdering Wanda for motives that could so easily be pinned on him. But he didn’t for a moment really think that it would ever come to Homicide. The alternate was too credible. An ugly, neurotic little woman like Wanda and a man like him. Suicide, indeed, would be the only really credible disposition of the case.

But wouldn’t she have taken steps to exclude him legally from inheritance? Wouldn’t she have seen to it, in the end, that he could never touch that beautiful million? This, of course, was ridiculous. He smiled dreamily into the thin blue smoke of his cigarette, thinking what any competent psychiatrist would do to a contention like that. A shattered woman committing suicide in the intensity of neurotic anguish simply doesn’t take time to tie up loose ends. If she was capable of that she would never commit suicide at all. No. She would do it as it would be assumed that Wanda had done it, quickly and blindly and without rational thought.

Having been open to this point, the strategy would be, of course, to continue that way. No reason at all, for example, why he shouldn’t see Carol. As a matter of fact, it would strengthen his position as a man who had not tried to dissemble and had nothing to hide.

Passing to Carol, his thoughts lost their cool quality of detachment. They acquired, as they always did when she was their subject, heat and a certain wildness, reverting now to the remembrance of past instances in his relationship with her, and now pressing forward hotly to the anticipation of more to come. Carol, beautiful and hard and calculating. Carol, his kind of woman, stone and fire, remembered and anticipated in a hundred positions and places. In the soft and scented and designed clusk of a dozen fancy lounges with a thin stem of brittle glass between her scarlet-tipped fingers and her lips glistening from the touch of a martini or a daiquiri or a Pink Lady or whatever it happened to be at that particular time. In sand and sun with her golden-brown body barely broken by flimsy scraps. In other places when it was broken by nothing whatever.

At this moment she would be in bed, still asleep, her heavy pale hair shining on the pillow, her exciting body shadowed slightly by a haze of sheer nylon. Her lips would be parted, just barely parted, with bright enamel just visible between them, and the shadows of lashes that were real would be cast below closed lids. The imagery of her lying there like that was so strong in his mind, so real and so prescient, that he forgot completely, for a while, the image of the other woman who was still a pertinent factor in his life, the one sitting by the tub with her arm dangling in red water. The one who also slept, but differently and more deeply.

He sat in the room for perhaps thirty minutes, and then he went out and caught a cab, and within another thirty minutes he was ringing the bell of the door behind which was the reality of his imagery. It took her a long time to open the door, verifying the validity of his thoughts of her asleep, and when she finally came, she had pulled over the haze of nylon a second haze that did a little, but not much, to diminish transparency. He went in, and she closed the door behind him, and they met and fused in a spontaneous generation of heat that was a kind of emotional combustion. Her lips were restless and hungry, her hands and body aggressive in conquest.

After a while, hunger somewhat abated, she said, “Did you do it, Charles?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s done.”

“She’s dead?”

“Certainly. You can’t bleed freely very long and not die.”

“Was it hard?”

“No. It was simple. Very easy. It went just the way I planned it.” He went over to a table and helped himself to a cigarette from a silver box. He made no motion to light the cigarette but stood revolving it slowly between the fingers of his two hands. “The hard part is coming up. It’ll take guts, darling.”

She followed him to the table and took the cigarette from him. She carried it to her lips between index and middle fingers and waited with the cigarette still between the fingers until he had picked up the lighter that matched the box and furnished flame. She exhaled smoke in a long plume, and her lips curled around the cigarette in a quiet little smile that suggested some kind of amusing esoteric knowledge.

“Don’t worry about my guts,” she said.

He took one of her hands and held it palm up, stroking the palm slowly and softly. “Are you sure? Are you quite positive you can take it? Her supposed suicide will create a hell of a stink. We’ll be torn to shreds. You know the things that will be said. Lots of people will call us a pair of murderers. Morally, that is.”

“Morally?” She lifted shoulders to indicate what she thought of morally. “What about legally?”

“Legally we’re safe enough. They can’t substantiate anything by suicide. I doubt if they’ll even seriously consider anything but that.”

“What about the money?”

“It’s all right, I tell you. The only thing that’s left is to carry the thing through. If you play it wrong, if you say the wrong things or break down the least little bit, we’re sunk. If we give them nothing more than they have now, they can never definitely establish anything against us even if someone gets an idea or two.”

She turned away from him and crossed to the windows. Against the light, the double haze of nylon was nearly dissolved. He stood behind her, watching her, the pulses in his temples and throat throbbing suddenly and painfully like a trio of malignancies. She looked out into the bright light and spoke to him over her shoulder.

“Look, darling. You talk about my guts. You talk about my breaking down. I thought you knew me better than that. I thought you knew me as well as I’ve ever been known by anyone on earth. I guess I was mistaken, though, and so I’d better set you right. To look at me now you might not realize it, but I was one of seven kids. My old man was a leery bum, and my old lady was a whining slattern. I’ve eaten so damn much bread and potatoes just to fill my belly that I never want to see a potato or a loaf of bread again. I’ve worn cast-off clothes that weren’t fit to wear when they were new, and I’ve had rags against my skin that were so damn rough they gave me gall. I got me a philosophy early in life, darling, and there isn’t anything in it, not one damn thing except what happens in bed, that you aren’t supposed to pay income tax on.”

She turned suddenly and faced him. “Look at me. I’m soft, aren’t I? I’m lots of fun in the right time and place, aren’t I? Just a soft, generous girl? If you got that idea, you’re crazy. I want you all right, darling, I want you like hell, but I want you with a million bucks, and I wouldn’t have you for keeps any other way. Now forget about my guts, darling. And forget about my caring a damn what anyone thinks or says.”

He went over to her then, and she was soft, as he had known perfectly well she was, and she was also hard, hard as a diamond beneath the softness, and he had really known that perfectly well, too. Not that he cared. He preferred it that way. It only made him want her more, because he was, after all, just the kind of man who would want a woman like that.

They used up an hour, and when he was ready to leave, he said, “I mentioned your name in the note. That means someone will probably be here on his way to me. When he comes, whoever he is, tell him I’m at the Ambassador, and I’ll be there waiting for him. Open trail leading nowhere, that’s the strategy, darling.”

“When do you think they’ll find her?”

“It’s our maid’s day off, so possibly not until morning. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all set up for them, whenever it is.”

She touched the tip of a finger to her lips and his. “Okay. Whoever it is and whenever it is, I’ll send him on.”

He left her with that and went back to the Ambassador, and it was about nine hours later when he heard her voice again. The next time was on the telephone, and he was just thinking about going down to the dining room for some dinner when the bell rang.

He lifted the instrument and said hello, and she said, “He was here, darling. He just left.”

“Already? Who found her? How did it happen?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to sound too curious about things like that.”

“All right. I’ll wait for him here.”

He hung up and waited, and it was only a short time before the desk rang up to tell him that there was a man from the police to see him. He told the desk to send the man up, and he waited the last couple of minutes in the open doorway to the hall.

The cop was a thin, middle-aged man with shoulders stooped almost to the point of deformity, and this seemed to make his arms hang down farther than normal, which gave him, in that one respect, a rather simian appearance. He took off his hat politely and spoke with a tired voice.

“Mr. Bruce?”

“Yes. Are you the policeman?”

“That’s right. Name’s Benson.”

“Come in, please. I’ve been wondering what on earth you could want with me.”

Benson walked into the room and turned as Charles closed the door.

“I’m afraid it’s bad news. Your wife, Mr. Bruce. She’s dead.”

“Dead!” Charles gave a passable impression of shock. “She was all right this morning when I left. That is, I assume she was. As a matter of fact, she was still sleeping, and I didn’t disturb her.”

“Maybe you disturbed her a hell of a lot more than you thought, Mr. Bruce. Anyhow, she’s dead.”

Charles ran fingers through his hair and worked his features into a simulation of concern. “See here, Mr. Benson...

“Sergeant.”

“All right. Sergeant. The point is. I may be somewhat responsible if Wanda’s done anything...

“We found the note.”

“I see. Well...

Benson cut across his words with a gusty sigh and said with quiet bitterness, “Look, Mr. Bruce. I’m not the one to explain it to. I’m just a guy running an errand. There’s a big-shot lieutenant down at Headquarters wants to talk with you. He’s the one, so if you’ll just come along.”

“Very well. I suppose there are certain formalities in these matters.”

“That’s right, Mr. Bruce. Formalities.”

It was a short ride to Headquarters. The traffic was heavy, but Benson threaded the police car through it expertly, and they were there quickly. They found the lieutenant in a small room sparsely furnished with essential items, and he was a younger man than Benson, although he ranked him, and this might have been a reason for Benson’s tired and quiet bitterness. The lieutenant’s name turned out to be Tomlinson. He had a hard square face and competent square hands, and his brain was fairly effective, too. Next to being a lieutenant, he was proudest of knowing about things like predicate nominatives and how to use them. He studied books at home.

He introduced himself. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Bruce. I’m Lieutenant Tomlinson of Homicide.” Homicide, he said. So it had come to that so soon. After the initial shock, Charles wasn’t especially concerned, however. He imagined, thinking about it, that probably all suicides were at least perfunctorily investigated by Homicide.

He sat down and said, “Sergeant Benson tells me my wife is dead, Lieutenant, but that’s all I know. I wish you would be kind enough to explain.”

“Certainly, Mr. Bruce. I’ll explain some things to you, and you can explain some to me. That’s why you’re here. Your wife apparently committed suicide.”

Charles sagged a little in his chair, doing it quite effectively. He was silent for a moment, staring at the floor, before he spoke again.

“I was afraid of that, with the police concerned and all.”

“Was that the only reason you were afraid of it? Because the police were concerned?”

“No. Sergeant Benson has told me that you found my note, so you must be aware of my grounds for fear. I may say in defense, however, that I never really thought she’d do it.”

“Do what?”

Charles let his eyebrows rise in a brief expression of cold surprise. “Why, kill herself because I left her, of course.”

“You think she did that?”

“It certainly seems very obvious.”

Lieutenant Tomlinson shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.” He kept on shaking his head, and his face seemed suddenly much older. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think she killed herself at all. I think she was killed. Possibly by you, Mr. Bruce.”

The sudden violent constriction in his chest was a kind of pain that Charles had never known. It was as though a powerful centripetal force had closed in upon his heart, and he wanted to cry out with the pain, but nothing of what he felt showed in his face. Not the least indication of it. There was nothing in his face but icy and arrogant disdain.

“You’re insane,” he said.

“Perhaps.” Tomlinson turned side-wise and said, “Mr. Creely.”

That was the first instant that Charles was aware of a fourth person in the room. The man called Creely stood up from his chair against a wall and came forward. He was about the same height as Charles but much thinner, with narrow shoulders, and he must have been twenty years older. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit that was obviously expensive, and he used the cane in his right hand, leaning upon it heavily, as if it were utilitarian. His face was deeply lined, beginning to sag a little from its frame.

Tomlinson said, “Mr. Creely’s the one who found your wife.”

Charles stood to face Creely. “How could that be so? I believe I know all my wife’s friends, and this man is a stranger. If she was dead in the apartment, who let him in?”

“No one let me in, Mr. Bruce.” Creely’s voice was dry and precise. “I let myself in. With this.”

He extended a hand, palm up, and lying in the palm was a key. Charles lifted incredulous eyes from the key to Creely’s face, and he experienced a feeling that might have been terror when he saw the steady, virulent hatred in the man’s eyes. It’s always a shock to see hatred in the eyes of a stranger.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Don’t you?” Creely’s laugh was an arid whisper. “Surely a man like you has no difficulty in understanding the significance of a key to a lady’s apartment. I used it discreetly, Mr. Bruce. Only on those occasions — rather frequent, I must say — when you were using the one you have to another lady’s apartment.”

Tomlinson cut back in, speaking slowly in a kind of cadence timed by the shaking of his head, “Your wife was apparently having an affair, Mr. Bruce, just as you were. Mr. Creely has been able to establish pretty definitely that he and your wife planned marriage. It seems she intended to tell you within a few days.” He stopped talking, but his head kept right on shaking, and after a moment his voice picked up the tempo again. “So you see, Mr. Bruce, it isn’t likely your wife would have killed herself because you’d left her. It isn’t likely she’d have cared at all.”

That was the wholly incredible thing. The thing that had never seriously crossed his mind. That she wouldn’t care. Most of all, that she had planned to leave him — him! — for a gray, sagging, crippled specimen like Creely. And in the final phase of his destruction, with the terrible realization that the police would pin it on him since they knew Wanda was not a suicide, it was the cruel cut to his vanity that hurt him most. It actually drove him a little mad.

It took both Tomlinson and Benson to pull him off Creely.

Points South

Originally published in Manhunt, June 1954.

I drew an ace, and I needed it. With the pair that I already had, it established something substantial. Luck was going my way. I lifted my eyes from the cards to the face of Leo Gall, and I thought to myself again that it was like a fat olive with features. His eyes were screwed back into little puffs of skin as he examined his hand, and his pimento-red lips were pursed into the shape of a wet kiss. It was a face I didn’t like, though I pretended to like it for my health’s sake, so I slanted my line of vision off over his shoulder to the face of Hilda Hearn.

Hilda was tired. About midnight she’d gone into the bedroom for a nap, but when she’d returned a couple of hours later, it was obvious that the nap had been too late and too short to do her much good. The muscles of her face had a tight, drawn look, her eyes were smudged, and her mouth was a soft scarlet smear. She slept too little and smoked too much, ate too little and drank too much, did too much of everything bad for her and too little of anything good, but tousled and smeared and worn to the bone, she was still a lovely assembly of female parts. Sprawled on the sofa with a highball in her hand, she combed free fingers through copper curls and sent me a smoke signal from smoldering eyes.

“One grand,” Leo Gall said.

Beside me, between me and Leo as the betting went, Hugh Lawson cursed softly and bitterly, slapping his hand into the discard. His mouth and eyes were pinched at the corners by the long strain of losing, and his fingers shook as they fumbled a cigarette out of a limp pack and carried it to his lips. I did some quick calculation and figured he must have dropped at least twenty grand. Just about what I’d contributed myself to the fat welfare of our host. I also figured Hugh could afford it about as much as I could, which was not at all. He was a slim guy with a lean, hungry face and blond hair cut very short and square on top the way a lot of college boys wear it. He’d got most of his education in pool rooms and clip joints, but he looked a hell of a lot like a college boy.

“Out,” he said.

I put my faith in three bullets and met the thousand. I couldn’t bump it, because I didn’t have a good bump left. A couple of hundred in chips, that was all.

“One raise, I’m a dead duck,” I said.

Leo laughed softly and wetly behind a red, white and blue mountain. “Credit’s good, boy. With me, it’s always good.”

Around the circle 90 degrees, Kal Magnus sighed and rolled his soaked cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. His hand struck the discard and flew apart, but his expression was genial, signifying his indifference to luck that always ran one way or the other and would be good next time, or the next or the next, if it happened to be bad tonight. Being able to carry your luck comfortably from bad to good makes a hell of a difference in your attitude. Kal’s was bad tonight, all right, ten grand bad, but you’d have thought he was playing for matches.

He said, “If you’re worried about me, you’re wasting it. I’m out.”

Leo smiled. It was a very small smile, slightly sad. It was the one he’d been using all night. The one he used when he was looking down your throat.

“No raise? That’s too bad. Well, you paid to see them, Andy, so have a good look.”

He spread them slowly in ascending order, five little cards worth my last grand, and whichever end you read them from, going up or down, they came out straight. Better any time than three lousy aces.

I added my junk to the discard and said, “Take it away.”

He took it. On the ring finger of his right hand was a diamond worth more than the pot. In the thick nest of black hair growing above the second joint of the finger, it looked like a glittering egg. And it was then, watching his fat hands rake in my dough, that I got one of those crazy ideas a guy sometimes gets when it’s late, too late, and the world’s gone sour. It was then that I began to think what fun it would be to clobber him. We began to settle the score, and all the time we were settling it, I kept seeing those fat white fingers with the black hair growing out of them. I saw them over and over in a dozen repellent engagements — dealing cards that brought me no luck, dragging in the fat pots, creeping like slugs over the soft flesh of Hilda Hearn.

I closed my eyes and kept them closed for half a minute, but the fingers were there behind the lids, so I opened them again, and the first thing I saw was his red, wet mouth. The lips were so soft and thick and full of blood. They looked as if they’d smash on his big white teeth like a glutted leech.

I went sort of blind, I guess. Blind to everything and everyone but Leo Gall. And I functioned for a few seconds in the terrible urgency of a single grim compulsion.

I stood up and leaned across the table and clobbered him.

He got a glimpse of knuckles coming at him, and his face had, for a split second, a ludicrous expression of surprise. His chair rocked back on its rear legs, hung for a moment in balance, and then crashed over. He hit the floor on his shoulders and skidded like a clown on ice, but there wasn’t really anything funny about it. His head smacked the sharp edge of the frame of the sofa Hilda was sprawled on, and there was a dull, sodden sound like the bursting of a rotten melon, and he lay very still on his back with his fat gut rising like a strange and ugly growth from the floor, and it was not funny at all.

Hilda stood up very slowly, the movements of her arms and legs possessing the unreal quality of action in slow-motion. She stood looking down at Leo. “Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus.”

Hugh Lawson’s breath whistled shrilly through his nostrils, and Kal Magnus heaved his ponderous bulk erect. He turned his eyes from Leo’s prone carcass to me, and his broad face was flat and still and hard as stone.

He said tonelessly, “You tired of living, Andy?”

I didn’t bother to answer. I went over and knelt beside Leo. I felt for his pulse and found it. Then I passed my hands swiftly over the obvious places for a gun, but there was no gun on him. I knew he would come out of it soon, and I didn’t want him coming with death in his hand. My death, I mean. Chances were it’d come soon enough. Soon and sudden, if I was lucky. Soon and not so sudden, if I wasn’t.

Standing, I looked across the body at Hilda. Her lips were slightly parted, and the tip of her tongue appeared between them to slip slowly around the red circumference. Her eyes were hot and cloudy behind lids descending to veil an intense inner excitement.

On the floor between us, Leo stirred and shuddered and came up jerkily from the hips, leaning back for support against braced arms. He shook his head from side to side and brought one hand forward and up across his split lips. He sat there on the floor and looked in a stupefied way at the smear of blood on his hand. At last, moving like an old, old man, he got one knee under him and rose slowly to his feet. His eyes were as dull and lifeless as dirty metal disks. They slid from face to face until they reached and remained on mine, and his voice was a gassy whisper escaping through loose teeth and blood and swollen flesh.

“You dirty bastard! You scummy little louse! Get out of here! Get the hell out of here fast! And right now you better start living it up. Right now you better start to live up all your God-damn life in the next twenty-four hours, because maybe you’ll have that long and maybe you won’t.”

Hilda took a step toward him, lifting one arm with a jerk, as if she were breaking ice in the joints. “Look, Leo. It was just one of those crazy things. Andy just went nuts for a second, that’s all.”

He turned to face her. His mangled lips were working, and a trickle of saliva leaked out of one corner of his mouth and down across his chin. “The hell you say! So we just forget all about it, is that it? So we kiss and make up? Well, it’s nice to know you’re so damn concerned about the lousy punk. If that’s the way it is, maybe you better get the hell out, too.”

“It’s not that way, Leo. You know it’s not that way.”

His voice broke controls, skidding up to a high, feminine scream. “Get out! Get the hell out, you God-damn tramp!”

She stood very still for a moment, her breasts held high against her dress, and then she turned without speaking and went into the bedroom. She returned immediately in mink and went over to the hall door and out, still without speaking and without looking at any one of us. When she was gone, I helped myself to my hat and followed. Behind me, Leo’s shrill voice said, “Don’t try to run, punk. Wherever you go, wherever you try to hide...”

There was more, but I never heard it, because I cut it off with the door and went down the hall to the elevator. Hilda had left the car in the lobby, and when I’d brought it up, Kal and Hugh still hadn’t come out of the apartment. Taking time to clear themselves, I thought. Making certain that none of Leo’s trigger men came looking for them in whatever good time was convenient for killing. On the same trip, probably, when he came looking for me. God knows I couldn’t blame them. I could blame them in no way for not wanting to share Andy Corkin’s suicide. Descending alone in the elevator, I cursed myself in the bleak and passionless futility of irreparable idiocy, but it only came to the same result that most things had come to in the life of Andy Corkin. To nothing, that is.

Outside by the curb, the taxi was waiting with its engine running. The back door opened as I came out, and I scooted across the sidewalk and inside. The taxi lurched forward, swerving out into the traffic lane, and Hilda came over against me with a kind of restrained violence, her body twisting around to a frontal approach, her soft mouth hungry and aggressive. I snarled fingers in her short copper hair and pulled her face down so hard that I could feel her lips flatten and spread and her teeth click sharply against mine. Her breath was hot and labored, and after a long time she twisted away and fell back in the seat, her breasts rising and falling in slow cadence with deep, ragged gasps.

“Andy,” she said. “Andy...”

“I just thought we’d better be making hay, honey.”

“Don’t say it that way. Don’t ever say it that way.”

“You heard Leo. Live it up, he said. Twenty-four hours, he said.”

“Why, Andy? For God’s sake, why’d you do it?”

“I went blind, honey. I saw his fat fingers, and I thought of you, and I thought of the fingers and you together, and so I smashed his ugly mouth. Besides, maybe it was just getting too late. Maybe I’m just a sour loser who should’ve stuck to penny ante. Who really knows what makes a guy do something crazy? He does it, that’s all. First thing he knows, it’s done.”

“Now what, Andy? What’re you going to do now?”

“Something pleasant, I hope. It’s up to you.”

“You’ve got to get away, Andy. Just till I’ve had time to try to fix things.”

“Run?”

“Call it what you like. If I can’t get it fixed, I’ll run after you.”

I shook my head. “There’s no place far enough, honey. And if there were, there’s nothing fast enough to get me there.”

“Jesus, Andy, you can’t just sit and wait for it. There has to be something we can do.”

“There is. I said it was up to you. Something pleasant, I said.”

She came back then, and my hands crept in under mink, and it was as if she was trying desperately to give me everything in no time at all, but a taxi’s no place for it, a taxi prescribes limits, and so pretty soon I said, “We’d better go to my place, honey.”

“That’s where we’re going. I told the cabbie.”

“Sweet baby.”

“I can’t stay, though, darling.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I’ve got to get back.”

“To Leo?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be a fool. He kicked you out. Remember?”

“Look, Andy. It was just because he’d been humiliated, and I’d seen it happen. It was just because his bloated little ego couldn’t stand my seeing it. When I get back, it’ll be different. By that time, he’ll be wanting me so bad it’ll be stronger than anything else, even stronger than the effect of my seeing him slapped in the chops like a fat brat.” Her voice sank to a thin complaint. “I’ve been earning the rent, Andy. Believe me, I earn it in plenty of service and a thousand futile damn regrets.”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s for us, Andy. If I left him, it still wouldn’t clear things for us. He’d have us both killed. Can’t you see it’s for us? You’re the only one I really ever want it from, darling. Just you.”

“You’re forgetting something, honey. I’m the guy who clobbered him tonight. He’s going to have me taken care of, anyhow.”

“Maybe not. Maybe I can stop him. If I go back tonight, I think I can stop him. Not entirely, of course. He’ll want something out of you. Something to salvage his pig’s vanity. But I can make it something less than death. Then it’ll be you and me, Andy, the same as now, and there’ll be a thousand nights together to make up for this one.”

“Sure. You and me. You and me and Leo.”

“We’ll find a way to eliminate Leo later on. A safe way. Sometime, somehow, we’ll find a way.”

I was tired. I was a tired, broke, sick damn fool, but I had no particular desire to die, and I wanted Hilda wholly or on shares, any way I could get her whenever she wanted to come. I leaned back in the seat and said, “You save it for us, honey. I’ll be waiting around.”

The taxi wheeled into my street and stopped, and I got out and stood beside it on the curb. Hilda leaned out after me, her face lifted above her white, arched throat, and I leaned down and kissed her without touching her with anything but my lips. Then the taxi pulled us apart, and I went inside and upstairs alone.

What do you do with the twenty-four hours that may be your last? Get drunk? Get religion? Go crazy? I guess it depends on who you are, how much that next breath means to you. For what it signifies, I had one drink, one cigarette, and went to bed. I also slept. I slept long and well, and when I woke up I saw by the watch on my wrist that it was far past noon. I got up and oriented, and I didn’t feel so good, but I didn’t feel so bad, either. Sort of so-so. Sort of like almost any garden variety day. I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and brushed the fur off my teeth. I dressed and asked myself if I was hungry, and I decided that I wasn’t hungry but that I could do with a drink. I had the stuff available, rye and bourbon, but I didn’t want a drink alone in the apartment. I wanted a drink in a bar. This seemed a reasonable desire for a guy well into his last time around the clock, so I went out to gratify it.

I got the drink at Stony’s. Stony himself poured it for me. He asked me how I was, and I said I was all right. After drinking half of what he’d poured, I almost believed it. Someone in a booth paid a nickel for Many Times, which isn’t a bad tune in itself, but it started me thinking about Hilda trying to make Leo see that I wasn’t worth killing, and that wasn’t good. I tried to quit thinking about it, but little details kept forcing their way into my mind which may or may not have been parts of the way it actually happened, so I lifted my drink to finish it, and in the process I saw something that made me think for a moment that it hadn’t happened at all. In the mirror behind the bar, I saw a character named Jack Steap, a thin guy with a body like ten-gauge wire and a face like the edge of a razor. He was a guy for hire who worked for Leo Gall when Leo needed a fast, professional job, and he was standing precisely behind the empty stool on my right. One hand was in the pocket of his coat, very casually. I felt, suddenly, dry and withered inside, all dead and done and ready for the fire.

He said softly in a thin tenor voice, “Okay, hero. Let’s go.”

I turned on the stool, and it was then that I realized that he hadn’t spoken to me at all. His eyes and voice were directed toward the customer on the other side of the empty stool. He’d come in a few minutes after me, and we were now the only ones at the bar. He looked like a college guy. He was wearing a hat, but the hair that showed below it was blond, and I knew it was cut short and square on top. I was a little surprised to see that he still had the price of a drink. Hugh Lawson, I mean.

If he ever recognized me, he didn’t show it. He looked over his shoulder at the gunsel and said, “You talking to me?”

“You, hero. Let’s go.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

Jack Steap showed his teeth in a smile that was all on the plane. No depth, no meaning. “You know, hero. Just for kicks, though, I’ll brief you on it. I’m talking about your dropping a bundle to Leo Gall last night. I’m talking about your coming back later to reclaim it. It and the other lettuce Leo’d won, plus fifty grand or so he had lying around for household expenses. It was real messy, the way you did it. Smashing his skull that way. Leo’s head was a real mess.”

Hugh Lawson spun around slowly on his stool. His face had gone white and slack, and the first wash of fear was coming up into his eyes. His voice was a sick croak. “You’re crazy! Leo was alive when I left. Kal Magnus and I went together.”

“I know. Kal went and stayed. You didn’t. You went back.”

“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”

“Sure you swear you didn’t. But you did. You were seen, hero. You were seen leaving the apartment by someone else who went back. Someone on Leo’s team. So the word went out to Leo’s boys. So the boys sent me out to find you. So here I am. And so let’s go.”

A greenish tinge began to creep into the dead white of Lawson’s face. It was the face of a man who knew that nothing he could say would make any difference. His mouth labored to create sound, but the most it managed was a whimper, and his eyes slithered around desperately for help that wasn’t there. They crossed my face, his eyes, but I don’t think I registered in them. Then he was off the stool and running parallel to the bar. He must have intended to duck around it and out the back way into the alley, but he never made it. Jack Steap’s hand came out of his pocket, and there were two muffled detonations so close together that they almost blended, and Hugh Lawson stopped and turned half around and leaned back against the bar like a guy who might have stopped in for a short beer. After a moment, he slipped down to a sitting position and toppled over sideways.

There was a long moment of dead silence in the bar, and then the five or six customers in booths got up and out before the cops got in.

Jack Steap walked down along the bar, stepped over Lawson’s body, and went on out the way Lawson had wanted to go.

I went that way myself. I went out into the alley and down the alley to the street and back to my apartment.

I went inside and closed the door and leaned back against it with my eyes closed. Something was hurting inside me, and the hurting was related to the death of Hugh Lawson. He was a guy I hadn’t known well and had neither liked nor disliked, but I didn’t want him dead at the hands of a thin weasel like Jack Steap for the sake of a fat pig like Leo Gall. Not even when his death was maybe my salvation.

Hilda’s voice said, “What’s the matter, darling?”

I opened my eyes, and there she was. She was there like something beautiful and warm and real that I needed like hell. I started for her, and she started for me, and we met and merged somewhere between our starting places.

“It’s all right, darling,” she said. “Leo’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead. So’s Hugh Lawson. I just saw him shot down in Stony’s place.”

“Leo’s boys think Hugh’s the one who killed Leo.”

“I know. That’s what the gunsel said.”

“Don’t you see what it means, darling? It means you and me in the open. You and me without a worry. We can go away for awhile. South, I think. Somewhere a long way south of the border.”

“Using what for money?”

She broke out of my arms then and went for her purse in a chair. It was a big job, almost as big as an overnight bag, one of these things on a strap that’s worn over the shoulder. She picked it up and brought it back and turned it upside down, and paper began to fall out. Green paper. I thought it’d never quit falling. It fell and spread and piled up around my feet.

I raised my eyes to her face, and it was still the loveliest face I’d ever seen, smooth and creamy under copper, with a bright and gifted mouth and smoky eyes.

“You,” I said. “You killed Leo and put the finger on Lawson.”

She shook her head. “No. I put the finger on Lawson, all right, but I didn’t kill Leo.”

“Lawson really did, then?”

“No. Neither me nor Lawson.”

“Who?”

She looked at me and smiled and said, “You did, darling.”

I reached out and took her by the shoulders and dug in. “What the hell’s this? I never went back there.”

“I know you didn’t. Look, Andy. When I was a kid on southside, I used to watch the fellows play ball in the street. One day a kid we called Fats got hit in the head with a bat. He was out for a few minutes, and his head hurt for a while, but pretty soon he started to play again, and it was almost half an hour later when he dropped dead. Concussion acts like that sometimes, and that’s the way Leo died. You remember how his head smacked the sharp frame of the sofa? He got up and chased us out, and he got ready for bed, and he dropped dead.”

“Wait a minute. The gunsel said his head was a mess.”

“That was just for looks, darling. He was already dead when I got back. If I’d left him the way I found him, it would’ve been easy to figure what had really happened.”

“So you mess him up and help yourself to his money and finger an innocent guy for the rap.”

“For you, darling. For you and me.”

“You think I’d touch the lousy money now? Or you?”

“Yes, darling. The money and me. Without us, it’s so much paper. With us, it’s more fun than you ever dreamed of in that place we’ll find below the border.”

I kept on looking at her, and I kept on wanting her, in spite of everything, and I told myself that there’s a point beyond which you can’t go. You can skirt the dark edge, you can do things that later make you sick to your stomach, but there’s a point beyond which you can’t go if your soul is ever to be your own again. That’s what I told myself, and I told myself that I had reached the point.

Now I’ll tell you something: it’s hot down here. It’s hot as hell below the border.

Two Little Hands

Originally published in Manhunt, December 1954.

I shouldn’t have done it to Obie. I keep telling myself that he’s really better off, that he might have come to even a worse end if it hadn’t happened the way it did, but I know that isn’t true.

I know I played a dirty trick on the only guy who ever really loved me, and I know I’ll remember it as long as I live and think about it the last thing before I die. I keep thinking about how he loved to work in the fields under the hot sun with the sweat seeping through his rough blue shirt in a great dark stain until the whole shirt was sopping wet, and about how he used to take a dip afterward in the deep pool at the bend of the creek and then sit naked on the bank like a small, innocent boy and watch the shifting pattern of sunlight and shade and listen to the stirrings and splashings of small life along the bank and in the water. You can’t do things like that where Obie is now. Not in a mad house.

He isn’t really crazy, no matter what they said. It’s just that he isn’t bright. I don’t know much about the technical gradations of intelligence, but I guess you’d call Obie an imbecile, maybe. He was a good worker, but you always had to tell him exactly what to do. You’d tell him to get the ax, he’d get the ax. You’d tell him to chop some wood, he’d chop some wood. Then, unless you’d tell him to put the ax away, he’d leave it right out in the God-damn rain or anything else. The only time he ever went ahead and did something on his own, without being told just what, was the time I’m telling about, the time I played the dirty trick on him. It got pretty trying sometimes, telling him just every little thing to do that way, and I lost my temper and cursed him more times than I can count, but I regret it now, and wish I hadn’t done it, and most of all I wish I hadn’t done what I did in the end to get him put away. I miss Obie. It’s lonely around here without him.

It happened the day I heard him singing Two Little Hands out behind the barn. Two Little Hands is a religious song, a kind of hymn, I guess, and it’s all about someone having two little hands for Jesus, and it’s supposed to be sung by kids in Sunday School and places like that. Someone had got hold of Obie early and taught him a few simple things about religion, and he was always singing this little song that he’d picked up somewhere. He only knew a few lines, because that was all he was capable of remembering, but he liked to sing what he knew, and he sang it every time he thought to, or someone asked him to, and it was sort of funny and sad at the same time to hear the big lug do it, especially because his hands were really about the size of a brace of snow scoops.

I heard him singing this song behind the barn, and then I heard someone start to laugh as if it was the funniest God-damn thing that ever happened. There were two voices laughing, that is, a man’s and a woman’s, and I knew it was Ivy and Gunner Hoke hack there with Obie. I began to feel sick then, partly because I didn’t like anyone poking fun at Obie, but mostly because it was Ivy and Gunner doing it. Ivy was my step-sister, no blood relation, and Gunner was a tall lean guy from in town who came out to see her. He was doing more than seeing her, too. I knew that as well as anything, even though I couldn’t actually prove it, and for a long time I kidded myself that I hated Gunner for that reason, because I didn’t approve of such goings-on, but now that I’m making a clean breast of everything and telling the whole story, I may as well admit that it was really because I wanted to take Ivy for myself and never could.

She was enough to make anyone want to. Gunner and I weren’t the only ones by any means, and so far as I know maybe Gunner wasn’t the only one who managed it. She did everything she could to put it in a guy’s mind, that was sure. She was certain to be sloppy fat someday, like her old lady, my stepmother, but now her body was just full and ready, like it had been tree-ripened in the hot summer sun for picking, and it had a way of projecting itself through the thin cottons she wore around the place. She knew the effect she had on me, all right, I wasn’t fooling her any, and she got a hell of a bang out of it even though she never intended to give me any house. I guess I hated her in a way just as much as I hated Gunner, but I’m trying to be honest, and I can’t be sure, because it was all mixed up with my wanting her the way I did.

I went around behind the barn, and there was Obie singing this little song about two little hands for Jesus, and he was standing like a kid speaking a piece for the parents on the last day of school, with his big feet together in the dust and his huge, bony hands hanging down at his sides below knobby wrists that looked like they’d been swollen and crippled by arthritis. He had a pained look on his face, just like he always got when he sang, his pale eyes staring straight in front of him and filled with a kind of misery, as if it hurt him to try to remember the words in the order they were supposed to come. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and his slack mouth that was never quite closed, even when he wasn’t talking or singing, leaked saliva at the corners, and the saliva ran down over his chin. He was a big, lank guy at least three inches over six feet, and his bones were thick and knobby at all the joints just like at the wrists, and he looked like just what he was a big boob without the brains to know when someone was making a damn fool of him, but I didn’t think it was funny.

Ivy and Gunner did, though. They were leaning against the barn with their arms around each other, and they were laughing fit to kill, Ivy with an abandon that was almost hysteria and Gunner more quietly, in his own way, his bright red lips drawn back off white teeth in an expression that was somehow canine and cruel.

I went over and grabbed Obie by an arm and jerked him around. His song ended with a little squawk in his throat, and he stood looking down at me with his mouth hanging open and his pale eyes clouded and confused in the way they got when anything happened too suddenly or was a little different from any-thing that had happened to him before.

“What’d you do that for, Jake?” he said. “I was singing my song for Ivy. You oughtn’t to stop me when I’m singing my song for Ivy.”

“God damn it,” I said, “can’t you tell when someone’s making a damn clown out of you? Haven’t you even got that much brains?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side, laboring to understand what I’d said, taking each word one at a time in the darkness of his brain and figuring it and then putting them all together at the end like a little kid just learning to read.

“You oughtn’t to say that, Jake. Ivy’s my girl. You know Ivy’s my girl. Ivy wouldn’t do anything like that to Obie.”

“Don’t be any more of a fool than God intended you to be, Obie. Ivy’s just stringing you along. She’s Gunner’s girl, not yours. Why would she laugh at you if she wasn’t? Why would she stand there laughing at you and letting Gunner laugh with her right in front of you if she wasn’t?”

It was true that Ivy teased Obie. She was cruel by instinct, and it gave her a big bang to work him up to the point where he was leaking saliva through his loose lips and shaking like a bird dog evacuating peach seeds, and you’d have thought it was a dangerous game for her, that a big powerful guy with no brains to evaluate consequences might have just slapped her down and had what he wanted, but she knew it wouldn’t happen because Obie had this simple religion in him and a rudimentary kind of morality that had been drilled into him for his own protection that said you never bothered anyone, least of all a woman, and that any kind of physical intimacy, no matter how bad you wanted it, was evil and strictly taboo. He’d never have touched Ivy, or Gunner, either, if it hadn’t been for me. Never on earth.

He swung his head around and looked at Ivy and Gunner by the barn. “Gunner oughtn’t to do that to Ivy. Ivy doesn’t like it. Ivy wouldn’t even like Obie to do something like that.”

Gunner let his hand slip off her and stepped forward, bending a little at the waist like a man ready to attack. He was looking at me, not Obie, and his eyes were as black and shiny as two chips of anthracite, and his face, though he had quit laughing, had the same expression as before, his red lips drawn back in the shape of cruel pleasure without sound. Ivy, in an unconscious gesture, lifted her hands to her armpits and ran them down the sidelines of her body as if she enjoyed the feel of herself.

She said softly, “Don’t pay any attention to Jake, Obie. He’s just jealous. He’s jealous because I’m your girl instead of his.”

Obie shook his head again, his sparse dry hair falling down over his eyes. “No. Jake’s Obie’s friend. Jake’s Obie’s friend, and Ivy’s Obie’s girl.”

It was as simple as that to the big boob. He couldn’t see any conflict. He couldn’t see any reason at all why it shouldn’t be that way.

Gunner laughed with a sound that was no more than a long breath hissing through his teeth. “Jake’s a sneaky little mouse, that’s what he is. Jake’s a slimy, panting little jerk who can’t get what he wants and doesn’t want anyone else to get it.”

My hate was too big for me then, and I stepped forward and started to swing at him, but he was much too fast for me and hit me flush in the mouth, and I was suddenly on my back in the hot, dry dust with blood in my throat. After fifteen seconds or so, I got up to do the best I could, but it wasn’t necessary, because Obie was standing between me and Gunner, and his huge hands were clenching and unclenching slowly.

“Don’t hit Jake again,” he said to Gunner. “Don’t hit Jake and don’t touch Ivy.”

Gunner was lean and mean and fast as hell, but he didn’t want any part of Obie. Obie would simply have waded into him and taken him in his big hands and crushed the life out of him, and Gunner knew it. In his eyes were fear and sudden withdrawal, but in Ivy’s eyes there was nothing but the crazy, shining excitement that was always her reaction to violence or the sight of blood as the symbol of violence.

“Come on, Obie,” I said. “Let’s cut out. I want you to help me down in the fields.”

I took him by an arm and led him down the cowpath into the pasture at the lower end and across the pasture toward the creek, and all the way he kept turning his head every few steps to look back toward Ivy and Gunner by the barn, and I could tell he was trying to figure it out, what had happened and why I had stopped him from finishing his song and why we had all said and done the things we had. My lips were split and beginning to swell, and one tooth was so loose that I could push it around with my tongue, but that wasn’t what hurt. A few cuts and bruises didn’t matter a damn. What hurt was the festering hatred and humiliation inside me that made me want to vomit and was all the worse because I couldn’t think of anything to do about it. At the edge of the timber along the creek I stopped and looked back myself, and I could see Ivy and Gunner walk across the barnyard and into the barn with their arms around each other, and I knew all of a sudden without any doubt at all just what they were going in there for. I think I knew because I understood that it would be necessary for Ivy to complete the cycle of intense physical excitement that the brief episode of violence and blood had aroused but hadn’t satisfied.

“What we stopping for, Jake?” Obie said. “I thought we were going to the fields.”

If he hadn’t said that, maybe I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe just a little thing like his saying something at the wrong time was the difference between doing it and not doing it.

“I just remembered that we’ll need a pitch fork, Obie,” I said. “Go back to the barn and get one.”

“What we need a pitch fork for?”

“Never mind that. Just go get it. It’s sticking in the hay in the loft.” He started back the way we had come, and when he’d gone a few steps, I said, “Wait a minute. Obie. Listen to me. You be real quiet going in the barn. Don’t let anyone see you or hear you. You understand?”

His eyes got clouded and confused from the effort of trying to understand why I was telling him to get the fork in a way that was different from the way I had always told him to get it before.

“Why, Jake? Why don’t you want anyone to see me?”

“Never mind. I’ve got my reason. Will you do it the way I say?”

“Sure, Jake. If you say so.”

“Don’t forget, now. Promise?”

“Sure, Jake. I promise.”

He turned and started again, and I stood and watched him, watched his long, loping gait eat up the distance to Ivy and Gunner in the barn, and then I went on through the trees to the bank of the creek and sat down. I gathered a handful of pebbles and threw them one at a time into the dark green water, watching the little concentric circles move outward from the place where the pebble went in, and then, after the water had smoothed out, I lay back on the bank and closed my eyes and began to count, and I had counted a long way, I don’t remember how far except that it was a long way, when I heard Obie’s big clod-hoppers thumping the ground, and he came through the trees and sat beside me. He was breathing very hard. His breath was like a whinny in his nostrils.

Without opening my eyes, I said, “You get the fork, Obie?”

“Fork?”

“What’s the matter, Obie?”

He didn’t answer, and I guess he didn’t even hear me, but after a while he said more to himself than to me, “He oughtn’t to have done it. She oughtn’t to have let him.”

I knew then that it was both of them. I knew that he had seen what I’d sent him to see and that he’d done what I’d thought he might do. I couldn’t stand the sight of him sitting there crying, so I rolled over and buried my face in my arms, but I could still see him just the same, and I can still see him now, and I only wish they had, in the place where he is, a field where he could work under the hot sun with his big hands, and a creek where he could go when the work was finished.

Handy Man

Originally published in Manhunt, February 1956.

Carey Regan had word that Campan wanted to see him at his apartment, so Carey went up. It was Campan’s wife, Phyllis, who opened the door.

“Hello, Phyl,” Carey said.

Such abbreviations usually suggest intimacy, and in this case the suggestion was valid. Carey and Phyl knew each other better than Campan dreamed. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater tucked into the waist of a pair of blue velvet toreador pants. Her short black hair had a seductively tousled look, as if she’d just crawled out of bed, and the bright lips that could thin on provocation to a hard red line were now relaxed in a receptive pout. She put her arms around Carey’s neck and her mouth on Carey’s mouth, and for a long minute or two the situation was pretty exciting, but it couldn’t develop much because of Campan, who was certainly near by.

Pretty soon she stepped back and said, “Campan’s waiting for you. Campan calls and Carey comes running.”

He raised an eyebrow and hid his sudden anger behind a derisive smile. “Campan? You too? Has he started taking his ego to bed with you yet?”

“The last name stuff, you mean? Why not? It’s the sign of a man getting big. It’s a man riding a star.”

“Sure. Drop the Adolph. Drop the Benito. In this case, drop the Joseph. Just Campan. Even to his wife, just Campan.”

“You sound bitter, darling. Why? You’re going along, aren’t you? On the ride, that is. Campan needs you. He needs an errand boy. He needs a smooth, hard guy with practically no conscience.”

“Where is he?”

“In the office. Stop and have a drink with me on the way out.”

“Maybe.”

He walked the length of the living room and went into a short hall and down the hall to the door of the room Campan used as an office. He knocked and heard Campan’s voice telling him to come in. Inside, he closed the door behind him and gleaned his shoulders against it. It wasn’t a large room. There was a rug land a desk and three chairs and a green metal filing cabinet. That was all. Campan was a luxury-loving guy who would eventually run to fat but in this one room he affected a phony Spartan simplicity. It was very odd. It probably indicated something or other about his character.

Campan said. “Come in, Carey. Sit down.”

Carey crossed to a chair and sat looking at Campan behind the desk. Campan looked the same as last time, but this was an illusion. He wasn’t the same because every time he was a little bigger, and bigger is different. Every time he was a little more Campan and a little less Joseph. The short body, the brown, tight, glossy skin that looked stuffed to bursting, the pale brown eyes, almost yellow at times, the small pink bud of a mouth — these were nearly constant, changing only in the very slow and indiscernible process of getting day-by-day older. But these were not Campan. These were only Campan’s baggage. Campan himself was inside. Campan himself kept getting bigger and bigger. Campan was a voracious ego eating itself to immensity. Hardly anything bothered him. Danger didn’t bother him. Cruelty didn’t bother him. Death didn’t bother him. Only the thought of defeat bothered him. He had been defeated a few times in his life, and the ones responsible for his defeat had lived to regret it. Or, precisely, had in certain cases not lived to regret it.

Carey wondered how he did it. All the money coming in. All the power coming in with the money. All the officials in his pocket. Growing right up in the fat rackets to measure stature with no one but the Swede himself. Someone had to go. Either Campan or the Swede. Everyone on the inside understood it and kept wondering when it would be and which it would be, because they thought, of course, that it would be very nice to get on the right side in good time.

“You wanted to see me?” Carey said.

“That’s right.” Campan’s little pink bud of a mouth spread on his teeth. “You like a drink?”

“No, thanks. Phyllis asked me to have one with her on the way out.”

“Sure. You do that. You have a drink with Phyllis and then run on and do this little job I have in mind.”

Carey found a cigarette and lit it. “What job?” he said.

Campan didn’t answer directly. He sat back and folded his hands across the belly that would someday get sloppy. He watched Carey go through the business with the cigarette, and his pink mouth kept smiling, but his eyes hadn’t even begun. They were more yellow than brown, Carey decided. There seemed to be a light behind them on the inside.

“I got a call from the Swede,” Campan said.

“Yes?”

“I said so. Couple hours ago. He wants to see me.”

“When?”

“Ten, he said. Tonight.”

“Where?”

“You know that little office he keeps down on Twelfth?”

“Sure. Everyone knows it. It’s the one he started in. So he’s superstitious about it. So he keeps it.”

“All right. I know the legend. That’s where. At ten tonight.”

“He told you to come? Like ordering up a bellhop?”

“That’s the way. Real brusque. Docs Campan run when someone calls?”

“Maybe when the Swede calls.”

“No. Yesterday, yes. Today, no. Campan doesn’t run.”

“Who runs? Carey Regan?”

“Campan’s shadow. Campan’s right arm. The guy who goes where Campan goes and shares in Campan’s take. Is that Carey Regan?”

“What does the Swede want?”

“He didn’t say, but it wasn’t necessary. He wants to draw a line. He wants to draw a line right in front of Campan. This far, he wants to say. No farther, Campan. Time’s up, I mean. Tonight at ten, Carey, time’s up.”

“About the line. You going across?”

“Going? I’m already across. I’ve been across for longer than the Swede will ever know. Connections I’ve got. Strategy I’ve got. The Swede goes, Campan’s in his place. Just like that. All at once, Campan’s there. It’ll look real simple, but it hasn’t been. There’s been work. There’s been deals. There’s been waiting.”

“But the Swede’s still there.”

“Until ten. He set the time himself. It’s sad to think of a big guy’s last hours. To think about everything he’s been and done, and all the time it’s taken, and how in a little while it’ll all be gone. Nothing left. Like it never was. It’s sad as hell, Carey. Thinking about something like that could break a guy up. Well, he’s been around a long time. He’s had quite a run, and no reasonable guy can expect to last forever.”

“Will he be alone?”

“As alone as he ever gets.”

“He and Johnny Derry?”

“That’s right. He didn’t say Johnny would be there, but you can count on it. He’s always there. The Swede’s getting old, and there are a lot of guys around who think it would be a good thing if he didn’t get any older. You can always count on Johnny being around.”

“The two of them. The Swede and Johnny.”

“Two. No matter how many times you add it, it comes out two.”

“It’ll be quite a job of work.”

“I like a guy who can do a job of work. A guy like that is a guy Campan likes to do something for.”

“You’ll want a report?”

“Naturally. I’ll sleep better if I have a report.”

“Here?”

He shook his head. “Not here. I’ll be with a few boys at the Line Club. About eleven I’ll slip out to the Caddy in the parking lot in back. You know my slot. Come there.”

“I’ll come. About eleven.”

“You’re a good boy, Carey. You’re Campan’s good boy. You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“I’ll have it with Phyllis, if you don’t mind. She’s prettier.”

Campan was pleased, and he laughed. It pleased him to have people tell him how pretty Phyllis was. She was his property, and it was right that Campan’s property should be a credit to him. It was good that people should envy Campan his property.

“Sure,” he said. “Campan’s good boy and Campan’s pretty wife. Have your drink together.”

“Thanks.”

Carey stood up and went out into the hall and down the hall into the living room again. Phyl had a shaker ready. She poured twice and held out a glass. He went over and took hold of the wrist behind the glass and pulled her to him, and she stood leaning against him with her arms spread and a glass in each hand and her face lifted for his kiss. When the kiss was over, she stepped back with a deep breath that was like a shudder running through her body. She lifted her glass and drained it and turned away to set the empty glass on a table.

“Too bad you’re just a handyman,” she said. “Too bad you’re just big enough for odd times.”

“Sure,” he said. “Too bad. Do I get that other drink?”

She turned back and handed it to him, and he drank it and dropped the glass on the carpet and set his foot on the glass deliberately. She looked down at the foot on the glass and listened to the grating sound of shards being ground into rich wool pile.

“See you later,” he said. “Some other odd time. Right now I’ve got an errand to run. Campan’s good boy with an errand to run.”

He left the apartment and went downstairs to his car in the street.

In the car, he drove to a bar where the name and tastes of Carey Regan were known. Without having to specify it, he got a bourbon on the rocks and sat on a stool in cool shadows and nursed it. There was a baseball game on television, and one team was ahead, but then the other team tied it, and it was the ninth frame, and it looked like extra innings. Which it turned out to be. He nursed the bourbon through inning ten and got a fresh one for inning eleven, and in the top of the eleventh the visitors scored once on a double and a single back to back, but then in the bottom of the eleventh the crumby pitcher walked a pair and threw a gopher ball, so the home team won by two, and everyone lined up at the bar seemed to think it made a pretty exciting and satisfactory game, and anyhow the game and the second bourbon were finished at the same time. Carey got off his stool and went back to his car and drove to his apartment, which was smaller than Campan’s and cheaper than Campan’s and just about right for Campan’s right arm.

In the apartment, he took off his coat, took off his tie, sat in a chair. That’s all he did. Just sat in a chair. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he almost didn’t move. This was a kind of conditioning process and was something he always did when there was a job to do that was a little bigger than the usual jobs. It was peculiar how it worked. He sat there for a long time, for hours maybe, and he didn’t do anything but think of this and that, whatever came into his mind, and all the while the thought of the job was there too, the thought of the job that had to be done, and he could feel the hardness start and spread outward from a tiny core in the center of him, the cold impervious hardness that was like stone and made him a stone man, and when it was time at last to go on the job he was someone who could do this job or any job in the world.

The last part of the afternoon passed, and the time for eating passed without recognition, because there is no hunger in stone, and the first part of the evening passed in turn. He thought about the Swede, the legend of him, how he had started from nothing and grown to something and how he would soon go back to nothing much faster than he had come from it, and he thought of Campan, drop the Joseph, and of what a bad day it had been for the Swede when Mrs. Campan, not Phyl, had gone into confinement with her sixth son, the same Joseph before the drop. From there it was quite natural to pass on to the thought of Mrs. Campan, Phyl, and of numerous odd times that might become steady times it only a man got big enough to drop a name or fill a place someone moved out of. He thought of these things, as well as other lesser things, and lights came up in the streets outside, and time passed, and it got to be nine-thirty.

Getting up from the chair, he put on a shoulder harness and put a silenced .45 in the holster under his left arm and put his coat on over the harness and the holster and the .45. Then he remembered the tie he had taken off and he put that on too, standing in front of the mirror in the bedroom and watching the sure, stone hands fashion the knot and never seeing at all the face above the hands. The knot tied and adjusted, he went downstairs to the street and his car and started for Twelfth and on the way to the narrow street in the shabby section where the Swede had started and would shortly end (cross fingers and never doubt it), he began for the first time to think in detail about the best way to do the job.

They would be in the little office, the Swede and Johnny Derry, and chances were they would be alone, the pair of them, although there was an outside chance they would not, and if they were not it would be just too bad, but this was a chance a right arm had to take on a job like this, and anyhow they would probably be alone, just the pair of them. One way would be to go up and knock and go in when invited, but then they would see that it was not Campan, but Campan’s right arm, and this would certainly make them wary and reduce the chance of success. Another way, the only other way that he could think of, since the window was not accessible, was to go up and knock but not go in when invited, standing instead in the hall and doing the job from there, with only seconds, maybe three, allowed between the time the door was opened and the time the job was finished. It was such a small room that he could easily reach anyone in it who was not right up against the wall the door was in, and this was another chance to be taken. It would be better if he didn’t have to knock at all, if the door were unlocked, but this was not to be anticipated because the Swede was a great one for locking doors as a justified precaution.

He reached Twelfth and drove down it and parked his car a block above the building in which Johnny and the Swede sat waiting for something they didn’t expect. He walked the block in the shadow of buildings and turned into the entrance to the building and climbed narrow stairs to a narrow hall, and the air in the hall was hot and oppressive, and it stank. He walked down to the door to the Swede’s old office and knocked and as he knocked with one hand the .45 was in the other.

Beyond the door. Johnny Derry’s voice said, “Who is it?” and he answered, “Campan,” in Campan’s voice, which was a trick he’d perfected for practical purposes.

The lock clicked, and the door opened, and there was Johnny like a sitting pigeon, acquiring and losing in a terrible instant the knowledge that he had made a mistake that would be his last one. The .45 coughed, and he was pushed back out of the way as if by the breath of it, and beyond him, behind an ancient desk which was another item of sentiment, the Swede moved with a jerk in the desperate exigency, but the Swede was getting old, the Swede was getting slow, and now he was too old and too slow to live, but not to die, and he fell back into the chair and slipped sidewise out of it and was swiftly dead before he reached the floor. Johnny, who had begun dying first, was not yet dead. He lifted his head from the floor and coughed blood and was dead then. Carey put the .45 away and went downstairs and rewalked the block to his waiting car.

It was then ten-o-five. When he reached the parking lot behind the Line Club, it was ten-thirty. About eleven, Campan had said. Carey left his own car by the lot exit and went across to Campan’s reserved slot and got into the front seat of Campan’s Caddy. He lit a cigarette with the dash lighter. A man and a woman came and got into a car and drove out of the lot. He sat and smoked and waited.

It must have been eleven when Campan came. Carey couldn’t see the face of his wrist watch, and the clock on the dash had quit running. Campan opened the door on the left side and slipped in under the wheel. He was smoking a cigar and had been drinking. He was heavy with the smell of rich Havana tobacco and rich Kentucky bourbon.

“How did it go?” he said.

“Fine. Everything went fine.”

Campan laughed. There was no other sound in the lot. There was no one else in the lot to make a sound. Just Campan, drop the Joseph, and Carey, his right arm.

“You’re a good boy, Carey,” Campan said. “Campan won’t forget it.”

“Thanks,” Carey said.

He took the .45 out of its holster and shot Campan twice. Campan’s body struck the door and arched upward in a violent reaction that drove the belly against the wheel, and then it collapsed with a great sigh and the head dropped back against the seat, and it looked for all the world as if Campan were catching forty winks, and that’s exactly what they thought at first when they found him later. Carey got out on his side and went back to his own car and drove to Campan’s apartment.

Phyl opened the door, just as she had opened it earlier, and this had the effect of completing the cycle nicely. She had been drinking alone and listening to tangos, and the last of the drinks was still in her hand, and the last of the tangos was still on the machine. Her eyes flared with pleasure that he had come and fear that he would be caught at it.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “Campan may be here any minute.”

He stepped into the room and closed the door.

“Campan won’t come,” he said.

“How do you know? Have you seen him?”

“I have. He’s dead.”

She stood looking at him, the blood draining from her face and returning slowly in two feverish spots high on the bones of her cheeks. She breathed deeply and very slowly, as if breathing were a great pain to her.

“Dead?” she said, “Campan dead?”

“Campan dead, the Swede dead. The Swede died first and left an empty place, and Campan was going to fill it, but now Campan’s dead too, and that still leaves the empty place for someone to fill. Guess who.”

“You? Carey Regan?”

“Campan said he had connections. He said he had strategy. Work and deals and waiting, he said. Was he the only one? Did he really think he was the only one? Working and dealing and waiting are things that anyone can do, even an odd-times guy, and it was his mistake if he never knew it.”

“Can you do it, Carey? Can you fill the place?”

“I can fill it. It’s fixed. Once it’s fixed, you move hard and fast, and that’s all of it.”

The spots were spreading and brightening in her cheeks. In her eyes was a gathering intensity of light. She seemed to be burning with a fever of excitement that would surely consume her and leave her a cinder.

“Carey,” she said. “Carey.”

He smiled at her thinly.

“Just call me Regan,” he said.

Loose Ends

Originally published in Manhunt, August 1958.

Chapter 1

A woman wanted to see me about a job. Her name, she said, was Faith Salem. She lived, she said, in a certain apartment in a certain apartment building, and she told me the number of the apartment and the floor it was on and the name and the address of the building it was in. She said she wanted me to come there and see her at three o’clock that afternoon, the same day she called on the telephone, and I went and saw her, and it was three o’clock when I got there.

The door was opened by a maid with a face like half a walnut. You may think it’s impossible for a face to look like half a walnut, and I suppose it is, if you want to be literal, but half a walnut is, nevertheless, all I can think of as a comparison when I think of the face of this maid. She wasn’t young, and she probably wasn’t old. She was, as they say, an indeterminate age. Her eyes smiled, but not her lips, and she nodded her head three times as if she had checked me swiftly on three salient points and was satisfied on every one. This gave me confidence.

“I’m Percy Hand,” I said. “I have an appointment with Miss Salem.”

“This way,” she said. Following her out of a vestibule, I waded through a couple acres of thick wood pile in crossing two wide rooms, and then I crossed, in a third room, another acre of black and white tile that made me feel, by contrast, as if I were taking steps a yard high, and finally I got out onto a terrace in the sunlight, and Faith Salem got up off her stomach and faced me. She had been lying on a soft pad covered with bright yellow material that might have been silk or nylon or something, and she was wearing in a couple of places a very little bit of more material that was just as shining and soft and might have been the same kind, except that it was white instead of yellow. Sunbathing was what she was doing, and I was glad. Her skin was firm and golden brown, and it gave the impression of consistency all over, and I was willing to bet that the little bit of white in a couple of places was only a concession to present company. Nine times out of ten, when someone tries to describe a woman who is fairly tall and has a slim and pliant and beautiful body, he will say that she is willowy, and that’s what I say. I say that Faith Salem was willowy. I also say that her hair was almost the identical color of the rest of her, and this seemed somehow too perfect to have been accomplished deliberately by design, but it may have been. You had to look at her face for a long time before you became aware that she was certainly a number of years older than you’d thought at first she was.

“Mr. Hand has arrived, Miss Faith,” the maid said.

“Thank you. Maria,” Faith Salem said.

I stepped twice, and she stepped twice, and we met and shook hands. Her grip was firm. I liked the way her fingers took hold of my fingers and held them and were in no hurry to drop them.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Hand,” she said. “You must excuse me for receiving you this way, but the sun is on this terrace for only a short while each afternoon, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.”

“I’d have been sorry to have missed it myself,” I said.

She smiled gravely, taking my meaning, and then released my fingers and walked over to a yellow chaise lounge on which a white hip-length coat had been left lying. She put on the coat and moved to a wrought iron and glass table where there was a single tall tumbler with alternating red and yellow stripes. The tumbler was empty. Holding it against the light, she stared through it wistfully as if she were regretting its emptiness, and I watched her do this with pleasure and no regrets whatever. There is a kind of legerdemain about a short coat over something shorter. It creates the illusion, even when you have evidence to the contrary, that it’s all there is, there isn’t any more.

“I like you, Mr. Hand,” she said. “I like your looks.”

“Thanks. I like yours too.”

“Would you care for a drink?”

“Why not? It’s a warm day.”

“I had a gin and tonic before you came. Do you drink gin and tonic?”

“When it’s offered. A gin and tonic would be fine.”

She set the red and yellow tumbler on the glass top of the table and turned slightly in the direction of the entrance to the black and white tiled room.

“Gin and tonic, Maria,” she said. I had thought that the indeterminate maid with a face like half a walnut had gone away, and I felt a slight shock of surprise to discover that she had been standing all the while behind me. Now she nodded three times exactly, a repetition of the gesture she had made at the door, and backed away into the apartment and out of sight. Faith Salem sat down in a low wicker chair and crossed her feet at the ankles and stared at her long golden legs. I stared at them too.

“Please sit down, Mr. Hand,” she said. “Maria will bring the gin and tonics in a moment. In the meanwhile, if you like, I can begin explaining why I asked you to come here.”

“I’d appreciate it.” I folded myself into her chair’s mate. “I’ve been wondering, of course.”

“Naturally.” The full lower lip protruded a little, giving to her face a suggestion of darkness and brooding. “Let me begin by asking a question. Do you know Graham Markley?”

“Not personally. Like everyone else who reads the papers, I know something about him. Quondam boy-wonder of finance. No boy any longer. If he’s still a wonder, he doesn’t work at it quite so hard. Works harder nowadays, from reports, at spending some of what he’s made. Unless, of course, there’s another Graham Markley.”

“He’s the one. Graham and I have an understanding.”

There was, before the last word, a barely perceptible hesitation that gave to her statement a subtle and significant shading. She had explained in a breath, or in the briefest holding of a breath, the acres of pile and tile in this lavish stone and steel tower with terraces that caught the afternoon sun for at least a little while. Delicately, she had told me who paid the rent.

“That’s nice,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“It’s entirely informal at present, but it may not remain so. He’s asked me to marry him. Not immediately, which is impossible, but eventually.”

“That’ll be even better. Or will it?”

“It will. A certain amount of security attaches to marriage. There are certain compensations if the marriage fails.” She smiled slowly, the smile beginning and growing and forcing from her face the dark and almost petulant expression of brooding, and in her eyes, which were brown, there was instantly a gleam of cynical good humor which was the effect, as it turned out, of a kind of casual compatibility she had developed with herself. “I haven’t always had the good things that money buys, Mr. Hand, but I’ve learned from experience to live with them naturally. I don’t think I would care now to live with less. With these good things that money buys, I’m perfectly willing to accept my share of the bad things that money seems invariably to entail. Is my position clear?”

“Yes, it is.” I said. “It couldn’t be clearer.”

At that moment, Maria returned with a pair of gin and tonics in red and yellow glasses on a tray. She served one of them to Faith Salem and the other to me, and then she completed the three nods routine and went away again. The three nods, I now realized, was not a gesture of approval but an involuntary reaction to any situation to be handled, as my arrival earlier, or any situation already handled, as the serving of the drinks. I drank some of my tonic and liked it. There was a kind of astringency in the faintly bitter taste of the quinine. There was also, I thought now that it had been suggested to me, a kind of astringency in Faith Salem. A faintly bitter quality. A clean and refreshing tautness in her lean and lovely body and in her uncompromised compatibility with herself.

“Did you know Graham’s wife?” she asked suddenly.

“Which one?” I said.

“The last one. Number three, I think.”

“It doesn’t matter. There was no purpose in my asking for the distinction. I didn’t know number three, or two, or one. Graham Markley’s wives and I didn’t move in the same circles.”

“I thought perhaps you might have met her professionally.”

“As an employer or subject of investigation?”

“Either way.”

“Neither, as a matter of fact. And if I had, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Ethics? I heard that about you. Someone told me you were honorable and discreet. I believe it.”

“Thanks. Also thanks to someone.”

“That’s why I called you. I’m glad now that I did.”

“I know. You like my looks, and I like yours. We admire each other.”

“Are you always so flippant?”

“Scarcely ever. The truth is, I’m very serious, and I take my work seriously. Do you have some work for me to do?”

She swallowed some more of her tonic and held the glass in her lap with both hands. Her expression was again rather darkly brooding, and she seemed for a moment uncertain of herself.

“Perhaps you won’t want the job,” she said.

I nodded. “It’s possible.”

“We’ll see.” She swallowed more of the tonic and looked suddenly more decisive. “Do you remember what happened to Graham’s third wife?”

“I seem to remember that she left him, which wasn’t surprising. So did number one. So did number two. Excuse me if I’m being offensive.”

“Not at all. You’re not required to like Graham. Many people don’t. I confess that there are times when I don’t like him very much myself. I did like his third wife, however. We were in college together, as a matter of fact. We shared an apartment one year. Her name was Constance Vaughan then. I left school that year, the year we shared the apartment, and we never saw each other again.”

“You mean you never knew her as Mrs. Graham Markley?”

“Yes. I didn’t know she’d married. In college she didn’t seem, somehow, like the kind of girl who would ever marry anyone at all, let alone someone like Graham. That was a good many years ago, of course, and people change, I suppose. Anyhow, it was rather odd, wasn’t it? I came here about a year ago from Europe, where I had been living with my second husband, who is not my husband any longer, and I met Graham and after a while entered into our present arrangement, which is comfortable but not altogether satisfactory, and then I learned that he had been married to Constance, whom I had known all that time ago. Don’t you think that was quite odd?”

“It seems to meet the requirements of the term.”

“Yes. The truth is, it made me feel rather strange. Especially when I discovered that she had simply disappeared about a year before.”

“Disappeared?”

“Simply vanished. She hasn’t been seen since by anyone who knew her here. You’ll have to admit that it’s peculiar. Numbers one and two left Graham and divorced him and tapped him for alimony, which he probably deserved, and this was sensible. It was not sensible, however, simply to disappear without a trace and never sue for divorce and alimony, or even separate maintenance. Do you think so?”

“Off hand, I don’t. There may have been good reasons. Surely an attempt was made to locate her.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Her disappearance was reported to the police, and they made an effort to find her, but it was kept pretty quiet, and I don’t think anyone tried very hard. Because of the circumstances, you see.”

“No, I don’t see. What circumstances?”

“Well, Constance had a baby. A little boy that got to be almost two years old and died. Constance loved him intensely. That’s the way she was about anyone or anything she loved. Very intense. It was rather frightening, in a way. Anyhow, when the little boy died, she seemed to be going right out of her mind with grief, and Graham was no consolation or comfort, of course, and then she met Regis Lawler. Psychologically, she was just ready for him, completely vulnerable, and she fell in love with him, and apparently they had an affair. To get to the point about circumstances, Regis Lawler disappeared the same night that Constance did, and that’s why no one got too excited or concerned. It was assumed that they’d gone away together.”

“Don’t you believe that they did?”

“I don’t know. I think I do. What do you think?”

“On the surface, it seems a reasonable assumption, but it leaves a lot of loose ends.”

“That’s it. That’s what disturbs me. Too many loose ends. I don’t like loose ends, Mr. Hand. Will you try to tie them up for me?”

“Find out where Constance Markley went?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You mean you won’t?”

“I mean I probably couldn’t. Look at it this way. The police have far greater facilities for this kind of thing than any private detective, and they’ve tried without success. Or if they did find out where Constance Markley went, it was obviously not police business and was quietly dropped. Either way, I’d be wasting my time and your money to try to find her now.”

“Don’t worry about wasting my money.”

“All right. I’ll just worry about wasting my time.”

“Is it wasted if it’s paid for?”

“That’s a good point. If you want to buy my time for a fee, why should I drag my heels? Maybe I’m too ethical.”

“Does that mean you accept?”

“No. Not yet. Be reasonable, Miss Salem. If Constance Markley and Regis Lawler went off together, they might be anywhere in the country or out of it. The West Coast. South America. Europe. Just about anywhere on earth.”

She finished her tonic, lit a cigarette, and let her head fall slowly against the back of the wicker chair as if she were suddenly very tired. With her eyes closed, the shadows of her lashes on her cheeks, she seemed to be asleep in an instant, except for the thin blue plume of smoke expelled slowly from her lungs. After a few moments, her eyes still closed, she spoke again.

“Why should they do that? Why disappear? Why run away at all? Women are leaving husbands every day. Men are leaving wives. They simply leave. Why didn’t Constance?”

“People do queer things sometimes. Usually there are reasons that seem good to the people. You said Mrs. Markley was an intense sort of person. You said she’d suffered a tragedy that nearly unbalanced her mentally. You implied that she hadn’t been happy with Graham Markley. Maybe she just wanted to go away clean — no connections, no repercussions, nothing at all left of the old life but a man she loved and the few things she’d have to remember because she couldn’t forget.”

“I know. I’ve thought of that, and it’s something that Constance might possibly have done, as I remember her.”

“How do you remember her?”

“Well, as I said, she was intense. She was always excited or depressed, and I could never quite understand what she was excited or depressed about. Ideas that occurred to her or were passed on to her by someone. Impressions and suggestions. Things like that. Little things that would never have influenced most people in the least. She was pretty, in a way, but it took quite a while before you realized it. She had a kind of delicacy or fragility about her, but I don’t believe that she was actually fragile physically. It was just an impression. She didn’t appeal to men, and I never thought that men appealed to her. In the year we lived together, she never went out with a man that I can recall. Her parents had money. That’s why I lived with her. I had practically no money at all then, and she took a fancy to me and wanted to rent an apartment for us, and so she did, and I stayed with her until near the end of the school year. I married a boy who also had money. Never mind me, though. The point is, we went away from school, and I didn’t see Constance again. She was angry with me and refused to say good-by, I’ve always been sorry.”

“How did she happen to meet and marry Graham Markley?”

“I don’t know. Graham is susceptible to variety in women. Probably her particular kind of intangible prettiness, her fragility, something happened to appeal to him at the time they met. I imagine their marriage was one of those sudden, impulsive things that usually should never happen.”

“I see. How did you learn so much about her? Not back there in the beginning. I mean after she married Markley. About her baby, her affair with Lawler, those things.”

“Oh, I picked up bits from various sources, but most of it I learned from Maria. She was maid to Constance, you see, when Constance and Graham were living together. When I came along and moved into this apartment, I sort of acquired her. Graham still had her and didn’t know what to do with her, so he sent her over to me. Isn’t that strange?”

“Convenient, I’d say. Did Maria see Constance Markley the night of her disappearance?”

“Yes. She helped Constance dress. Apparently she was the last person that Constance spoke to.”

“May I speak with her for a moment?”

“If you wish. I’ll get her.”

Chapter 2

She got up and walked barefooted off the terrace into the black and white tiled room, and I drank the last of my gin and tonic and wished for another, and in about three minutes, not longer, she returned with Maria. She sat down again and told Maria that she could also sit down if she pleased, but Maria preferred to stand. Her small brown face was perfectly composed, and expressionless.

“What do you want me to tell you?” she said.

“I want you to answer a few questions about Mrs. Markley,” I said. “Constance Markley, that is. Will you do that?”

“If I can.”

“Miss Salem says that you saw Mrs. Markley the night she disappeared. Is that so?”

“It’s so. I helped her dress for the evening.”

“Did she go out alone?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Do you know where she was going?”

“I assumed that she was going to see Mr. Lawler. She didn’t tell me.”

“Did she go to see Mr. Lawler often?”

“Twice a week, maybe. Sometimes more.”

“How do you know? Did she confide in you?”

“More in me than anyone else. She had to talk to someone.”

“I see. Were you devoted to Mrs. Markley?”

“Yes. She was very kind, very unhappy. I pitied her.”

“Because of the death of her child?”

“Partly because of that. I don’t know. She was not happy.”

“Did you approve of her affair with Mr. Lawler?”

“Not approve, exactly. I understood it. She needed a special kind of love. A kind of attention.”

“Mr. Lawler gave her this?”

“He must have given it to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone on with him. That’s reasonable.”

“Yes, it is. It’s reasonable. And so are you, Maria. You’re a very reasonable woman. Tell me. What was your impression of her the night she disappeared?”

“Pardon?”

“Her emotional state, I mean. Was she depressed? Cheerful?”

“Not depressed. Not cheerful. She was eager. There’s a difference between eagerness and cheerfulness.”

“That’s true. Besides being reasonable, Maria, you are also perceptive. Did she seem excessively agitated in any way?”

“Just eager. She was always eager when she went to see Mr. Lawler.”

“Do you think that Mr. Markley was aware of the relationship between his wife and Lawler?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t show much interest in anything Mrs. Markley did. Not even when the child died.”

“All right. Just one more question. Maria. What time did Mrs. Markley leave here?”

“About eight. Perhaps a few minutes before or after.”

“Thank you, Maria.”

Maria turned her still brown face toward Faith Salem, who smiled and nodded. The maid nodded in return, three times, and went away. Faith Salem stood up abruptly, standing with her legs spread and her hands rammed into the patch pockets of the short white coat.

“Well?” she said.

“It looks hopeless,” I said. “You’d be wasting your money.”

“Perhaps so. If I don’t waste it on you, I’ll waste it on someone else.”

“In that case, it might as well be me.”

“You agree, then? You’ll take the job?”

Looking up at her, I was beginning to feel dominated, which was not good, so I removed the feeling by standing.

“Tentatively,” I said.

“What do you mean, tentatively?”

“I’ll make a preliminary investigation. If anything significant or interesting comes out of it, I’ll go ahead. If not, I’ll quit. You’ll pay my expenses and twenty-five dollars a day. Are those terms acceptable?”

“Yes. I accept.”

“Another thing. I’m to be allowed to talk with whomever I think necessary. Is that also agreed?”

“Yes, of course.” She hesitated, her soft lower lip protruding again in the darkly brooding expression. “You mean Graham, I suppose. I’d prefer, naturally, that he not know whom you’re working for.”

“I won’t tell him unless I think it’s advisable. I promise that much.”

“That’s good enough. I have confidence in your word, Mr. Hand.”

“Ethical. Someone told you, and you believe it, and that’s what I am. I’ll begin my investigation, it you don’t mind, by asking you one more question. What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid? I’m afraid of nothing. I honestly believe that I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life.”

“I’m ready to concede that you probably haven’t. Let me put it differently. What disturbs you about Constance Markley’s disappearance?”

“I’ve explained that. I don’t like loose ends. Graham has asked me to marry him. For my own reasons, I want to accept. First, however, he has to get a divorce. He can get it, I suppose, on grounds of desertion. I only want to know that it really was desertion.”

“That’s not quite convincing. What alternative to desertion, specifically, do you have in mind?”

“You said you would ask one more question, Mr. Hand. You’ve asked two.”

“Excuse me. You can see how dedicated I become to my work.”

“I should appreciate that, of course, and I do. I honestly have no specific alternative in mind. I just don’t like the situation as it stands. There’s another thing, however. I knew Constance, and I liked her, and now by an exceptional turn of events I’m in the position of appropriating something that was hers. I want to know that it’s all right. I want to know where she went, and why she went wherever she did, and that everything is all right there and will be all right here, whatever happens.”

I believed her. I believed everything she told me. She was a woman I could not doubt or condemn or even criticize. If I had been as rich as Graham Markley, I’d have taken her away, later if not then, and I’d have kept her, and there would have been between us, in the end, more than the money which would have been essential in the beginning.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Do you have a photograph of Constance Markley that I can take along?”

“Yes. There’s one here that Maria brought. I’ll get it for you.”

She went inside and was gone for a few minutes and came back with the photograph. I took it from her and put it into the side pocket of my coat without looking at it. There would be plenty of time later to look at it, and now, in the last seconds of our first meeting, I wanted to look at Faith Salem.

“Goodbye,” I said. “I’ll see you again in a few days and let you know if I intend to go ahead.”

“Call before you come,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Certainly.”

“I’ll see you to the door.”

“No. Don’t bother. You’d better stay here in the sun. In another half hour, it’ll be gone.”

“Yes. So it will.” She looked up at the white disk in the sky beyond a ridge of tooled stone. “Goodbye, then. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

She offered me her hand, and I took it and held it and released it. In the middle of the black and white acre, I paused and looked back. She had already removed the short white coat and was lying on her stomach on the yellow pad. Her face was buried in the crook of an elbow.

I went on out and back to my office and put my feet on the desk and thought about her lying there in the sun. There was no sun in my office. In front of me was a blank wall, and behind me was a narrow window, and outside the narrow window was a narrow alley. Whenever I got tired of looking at the wall I could get up and stand by the window and look down into the alley, and whenever I got tired of looking into the alley I could sit down and look at the wall again, and whenever I got tired of looking at both the wall and the alley, which was frequently, I could go out somewhere and look at something else. Now I simply closed my eyes and saw clearly behind the lids a lean brown body interrupted in two places by the briefest of white hiatuses.

This was pleasant but not of the first importance. It was more important, though less pleasant, to think about Graham Markley. Conceding the priority of importance, I began reluctantly to think about him, and after a few minutes of reluctant thinking, I lowered my feet and reached for a telephone directory. After locating his name and number, I dialed the number and waited through a couple of rings, and then a voice came on that made me feel with its first careful syllable as if I’d neglected recently to bathe and clean my fingernails.

“Graham Markley’s residence,” the voice said.

“This is Percival Hand,” I said. “I’m a private detective. I’d like to speak with Mr. Markley.” Ordinarily I use the abbreviated version of my name, just plain Percy, but I felt compelled by the voice to be as proper and impressive as possible. As it was, in the exorbitantly long pause that followed, I felt as if I had been unpardonably offensive.

“If you will just hold the wire,” the voice said at last, “I shall see if Mr. Markley is at home.” Which meant, of course, that Mr. Markley was certainly at home, but that it remained to be seen if he would be so irresponsible as to talk with a private detective on the telephone, which was surely unlikely. I held the wire and waited. I inspected my nails and found them clean. I tried to smell myself and couldn’t. Another voice came on abruptly, and it was, as it developed, the voice of Graham Markley.

“Graham Markley speaking. What can I do for you, Mr. Hand?”

“I’d like to make an appointment to see you personally, if possible.”

“About what?”

I had already considered the relative advantages in this particular instance of candor and deception, and I had decided that there was probably little or nothing to choose between them. In cases where deception gains me nothing, I’m always prepared to be candid, and that’s what I was now.

“About your wife. Your third wife, that is.”

“I can’t imagine why my wife should be a point of discussion between you and me, Mr. Hand.”

“I thought you might be able to give me some useful information.” There was a moment of waiting. The wire sang softly in the interim.

“For what purpose?” he said. “Am I to understand that you’re investigating my wife’s disappearance?”

“That’s right.”

“At whose request?”

“I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.”

“Come, Mr. Hand. If you expect any cooperation from me, you’ll have to be less reticent.”

“I haven’t received any cooperation from you yet, Mr. Markley.”

“It was reasonably apparent to everyone, including the police and myself, why my wife went away. I confess that I can’t see any use in stirring up an unpleasant matter that I had hoped was forgotten. Do you know anything that would justify it?”

Again I evaluated the advantages of candor and deception, and this time I chose deception. The advantages in its favor seemed so palpable, as a matter of fact, that the evaluation required no more than a second.

“I’ve learned something,” I lied, “that I think will interest you.”

“Perhaps you had better tell me what it is.”

“Sorry. I’d rather not discuss it over the telephone.”

“I can’t see you today. It’s impossible.”

“Tomorrow will do. If you’ll set a time, I’ll be happy to call on you.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll come to your office.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Thank you for your consideration. However, I prefer to see you in your office. How about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

“Good. I’ll be expecting you.”

I told him where my office was, and we said good-by and hung up. Hocking back in my chair, I elevated my feet again and closed my eyes. Faith Salem was still lying in the sun. I watched her for a few moments and then opened my eyes and lit a cigarette and began thinking about Regis Lawler. I didn’t accomplish much by this, for I didn’t have much material for thought to start with. I had met him casually a few times quite a while ago, in this or that place we had both gone to, but most of what I knew about him was incidental to what I knew about his brother, who was older and generally more important and had more about him worth knowing.

The brother’s name was Silas. After long and precarious apprentice years in a number of illegal operations, he had begun slowly to achieve a kind of acceptance, even respectability, that increased in ratio to the measure of his security. Now he was the owner of a fine restaurant. At least, it was a restaurant among other things, and it was that equally, if not primarily. When you went there, it was assumed that you had come for good food, and that’s what you got. You got it in rich and quiet surroundings to the music of a string quartet that sometimes played Beethoven as well as Fritz Kreisler and Johann Strauss. The chefs were the best that Lawler could hire, and the best that Lawler could hire were as good as any and better than most. On the correct principle that good food should tolerate no distractions, the service was performed by elderly colored waiters who were artists in the difficult technique of being solicitous without being obtrusive.

If you wanted distractions, you went downstairs, below street level. This was known as the Apache Room, a little bit of the Left Bank transplanted, and it was phony and made no pretense of being anything else, and it was frankly for people who liked it that way. There were red-checked cloths on the tables, pretty girls with pretty legs who serviced the tables, a small orchestra with the peculiar quality that is supposed to be peculiarly Parisian, and murals all around the wails of girls in black stockings doing the can-can alternating with other murals of other girls being maltreated by Apaches and always showing quite a lot of one white thigh above a fancy garter in the deep slit of a tight skirt.

On the floor above the restaurant, up one flight of carpeted stairs, you could go to gamble if you chose. In a series of three large rooms muffled in drapes and carpets, you could play roulette or poker or blackjack or shoot dice, and sometimes you might even win at one or the other or all, but more often, of course, you lost and were expected to lose graciously. If you did not, as sometimes happened, you were escorted outside by a brace of hard-handed gentlemen in evening clothes, and you were thereafter persona non grata until you received absolution and clearance from Silas Lawler himself. The games were reputed to be honest, and, all things considered, they probably were.

In the basement, you could dance and make moderate love and get drunk, if you wished, on expensive drinks. In the restaurant, you did not get drunk or dance or make love or look at naughty murals. In the game rooms, you gambled quietly with no limit except your own judgment and bank account, and you saved everything else for some other place and some other time. Patrons passed as they pleased from one level to another, but the atmosphere was never permitted to go with them. The basement never climbed the stairs, nor did the upper floors descend.

Silas Lawler was, in brief, not a man to be taken lightly, or a man who would take lightly any transgression against himself or his interests. It was, I reflected, wholly incredible that he would be indifferent to the disappearance of a brother. Whatever the reason for the disappearance, whatever the technique of its execution, Silas Lawler knew it, or thought he knew it, and he might be prevailed upon to tell me in confidence, or he might not, but in any event it would be necessary for me to talk with him as soon as I could, which would probably be tomorrow. I would see Graham Markley at two, and later I would try to see Silas Lawler, and if nothing significant came of these two meetings I would go again to see Faith Salem, which would be a pleasure, and terminate our relationship, which would not.

Having thought my way back to Faith Salem, I closed my eyes and tried to find her, but the sun had left the terrace, and so had she. Opening my eyes, I lowered my feet and stood up. I had determined an agenda of sorts, and now there seemed to be nothing of importance left to do on this particular day. Besides, it was getting rather late, and I was getting rather hungry, and so I went out and patronized a steak house and afterward spent one-third of the night doing things that were not important and not related to anything that had gone before. About ten o’clock I returned to the room and bath and hot plate that I euphemistically called home. I went to bed and slept well.

Chapter 3

I woke up at seven in the morning, which is a nasty habit of mine that endures through indiscretions and hangovers and intermittent periods of irregular living. In the bathroom, I shaved and necessarily looked at my face in the mirror. I like you, Mr. Hand, Faith Salem had said. I like your looks. Well, it was an ambiguous expression. You could like the looks of a Collie dog or a pair of shoes or a Shoebill stork. It could mean that you were inspired by confidence or amusement or the urge to be a sister. Looking at my face, I was not deluded. I decided that I was probably somewhere between the dog and the stork. I finished shaving and dressed and went out for breakfast and arrived in due time at my office, where nothing happened all morning.

Two o’clock came, but Graham Markley didn’t. At ten after, he did.

I heard him enter the little cubbyhole in which my clients wait when there is another client ahead of them, which is something that should happen oftener than it does, and when I got to the door to meet him, he was standing there looking antiseptic among the germs. His expression included me with the others.

“Mr. Hand?” he said.

“That’s right. You’re Mr. Markley, I suppose?”

“Yes. I’m sorry to be late.”

“Think nothing of it. In this office, ten minutes late is early. Come in, please.”

He walked past me and sat down in the client’s chair beside the desk. Because I felt he would consider it an imposition, I didn’t offer to shake hands. I felt that he might even ignore or reject the offer, which would have made me indignant or even indiscreet. Resuming my place in the chair behind the desk, I made a quick inventory and acquired an impression. He sat rigidly, with his knees together and his hat on his knees. His straight black hair was receding but still had a majority present. His face was narrow, his nose was long, his lips were thin. Arrogance was implicit. He looked something like the guy who used to play Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Maybe he looked like Sherlock Holmes.

“Precisely what do you want to tell me, Mr. Hand?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “that isn’t quite my position. What I want is for you to tell me something.”

“Indeed? I gathered from our conversation on the telephone yesterday that you were in possession of some new information regarding my wife.”

“Did I infer that? It isn’t exactly true. What I meant to suggest was that the available information isn’t adequate. It leaves too much unexplained.”

“Do you think so? The police apparently didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was quite clear to everyone what my wife had done. It was, as you may realize, an embarrassing affair for me, and there seemed to be no good purpose in giving it undue publicity or in pursuing it indefinitely.”

“Do you still feel that way? That there is no purpose in pursuing it any further?”

“Until yesterday I did. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t wish to interfere with whatever kind of life my wife is trying to establish for herself, nor do I wish to restore any kind of contact between her and me, but since our telephone conversation I’ve begun to feel that it would be better for several reasons if she could be located.”

“Are you prepared to help?”

“Conditionally.”

“What conditions?”

“Are you, for your part, prepared to tell me who initiated this investigation?”

“What action would you consider taking if I were to tell you?”

“None. The truth is, I’m certain that I know. I merely want to verify it.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Miss Salem? I thought so. Well, it’s understandable. Under the circumstances of our relationship, she’s naturally concerned. She urged me once previously to try again to locate my wife, but I wasn’t inclined to reopen what was, as I said, an unpleasant and embarrassing affair. Apparently I underestimated the strength of her feeling.”

“You don’t resent her action, then?”

“Certainly not. I’m particularly anxious to settle any uneasiness she may feel. I’m even willing to assume the payment of your fee.”

“That’s between you and her, of course. Will you tell me why you think your wife disappeared?”

“As to why she disappeared, I can only speculate. As to why she left, which is something else, I’m certain. She was having an affair with a man named Regis Lawler. They went away together. The relationship between my wife and me had deteriorated by that time to such an extent that I really didn’t care. I considered it a satisfactory solution to our problem.”

“Satisfactory? You said painful and embarrassing.”

“Painful and embarrassing because it was humiliating. Any husband whose wife runs away with another man looks rather ridiculous. I mean that I had no sense of loss.”

“I see. Did she give you any idea that she was leaving before she went?”

“None. We didn’t see each other often the last few months we lived together. When we did see each other, we found very little to say.”

“You said you could only speculate as to why she disappeared instead of leaving openly. I’d like to hear your speculation.”

“You would need to have known her before you could understand. She was, to put it kindly, rather unstable. Less kindly, she was neurotic. She may have been almost psychotic at times. I don’t know. I don’t understand the subtle distinctions between these things. Anyhow, she had had a bad time when our child died. At first, after the initial shock, she became withdrawn and depressed, totally uninterested in living. Later there was a reaction. A kind of hysterical appetite for activity and experiences. It was then that she met Regis Lawler. It’s my opinion that she disappeared because she wanted to cut herself off completely from the life that had included our marriage and the death of our child. It’s difficult to believe, I know.”

“I wouldn’t say so. Not so difficult. I’ve already considered that motivation, as a matter of fact. It seems to fit in with the little I know about her. There’s another point, however, chat bothers me. Was Regis Lawler the kind of man to fall in with such a scheme?

“I can’t answer that. If he was devoted to her, it’s fair to assume that he would do as she wished, especially if she convinced him that it was something she desperately needed.”

“Possibly. I didn’t know Lawler well enough to have an idea. Miss Salem said that Mrs. Markley’s family had quite a lot of money. Did Mrs. Markley herself have any?”

“No. Her mother and father were both dead when we married. If they had money at one time, which I believe was so, it had been dissipated. The estate, I understand, did little more than pay the claims against it.”

“Then your wife had no personal financial matters to settle before she left?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Was Regis Lawler a wealthy man?”

“I have no idea. His brother apparently is.”

“Well, you can see what I’m getting at. It would not be a simple matter for a man of wealth to disappear. It would certainly entail the liquidation of assets — securities, property, things like that. He’d have to convert his wealth to negotiable paper that he could carry with him. If he wanted to assure his not being traced through them, he’d have to convert to cash. Do you know if Regis Lawler did any such thing?”

“No. But the police surely made such an obvious investigation. Since it was not an issue, it follows that Lawler did do something of the sort, that he had no holdings to convert.”

“Right. If Lawler had left much behind, the police wouldn’t have quit investigating. They’d have smelled more than a love affair. As you say, he either converted or had nothing to convert. At any rate, he must have had considerable cash in hand. Running away with a woman, I mean, wouldn’t be any two-dollar tour. Unless he had a job arranged somewhere, an assured income, he must have been, putting it mildly, damn well heeled.”

“Oh, I think it’s safe to assume that he had at least enough cash to last a while. I can’t imagine that. Regis Lawler was a pauper.”

His tone implied that no one but a simpleton, specifically me, would waste time speculating about it. I was beginning to think he was right. That was okay, though. I had been convinced from the beginning that I was wasting my time on the whole case. That was okay too, since I was doing it for a fee.

“How long ago was it that Mrs. Markley left?” I said.

“Two years ago next month.”

“Did she take anything with her? Any clothes, for example? I know from talking with her maid that she took nothing when she left home that night, but I’m thinking she might have taken or sent luggage ahead to be picked up later. She’d have done something like that, I imagine, if she was being secretive.”

“No doubt. On the other hand, if you accept the theory that she intended to make a complete break, she might not have wanted to keep any of her old possessions, not even her clothes. I don’t find this incredible in her case. Anyhow, I honestly don’t know if she took anything. She had closets full of clothes, of course. If anything was missing, I wouldn’t know.”

“How about the maid?”

“She thought that nothing was missing, but she wasn’t positive.” He looked at his wrist watch and stood up abruptly, his knees still together as they had been all the time he was sitting, and he had, looking down at me, a kind of stiff, military bearing and collateral arrogance. “I’m sorry to end this interview, Mr. Hand, but I have another appointment. You’ll have to excuse me.”

“Certainly,” I said. “I was running out of questions, anyhow. Thanks very much for coming in.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful.”

“You never know. It doesn’t sound like much now, but it may mean something later.”

I walked around the desk and with him to the door. I didn’t offer to shake hands, and nether did he.

“Please inform Miss Salem or me of any progress,” he said.

“I’m not optimistic,” I said.

The door closed between us, and I went back and sat down. As far as I was concerned, I was still wasting time.

Chapter 4

From street level I went up two shallow steps into a spacious hall. The floor was carpeted. The walls were paneled with dark and lustrous walnut. At the far end of the hall, a broad sweep of stairs ascended. To my right as I entered was the dining room. The floor was carpeted in there also, and the walls were also walnut paneled. Tables were covered with snowy cloths and set with shining silver. A few early diners were dining. The string quartet was playing something softly that I remembered by sound and remembered after a moment by name. Stars in My Eyes. By Fritz Kreisler. A very pretty tune.

I looked right. A cocktail lounge was over that way, beyond a wide entrance and down a step. A number of people were drinking cocktails. There was no music. I recognized a martini, which was all right, a Manhattan, which was better, and an Alexander, which you can have. Everything was very elegant, very sedate. Maybe someone saw me, maybe not. No one spoke to me or tried to stop me. I walked down the hall and up the stairs.

The carpet went up with me, but the walnut stayed below. The hall upstairs ran a gauntlet of closed doors recessed in plaster. It was nice plaster, though, rough textured and painted a soft shade of brown. Cinnamon or Nutmeg or one of the names that brown acquires when it becomes a decorator color. It was too early for the games, and the rooms behind the doors were quiet. All, that is, except the last room behind the last door, which was the private room of Silas Lawler. Someone in there was playing a piano. A Chopin waltz was being played. I thought at first it was a recording, but then I decided it wasn’t. It was good, but not good enough.

I opened the door softly and stepped inside and closed the door behind me. It was Silas Lawler himself at the piano. He turned his face toward me, but his eyes had the kind of blind glaze that the eyes of a man may have when he is listening to good music or looking at his mistress or thinking of something a long way off. A pretty girl was sitting in a deep chair on the back of her neck. She had short black hair and smoky eyes and a small red petulant mouth. She was facing the door and me directly, and her eyes moved over me lazily without interest. Otherwise, she did not move in the slightest, and she did not speak.

Lawler finished the Chopin waltz, and the girl said, “That was nice, Lover.” She moved nothing but her lips, in shaping the words, and her eyes, which she rolled toward him in her head. She didn’t sound as if she meant what she said, and Lawler didn’t look as if he believed her. He didn’t even look as if he heard her. He was still staring at me, and the glaze was dissolving in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Percy Hand,” I said. “We’ve met.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I remember you. Don’t you believe in knocking?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt the music. I like Chopin.”

“Do you? It’s better when it’s played right.”

“You play it fine. I thought at first it was Brailowsky.”

“If you thought it was Brailowsky, you’ve never heard him.”

“I’ve heard him, all right. I went to a concert once. I got a couple records.”

“In that case, you’ve got no ear for music. Brailowsky and I don’t sound alike.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it was just the shock of hearing you play at all. I never figured Silas Lawler for a pianist.”

“I was a deprived kid. I had secret hungers. I made some money and took lessons.”

“So was I. So had I. I didn’t.”

“Make money or take lessons?”

“Both.”

“You can see he’s poor,” the girl said. “He wears ready-made suits.”

“Botany 500,” I said. “Sixty-five bucks.”

Lawler looked at her levelly across the grand. I could have sworn that there was an expression of distaste on his face. The deprived kid business was on the level, I thought. He remembered the time. He didn’t like people who made cracks about the poor.

“This is Robin Robbins,” he said carefully. “She’s pretty, but she’s got no manners. That isn’t her real name, by the way. She didn’t think the one she had was good enough. The man you’re trying to insult, honey, is Percy Hand, a fairly good private detective.”

“He looks like Jack Palance,” she said.

“Jack Palance is ugly,” I said, “God, he’s ugly.”

“So are you,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“In a nice way,” she said. “Jack Palance is ugly in a nice way, and so are you. I don’t really care if you’re poor.”

“Just as long as you’re good in bed,” Lawler said. “Come over here.”

I walked over and stood beside the piano. Now I could see the girl only by looking over my shoulder. Instead, I looked down at Lawler. His face was clean shaven and square. He was neither tall nor fat, but he must have weighed two hundred. His hands rested quietly on the piano keys. They looked like chunks of stone.

“Here I am,” I said. “Why?”

“I want to be able to reach you in case you haven’t got a good reason for busting in here.”

“I’ve got a reason. You tell me if it’s good.”

“I’ll let you know. One way or another.”

“I want to talk about a couple people you know. Or knew. Your brother and Constance Markley.” He didn’t budge. His face stayed still, his body stayed still, the hands on the keys stayed still as stone. “It’s lousy. I’d be bored to death.”

“Is that so? I’m beginning to get real interested in them.”

“That’s your mistake. While we’re on mistakes, I’ll point out another. He isn’t my brother. Not even step-brother. Foster brother.”

“That makes it less intimate, I admit. Not quite impersonal, though. Wouldn’t you like to know where he is? How he is? Or maybe you already know.”

“I don’t. I don’t want to.”

“Well, I never heard the like. A man’s wife disappears. He doesn’t care. A man’s foster brother disappears. He doesn’t care. The indifference fascinates me.”

“Let me figure this.” His right hand suddenly struck a bass chord and dropped off the keys into his lap. The sound waves lingered, faded, died. “I’ve got a sluggish mind, and I think slow. Regis and Constance ran away. You’re a private detective. Could it be you’re trying to make yourself a case?”

“I’m not making any case. The case is made. I’m just working on it.”

“Take my advice. Don’t. Drop it. Forget it. It isn’t worth your time.”

“My time’s worth twenty-five dollars a day and expenses. That’s what I’m getting paid.”

“Who’s paying?”

“Sorry. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“It’s not enough.”

“I get by on it.”

“Not enough to pay a hospital bill, I mean. Or the price of a funeral, even.”

The girl stood up suddenly and stretched. She made a soft mewing sound, like a cat. I turned my head and watched her over my shoulder. Her breasts thrust out against her dress, her spread thighs strained against her tight skirt.

“I think I’ll go away somewhere,” she said. “I abhor violence.”

“You do that, honey,” Silas Lawler said.

She walked across to the door, and she walked pretty well. She had nice legs that moved nicely. You could follow the lines of her behind in the tight skirt. I’d have been more impressed if I hadn’t seen Faith Salem lying in the sun. At the door, before going out, she paused and looked back at me and grinned.

“You couldn’t hurt his face much,” she said. “You could change it, but you couldn’t hurt it.”

She was gone, and I said, “Lovely thing. Is it yours?”

“Now and then.” He shrugged. “If you’re interested, I won’t be offended.”

“I’m not. Besides, I’m too ugly. Were you threatening me a moment ago?”

“About the hospital, yes. About the funeral, no. It wouldn’t be necessary.”

“You never can tell. I get tired of living sometimes.”

“You’d get tireder of being dead.”

“That could be. The way I hear it explained, it sounds pretty dull.”

“You’re a pretty sharp guy, Hand. You’ve got a nose for what’s phony. I’m surprised a guy like you wouldn’t smell a phony case.”

“I won’t say I haven’t. I’m open to conviction.”

“All right. Regis and Constance had a real fire going. It didn’t develop, it was just there in both of them at first sight. First sight was right here. Downstairs in the lounge. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. Regis was there, and Constance was there, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone and everything. They got in bed, and whatever they had survived. They ran away together, that’s all. Why don’t you leave it alone?”

“You make it sound so simple. I can’t help thinking, though, that running away’s one thing, disappearing’s another. You see the difference? There is one you know.”

“I see. It wouldn’t seem so strange if you’d known the woman. Constance, I mean. She’d had a bad time. She was sad, lost, looking for a way to somewhere. You get me? She was a real lady, but she had queer ideas. When she left, she wanted to leave it all, including herself. It’s pathetic when you stop to think about it.”

“I get the same picture everywhere. The same idea. I’m beginning to believe it. I’m skeptical about Regis, though. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“He wasn’t. Not before he met Constance. Before he met her, he was a charming, no-good bastard, but then he met her, and he changed. Queer. You wouldn’t have thought she’d have appealed to him, but she did. He’d have done anything she wanted. Very queer.”

“Yeah. Queer and corny.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking so. You’d have to see it to believe it.”

“Did Regis have an interest in this restaurant?”

“Regis didn’t have a pot. Just what I gave him. Spending money.”

“What did they use for cash when they left? What are they using now? And don’t feed me any more corn. You don’t live on love. Some people get a job and live in a cottage, but not Regis and Constance. Everything they were and did is against it.”

The fingers of his left hand moved up the keys. It was remarkable how lightly that chunk of rock moved. The thin sounds of the short scale lasted no longer than a few seconds. The left hand joined the right in his lap.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I don’t know why. What I ought to do is throw you out of here. Anyhow, Regis had cash. Enough for a lifetime in the right place. See that picture over there? It’s a copy of a Rembrandt. Behind it there’s a safe. Regis knew the combination. The night he went away, I had seventy-five grand in it. Regis took it.”

“That’s a lot of cash to have in a safe behind a picture.”

“I had it for a purpose. Never mind what.”

“You let him get away with it? You didn’t try to recover it?”

“No. To tell the truth, I was relieved. I always felt an obligation toward him because of the woman whose lousy kid he was. Now the obligation is wiped out. We’re quits.” He lifted both hands and replaced them gently on the keys of the piano. There was not the slightest sound from the wires inside. “Besides, I figured it was partly for her. For Constance. I liked her. I hope she’s happier than she ever was.”

I started to refer again to corn, but I thought better of it. Then I thought that it would probably be a good time to leave, and I turned and went as far as the door. “Hand,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Forget it. Drop it. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

I opened the door and went out. After three steps in the hall, I heard the piano. What I heard from it was something else by Chopin.

Chapter 5

On the way in, no one had spoken to me. On the way out, someone did. The lower hall was the place, and Robin Robbins was the person. She was standing in the entrance to the cocktail lounge, at the edge of the shallow step, and although she was standing erect, like a lady, she somehow gave the impression of leaning indolently against an immaterial lamppost. Her voice was lazy, threaded with a kind of insolent amusement. “Buy me a drink?” she said.

“I’m too poor,” I said.

“Tough. Let me buy you one.”

“I’m too proud.”

“Poor and proud. My God, it sounds like something by Horatio Alger.”

“Junior.”

“What?”

“Horatio Alger, Junior. You forgot the junior.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t forget him altogether. What do you say we start trying?”

“I’m surprised you know anything about him to start trying to forget. He was a long time ago, honey. Were kids still reading him when you were a kid?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was never a kid. I was born old and just got older.”

“Like me. That gives us something in common, I guess. Maybe we ought to have that drink together after all. I’ll buy.”

“No. I’ve got a better idea for a poor, proud man. In my apartment there’s a bottle of scotch left over from another time. Someone gave it to me. We could go there and drink out of it for free.”

“I don’t care for scotch. It tastes like medicine.”

“There’s a bottle of bourbon there too. In case you don’t care for bourbon, there’s rye.”

“No brandy? No champagne?”

“Anything you want.”

“That’s quite a selection to be left over from other times. Was it all given to you?”

“Why not? People are always giving me something. They seem to enjoy it.”

“Thanks for offering to share the wealth. However, I don’t think so. Some other time, maybe.”

She opened a small purse she was holding in her hands and extracted a cigarette. I went closer and supplied a light. She inhaled and exhaled and stared into the smoke with her smoky eyes. Her breath coming out with the smoke made a soft, sighing sound.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve got something I thought you might be interested in.”

“You’ve got plenty I might be interested in, honey.”

She dragged again and sighed again. The smoke thinned and hung in a pale blue haze between us. In her eyes was a suggestion of something new. Something less than insolence, a little more than amusement. Her lush little mouth curved amiably.

“That’s not quite what I meant, but it’s something to consider. What I meant was something I can tell you.”

“Information? Is it free like the scotch and the bourbon and the rye? Don’t forget I’m a guy who wears ready-made suits.”

“I remember. Poor and proud and probably honest. Right out of H. Alger, Junior. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s free like the scotch and the bourbon and the rye.”

“Everything free. No price on anything. I hope you won’t be offended, honey, but somehow I got an idea it’s out of character.”

“All right. Forget it. You were asking questions about a couple of people, and I thought you were, interested. My mistake, Horatio.” Her mouth curved now in the opposite direction from amiability. What had been in her eyes was gone, and what replaced it was contempt. I thought in the instant before she turned away that she was going to spit on the floor. Before she could descend the step and walk away nicely on her nice legs with the neat movement of her neat behind, I took a step and put a hand on her arm, and we stood posed that way for a second or two or longer, she arrested and I arresting, and then she turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder.

“Yes?” she said.

“Make mine bourbon,” I said.

We went the rest of the way down the hall together and down the two steps and outside. Beside the building was a paved parking lot reserved for patrons, and I had left my car there, although I was not properly a patron. We walked around and got into the car and drove in it to her apartment, which was in a nice building on a good street. It was on the fifth floor, which we reached by elevator, and it didn’t have any terrace that got the sun in the afternoon, or any terrace at all, or any of many features that the apartment of Faith Salem had, including several acres, but it was a nice enough apartment just the same, a far better apartment than any I had ever lived in or probably ever would. Besides, it was certainly something that someone had just wanted to give her. For a consideration, of course. An exchange, in a way, of commodities.

“Fix a bourbon for yourself,” she said. “For me too, in water. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She went out of the room and was gone about five times as long as the minute. In the meanwhile, I found ingredients and mixed two bourbon highballs and had them ready when she returned. She looked just the same as she’d looked when she’d gone, which was good enough to be disturbing.

“I lose,” I said.

“Some people always do,” she said. “Lose what, exactly?”

“A bet. With myself. I bet you’d gone to get into something more comfortable.”

“Why should I? What I’m wearing is comfortable enough. There’s practically nothing to it.”

I was facing her with a full glass in each hand. She approached me casually, as if she were going to ask for a light or brush a crumb off my tie. She kept right on walking, right into me, and put her arms around my neck and her mouth on my mouth, and I stood there with my arms projecting beyond her on both sides, the damn glasses in my hands, and we remained static and breathless in this position for quite a long time. Finally she stepped back and helped herself to the glass in one of my hands. She took a drink and tilted her head and subjected me and my effect to a smoldering appraisal.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss a man as ugly as you,” she said. “It wasn’t bad.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve had worse myself, but under better conditions.”

“I’m wondering if it’s good enough to develop. I think it might be.”

“You go on wondering about it and let me know.”

“I’ll do that.”

She moved over to a chair and lowered herself onto her neat behind and crossed her nice legs. From where I found a chair and sat, across from her, I could see quite a lot of the legs. She didn’t mind, and neither did I.

“If you decide to develop it,” I said, “won’t Silas Lawler object?”

She swallowed some more of her highball and looked into what was left. Her soft and succulent little mouth assumed lax and ugly lines.

“To hell with Silas Lawler,” she said.

“Don’t kid me,” I said. “I know he pays the bills.”

“So he pays the bills. There’s one bill he may owe that he hasn’t paid. If he owes it, I want him to pay in full.”

“For what?”

“For the murder of Regis Lawler.”

She continued to look into her glass. From her expression, she must have seen something offensive on the bottom. I looked into mine and saw nothing but good whisky and pure water. I drained it.

“Maybe you don’t know what you said,” I said.

“I know what I said. I said he may owe it. I’d like to know.”

“And I’d like to know what makes you think he may.”

“Start with that fairy tale about Regis and Constance Markley running off together. Just disappearing completely so they could have a beautiful new life together. Do you believe it?”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t disbelieve it. I’ve got an open mind.”

“Brother, if you’d known Regis Lawler as well as I did, you’d know the whole idea is phony. He just wasn’t the type.”

“I’ve heard that. I’ve also heard that he was in love with Constance. It’s been suggested that he might have done for her what he wouldn’t have done for anyone else.”

“That’s another phony bit. His being in love with Constance, I mean. He wasn’t.”

“No? This is a new angle. Convince me.”

“Maybe I can’t. I don’t have any letters or tapes or photographs. Neither does anyone else, thank God. I could give you some interesting clinical descriptions, but I won’t. Basically I’m a modest girl. I like my privacy.”

“I think I get you, but I’m not sure. Are you telling me more or less delicately that Regis had love enough for two?”

“Two? Is that all the higher you can count? Anyhow, what’s love? All I know is, we went through the motions of what passes for love in my crowd, and he seemed to enjoy it. Whatever you call it, he felt more of it for me than he felt for anyone else, including Constance, and I guess you couldn’t have expected more than that from Regis.” Her little mouth had for a moment a bitter twist. The bitterness tainted the sound of her words. She did not have the look and sound of a woman who had been rejected. She had the look and sound of a woman who had been accepted with qualifications and used without them. Most of all, a woman who had understood the qualifications from the beginning and had accepted them and submitted to them.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I always have trouble understanding anything when it gets the least complicated. You were having Regis on the side of Silas, and Regis was having you on the side of Constance. Not that I want to make you sound like a chaser or a dish of buttered peas. Is that right?”

“Damn it, that’s what I said.”

“And Silas killed Regis in anger because he found out about it. Is that what you mean?”

“It’s a solid thought. I like it better than the fairy tale.”

“I’m not sure that I share your preference. I don’t want to hurt you, honey, but I doubt like hell that Silas considers you worth killing for. He just gave me permission to try my luck if the notion struck me, but maybe he didn’t really mean it. Anyhow, you’ll have to admit that it doesn’t sound like a case of homicidal jealousy.”

“Who mentioned jealousy?” She shrugged angrily, a small gesture of dismissal. “He’s proud. He’s vain and sensitive. He’s made a hell of a lot out of nothing at all, but he can’t forget that he only went to the fourth grade and got where he is by doing things proper people don’t do. He still feels secretly inferior and insecure, and he always will. The one thing he can’t stand is the slightest suggestion of contempt. He’d kill anyone for that. Can you think of anything more contemptuous than taking another man’s wife or mistress?”

I thought of seventy-five grand. It seemed to me that helping yourself to that much lettuce was a contemptuous act too, and I thought about discussing it as a motive for murder, but I couldn’t see that it would get me anywhere in present circumstances, and so I decided against it.

“So he killed Regis,” I said. “That was a couple of years ago. And ever since he’s gone on with you as if nothing at all had happened. After murder, business as usual at the same old stand. Is that it?”

“Sure. Why not? Laughing like hell all the time. Feeling all the time the same kind of contempt for Regis and me that he imagines we felt for him. Silas would get a lot of satisfaction out of something like that.” She looked down into her glass, swirling what was left of her drink around and around the inner circumference. Bitterness increased the distortion of her mouth. “He’ll throw me out after a while,” she said.

“You’re quite a psychologist,” I said. “All that stuff about inferiority and insecurity and implied contempt. I wish I had as much brains as you.”

“All right, you bastard. So I’m the kind who ought to stick to the little words. So I only went to the eighth grade myself. Go ahead and ridicule me.”

“You’re wrong. I wasn’t ridiculing you. I never ridicule anyone. The trouble your theory has is the same trouble that the other theory has, and the trouble with both is that they leave loose ends all over the place. I can mention a few, if you’d care to hear them.”

“Mention whatever you please.”

“All right. Where’s the body?”

“I don’t know. You’re the detective. Work on it”

“Where’s Constance? Did he kill both of them? If so, why? He had no reason to hate her. As a matter of fact, they should have been on the same team. You, not Constance, would have been the logical second victim.”

“I know. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that a thousand times? Maybe she knew he killed Regis. Maybe she learned about it somehow or even actually witnessed it. Damn it, I’ve told you something you didn’t know. I’ve told you about Regis and me. I’ve told you he was not really in love with Constance and would never have run away with her for any longer than a weekend. I’ve told you this, and it’s the truth, and all you do is keep wanting me to be the detective. You’re the detective, brother. I’ve told you that too.”

“Sure you have. I’m the detective and all I’ve got to do is explain how someone killed a man and a woman and completely disposed of their bodies. That would be a tough chore, honey. Practically impossible.”

“Silas Lawler’s been doing the practically impossible for quite a few years. He’s a very competent guy.”

“He Is. I know it, and I’m not forgetting it. However, I can think of a third theory that excludes him. It’s simpler and it ties up an end or two. You said Regis didn’t love Constance. He just had an affair with her. Suppose he tried to end the affair and got himself killed for his trouble? She was a strange female, I’m told. Almost psychotic, someone said. Do you think she was capable?”

Robin Robbins stood up abruptly. She carried her glass over to the ingredients and stood quietly with her back to me. Apparently she was only considering whether she should mix herself another or not. She decided not. Depositing her glass, she helped herself to a cigarette from a box and lit it with a lighter. Trailing smoke, she returned to her chair.

“Oh, Constance was capable, all right,” she said. “She was much too good to do a lot of things I’ve done and will probably do again and again if the price is right, but there’s one thing she could have done that I couldn’t, and that’s murder. And if you think that sounds like more eighth grade psychology, you can forget it and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t know about the psychology,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that you don’t really think she killed Regis. If you did, you’d be happy to say so.”

“That’s right.” She nodded in amiable agreement. “I wouldn’t mind at all doing Constance a bad turn, but she didn’t kill Regis. That’s obvious.”

“I’m inclined to agree. In the first place, she couldn’t have got rid of the body. In the second place, if she could and did, why run away afterward? It wouldn’t be sensible.”

“Well, it’s your problem, brother. I guess it’s time you went somewhere else and began to think about it.”

“Yeah. I’m the detective. You’ve told me and told me. You haven’t told me much else, though. Not anything very convincing. You got an idea that Silas killed Regis because you and Regis made a kind of illicit cuckold of him, and you lure me here with free bourbon and tell me so, and I’m supposed to be converted by this evangelical message. It’s pretty thin, if you don’t mind my saying it. Excuse me for being skeptical.”

“That’s all right. I didn’t expect much from you anyhow. I just thought I’d try.”

“Try harder.”

“I’ve got nothing more to tell you.”

“Really? That’s hard to believe. You’re not exactly inexpensive, honey, and I’ll bet you have to earn your keep. What I mean is, you and Silas surely get convivial on occasions. Even intimate. Men are likely to become indiscreet under such circumstances. They say things they wouldn’t ordinarily say. If Silas killed Regis because of you, I’d think he’d even have an urge to gloat. By innuendo, at least.”

She moved her head against the back of her chair in a lazy negative. “I’m a girl who knows the side of her bread the butter is on, and I earn my keep. You’re right there. But you’re wrong if you think Silas Lawler is the kind who gets confidential or careless. He’s a very reserved guy, and he protects his position. He tends to his own business, and most of his business nowadays is on the three floors of the building we just left. To be honest, he’s pretty damn dull. He works. He eats and sleeps and plays that damn piano, and once in a while he makes love. Once a month, for a few days, he goes to some place called Amity.”

“Amity? Why does he go there?”

“I wouldn’t know. I guess he has interests.”

“Do you ever go with him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m never invited, thank God. Who wants to go to Amity?”

I took a deep breath and held it till it hurt and then released it.

“That’s right,” I said. “Who does? Incidentally there’s something else that nags me. It seems to me that you’re trying to ruin a good thing for yourself, and I don’t understand it. What happens to you and all this if Silas turns out to be a murderer?”

“Whatever it is, I’ll try to bear it. I may even celebrate. In the meanwhile, on the chance that I’m wrong about him, I may be as well be comfortable.”

I stood up and looked down, and she stayed down and looked up, and because she was a shrewd and tough wench with looks and brains and queer attachments and flexible morals, I though it would be pleasant and acceptable to kiss her once in return for the time she’d kissed me once, and that’s what I did, and it was. It was pleasant and acceptable. It even started being exciting. Just as her hands were reaching for me, I straightened and turned and walked to the door, and she came out of the chair after me. She put her arms around my waist from behind.

“It’s worth developing,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided.”

“Sorry,” I said. “My own mind isn’t made up yet. I’ll let you know.”

I loosened her hands and held them in mine against my belly. After a few seconds, I dropped them and opened the door and started out.

“You ugly bastard,” she said.

“Don’t call me,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

“Go to hell,” she said.

I got on out and closed the door softly and began wishing immediately that I hadn’t.

Chapter 6

The next morning I checked a couple of morgues. The newspaper variety. I turned the brittle bones of old dailies and disturbed the rest of dead stories, but I learned nothing of significance regarding Constance Markley. She was there, all right, briefly and quietly interred in ink. No one had got excited. No one had smelled anything, apparently, that couldn’t eventually be fumigated in divorce court. I left the second morgue about noon and stopped for a steak sandwich and a beer on the way to my office. In the office, sitting, I elevated my feet and began to think.

Maybe thinking is an exaggeration. I didn’t really have an idea.

All I had was an itch, a tiny burr of coincidence that had caught in a wrinkle of my cortex. It didn’t amount to much, but I thought I might as well worry it a while, having nothing else on hand or in mind, and what I thought I would do specifically was go back and see Faith Salem again, and I would go, if I could arrange it, when Faith and the sun were on the terrace. She had said to call ahead of time, and so I lowered my feet and reached for the phone, and that’s when I saw the gorilla.

He was a handsome gorilla in a Brooks Brothers suit, but a gorilla just the same. There’s something about the breed that you can’t miss. They smell all right, and they look all right, and there’s nothing you can isolate ordinarily as a unique physical characteristic that identifies one of them definitely as a gorilla rather than as a broker or a rich plumber, but they seem to have a chronic quality of deadliness that a broker or a plumber would have only infrequently, in special circumstances, if ever. This one was standing in the doorway watching me, and he had got there without a sound. He smiled. He was plainly prepared to treat me with all the courtesy I was prepared to make possible.

“Mr. Hand?” he said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I have a message from Mr. Silas Lawler. He would appreciate it very much if you could come to see him as soon as possible.”

“I just went to see him yesterday.”

“Mr. Lawler knows that. He regrets that he must inconvenience you again so soon. Apparently something important has come up.”

“Something else important came up first. I was just getting ready to go out and take care of it.”

“Mr. Lawler is certain that you’ll prefer to give his business priority.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what to do. You go back to Mr. Lawler and tell him I’ll be around this evening or first thing tomorrow.”

“Mr. Lawler is most urgent that you come immediately. I have instructions to drive you there and bring you back. For your convenience, of course.”

“Of course. Mr. Lawler is notoriously considerate. Suppose I don’t want to go.”

“Mr. Lawler hopes you will want to accommodate him.”

“Let’s suppose I refuse.”

“Mr. Lawler didn’t anticipate that contingency, I’m afraid. He said to bring you.”

“Even if I resist?”

“As I understood my orders, Mr. Lawler made no qualifications.”

“Do you think you’re man enough to execute them without qualifications?”

“I think so.”

“In that case,” I said, “we’d better go.”

I got my hat and put it over the place where the lumps would have been if I hadn’t. Together, like cronies, we went downstairs and got into his car, which was a Caddy, and drove in it to Silas Lawler’s restaurant plus. In the hall outside Silas Lawler’s private room, we stood and listened to the piano, which was being played. What was being played on it this time was not something by Chopin, and I couldn’t identify who it was by certainly, but I thought it was probably Mozart. The music was airy and intricate. It sounded as if it had been written by a man who felt very good and wanted everyone else to feel as good as he did.

“Mr. Lawler doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s playing,” the Brooks Brothers gorilla said.

“You can’t be too careful with artists,” I said. “They’re touchy.”

“Mr. Lawler’s a virtuoso,” he said.

He didn’t even blink when he said it. It was obviously a word he was used to and not something special for effect. I wondered if they were granting degrees to gorillas these days, but I didn’t think it would be wise to ask. There wouldn’t have been time for an answer, anyhow, for the virtuoso stopped playing the music by Mozart, or at least not Chopin, and the gorilla knocked twice on the door and opened it, and I walked into the room ahead of him.

Silas Lawler got off the bench and walked around the curve of the grand and stopped in the spot where the canary usually perches in nightclubs. He didn’t perch, however. He merely leaned. From the same chair in which she had sat yesterday, Robin Robbins looked across at me with a poker face, and I could see at once, in spite of shadows and cosmetics, that somebody had hung one on her. A plum-colored bruise spread down from her left eye across the bone of her cheek. There was still some swelling of the flesh too, although it had certainly been reduced from what it surely had been. She looked rather cute, to tell the truth. The shiner somehow made her look like the kid she said she never was.

“How are you, Hand?” Lawler said. “It was kind of you to come.”

“Your messenger was persuasive,” I said. “I couldn’t resist him.”

“Darcy, you mean. I can always depend on Darcy to do a job like a gentleman. He dislikes violence almost as much as I do. I’m sure you didn’t find him abusive.”

“Not at all. I’ve never been threatened half so courteously before.” I turned my head and looked down at Robin Robbins. “Apparently you weren’t so lucky, honey. You must have run into an interior gorilla somewhere.”

“I fell over my lip,” she said.

Lawler laughed, and I could have sworn that there was a note of tenderness in it. “Robin’s impetuous. She’s always doing something she later regrets, and I’m always prepared to forgive her eventually, although I sometimes lose my temper in the meanwhile. Isn’t that so, Robin?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “We love each other in spite of everything.”

“I won’t deny that Robin’s been punished,” Lawler said, “but I’m afraid I must charge you with being partially responsible, Hand. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of her innocence.”

“I am,” I said, “I truly am.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think we need to be too critical. Robin, I realize, is even harder to resist than Darcy. For different reasons, of course. She’s told me what the two of you talked about yesterday after leaving here together, and she understands now how foolish she was. Don’t you, Robin?”

“Sure,” she said. “I was foolish.”

“She wants me to ask you to forget all about it, don’t you, Robin?”

Sure,” she said. “Forget it.”

“You see?” Lawler shrugged and shifted his weight against the piano. “Robin and I are really very compatible. We are never able to keep secrets from one another for very long.”

“That’s sweet,” I said. “I’m touched.”

He was looking directly at Robin for the first time now. “Wouldn’t you like to apologize to Mr. Hand for causing him so much trouble, Robin?”

“I apologize, Mr. Hand, from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

“I liked it better when you told me to go to hell,” I said.

Lawler stood erect and stopped looking at Robin in order to look at me. “That wasn’t a very gracious response, Hand. However, let it pass. I also want to apologize to you.”

“What for?”

“I’m afraid I was a little unreasonable yesterday. I understand now that you were hired to investigate the matter we discussed, and you’re naturally concerned about your fee. I have no right to ask you to sacrifice that, of course. What do you think it will amount to?”

“That depends on how long the job lasts. I get twenty-five dollars a day and expenses.”

“Very reasonable. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars to drop the case. That should be adequate.”

“Bribery?”

“Don’t be offensive. Compensation for the loss of your fee.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Really? I figure that it comes to two-hundred days’ work. What do you think would be fair?”

“Make it a million, and I’ll take it.”

“Your joke isn’t very funny, Hand. It’s bad taste to joke about a serious matter.”

“I’m not joking. You see, I’ve got to be compensated for more than the loss of a fee. I’ve got to be compensated for the loss of my integrity, such as it is. I don’t figure a million’s too much for that.”

“Nonsense. You’re wasting your time, anyhow. I assured you of that. Is it ethical to go on accepting a fee under false pretenses?”

“I explained to my client that it might not come to anything. Probably wouldn’t, as a matter of fact. We’re both satisfied.”

“Perhaps I could persuade your client that he is making a mistake. Would you care to give me his name?”

“No, I wouldn’t. The truth is, I don’t particularly care for your methods of persuasion.”

“No matter. If I really want to learn the identity of your client, I can do it easily enough. Now, however, I don’t propose to discuss this matter with you any longer. I believe I’ve made you a fair proposition. Do you still refuse to accept it?”

“Sorry. I’m holding out for the million.”

If there was the slightest sign between him and Darcy behind me, the lifting of a brow or the twitch of a tick, I never saw it. It could be, I guess, that they’d developed a kind of extra-sensory communication that functioned automatically when the time was precisely right. Anyhow, sign or not, Darcy grabbed me abruptly above the elbows from behind and wrenched my arms and shoulders back so violently that I thought for a moment I’d split down the middle like a spring fryer. At the same instant, Lawler made a fist and stepped forward within range.

“I regret this, Hand,” he said. “I really do.”

“I know,” I said. “You dislike violence. You and Darcy both.”

“It’s your own fault, of course. You’re behaving like a recalcitrant boy, and it’s necessary to teach you a lesson.”

“Don’t you think you ought to teach me somewhere else? You wouldn’t want to get blood on this expensive carpet.”

“It’s acrilan. Haven’t you heard of it? One of these new miracle fabrics. Blood wipes right off.”

“Is that a fact? Better living through chemistry. I’m impressed.” He was tired now of the whole business. I could see in his face that he was tired, and I believe that he actually did regret what he considered the necessity of having to do what he was going to do. It was only that he knew no other way to fight, in spite of Chopin and Mozart and the veneer of respectability, than the way of violence. He wanted to get it over with, and he did. He drove the fist into my face, and it was like getting hit with a jagged boulder. Flesh split on bone, and bone cracked, and darkness welled up internally.

I sagged, I guess, and hung by my arms from the hands of Darcy, and after a while, I guess, I straightened and lifted my head and was hit again in the face. When I opened my eyes after that, I was lying on the carpet, and there was blood on it. In my mouth there was more blood, and a thin and bitter fluid risen from my stomach. I was sick and in pain, but mostly I was ashamed. I got up slowly, in sections, and looked at Lawler through a pink mist.

“Your carnet’s a mess,” I said. “I hope you’re right about acrilan.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re a tough guy, Hand, and I like you. If you think I get any kicks out of pushing you around, you’re wrong. There’s a lavatory in there. Through that door. Why don’t you go in and wash your face?”

“I think I will,” I said.

I went in and turned on the cold tap and caught double handfuls of water and buried my face in them. The water burned like acid, but it revived me and dispelled the pink fog. In the mirror above the lavatory, I saw that a cut on my cheekbone needed a stitch or two. I found some adhesive tape in the medicine cabinet and pulled the cut together and went back out into the other room.

Lawler was seated at the grand again. Darcy was leaning against the wall behind him. Robin Robbins, in her chair, was still wearing her poker face. I thought I saw in her eyes a guarded gleam of something appealing. Compassion? Camaraderie based on mutual beatings? A raincheck? Who could be sure with Robin? I kept right on walking toward the door, and I was almost there when Lawler spoke to me.

“Hand,” he said.

I stopped but didn’t turn. I didn’t answer either. It hurt to talk, and I saw no sense in it.

“One thing more,” he said. “I made a reasonable offer, and you’d be wise to accept it. This is just a suggestion of what you’ll get if you don’t. I’ll put a check for five thousand in the mail today. You’ll get it tomorrow.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

I started again and kept going and got on out of there.

Chapter 7

In a sidewalk telephone booth I dialed Faith Salem’s number and got Maria.

“Miss Salem’s apartment,” she said.

“This is Percy Hand,” I said. “Let me speak with Miss Salem.”

“One moment, please,” she said.

I waited a while. The open wire hummed in my ear. My head felt three times its normal size, and the hum was like a siren. I held the receiver a few inches away until Faith Salem’s voice came on.

“Hello, Mr. Hand,” she said.

“You said to call before I came.”

I said. “I’m calling.”

“Is it something urgent?”

“I don’t know how urgent it is. I know I just turned down five grand in a chunk for twenty-five dollars and expenses a day. Under the circumstances, I feel like being humored.”

She was silent for ten seconds. The siren shattered my monstrous head.

“You sound angry,” she said finally.

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m an amiable boob who will take almost anything for anybody, and my heart holds nothing but love and tenderness for all of God’s creatures.”

Silence again. The siren again. Her voice again in due time.

“You’d better come up,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you.”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said.

When I got there, the sun was off the terrace, and so was she. She was waiting for me in the living room, and she was wearing a black silk jersey pullover blouse and black ballerina-type slippers and cream-colored Capri pants. On her they looked very good, or she looked very good in them, whichever way you saw it. She was lying on her side, propped up on one elbow on a sofa about nine feet long, and she got up and came to meet me between the sofa and the door. I thought I heard her breath catch and hold for a second in her throat.

“Your face,” she said.

“It must be a mess,” I said.

“There’s a stain on the front of your shirt,” she said.

“Blood,” I said. “Mine.”

She reached up and touched gently with her finger tips the piece of adhesive that was holding together the lips of the cut that needed a stitch or two. The fingers moved slowly down over swollen flesh and seemed to draw away the pain by a kind of delicate anesthetization. It was much better than codeine or a handful of aspirin. “Come and sit down,” she said. I did, and she did. We sat together on the nine foot sofa, and my right knee touched her left knee, and this might have been by accident or design, but in either event it was a pleasant situation that no one made any move to alter, certainly not I.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“So am I,” I said. “I’m sorrier than anyone.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

“It’s hardly worth while. I took a job, and this turned out to be part of it.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“Sure it is.”

“But I don’t understand. Why should anyone do this to you?”

“Someone wanted me to give up the job, and I didn’t want to. We had a difference of opinion.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to go ahead with it?”

“That’s what it means. At least for a while longer. When anyone wants so hard for me to quit doing something I’m doing, it makes me stubborn. I’m a contrary fellow by nature.”

“You must be careful,” she said.

She sounded as if it would really made a difference if I wasn’t. She was sitting facing me, her left leg resting along the edge of the sofa and her right leg not touching the sofa at all, and she lifted her hand again and touched the battered side of my face as if she were reminding herself and me of the consequences of carelessness, and it seemed a natural completion of the gesture for her hand to slip on around my neck. Her arm followed, and her body came over against mine, and I was suddenly holding her and kissing her with bruised lips, and we got out of balance and toppled over gently and lay for maybe a minute in each other’s arms with our mouths together. Then she drew and released a deep breath that quivered her toes. She sat up, stood up, looked down at me with a kind of incredulity in her eyes.

“I think I need a drink,” she said. “You too.”

“No gin and tonic, thanks,” I said. “Straight bourbon.”

“Agreed,” she said.

She walked over to a cabinet to get it. I watched her go and watched her come. Her legs in the tight Capri pants were long and lovely and worth watching. This was something she knew as well as I, and we were both happy about it. She handed me my bourbon in a little frosted glass with the ounces marked on the outside in the frost, and the bourbon came up to the third mark. I drank it down a mark, leaving two to go, and she sat down beside me and drank a little less of hers.

“I liked kissing you, and I’m glad I did,” she said, “but I won’t do it again.”

“All right,” I said.

“Are you offended?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing personal in it, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“There are obvious reasons why I can’t afford to.”

“I know the reasons. What I’d like to do now, if you don’t mind, is to quit talking about it I came here to talk about something else, and it would probably be a good idea if we got started.”

“What did you come to talk about?”

“About you and Constance Markley. When I was here before, you said you knew her in college. You said you shared an apartment that she paid the rent on. I neglected to ask you what college it was.”

“Amity College.”

“That’s at Amity, of course.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“What was your name then?”

“The same as now. Faith Salem.”

“You told me you’d been married a couple of times. I’ve been wondering about the Miss. Did you get your maiden name restored both times?”

“Not legally. When I’m compelled to be legal, I use another name. Would you believe that I’m a countess?”

“I’d believe it if you said it.”

“Well, I don’t say it often, because I’m not particularly proud of it. The count was attractive and quite entertaining for a while, but he turned out to be a mistake. I was in Europe with my first husband when I met him. You remember the publisher’s son I married in college? That one. We were in Europe, and he’d turned out to be rather a mistake too, although not so bad a one as the count turned out later. Anyhow, I met the count and did things with him while my husband was doing things with someone else, and he was a very charming and convincing liar, and I decided it would probably be a smart move to make a change. It wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t it profitable?”

“No. The amount of his income was one of the things the count lied about most convincingly. Are you being rather nasty about it, incidentally? I hope not. Being nasty doesn’t suit you somehow.”

“Excuse me. You’ll have to remember that I’ve had a hard day. The publisher’s son and the count are none of my business. At your request, Constance Markley is. I’d like to know exactly the nature of the relationship that caused you to share an apartment at college.”

“It was normal, if that’s what you mean.”

“It isn’t.” I lowered the bourbon to the first mark. My mouth was cut on the inside, and the bourbon burned in the cut. “I don’t know just what I do mean. I don’t even know exactly why I asked the question or what I’m trying to learn. Just tell me what you can about Constance.”

She was silent, considering. Her consideration lasted about half a minute, and after it was finished, she took time before speaking to lower the level of her own bourbon, which required about half as long.

“It’s rather embarrassing,” she said.

“Come on,” I said. “Embarrass yourself.”

“Oh, well.” She shrugged. “I liked Constance. I told you I did. But I wasn’t utterly devoted to her. She was rather an uncomfortable girl to be around, to tell the truth. Very intense. Inclined to be possessive and jealous. She often resented the attention and time I gave to other people. At such times, she would be very difficult and demanding, then withdrawn and sullen, and finally almost pathetically repentant and eager to make everything right again. It was a kind of cycle that she repeated many times. Her expressions and gestures of affection made me feel uncomfortable. Not that there was the least sign of perversion in them, you understand. It was only that they were so exorbitant.”

“Would you say that she admired you?”

“I guess so. I guess that’s what it was.”

“Well, I understand it isn’t so unusual to find that kind of thing among school girls. Boys either, for that matter. Do you have anything left over from that time? Any snapshots or letters or anything like that?”

“It happens that I do. After you left the other day, I got to thinking about Constance, the time we were together, and I looked in an old case of odds and ends I’d picked up different times and places, the kind of stuff you accumulate and keep without any good reason, and there were this snapshot and a card among all the other things. They don’t amount to much. Just a snapshot of the two of us together, a card she sent me during the Christmas holiday of that year. Would you like to see them?”

I said I would, and she went to get them. Why I wanted to see them was something I didn’t know precisely. Why I was interested at all in this period of ancient history was something else I didn’t know. It had some basis, I think, in the feeling that the thing that could make a person leave an established life without a trace was surely something that had existed and had been growing for a long time, not something that had started yesterday or last week or even last year. Then there was, of course, the coincidence. Silas Lawler wanted this sleeping dog left lying, and once a month he went to the town where Constance Markley had once lived with Faith Salem, who wanted the dog wakened. It was that thin, that near to nothing, but it was all there was of anything at all.

Faith Salem returned with the snapshot and the Christmas card. I took them from her and finished my bourbon and looked first at the picture. I don’t know if I would have seen in it what I did if I hadn’t already heard about Constance Markley what I had. It’s impossible to know how much of what we see, or think we see, is the result of suggestion. Constance and Faith were standing side by side. Constance was shorter, slighter of build, less striking in effect. Faith was looking directly into the camera, but Constance was looking around and up at the face of Faith. It seemed to me that her expression was one of adoration. This was what might have been no more than the result of suggestion. I don’t know.

I took the Christmas card out of its envelope. It had clearly been expensive, as cards go, and had probably been selected with particular care. On the back, Constance Markley had written a note. It said how miserable and lonely she was at home, how the days were interminable, how she longed for the time to come when she could return to Amity and Faith. Christmas vacation, I thought, must have lasted all of two weeks. I read the note with ambivalence. I felt pity, and I felt irritation.

Faith Salem had finished her bourbon and was looking at me over the empty glass. Her eyes were clouded, and she shook her head slowly from side to side.

“I guess you’ve got an idea,” she said.

“That’s an exaggeration,” I said. “Why are you interested in all this? I don’t understand.”

“Maybe it’s just that I’m naturally suspicious of a coincidence. Every time I come across one, I get curious.”

“What coincidence?”

“Never mind. If I put it in words, I’d probably decide it sounded too weak to bother with. I’m driving to Amity tomorrow. The trip’ll hike expenses. You’d better give me a hundred bucks.”

“All right. I’ll get it for you.” She got up and went out of the room again. I watched her out and stood up to watch her in. From both angles and both sides she still looked good. She handed me the hundred bucks, and I took it and shoved it in a pocket and put my arms around her and kissed her.

She had meant what she had said. She said she wouldn’t kiss me again, and she didn’t. She only stood quietly and let me kiss her, which was different and not half so pleasant. I took my arms away and stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“So am I,” she said.

Then we said good-by, and I left. Going, I met Graham Markley in the hall, coming. We spoke politely, and he asked me how the investigation was getting along. I said it was getting along all right. He didn’t even seem curious about the condition of my face.

Chapter 8

I didn’t get out of town the next day until ten o’clock. It was three hundred fifty miles by highway to Amity. In my old clunker, allowing time for a couple of stops, I did well to average forty miles an hour. Figure it for yourself. It was almost exactly eight and a half hours later when I got there. About six-thirty. I was tired and hungry, and I went to a hotel and registered and went up to my room. I washed and went back down to the coffee shop and got a steak and ate it and went back to the room. By then it was eight. I lit a cigarette and lay down on the bed and began to wonder seriously why I was here and what the hell I was going to do, now that I was.

I thought about a lot of things. I thought about Robin Robbins looking like a tough and lovely kid with her beautiful shiner. I thought about Faith Salem lying in the sun. I thought about Silas Lawler and Graham Markley and Regis Lawler and Constance Markley. The last pair were shadows. I couldn’t see them, and I couldn’t entirely believe in them, and I wished suddenly that I had never heard of them. I did this thinking about these people, but it didn’t get me anywhere. I lay there on the bed in the hotel room for what seemed like an hour, and I was surprised, when I looked at my watch, to learn that less than half that time had passed. The room was oppressive, and I didn’t want to stay there any longer. Getting up, I went downstairs and walked around the block and came back to the hotel and bought a newspaper at the tobacco counter and sat down to read it. I read some of the front page and some of the sports page and all the comics and started on the classified ads.

Classified ads interest me. I always read them in the newspapers and in the backs of magazines that publish them. They are filled with the gains and losses and inferred intimacies of classified lives. If you are inclined to be a romantic, you can, by a kind of imaginative interpolation, read a lot of pathos and human interest into them. Someone in Amity, for instance, had lost a dog, and someone wanted to sell a bicycle that was probably once the heart of the life of some kid, and someone named Martha promised to forgive someone named Walter if he would come back from wherever he’d gone. Someone named Faith Salem wanted to teach you to play the piano for two dollars an hour.

There it was, and that’s the way it sometimes happens. You follow an impulse over three hundred miles because of a thin coincidence, and right away, because of a mild idiosyncrasy, you run into another coincidence that’s just a little too much of one to be one, and the first one, although you don’t know why, no longer seems like one either.

I closed my eyes and tried to see Faith Salem lying again in the sun, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see her lying in the sun because she was in another town teaching piano lessons for two dollars an hour. It said so in the town’s newspaper. I opened my eyes and looked again, just to be certain, and it did. Piano lessons, it said. 1828 Canterbury Street, call LO 3314, it said. Faith Salem, it said.

I stood up and folded the newspaper and stuck it in my coat pocket and looked at my watch. The watch said nine. I walked outside and started across the street to the parking lot where I’d left my car, but then, because it was getting late and I didn’t know the streets of the town, I turned and came back to the curb in front of the hotel and caught a taxi. I gave the driver the address, 1828 Canterbury Street, and sat back in the seat. The driver repeated the address after me and then concentrated silently on his driving. I didn’t try to think or make any guesses. I sat and listened to the ticking of the meter that seemed to be measuring the diminishing time and distance between me and something.

We hit Canterbury Street at 6th and went down it twelve blocks. It was an ordinary residential street, paved with asphalt, with the ordinary variations in quality, you will find on most streets in most towns. It started bad and got better and then started getting worse, but it never got really good or as bad in the end as it had started. 1828 was a small white frame house with a fairly deep front lawn and vacant lots between it and the houses on both sides, which were also small and white and frame with fairly deep front lawns. On the corner at the end of the block was a neighborhood drug store with a vertical neon sign above the entrance. It would be a place to call another taxi in case of necessity, and so I paid off the one I had and let it go. I got out and went up a brick walk and across a porch. There was a light showing at a window, but I heard no sound and saw no shadow on the blind. After listening and watching for perhaps a minute, I knocked and waited for perhaps half another.

Without any prelude of sound whatever, the door opened and a woman stood looking out at me. The light behind her left her face in shadow. She was rather short and very slim, almost fragile, and her voice, when she spoke, had an odd quality of detached airiness, as if it had no corporeal source. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m looking for Miss Faith Salem,” I said.

“I’m Faith Salem. What is it you want?”

“Please excuse me for calling so late, but I was unable to get here earlier. My name is Percival Hand. You were referred to me as an excellent teacher.”

“Thank you. Are you studying piano, Mr. Hand?”

“No.” I laughed. “My daughter is the student. We’re new in town, and she needs a teacher. As I said, you were recommended. May I come in and discuss it with you?”

“Yes, of course. Please come in.” I stepped past her into a small living room that was softly lighted by a table lamp and a floor lamp. On the floor was a rose-colored rug with an embossed pattern. The furniture was covered with bright chintz or polished cotton, and the windows were framed on three sides by panels and valences of the same color and kind of material. At the far end of the room, which was no farther than a few steps, a baby grand occupied all the space of a corner. Behind me, the woman who called herself Faith Salem closed the door. She came past me into the room and sat down in a chair beside the step-table on which the table lamp was standing. It was apparently the chair in which she had been sitting when I knocked, for a cigarette was burning in a tray on the table and an open book was lying face down beside the tray. The light from the lamp seemed to gather in her face and in the hands she folded in the lap. The hands were quiet, holding each other. The face was thin and pretty and perfectly reposed. I have never seen a more serene face than the face of Constance Markley at that moment.

“Sit down, Mr. Hand,” she said. I did. I sat in a chair opposite her and held my hat on my knees and had the strange and inappropriate feeling of a visiting minister. I felt, anyhow, the way the minister always appeared to be feeling when he called on my mother a hundred years ago when I was home.

“What a charming room,” I said.

“Thank you.” She smiled and nodded. “I like bright colors. They make a place so cheerful. Did you say you are new in Amity, Mr. Hand?”

“Yes. We just arrived recently.”

“I see. Do you plan to make your home here permanently?”

“I don’t know. It depends on how things work out, Miss Salem. Is that correct? I seem to remember that you’re single.”

“That’s quite correct. I’ve never married,” she said, and nodded.

“I’m surprised that such a lovely woman has escaped so long. Do you live here alone?”

In her face for a moment was an amused expression that did not disturb the basic serenity, and I wondered if it was prompted by the trite compliment or the impertinent question. At any rate, she ignored the first and answered the second simply.

“Yes. I’m quite alone here. I like living alone.”

“Have you lived in Amity long?”

“Many years. I came here as a student in the college and never left. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

“Forgive my asking, but don’t you find it difficult to live by giving private music lessons?”

“I’m certain that I should if I tried it. I give private lessons only in my off hours. Evenings and weekends. I’m also an instructor in the Amity Conservatory. A private school.” She hesitated, looking at me levelly across the short space between us, and I thought that she was now slightly disturbed, for the first time, by my irrelevant questions. “I understand that you should want to make inquiries of a teacher you are considering for your child, Mr. Hand, but yours don’t seem very pertinent. Would you like to know something about my training and qualifications?”

“No, thanks. I’m sure you’re very competent, Miss Salem. I’m sorry if my questions seemed out of line. The truth is, I know so little about music myself that I hardly know what to talk about.”

“Do you mind telling me who sent you to me, Mr. Hand?”

“As a matter of fact, it was the Conservatory. They recommended you highly, but they didn’t mention that you were an instructor there.”

“I see. Many students are directed to me that way. The ones who are unable to attend the Conservatory itself, that is.”

I looked down at my hat, turning it slowly in my hands, and I didn’t like the way I was beginning to feel. No one could accuse me fairly of being a particularly sensitive guy, and ordinarily I am conscious of no corruption in the dubious practices of my trade, dubious practices being by no means restricted to the trade I happen to follow. By now I was beginning to feel somehow unclean, and every little lie was assuming in my mind the character of a monstrous deception. I was suddenly sick of it and wanted to be finished with it, the whole phony case. I had been hired for twenty-five and expenses to find a woman who had disappeared two years ago, and here she was in a town called Amity, living quietly under the name of Faith Salem, which was the name of the woman who had hired me to find her, and it had all been so fantastically quick and easy, a coincidence and an itch and a classified ad, and now there seemed to be nothing more to be done that I had been hired to do.

But where was Regis Lawler? Here was Constance, but where was Regis? Well, I had not been hired to find Regis. I had been hired to find Constance, and I had found her, and that was all of it. Almost all of it, anyhow. All that was left to do for my money to get up and get away quietly with my unclean feeling after my necessary deceptions. Tomorrow I would drive back where I had come from, and I would report what I had learned to the woman who was paying me, and then she would know as much as I did, and what she wanted to do with it was her business and not mine.

There were still, however, so many loose ends. So many mental itches I couldn’t scratch. I did not know why Constance had come to Amity. Nor why she had assumed the name of Faith Salem. Nor certainly why, for that matter, the real Faith Salem wanted her found. Nor why Silas Lawler did not. Nor where in the world was Regis Lawler. Nor if, in fact, he was. In the world, that is.

Suddenly I looked up and said, “Mrs. Markley, where is Regis Lawler?”

Her expression was queer. It was an expression I remembered for a long time afterward and sometimes saw in the black shag end of the kind of night when a man is vulnerable and cannot sleep. She stared at me for a minute with wide eyes in which there was a creeping dumb pain, and then, in an instant, there was a counter expression which seemed to be a denial of the pain and the pain’s cause. Her lids dropped slowly, as if she were all at once very tired. Sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, she looked as if she were praying, and when she opened her eyes again, the expressions of pain and its denial were gone, and there was nothing where they had been but puzzlement.

“What did you call me?” she said.

“Mrs. Markley. Constance Markley.”

“If this is a joke, Mr. Hand, it’s in very bad taste.”

“It’s no joke. Your name is Constance Markley, and I asked you where Regis Lawler is.”

“I don’t know Constance Markley. Nor Regis Lawler.” She unfolded her hands and stood up, and she was not angry and apparently no longer puzzled. She had withdrawn behind an impenetrable defense of serenity. “I don’t know you either, Mr. Hand. Whoever you are and whatever you came here for, you are obviously not what you represented yourself to be, and you didn’t come for the purpose you claimed.”

“True. I’m not, and I didn’t.”

“In that case, we have nothing more to discuss. If you will leave quietly, I’ll be happy to forget that you ever came.”

I did as she suggested. I left quietly. She had said that I was in bad taste, and I guess I was, for the taste was in my mouth, and it was bad.

I turned left at the street toward the drug store on the corner, and I had walked about fifty feet in that direction when a man got out of a parked car and crossed the parking to intercept me, and the car was a Caddy I had ridden in before, and the man was Silas Lawler.

“Surprised?” he said amiably.

“Not especially,” I said. “I heard you’ve been coming out here pretty regularly the last couple years.”

“I was afraid that might have been one of the things you heard. Robin has a bad habit of knowing things she’s not supposed to. Not that it matters much. You’ve just made me make an extra trip, that’s all. Darcy’s really annoyed, though. He’s the one who’s had to tail you since you got into this business, and Darcy doesn’t like that kind of work. He figures it’s degrading.”

“Poor Darcy. I’ll have to apologize the next time I see him.”

“That could be right now. Just turn your head a little. He’s sitting over there behind the wheel of the Caddy.”

“I’ll have to do it some other time. Right now I’m on my way to the corner to call a cab.”

“Forget it. Darcy and I wouldn’t think of letting you go to all that trouble. We’ve been waiting all this time just to give you a lift.”

“I hope you won’t be offended if I decline.”

“I’m afraid I would. I’m sensitive that way. I always take it personally if my hospitality’s refused. You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“That’s not very gracious of you. Hand. I offer you a lift, the least you can do is be courteous about it. What I mean is, get in the Caddy.”

“No, thanks. The last time we got together, you didn’t behave very well. I don’t think I want to associate with you any more.”

“It won’t be for long.”

He took a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at me casually in such a way that it would, if it fired, shoot me casually through the head. I could see, in a glimmer of light, the ugly projection of a silencer.

“Now who’s not being gracious?”

I said. “It seems to me a guy with any pride wouldn’t want to force an invitation on someone.”

“Oh, I won’t force it. You don’t want a lift, have it your own way. I’d just as soon kill you here.”

“Wouldn’t that be rather risky?”

“I don’t think so. Odds are no one will hear anything. You probably wouldn’t even be found for a while. Anyhow, I’m not here. I’m in my room at the restaurant. So’s Darcy. If it got to be necessary, which it probably wouldn’t, we could find a half dozen guests who are with us.”

I thought about it and decided that he could. Maybe even a full dozen. And so, after thinking, I conceded.

“I believe you could,” I said, “and I’ve decided to accept the lift after all.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

I crossed the parking to the Caddy, and while I was crossing, Darcy reached back from the front seat and unlatched the door, which swung open, and I got in like a paying passenger, with no effort, and Silas Lawler got in after me and closed the door behind him.

“Good evening, Mr. Hand,” Darcy said.

“I’m beginning to doubt it,” I said.

He laughed softly and politely and slid under the wheel of the Caddy and started the engine and occupied himself with driving. He drove at a moderate rate of speed, with careful consideration of traffic regulations, and where he drove was out of town on a highway and off the highway onto a country road. I admired the erect and reliable look of the back of his head. He looked from the rear exactly like a man whose vocabulary included virtuoso.

“You’re a very stubborn guy, Hand,” Silas Lawler said. “You simply won’t take advice.”

“It’s a fault,” I said. “All my life I’ve been getting into trouble because of it.”

“You’re through with that,” he said. “This is the last trouble you’ll ever get into.”

This was not merely something he was saying. It was something he meant. I began trying to think of some way to change his mind, but I couldn’t, and so I began trying then to think of some way to get out of the Caddy and off in some dark field with a sporting chance, but I couldn’t think of that either. In the meanwhile, Darcy drove most of another mile and down a slope and across a culvert, and it was pitch dark down there in the little hollow where the culvert was. Silas Lawler leaned forward slightly and told him to stop the Caddy and turn off its lights, and Darcy did. The window beside Darcy was down, and I could hear clearly the infinite variety of little night sounds in the hollow and fields and all around.

“It’s a nice night to die.” I said. Lawler sighed. He really did. A long soft sibilant sound with weariness in it.

“I’m sorry, Hand. I rather like you, as I’ve said before, and I wish you hadn’t made this necessary.”

“I fail to see the necessity,” I said.

“That’s because you don’t know enough about something you know too much about.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?”

“It is, and it does.”

“Excuse me for being obtuse. I don’t know much of anything about anything that I can see. I know that Constance Markley is alive, and to teach piano lessons, in Amity at two bucks per. I know she’s calling herself Faith Salem. So what? She’s got a right to be alive and teaching piano lessons and what she calls herself is her business. I was hired to find her, and I found her. That’s a capital offense?”

“Murder is. Murder’s capital almost everywhere.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I haven’t committed any murder.”

“I know you haven’t,” he said. “But Constance has.”

I sat and listened to the sounds of the night from the hollow and fields and all around. For a few moments they were thunderously amplified and gathered in my head, and then they faded in an instant to their proper dimensions and places.

So that’s where Regis is, I thought. Regis is where I almost am.

And I said, “I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t got a shred of evidence.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head and took his gun out of his pocket again. “You know where Constance is, and that’s enough. You’ll tell the client who hired you, and your client will tell others, and the cops will know. Everyone thinks she and Regis ran away together, and when they learn that Regis isn’t with her and hasn’t ever been, they’ll wonder where he is, and he’s dead. It wouldn’t take them long to find that out. She couldn’t hold out against them for an hour. So you see? So you know too much to be trusted. So you’ve got to die. I’m glad for your sake that it’s a nice night for it.”

I didn’t try to convince him that I’d swap silence for life. The risk in a deal like that would have been all his, and he was too good a gambler to consider it. I sat and listened some more to the sounds in the nice night to die, and I was thinking pretty clearly and understanding a number of things, but there were some other things I wanted to understand and didn’t, and they were things that Silas Lawler could explain. Moreover, the longer we talked, the longer I lived, and this was important to me, if not to him.

“All right,” I said. “Constance killed Regis, and for some reason you want her to get away with it. Why? After all, Regis was your brother.”

“Foster brother.”

“Okay. Foster brother. It’s still in the family.”

“Regis was no damn good. Dying was the best thing he ever did, and he had to have help to do that. He wasn’t fit to touch Constance, let alone sleep with her, and why she ever loved him is something I’ll never understand. But she did. She loved him, and she killed him.”

“It sounds paradoxical, but it’s possible. It wouldn’t make her the first woman to kill a man she loved. Anyhow, I’m beginning to get a picture. You’re on her side, maybe because you both play the piano, and you helped her get away after she killed Regis. I’m guessing that you disposed of the body too, and that poses a puzzle I’ve been trying to figure. No body, no murder. Why should Constance run? And why, since she did, only to Amity? With your collusion, which she had, why not to Shangri-La or somewhere?”

He stared past me out the window into the audible night, and he seemed to be considering carefully the questions I’d asked, and after a while he sighed again, the sibilant weariness with the job he had to do, or thought he had to do. Either way, unless I could prevent it, it would come to the same end for me.

“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you,” he said. “It’ll take a little time, but I’ve got plenty, and you’ve got practically none, and maybe it won’t hurt to allow you a little more.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s generous of you.”

“Don’t mention it. And you’d better listen close because I’m only going over it once lightly. The night it happened, I went up to Regis’s apartment to see him about something personal. I punched the bell a couple times, but no one answered, so I tried the door, and it wasn’t locked. I went in, and there they were. Regis on the floor and Constance in a chair. Regis was dead, and she was gone. What I mean, she was in a state of shock. She was paying no more attention to Regis than if he’d just lain down for a nap. She hardly seemed aware that I’d come into the room. I checked Regis and saw that he’d been shot neatly between the eyes. She just sat there and watched me without moving or saying a word, her eyes as big and bright and dry as the eyes of an owl. I asked her what had happened, but she only shook her head and said she didn’t understand. She said she was confused and couldn’t seem to get things clear in her mind. I wanted to help her, and I held her hands and kept talking to her, trying to get her to remember, but even a dumb guy like me could see pretty soon that it wasn’t any use. She was gone, not home, and it wasn’t any act. She kept insisting she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand where she was, or why, or who Regis was, or I was, or a damn thing about anything. She said her name was Faith Salem. She said she lived in Amity. She said she just wanted to go home.

“That’s the way it was. Whatever I did to help her, I had to do blind. So it was a big chance. So I was an accessory after the act. To hell with all that. What I finally did, I took her to my room at the restaurant and made her promise to stay there, and then I got Darcy and went back for Regis. Darcy’s a guy I trust. Maybe the only guy. We got the body out of the building the back way between us. I’ve got a place in the country I sometimes go to, and we took Regis there, and Darcy put him in a good deep hole in the ground with a lot of quick lime, and I went back to the restaurant, and that was all for Regis. It was good enough. I haven’t lost any sleep because of Regis.”

He said all this quietly and easily, without the slightest trace of anger or excitement. He said it in exactly the same manner in which he would kill me in a little while, in his own time when he was good and ready, and I sat and waited for him to finish the story, whatever was left of it, and I had a strange and strong sense of revelation, a kind of gathering of loose ends in an obscure pattern.

“She wasn’t there,” he said. “She had simply walked out of the restaurant and was gone. I went looking for her. I beat the whole damn city, but I never found her. It was two weeks later before I saw her again. I remembered what she’d called herself: Faith Salem. I remembered where she’d said she lived: Amity. I went to Amity and tried to find her, but she wasn’t there, and so I waited and kept looking, and finally she came. About two weeks later. I don’t know where she’d been in the meanwhile, or how she got there, but she was dressed differently, in a plain suit, and she seemed to be in perfectly good condition. She’d had money in her purse the night she left. I know because I checked. Almost seven hundred dollars. Anyhow, I let her alone and kept watching after her, the same as I’ve done ever since, waiting to see what she’d do. What she did was rent that little house she lives in and start giving piano lessons.

“She advertised. She called herself Faith Salem. She got along all right, and finally she started teaching at a private conservatory. The point is, she wasn’t acting or consciously hiding. She really thought she was someone named Faith Salem. I’m pretty ignorant about such things, but I did some reading and fished a little information out of a medico who had a debt in the game rooms, and finally I got an understanding of it. She was in a kind of condition that’s called a fugue. Same name as a kind of musical composition. Unless something happened to shock her out of it, she might go on in this condition for years. Maybe the rest of her life. I figured it was safer for her to leave her as she was. As long as she was in the fugue state, she’d act perfectly normal in the identity she’d assumed and would never give herself away.

“There were obvious dangers, of course. The thing I worried most about was that she’d come out of the fugue. She wouldn’t remember anything since the murder, because the fugue period is entirely forgotten after recovery, but the murder was before the fugue, and she’d remember it as the last thing that happened to her, and if I wasn’t around to help her then, she’d be done for. God knows what she’d do. So I’ve been keeping watch over her the best I can, and everything’s been all right, except now you’ve come along and made like a God-damn detective, and I’ve got to kill you, and now’s the time for it.”

That was Darcy’s cue. He got out of the front seat and opened the door to the back seat on my side, and I was supposed to get out quietly into the road to save the cushions, but I didn’t want to do it. What I wanted to do was live, and in the growing sense of revelation and gathering ends, I thought I could see a faint chance.

“You’re making a mistake,” I said, “and if you go ahead and finish making it, it won’t be your first, but it may very well be your last and worst.”

Darcy stood erect by the open door and waited patiently and politely. Silas Lawler made an abrupt gesture with his gun and then became utterly still and silent for the longest several seconds there have ever been. Finally he sighed, and the tension went out of him.

“All right,” he said. “Another minute or two. What mistake?”

“Assuming that Constance Markley killed Regis Lawler,” I said.

“She was in the room with him. He was dead.”

“Conceded. But you said you checked her purse and saw seven hundred dollars. Did you see a gun?”

“No. No gun.”

“Was it in the room? Anywhere in the apartment?”

“No.”

“You think maybe she shot him with her finger?”

“I’ve wondered about that. You explain it.”

“I already have. She didn’t shoot him.”

“You’re just guessing.”

“Maybe so. But I’ve got better reasons for my guess than you’ve got for yours. You think she went off the deep end and killed him because he was getting tired of her. Is that it?”

“She’d had troubles. Things had piled up. Regis was more than a lover. He was a kind of salvation.”

“I’ll tell you something I’ve learned. The night Regis died, Constance Markley’s maid helped her dress. According to this maid, she was eager. She wasn’t angry or depressed or particularly disturbed in any way. She was only eager to see her lover. Does that sound like a woman betrayed and ready to kill? It sounds to me more like a woman who was still ignorant of whatever defections her lover was committing.”

“Say she was ignorant. She learned after she got there.”

“Sure. And shot him with her finger.”

Again, for the time it took to draw and release a long breath, Silas Lawler was silent. At the open door, Darcy shifted his weight with a grating of gravel.

“You got anything else to say?” Lawler said.

“Only what you’re already thinking,” I said. “Constance Markley didn’t kill Regis. Neither did you. But someone did. Pretend for a minute that it was you. You murdered a man, and the night of the murder the man’s mistress vanishes. No one knows where she went. No one knows why. In your mind these two things, the murder and the disappearance, are inevitably associated. It’s too big a coincidence. There must be a connection. But what is it? Does she know something that may be placing you in jeopardy every second of your life? Or every second of hers? You must learn this at any cost, and you must learn it before anyone else. You may pretend indifference, but in your mind are the constant uncertainty, the constant fear. They’re there for two long years. Then a garden variety private detective stumbles onto something. Maybe. He makes a trip to a town named Amity where the vanished mistress once lived with the same woman who has hired the detective to find her. Several people, in one way or another, learn of this trip. Including you, the murderer. What do these people do? They stay at home and mind their own business. Except you, the murderer. You don’t stay home and mind your own business, because your business is in Amity.”

That was all I had. It wasn’t much, but it was all, and I had a strong conviction that it was true. Silas Lawler was still, and so was Darcy. In the stillness, like a living and measurable organism, was a growing sense of compelling urgency. I could hear it at last in Lawler’s voice when he spoke again.

“Darcy,” he said, “let’s go back.”

Darcy got under the wheel, and we turned and went. We went as fast as the Caddy’s horses could run on the road and highway and streets they had to follow. On Canterbury Street, in front of the small frame house in which Constance Markley lived, Silas Lawler and I got out on the parking and looked up across the lawn to the house, and the light was still on the blind behind the window, and everything was quiet. Then, after a terrible interval in which urgency was slowly becoming farce, there was a shadow on the blind that was not a woman’s, a scream in the house that was.

The scream was not loud, not long, and there was no shadow and no sound by the time Lawler and I reached the porch. I was faster than he, running on longer legs, and he was a step behind me when I threw open the door to see Constance Markley hanging by the neck from the hands of her husband.

Interrupted in murder, he turned his face toward us in the precise instant that Lawler fired, and in another instant he was dead.

Constance Markley began to scream again.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

I had a notion that the screams were two years old.

Chapter 9

I took a week to get things cleared up. I stayed in Amity that week, and then I went home, and the day after I went home, I went up to the apartment of Faith Salem. I made a point of going when the sun was on the terrace. Maria let me in, and I crossed the acres of pile and tile and went out where Faith was. She was lying on her back on the bright soft pad with one forearm across her eyes to shade them from the light. She didn’t move the arm when I came out.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hand,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Excuse me for not getting up. Will you please sit down?”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Thanks.”

I sat down in a wicker chair. It was very warm on the terrace in the sun, but the warmth was pleasant, and after a while I began to feel it in my bones. Faith Salem’s lean brown body remained motionless, except for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her breasts in breathing, and I suspected that her eyes were closed under her arm.

“So it was Graham after all,” she said.

“That’s what you suspected, wasn’t it?”

“In a way. I had a feeling, but it was a feeling that he had done something to Constance. I can’t understand why he killed this man.”

“Not because of the affair. He didn’t care about that.”

“Why, then?”

“Regis Lawler tried to blackmail him. It went back to something that happened several years ago. Graham Markley and Constance were driving back from the country. They’d been on a party, and Graham was drunk. He hit a woman on the highway and killed her and kept right on driving. It was a nasty business. Constance isn’t a strong person, nor even a very pleasant person, and she agreed with Graham that it was better to keep quiet about the incident. It’s easy for some people to rationalize that kind of attitude. Then, in due time, after the death of her child, she met Regis Lawler, and she wanted to do with Regis just what everyone actually assumed she had done. She wanted to run away from everything — her marriage, her guilt, everything associated with her child’s death, all the unhappiness that people like her seem doomed to accumulate.

“Apparently Regis let her believe that he might be willing to go along with this, but he had no money. Silas Lawler told me that Regis stole seventy-five grand from a wall safe at the restaurant, but it wasn’t so. It was only a lie Silas used to make their running away plausible. What really happened was that Constance told Regis about the woman’s death on the highway, and Regis tried the blackmail, although he actually had no intention, it seems, of going anywhere at all with Constance. The blackmail didn’t work. Graham Markley wasn’t the kind of weak character to submit. He went to Lawler’s apartment and killed him. When Constance went there later the same night and found his body, she knew immediately what had surely happened. Her own burden of guilt was too heavy to bear in addition to everything else, and so she escaped it by becoming someone else to whom none of this had ever happened. It was something that could only have happened under certain conditions to a certain kind of person. She became the one woman she had known that she completely admired and envied, and she went back to the place where she had, for a while, been happier than she had ever been before or since. She became you, and she went back to Amity. With a break or two and a couple of hunches, I got the idea that she might be there, and I went there to see if I could find her, and Graham Markley learned from you where I was going. He was terribly afraid of what Constance might know to tell if she was found, and it was imperative, as he saw it, to get rid of her for good and all. And so he followed me and found her and tried to kill her, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

“I’m sorry I told him,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

“Not for me,” I said. “It made me a smart guy instead of a corpse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not important.”

The sun in the sky was nearing the tooled ridge of stone. I wished for a drink, but nobody brought one. Faith Salem’s breasts rose and fell, rose and fell. Her long brown legs stirred slightly in the sun.

“Did Constance tell all this?” she said.

“The part about the murder. Not the rest.”

“How strange it is. How strange simply to forget everything and become someone else.”

“Strange enough, but not incredible. It’s happened before. People have gone half around the world and lived undetected in new identities tor years.”

“Is she all right now?”

“She remembers who she is and everything that happened until she found the body of Regis Lawler in his apartment. She doesn’t remember anything that happened in the time of the fugue. That’s a long way from all right, I guess, but it’s as good as she can hope for.”

“Why become me? Why me of all people?”

There was honest wonderment in her voice. Looking at her, the lean brown length of her, I could have told her why, but I didn’t. I had a feeling that it was time to be going, and I stood up.

“I think I’d better leave now,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

“I’ll send you a bill.”

“Of course. I’ll be here as long as the rent’s paid. That’s about three months.”

“Are you going to look at me before I leave?”

“No. I don’t think so. Do you mind letting yourself out?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Good-by, then, Mr. Hand. I wish you had a lot of money. It’s a shame you’re so poor.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s a crying shame.”

She never moved or looked at me, and I went away. The next day I sent her a bill, and two days after that I got a check. I saw her twice again, but not to speak to. Once she was coming out of a shop alone, and once she was going into a theater on the arm of a man. I learned later that she married a very rich brewer and went to live in Milwaukee.

The Witness Was a Lady

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1960.

It was a Thursday morning when Corey McDown called me. I hadn’t heard from Corey for a long time. Not directly. After he got to be a cop, we sort of drifted apart and lost contact with each other. I’m not exactly allergic to cops, you understand, but it usually turns out that we’re incompatible.

Corey was a bright guy, and he’d moved up fast in the force. He was pretty young for a lieutenant in Homicide.

“Hello, Mark,” he said. “Corey McDown here. Did I get you out of bed?”

“I don’t have to get out of bed to answer the phone,” I said. “How are you, Corey?”

“I’ve been worse,” he said, “and I’ve been better. I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

“Do I owe you a favor?”

“Do this one for me, and I’ll owe you one.”

“You think I may need it?”

“You may, Mark. You never know.”

“True. There have been times before. What’s on your mind, Corey?”

“I hate long telephone conversations. Ask me over.”

“Sure, Corey. Come on over.”

“Give me thirty minutes.”

He hung up, and so did I. It must be a big favor he wanted, I thought, to make him so accommodating. I had an uneasy feeling that it was related to something that I didn’t want to think about, and I wished I could quit. I got out of bed and shaved and showered and dressed, which used up the thirty minutes. I had just finished when the door buzzer sounded, and I went out across the living room to the door and opened it.

“Right on time,” I said. “Come on in.”

He came in and tossed his hat into one chair and sat down in another. His hair was cut short, a thick brown stubble, and he looked trim and hard. Right now, leaning back and smiling, relaxed.

“You’ve got a nice place, Mark. You live well.”

“Heels always live well. It’s expected of them.”

“You’re not a heel, Mark. You’re just a reasonably good guy with kinks.”

“Thanks.” I walked over to a table and lifted a glass. “You want some breakfast?”

“Out of a bottle?”

“Is there another place to get it?”

“I had mine out of a skillet. You go ahead.”

I poured a double shot of bourbon and swallowed it fast. Then I went back and threw his hat on the floor and took its place. The double helped me feel as relaxed as he looked.

“Go on,” I said. “Convince me.”

“Don’t rush me. I’m trying to think of the best approach.”

“The best is the simplest. You want a favor. Tell me what it is.”

“Let me ask you a question first. You seen Nora lately?”

“No. It’s been forever. Why?”

“I thought you might have looked her up when Jack Kirby was murdered.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s strange. Old friends and all, I mean. The least an old friend can do when an old friend’s boy friend is killed is to offer sympathy and condolences and all that.”

“My personal opinion is that congratulations were in order. I didn’t think it would be in good taste to offer them.”

He looked across at me, shaking his burr head and grinning. The grin got vocal and became a loud laugh.

“You see, Mark? All you’ve got are a few kinks. A real twenty-four carat heel like Jack Kirby offends your sensibilities.”

“Go to hell.”

“Sure, sure. Anything to oblige. What I’m leading up to is, this favor isn’t really for me at all. Oh, incidentally it is, maybe, but mostly it’s a favor for Nora.”

“You sound like a man about to be devious, Corey.”

“Not me, Mark. Whatever I may be that makes me different from you, I’m not devious. I haven’t got the brains for it.”

“O.K. Tell me the favor for Nora that’s one for you incidentally.”

“I’ll tell you, but let’s get the circumstances in focus. Did you read the news stories about Jack Kirby’s murder?”

“Once over, lightly.”

“In that case, you’ll remember what the evidence indicated. He had an appointment with someone in his apartment. At least someone came to see him there, and this someone, whoever it was, killed him. Cracked his skull with a heavy cut-glass decanter, to be exact. This was all in the news stories, and it’s all true. What wasn’t in the stories, because we put the lid on it, is that someone pretty definitely knew who it was in the apartment with Kirby that night. That someone is Nora.”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind how. We know.”

“That won’t do, Corey. You can’t expect to clam up on the guy you’re asking for a favor.”

“All right. I’ll tell you this much. The day of Kirby’s murder, Nora told a friend that she was going to Kirby’s apartment that night, but she couldn’t go until late because Kirby was expecting someone earlier that she didn’t want to meet. This friend is a woman whose testimony can be relied on. We’re convinced of that.”

“Didn’t Nora mention the name of Kirby’s expected guest?”

“No. No name. Just that it was someone she didn’t want to meet there.”

“Did you ask Nora?”

Corey looked down at his hands in his lap. He folded and unfolded the blunt fingers. On his face for a few seconds there was a sour expression as he recalled an experience that he hadn’t liked and couldn’t forget.

“We hauled her in and asked her over and over for a long while. She wouldn’t say. She denied ever having told her friend that she knew.”

“I wonder why. You’d think she’d want to help.”

“Come off it, Mark. You know why as well as I do. Jack Kirby was a guy who associated with dangerous characters. One of these characters killed him, and he wouldn’t think twice about killing a material witness. Either to keep her from talking or in revenge if she did. If he couldn’t do it personally, he’d have it done for him. Today or tomorrow or next year. Nora’s been associating with some dangerous characters herself, including Kirby. She knows how they operate, Mark. She won’t talk because she’s afraid.”

“Well, Nora’s not exactly a strong personality. She’ll break eventually. Why don’t you ask her again?”

“I wish I could.”

“Why can’t you? Like you said, she’s a material witness. You can arrest her and hold her.”

“I could if I could get hold of her.” He looked down at his hands again, at the flexing fingers. His face was smooth and hard now, the sour expression dissolved. “I should have held her when I had her, but that was my mistake. A man makes lots of mistakes for old times’ sake.”

“Asking and giving favors, you mean. That sort of thing.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“Speaking of favors, where do I come in? If you think I know where Nora is, you’re wrong.”

“That’s not the problem. I already know where she is.”

“In that case, why don’t you pick her up?”

“Because she’s across the state line. You may know that we don’t have any extradition agreement with our neighbor covering material witnesses.”

“I didn’t know, as a matter of fact. Thanks for telling me. It may come in handy. I don’t seem to remember reading any of this about Nora in the papers.”

“I told you. It wasn’t there. We’ve kept the lid on it. The point is, we can’t keep the lid on any longer. The story’s going to break in the evening editions, and that’s what worries me.”

“I can see why. You won’t look so good, letting a material witness slip away from you. Tough. You expect me to bleed, Corey?”

“It’s not that. I’ll survive a little criticism. It’s Nora I’m worried about.”

“Old times’ sake again?”

“Call it what you like, but you can see her position. She’s a constant and deadly threat to Jack Kirby’s killer, whoever he is, and the moment the story breaks, the killer is going to know it. He’ll also know where to find her.”

“I see what you mean. The threat works two ways.”

“That’s it. And that’s where you come in.”

“Don’t tell me. You want me to go and talk to her and convince her that she’s got to come back and turn herself in for her own good.”

“You’re a smart guy, Mark. You always were.”

“Sure. With kinks. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite convinced that this mysterious visitor of Kirby’s is going to be so desperate as you imagine.”

“You think he won’t? Why?”

“Well, Nora knows he was supposed to be at Kirby’s at a certain time. At the time Kirby was killed. So she knows. That’s not absolute proof that he was actually there. Even if he was there, it’s not proof that he did the killing. It’s a lead, Corey, not a conviction.”

“A lead’s all we need. The visitor killed Kirby. We’re certain of it. Once we know who he was, we’ll find more evidence fast enough. We’ll know what to look for, and how and where to find it.”

“You haven’t told me yet where Nora is.”

“About a hundred miles from here. The first place I thought to check. The natural place for a woman to run when she’s scared and in trouble.”

“Home?”

“What used to be. Down on the farm.”

“Regression, as the psychs say. You were sharp to think of that right off the bat, Corey. You’re quite a psych yourself.”

He got up suddenly and walked over to a pair of matched windows overlooking a small court in which, below, there was some green stuff growing.

He stood there looking out for a minute or more, and then he turned and walked back but did not sit down again.

“You and Nora were always close, Mark, back there when we were kids. Closer than ever Nora and I were. I used to hate you for that, but it doesn’t matter any longer. It’s one of the things I’ve gotten over. The point is, she’ll be in danger. I believe that or I wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t listen to me, but she might to you. Will you go talk to her?”

“Why should I?”

“Do you have to have the reasons spelled out?”

“I can’t think of any.”

“As a favor for me?”

“I don’t want to obligate you.”

“For Nora, then?”

“Nora wants me to leave her alone. She told me so.”

“Not even to save her life?”

“Nora’s a big girl now. She associates with dangerous characters and makes up her own mind.”

He stood looking down at me, his face as bleak and empty as a department store floorwalker’s. Turning away, he picked his hat off the floor and held it by the brim in his hands.

“I guess those kinks are bigger than I thought,” he said.

He went over to the door and let himself out, and I kept on sitting in the chair, thinking about a time that he’d recalled. She used to ride into town to high school on the school bus, Nora did. Corey and I were town boys. We were snobbish with the country kids until we met Nora, who was a country kid, and then we weren’t snobbish any more. She was slim and lovely and seemed to move with incredible grace in a kind of golden haze. She was so lovely, in fact, that she intimidated me for almost a full year before we finally got together on a picnic one Sunday afternoon. After that, I began to know Nora as she was — as a touchable and lusty little manipulator, almost amoral, who already had, even then, certain carefully conceived and directed ideas about what Nora wanted out of life. I didn’t love her any the less, maybe more, but I resigned myself to the obvious truth that I was no more at most than a kind of privileged expedient.

After high school, Nora and Corey and I drifted at different times across the hundred miles to the city. At first we saw each other now and then, but later hardly at all. Corey became a cop. Thanks to luck and cards and certain contacts, I learned to live well without excessive effort. As for Nora — well, I had just refused to do her a favor at Corey’s request, but there had been plenty of others to do her favors, as there always are with girls like her, and some of the favors came to five figures. Jack Kirby had not been the first. Maybe he would be the last.

I stood up and walked over to the windows and looked down into the court, down at the green stuff growing. I wasn’t used to the radiance of day, and the light seemed intensely bright, and it hurt my eyes. My head ached, and I wondered if I could stand another double shot, or even a single, but I decided that I couldn’t. Turning away from the windows, I walked back across the living room and into the soft and seductive dusk of the bedroom. I lay down on the unmade bed and tried to think with some kind of orderliness, and the thinking must have been therapeutic, for after a while I lost the headache, or became unaware of it.

Granted, I thought, that Nora knew the identity of Jack Kirby’s visitor, who was also Jack Kirby’s killer. Corey was convinced that she did, and Corey was a bright guy. Being a bright guy, it was funny how he could go so far wrong from a good start. It was funny, a real scream, but I didn’t feel like laughing. Because she’d refused to talk, because she’d run and hid to escape the pressure that would certainly have broken her down, Corey assumed that she was afraid of the consequences of pointing a finger, the vengeance of a killer or a killer’s hired hand, but it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. She had run from the pressure, true, but she had kept her silence simply because she did not want Jack Kirby’s visitor to be known. For old times’ sake. It was touching, really, and I appreciated it.

I went over in my mind again with odd detachment, as if I were reviewing an experience of someone else, the way it had happened that I had killed Jack Kirby. I hadn’t intended to, although it was a pleasure when I did, and all I’d actually intended when I went up to his apartment that night was to pay an overdue debt of a couple of grand.

I had lost the two grand to Kirby in a stud game that proved to be the beginning of a streak of bad luck. In the first place, to show how bad my luck was beginning to be, I lost the pot on three of a kind, which is pretty difficult to do in straight stud. In the second place, to show how fast bad luck can get worse in a streak, I didn’t have the two grand. All I had to offer was an IOU with a twenty-four-hour deadline. The deadline passed, and I still didn’t have the two grand. My intentions were good, but my luck kept on being bad. I got three extensions on the deadline, and then I had a couple of visitors. They came to my apartment about the middle of the afternoon, a few minutes after I’d gotten out of bed. I’d seen both of them around, and I knew the name of one of them, but the names didn’t matter. It was a business call, not social. They were very polite in a businesslike way. Only one of them talked.

“Mr. Sanders,” he said, “we’re representing Mr. Jack Kirby in a little business matter.”

“Times have been tough,” I said.

“Mr. Kirby appreciates that, but he feels that he’s been more than liberal.”

“Thank Mr. Kirby for me.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Kirby wants more than thanks. He wants to know if you’re prepared to settle your obligation.”

“How about a payment on account? Ten percent, say.”

“Sorry. Mr. Kirby feels that the obligation should be settled in full. He’s prepared to extend your time until eight o’clock tomorrow night. He expects you to call at his apartment at that hour with the full amount due and payable.”

“Tell Mr. Kirby I’ll give the matter my careful attention.”

“Mr. Kirby wants us particularly to remind you of the urgency.”

“Fine. Consider me reminded.”

“Mr. Kirby wants us to remind you in a manner that you will remember.” This was the clue to go to work, apparently, for that’s what they did. I wasn’t very alert yet, it being several hours until dark, and I put up what might be called a sorry defense. In fact, I didn’t put up any defense at all. The mute suddenly had me from behind in a combination hammerlock and stranglehold, and the talker, looking apologetic, belted me three times in the belly. At the door, leaving me doubled up on the floor, the talker stopped and looked back, an expression of compassion spreading among the pocks on his flat face.

“Sorry, Mr. Sanders,” he said. “Nothing personal, you understand.”

I wasn’t able to acknowledge the apology with the good grace it deserved. After they were gone, I began to breathe again, and a little later I successfully stood up. The beating had been painful, but not crippling.

It was a break in a way, the beating was. It was the nadir of the streak, the worst of the bad luck, and now that things had got about as bad as they could get, they began immediately to get better. What I mean is, I took the ten percent I’d offered Kirby’s hired goons and ran it through another game of stud and brought it out multiplied by twenty. A little better than four grand in paper with not an IOU in the bundle. By midnight I had in my possession, as the talking goon had said, the full amount due and payable.

The next night at eight, I was at Kirby’s door. I rang the bell, and Kirby let me in. He was wearing most of a tux, the exception being a maroon smoking jacket with a black satin sash. I happen to have an aversion to satin sashes, on smoking jackets or anything else, and this put me in a bad humor. It made it more difficult than ever to be reasonable about the beating he had bought for me. Apparently I was wearing nothing to which he had a comparable aversion. His long, sallow face, divided under a long nose by a long, thin moustache, was perfectly amiable.

“Hello, Mark,” he said. “Glad to see you.”

“Even broke?” I said.

“Sorry.” His face lost its amiability. “Poverty depresses me.”

“Never mind. I’m not one of your huddled masses. I come loaded.”

“Good.” The amiability was back. “I was sure you could manage if you really tried.”

I took the ready bundle from a pocket, two grand exactly, and handed it to him. He transferred it to a pocket of his offending jacket with hardly more than a glance, and this put me in a worse humor than I was already in, which was bad enough. I knew he would count the money the moment I was gone, and it would have been less annoying if he had counted it honestly in front of me.

“Now I’ll have the IOU, if you don’t mind,” I said.

“Certainly, Mark.” He took the paper out of the same pocket the money had gone into. “I hope you don’t resent the little reminder I was forced to send you.”

“Not at all. It was very courteous and regretful, and it only hit me where it doesn’t show.”

“I’m glad you understand. Will you have a drink before you leave?”

“Bourbon and water.”

“Good. I’ll have one with you.”

He turned and walked over to a liquor cabinet and worked for a minute with a bottle and glasses. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to stay for more than one, but I’m expecting company.”

“Company’s nice if it’s nice company.”

“This is nice. Someone you once knew, I believe. Nora Erskine? Charming girl. Beautiful. She has a very warm nature. Very generous.”

He came toward me with a glass in each hand, and I hit him in the mouth. Don’t ask me why. Maybe a disciple of Freud could tell you, but I can’t. He fell backward in a shower of bourbon and came up with a little gun in his hand, which seemed to indicate that he hadn’t been quite so amiable and trusting as he’d appeared. The cut-glass decanter was there on a table beside me, and I picked it up and smashed it over his head, and he fell down dying and was dead in less than a minute.

Stripped to the bone, that was how I killed him. I tried to remember if I had touched anything besides the decanter and the outside of the door, and there seemed to be nothing, and so I wiped the neck of the decanter with my handkerchief and retrieved the two grand, which was no good to him, and left. I went home and thought about it, wondering if I should leave town incognito, but I decided that there was no need. The goons knew that I was supposed to be at Kirby’s, of course, but the goons were old pros. They’d done a job and were through with it. They couldn’t care less that Jack Kirby had got himself killed. As a matter of fact, if they made the logical deduction, I would probably go up immeasurably in their regard. The result of my thinking was the decision that it was unnecessary to take any precipitate action. I only needed to proceed with caution, as the signs beside the highways say, in the direction I was going.

But that was then, and now was different. Now I knew that Nora knew, and Nora was not an old pro, and Nora would surely someday tell. Maybe not now or soon, but someday, the day she couldn’t stand the pressure any longer, and the passage of time would not help or save me, for there is no statute of limitations on murder, not even murder which might turn out to be, with luck and a good lawyer, of lesser degree than first. And there was always the solid possibility, of course, of that grim first.

I could see that I had come to the time of decision now, and I didn’t want to face it. Like many another in the same predicament, I found a way to avoid it temporarily, if not permanently. In any case it was simple. I simply went to sleep.

When I awoke again, it was evening, but the hour of the day was the only thing that had changed, not me or the problem or anything that had to be considered and done or not done. I got up and washed my face in cold water and put on a tie and jacket and went downstairs onto the street. There was a newsstand on the corner, half a block away, and I went down there and bought an evening edition and carried it back to the apartment without looking at it. In the apartment, I poured another double shot and drank half of it and sat down and opened the newspaper, and there was the story on page one: Material Witness in Kirby Slaying Flees State. I read the story slowly, finishing the second shot of the double as I read, and it was reported about the way Corey had told it to me in the morning, how Nora was believed to know the identity of Kirby’s visitor at the time of the murder, and how she had refused to talk, and how, finally, she had escaped into the next state, from which she could not be extradited. It was also reported in the story exactly where she had gone and now was, the home of her childhood not more than a hundred miles away, and this was what I needed in order to make the decision I had to make, and you can see why. Now that her location was no longer a secret shared by me and the police, Nora was in greater danger and, as a consequence, so was I. There was therefore no longer any reason for indecision or delay, although there was probably no reason to hurry either.

I sat there for quite a long while, and it began to get dark outside in the city streets, and the incandescents and fluorescents and neons came on to drive the darkness back. I finally became aware, via my stomach, that I hadn’t eaten all day, and that I had better eat something before I took another drink, which I wanted, and so I went out and had a steak in a restaurant down the street a few blocks. After eating, I walked back and had a couple more drinks in the apartment, and then I went down and got my car out of the garage in the basement and drove across town to a place where they were having a stud game. I won five hundred skins in the game, the good streak still running in the wake of the bad streak, and at some point in the time it took to win that much money, my mind made itself up and I knew what I was going to do. I dropped out of the game about three o’clock in the morning, a little after, and it was almost four when I got home.

In the bedroom of the apartment, I changed into slacks, sport shirt and jacket, heavier shoes. From a shelf in the closet I got a leather case that contained a .30 — .30 rifle. I had been very good with a rifle when I was younger. There was no reason to believe that I wasn’t still almost as good. I assembled the rifle and checked it and took it apart again. I put the parts back into the case and half a dozen cartridges into my jacket pocket. I don’t know why I took so many, for chances were long that a dozen would not be enough if one wasn’t. Carrying the case, I went back downstairs to my car and drove out of town.

It took me about three hours driving slowly, to reach the town where I had grown up a hundred years or so ago, and I did not drive into it after reaching it. Instead, I drove around it on roads I remembered, and beyond it on another road until I saw ahead of me, quite a distance and on the left, the white house of the Erskines. It sat rather far back from the road at the end of a tree-lined drive, though not so far as memory had it, and it had once been considered the finest farm home in the county, if not the state. Now it did not seem one-half so grand, a different house than I had known before, as if the first had been razed and a second built in its place in an identical design, with identical detail, but on a reduced scale.

I turned off before I reached the house, along the side of a country square. The road descended slowly for a quarter of a mile to a steel and timber bridge across a shallow ravine. There had been water in the ravine in the spring, and there would be water again when the fall rains came, but now the bed was dry except for intermittent shallow pools caught in rock. After crossing the bridge, I pulled off the road on a narrow turning into high weeds and brush. Getting out of the car, carrying the rifle case, I climbed a barbed-wire fence and followed the course of the ravine through a stand of timber, mostly oaks and maples and elms, and across a wide expanse of pasture in which a herd of Holsteins were having breakfast. Pretty soon I left the ravine and cut across two fields at an angle and up a long rise into a grove of walnut trees on the crest. I stopped among the trees and assembled and loaded the rifle, and then I lay down and looked down the slope on the other side of the crest to the house where Nora was supposed to be. There was a stone terrace on this side of the house at the rear. On the terrace was a round table and several brightly striped canvas chairs. Wide glass doors led off the terrace into the house. No one was visible from where I lay under the walnut trees about fifty yards away.

After half an hour, I rolled over onto my back and lay looking up into the branches of the trees where the green walnuts hung, and I began to remember all the times I’d come here to gather the nuts when I was a kid, sometimes with Nora in the later years. We gathered them in burlap bags — gunny sacks, they were called — and later knocked the blackened husks off with a hammer. For a long time afterward, if we didn’t wear gloves, our hands were stained with the juice of the husks, a stain like the stain of nicotine, and there was no way to get this stain off except to wear it off, and you could always tell the ones who had gathered walnuts late in the fall by the stain on their hands that wore on toward winter.

I could hear a cow bell jangling back in the pasture. I could hear a dog barking. I could hear the cawing of a crow above the fields, and I thought I could hear, closing my eyes, the slow beating of his black wings against the still air. Opening my eyes, I rolled over and looked down the slope again to the terrace, and there was Nora standing beside the table and looking up toward the walnut grove as if she could see me lying in its shadow. She was wearing a white blouse and brown shorts, and her face and arms and legs were golden in the morning light. Drawing the rifle up along my side into firing position, I had her heart in my sights in a second, and I had a notion that it was a golden heart pumping golden blood.

She must have stood there for a full minute without moving, maybe longer, and then she turned and walked across the terrace and through the glass doors into the house, and I lowered my face slowly into the sweet green grass. I could still hear the bell and the dog and the crow, and I could hear the voice of Corey McDown saying that Mark Sanders was just a guy with kinks.

After a while I stood up and went back across the fields to the ravine and along the ravine through the pasture and the woods to the car. Driving to the city, I thought about what I had better do, and where I had better go, and how long it would take to learn to live comfortably with a constant threat, and I decided, although there was probably no hurry, that I might as well get my affairs in order and get somewhere a long way off as soon as possible.

She Asked for It

Originally published in Manhunt, Aug. 1960.

Chapter 1

It was about six o’clock of a long summer evening, and Lard Lavino had just brought the suppers over from his café. You probably know how it is with meals in a lot of county jails. The sheriff gets an allotment for feeding the prisoners, so much per meal, and if he’s got an economical wife to prepare them he can usually make a little gravy for himself, honest graft, and no one goes hungry in the process. I don’t happen to have a wife, being a bachelor, and so I had this arrangement with Lard to furnish the meals. On paper he charged me exactly the allowance, payable the first of the month, but we had a little kickback understanding between us, not on paper, and it worked out so that neither of us got rich but both of us made a little.

Sometimes Lard sent the meals over, and sometimes he brought them himself. This evening was one of the times he brought them himself. There were only half a dozen of them, guests of the jail being mighty few at the time, and I was thinking I ought to get off my tail and gather in a few vagrants and minor offenders to build up the food allowance for the month, but it had been too damn hot, and still was, to do a lot of things a man would normally do for his own profit. It made me feel even hotter to look at Lard. He weighs about three hundred pounds, just short of it, and the grease was seeping out of his pores to soak his shirt and make a high sheen on his fat, swarthy face.

“It’s hot,” he said. “God Almighty, Colby, it’s hot!”

“Sure is,” I said. “You bring a plate for me?”

“Well, you didn’t say if you wanted one, but I brought it just in case.”

“Good for you, Lard. Saves me a walk over to the café. What’s it tonight?”

“It’s Thursday, Colby. You know what it is Thursdays.”

“Oh, sure. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Lard, why the hell don’t you shift the menu around now and then? Chicken fried steak on Wednesday, say, and salmon patties on Thursday.”

“What the hell difference does it make if you eat steak on Wednesday or Thursday?”

“Just a thought, Lard. Just something for a change.”

“Nuts. You want me to peddle the trays?”

“Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”

“Well, you better do it right away. Cream gravy ain’t worth a damn if it gets cold, you know. I’ll send back in about an hour for the things.”

He went out, and I distributed the trays before the cream gravy got cold. It didn’t take long because, like I said, there weren’t many guests — one chicken thief, two habitual violators of the peace, a pair of drunken drivers with ten days each, and a farm laborer doing a year minus GCT for sticking his brother-in-law with a pitch fork. The brother-in-law, though perforated, didn’t die.

After serving the six, I came back to my desk and started in on my own plate. The chicken fried steak wasn’t bad, if you had a sharp knife and your own teeth, but there were lumps in the mashed potatoes, and the cream gravy wasn’t worth a damn, as it turned out, hot or cold or lukewarm, which is what it actually was. I was working up an appropriate reprimand for my partner in petty graft when the patrol car stopped out front and Rudy Squires, one of my deputies, came loping up the long brick walk from the street and into the office. Rudy watches Wyatt Earp and Matt Dillon and does the best he can, but he has a big handicap, and the handicap is, he’s stupid. He’s also my cousin, however, and I make allowances for him. This afternoon he’d gone out into the county on business with Virgil Carpenter, another deputy, but now, coming back, he was alone.

“Where’s Virgil?” I said.

“He’s out at Crawley Bratton’s place,” Rudy said.

“What’s he doing out there?”

“Crawley’s got a big fire out in a field near the creek behind his house. It’s a haystack.”

“The hell it is!”

“That’s right. Virg and me were driving back along the road and saw this fire, so we stopped in Crawley’s drive and went down there. Crawley was there with a couple farmers and three or four kids from the other side of the creek, but there wasn’t much anyone could do unless we’d got some buckets and carried water from the creek. Hell, Colby, you can’t put out a burning haystack with a few buckets of water you’d have to carry thirty yards from a creek.”

“Who said you could?”

“Nobody said it, Colby. I was just explaining why we couldn’t put out the fire.”

“That’s fine, Rudy. I appreciate your explaining these difficult things to me. Now maybe you’d be good enough to explain why the hell a deputy sheriff has to patrol a lousy burning haystack.”

“We just stopped to see if there was anything we could do, Colby.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Virgil.”

“Why he stayed out there, you mean?”

“Now you’re getting it, Rudy. Why did Virgil stay out there?”

“I was coming to that, Colby. It turned out there was a body in the fire. We’d been smelling something and wondering what it was, and it turned out to be this body. Soon as the smoke had thinned and the fire had burned down some, we could see it lying in there. The way I figure it, someone must have put it in there and then started the fire. I don’t figure it likely that anyone would just go to sleep on a haystack and burn to death without ever waking up and getting the hell out of it. Do you, Colby?”

“No, I don’t, Rudy. That’s good thinking. Now here’s a minor point I wish you’d concentrate on. Did you identify the body? I mean, do you know whose it is?”

“Well, you know what happens to something in a fire, Colby. It gets burned up pretty much. I couldn’t swear who it is, and neither could Virg, but it’s a woman, anyhow, and Crawley Bratton says it’s his wife Faye.”

“What makes him think so?”

A guy ought to know his own wife better than anyone else, Colby. That’s what I figure. Soon as we saw her in the fire, Virg rolled her out with a fork one of the farmers had with him, and Crawley got a close look before it made him sick and he had to quit looking. He says it’s Faye, all right. Even if he hadn’t known her anyhow, he says, he’d have known her from the little chain she wore around her left ankle. Crawley’s all busted up about it.”

“Is Faye missing?”

“Now, Colby, if she’s dead she’s bound to be missing. What I mean is, she ain’t around the same as the rest of us.”

“That’s true, Rudy. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself. Well, I better get on out there to Crawley’s place, I guess. You stay here and look after the mail, and if Lard Lavino comes back for the supper things, you tell him I said to get the God-damn lumps out of the mashed potatoes next time.”

“Well, that reminds me, Colby. I ain’t had any supper myself, and I’m pretty hungry. Do you mind if I finish yours?”

On my plate, the glob of mashed potatoes, smeared with cold cream gravy, looked like something that had already been eaten. I contained a belch and nodded. It was incredible, I thought, what could sometimes happen to a man in the way of cousins.

“Help yourself,” I said. “Watch your bridgework on that steak.”

In the patrol car, I drove west to Crawley Bratton’s place, about three miles out of town. My watch said almost seven when I got there. Light was draining slowly out of the long dusk, but it would be another hour before the dusk deepened into night. Behind Crawley’s house and barn, far back in a field against the black line of timber along the creek, I could see a small group of men standing in the red glow of what was left of the haystack. Leaving the patrol car in the barnyard, I walked down a long lane between parallel fences of barbed wire and across a pasture into the field, lying fallow, in which the stack had stood.

As I came nearer, I began to pick up the smell, getting stronger and stronger, of charred flesh. Human flesh. Flesh, if it was truly Faye Bratton’s, that would be remembered, if briefly, by more men than Crawley Bratton cared to think about. Virg Carpenter detached himself from the group in the red glow and walked a few steps into the shadows to meet me. Virg was a big guy, hanging over his belt, with a taste for purple shirts and black string ties. He was a pretty good deputy, all in all, and what he wanted more than anything else was to be a pretty good sheriff. I didn’t have any objections, particularly, after I was through with the office.

“We got something big this time, Colby,” he said.

“Rudy said it’s Fay Bratton,” I said.

“That’s who it is. What’s left of her.”

“You sure of it?”

“Crawley says so. Crawley ought to know. There’s one of these little chains around her left ankle. I remember seeing it lots of times myself.”

“Where’s Crawley now?”

“Up at the house. He was all busted up, Colby. I didn’t think it would do any harm to let him go up there.”

“I didn’t see any light in the house when I came by.”

“Maybe he likes to sit in the dark.”

“Maybe. You called the coroner?”

“I told Crawley to call from the house.”

“Good. It’s just routine, anyhow. The bastard can’t diagnose anything but rigor mortis. Where’s the body?”

“Over there on the ground. Just follow your nose. We got a piece of canvas out of Crawley’s barn to cover her with.”

I followed my nose to a dark heap at the edge of a red perimeter. Pulling the canvas back at one end, I stared for a moment at a black blister that might have been the face of Faye Bratton. Reversing ends, I looked at the ankle chain. Like Virg, I had noticed it on her before. Like Virg, like Crawley, like Tom and Dick and Harry. Lots of men had noticed lots of things about Faye. She’d had her share of playing in the hay, so to speak, and now she’d burned in it. Faye in the hay. An appropriate ending after all. A kind of epitaph.

One of seven, the sixth of the litter, an earthy beauty from the time of her tender years, she might have exploited herself to her own great advantage if only she’d had the brains to develop an imagination and a vision. Instead, she had married Crawley Bratton, or Crawley’s half-section of rich land, when she was eighteen and Crawley was twenty-six. To her, fresh off the thin soil of the north part of the county, straying south with hot eyes and swivel hips, Crawley’s fine farm and solid bank account had probably seemed like fabulous spoils. With a little excitement on the side, a man here and a man there, even Crawley himself could be accepted as a necessary part of a bargain. As for Crawley, ordinarily a sharp guy in any kind of deal, it was simply a matter of glands over brains. They had been married about four years ago, and now here they were at the end of their time, a cinder lying in a fallow field and a man alone in an unlighted house.

“It’s Faye, all right,” I said, standing. “I’d better go up and talk to Crawley. Get these other guys out of here, Virg. Send them home. You wait for the coroner. He’ll probably want you to help him decide if she’s dead.”

“Sure, Colby. We ought to have a real doctor, instead of some guy just after a political plum.”

“Well, don’t complain, Virg. We got an undertaker, and that’s next best thing. Even better, maybe, come to think of it. After a doctor says a guy’s dead, he’s finished. There’s still something left for an undertaker to do. Puts it all in one neat little package.”

“Something left for us to do, too, Colby. You got any ideas?”

“Not yet. Nothing to speak of.”

“She was a prowler, Colby. You know that. Kept old Crawley’s guts in the sauce pan all the time. Lots of guys might have done it for one reason or another.”

“Sure, sure. I know that. What I can’t figure is all this hocus pocus here. Why this crazy bonfire?”

“Hell, Colby, that seems plain enough.”

“Does it? Tell me why.”

“Well, damn it, to get rid of the body. At least burn it enough so it maybe couldn’t be recognized.”

“You sound like Rudy now.”

“Rudy? How like Rudy?”

“Stupid.”

I couldn’t see Virg’s face in the dusk, not clearly, but I knew it was getting about the same color as his shirt. Purple, that is. Virg was like that when you gouged him a little. He’d bloat and turn purple. Someday he’ll probably drop dead of apoplexy or something.

“I got a right to my opinion,” he said.

“Sure you have,” I said. “You got a right to be as stupid as you please on your own time, but you got no right to be stupid on county time. Not for pay.”

“You’re so damn smart, Colby, suppose you tell me what’s stupid about it.”

“I’ll try. First place, a hay fire isn’t hot enough to destroy a body. There’d be lots of things left to identify. Second place, the fire could be seen right away from two, three farmhouses. It’d just attract attention to the body instead of getting rid of it. Third place, you got a charred body, you got a certain woman missing. Any idiot could put the two together.”

“Just the same, Colby, someone put the body in the haystack and set the fire. Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t figure it. I told you I couldn’t.”

“Well, damn it, there’s got to be a reason.”

“Sure, there does. There’s a reason for everything. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find out what it is. You talked to all these kibitzers?”

“Yeah. Nobody saw anything. Just the fire blazing up. They all came running from wherever they were, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do. They just stood around and watched until the stack burned away enough to show the body. About that time, Rudy and I got here.”

“Be sure to get their names in case we want to talk to them again. I’m going up to see Crawley.”

I went back across the field and the pasture and up the long lane between barbed wire fences into the barnyard. Darkness was gathering and deepening between the barn and the house. There was still no light burning inside the house, but I saw a tiny red eye glowing angrily in the dense darkness of the screened-in back porch, watching me as I crossed the yard. When I drew near, I heard the thin creaking of rockers on the wood floor. Crawley was there alone in the darkness, smoking and rocking and waiting. I went up the steps and took hold of the latch of the screen door.

“Crawley?” I said.

“I’m here,” he said.

“It’s me. Colby Adams.”

“I can see you, Colby. Come on in.”

I went on inside and found another rocker beside the one Crawley was sitting in. Crawley kept on rocking and smoking. He didn’t say anything, still waiting.

“Tough luck, Crawley,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t do right,” he said. “She kept asking for trouble, and she finally found it. More trouble than she could handle. Maybe I’ll miss her for a while.”

“Chances are she was murdered, Crawley.”

“Chances are. Nothing else occurred to me.”

“You know anyone who might have wanted to kill her?”

“I might have. Lots of times. No one had a better reason.”

“Did you do it, Crawley?”

He sighed in the darkness and laughed softly after the sigh. There didn’t seem to be any bitterness in the successive sounds. They were expressions, I thought, of a black depth of tiredness.

“Not me, Colby. I might have, eventually, but I never got around to it.”

“All right. That disposes of you. How about someone else?”

“You want to play eeny, meeny, miney, mo? I don’t.”

“Maybe we ought to stick to current affairs.”

“Don’t ask me, Colby. I quit trying to keep up quite a while ago.”

“You’re not being much help, Crawley.”

“I’m not sure I want to be. I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t want it to end this way for her, not really, but now that it has, whoever did it, I can’t seem to work up any yen for justice or revenge or anything like that. Probably she deserved what she got.”

“That’s pretty rough on her, Crawley.”

“I don’t think so. Nothing hurts her now. Nothing will help her.”

“You always try to catch a murderer. Especially if you happen to be a cop.”

“I know. You got your job.”

“Sure I have, Crawley, and I’d better get on with it. You willing to tell me what you can?”

“You ask the questions, Colby. I’ll answer.”

“All right. When was the last time you saw Faye alive?”

“This morning. About nine o’clock, I guess. I’d been doing some work around the barn. About that time, about nine, I decided to go repair some fence that’s been needing it for a while. I went into the house and told Faye I was going, and she said all right, that she thought she’d go into town later. I went back to the barn and got a roll of wire and some tools and left. I didn’t come in at noon. I wasn’t hungry. I stayed on the job until after four in the afternoon, and it was close to five when I got back here. Faye wasn’t home, but the car and the truck were both here, and so I assumed someone had come and picked her up. It wasn’t unusual for that to happen. I ate a cold supper by myself and sat here on the porch, right where I’m sitting now, until the fire started down there in the field.”

“Where is this fence you mended?”

“West of here. Over on the section line.”

“Not close to the creek or the field where the fire started?”

“No. A long way. You know where the section line is, Colby.”

“Did Faye tell you where she was going in town?”

“No. She didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

“She didn’t mention anyone picking her up here?”

“Faye hardly ever told me what she planned to do. When she did, she usually lied.”

The lights of a car flashed past the side of the house, picking up the edge of the barn and flooding the lane beyond. The car itself followed, the tired ambulance driven by Emil Coker, undertaker and coroner. It went past the barn and stopped while someone got out and opened the gate to the lane. It went on down the lane and stopped again at the far end while someone got out again and opened the gate to the pasture. It moved on across the pasture, red tail lights bobbing.

I stood up and said, “There goes Emil.”

“Yeah.” His voice was curiously flat. “You’ll want to go down and talk to him, I guess.”

“No. Not tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough. It isn’t likely Emil will have anything to tell me that I can’t guess.”

“Sure. She’s dead. Someone killed her. You don’t need Emil to tell you.”

I walked over to the screen door and opened it, hesitating before passing through. I thought about saying again that I was sorry, but it didn’t seem to be necessary. He struck a match and lit a cigarette, the planes of his face flat and hard in the brief flare. The descending darkness was swollen and throbbing with the sounds of the night — an owl’s cry, a chorus of frogs, the singing of a thousand cicadas.

“Good-night, Crawley,” I said.

“Good-night,” he said.

I turned the patrol car in the yard and drove down the drive to the road and down the road to town.

Chapter 2

I drove along the main drag to the Hotel Bonny, a five story brick building standing tall on a corner. The street, in the slack period between five and eight, was almost deserted. Angling into a parking slot in front of the hotel, I got out and went into the lobby and down a couple of steps into the taproom. The taproom, like the street outside, was idling through the early evening interlude when people were engaged in other places. Hobby Langerham was behind the bar. He was eating a roast beef sandwich, washing it down with Schlitz beer. Hobby was a shrewd guy with sharp eyes, built like one of the kegs he tapped for the customers, and he had been behind the Bonny bar for a dozen years or more. He pulled a long shift, twelve to twelve, opening to closing, and I knew from experience that he generally knew who came and went at approximately what times.

“Hello, Colby,” he said. “How’s the law?”

“Can’t complain,” I said. “Draw me one, Hobby.”

He drew the beer and shoved it across the bar and waved away the two-bit piece I offered in payment. I always offered, and he always waved it away, and I don’t know why we kept going through the routine, unless it was just to keep the record straight.

“Thanks, Hobby,” I said. “This one I need.”

“You got a problem, Colby?”

“Looks like murder. I guess you could call that a problem.”

Hobby sucked in his breath, and his little eyes glittered in the soft light of the room, but he didn’t make a big demonstration out of his reaction. Hobby never did.

“I’d call it a problem, Colby. Anyone I know?”

“Come off, Hobby. You know everybody.”

“Okay. So it’s someone I know. Maybe it’s an official secret or something.”

“Nothing’s secret, official or otherwise, except the name of the one who did it. I wish I could tell you. Was Faye Bratton in here this afternoon, Hobby?”

“You mean it was Faye who got it?”

“That’s right. Faye Bratton.”

“Well, by God, it couldn’t have happened to anyone who tried for it harder. She was made to be murdered, that Faye was.”

“Maybe. I’ve got to take the position that no one is made to be murdered, not even wanton wives. Was she in here, Hobby?”

“Briefly. Fairly early. Alone.”

“How briefly?”

“I didn’t hold a watch on her. Say half an hour. Long enough to take her time drinking a couple of bourbon highballs.”

“How early?”

“When she got here? Let’s see. Not earlier than two. Not later than two-thirty.”

“You say she was alone?”

“That’s what I said. She came alone, she left alone.”

“She meet anyone here?”

“No.”

“She talk with anyone?”

“Sure. Me.”

“No one else?”

“No one. Matter of fact, there wasn’t anyone else here most of the time. Couple of guests of the hotel came in for maybe fifteen minutes. Drank a beer each. I took them to be salesmen. Not regulars, though. I’d never seen them before.”

“Did she say anything about meeting anyone later, after she left here?”

“She said she was going down the street to see Dolly Noble. That’s all.”

“Down to Dolly’s beauty parlor?”

“I took her to mean there. She didn’t say so.”

“That’s all she said about where she intended to go and what she intended to do?”

“That’s all.”

“How did she seem? I mean, did she seem nervous or excited or anything unusual at all?”

“Faye always gave the impression of looking for something or someone. Something or someone for excitement. Like a woman on the prowl. Tending bar, even in a place like this, you learn to know them. You can almost smell them. Nothing unusual about Faye this afternoon, I’d say. Just Faye the way she always was.”

“She talk about anything that seems significant, looking back?”

“I can’t remember anything.” He creased his brow, which ran up and back over the crown of his head, which he shook slowly sidewise. “Just talk, the kind of stuff you pass back and forth across a bar. No name was mentioned except Dolly’s.”

“Faye came in here pretty often, didn’t she?”

“She was in town often. I’d guess she came in here everytime she was in town. She was a good drinker, Faye was. She took bourbon in water with one ice cube. Short on the water. I’ve seen her a little high, but never what I’d call drunk.”

“Was she in the habit of meeting anyone here lately? Any special person, that is?”

“Like a man, you mean?”

“A man will do.”

“There wasn’t any. No one special. No one she was meeting by arrangement, I’ll swear. You know how Faye was, Colby. She never ran from a man if she came across one. If there happened to be one here, she was congenial.”

“I know. It doesn’t help much.”

“Maybe it does. In a negative way. If Faye was involved with a particular guy in a really big way, he’d probably be the one she wouldn’t be congenial with in a public bar. You see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean. You’re real clever to think of that, Hobby, but it sure as hell doesn’t narrow the field any. I can hardly suspect every man in the county that Faye hasn’t met up with one time or another in this taproom.”

“With Faye it’s going to be pretty hard to narrow the field much any way you look at it. Faye just naturally took in a lot of territory. You going to tell me what happened to her, Colby, or is it something you’re sitting on?”

“I’m not sitting on anything, Hobby. News just hasn’t had time to get around yet. Someone set fire to a haystack behind Crawley’s house this evening, out in a field near the creek. It attracted several men and kids from the area, including Virgil Carpenter and Rudy Squires, besides Crawley himself. When the fire burned down some and the smoke had lifted, they saw a body in there. Virgil forked it out, and it was Faye.”

“Jesus! You mean someone killed her and put her in the stack and set it on fire?”

“Looks that way, superficially. There are some crazy things about it.”

“It’s all crazy, if you ask me. How was Faye killed?”

“I’m not sure yet. The body was burned pretty bad. Emil Coker’s got it now, but I don’t suppose he’ll find out anything significant. Her head didn’t seem to be bashed in, and I couldn’t see any wounds. Maybe Emil will see something when he takes a close look at her on a table, but I doubt it. We’ll call in a doc for a post mortem, of course. It’s my guess she was strangled.”

“Why strangled in particular?”

“I don’t know. It probably happened in a quarrel about something. It seems to me the way a man would likely kill a woman under those circumstances, not having planned to kill her in advance. I might be wrong, of course, but it’s the way I’ve been thinking about it.”

“A guy would have to be out of his head to do something that crazy.”

“Faye drove men out of their heads. She was good at it.”

“You’re right there. How’s old Crawley taking it?”

“Virg and Rudy said he was busted up pretty bad down by the fire. When I talked to him at the house later, he wasn’t. He talked calm and sensible. He said he might miss Faye a little.”

“It’s a wonder Crawley didn’t kill her himself a long time ago, and that’s God’s truth.”

“Well, maybe he finally got around to it. He says he didn’t, of course.”

I drained my schooner and set it on the bar. Hobby picked it up and made a motion toward the tap.

“You want another, Colby?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got a place or two to go, Hobby. Keep an ear cocked to the bar talk tonight, will you? Something might drop. Chances are nothing will, but you never can tell.”

I went up the pair of steps and through the lobby and turned right on the main drag. Under lights, the street was beginning to look alive for a few more hours of this particular day. There was a moderate traffic of pedestrians on the sidewalk, and Wheeler’s Drug Store, next corner up from the Bonny, had begun to gather its nightly accretion of loafers and nylon inspectors. Passing, I wondered how often Faye Bratton’s nylons had been inspected and approved at this place to the sound of soft whistles, but it was nothing I gave a lot of attention to, just wondered in passing. In the next block, about half way between corners, I came to the narrow front of Dolly Noble’s beauty parlor, and found it dark. It was after closing hour, of course, but sometimes Dolly made night appointments with working girls, and I thought she might have made one tonight. It didn’t really matter, anyhow, for Dolly had a small apartment upstairs over the parlor, and I went up narrow stairs from the street into a narrow hall above, lighted by a single globe, and knocked on Dolly’s door. After a minute or two, she opened it.

“Hello, Dolly,” I said. “What’s new?”

“Nothing new,” she said, “except I’m getting a call from the sheriff. That’s new. What do you want, Colby?”

“Let me come in and tell you.”

“Why not? You’ll have to make it snappy, though. I’m expecting someone.”

I went past her into the living room of her little apartment, and she closed the door and sat down, crossing her legs, which were nice. She had a one-ton conditioner stuck in one of the windows overlooking the street below, and that was nice, too. It made the apartment nice and cool, and it was pleasant to sit there in the chair she’d offered and sneak a few looks at her nice legs. It was a lot better than standing in front of Wheeler’s.

“I’ll try to get out of the way before your date arrives,” I said.

“Oh, it’s no one that important, Colby. Just Faye Bratton.”

“Faye’s coming here?”

“She ought to be here now. She’s late.”

“What have you and Faye got scheduled for tonight?”

“That could be a personal question, Colby. You asking for a personal reason, or is it official?”

“What makes you think it might be official?”

“Nothing makes me think so. Hell, I don’t mind telling you, either way. We’re going to have dinner at the Bonny and go to a movie. Big night. Faye gets bored out on that damn farm with Crawley Bratton. She comes in and spends an evening with me every now and then. Sometimes she spends the night and goes home in the morning.”

I sat and looked at Dolly for a few seconds without speaking. Shorter than average, she wore spike heels to make herself look taller than she was, and someday she’d either be fat or haggard from diets and reducing exercises, but she was neither yet. Her blond hair, cut short and shaggy, had the benefit of her best rinse. Thanks to the treatments and tricks of her trade, Dolly managed to make herself a good-looking woman. Lots of men claim to consider this sort of deception unfair, but not me. The time comes for all women when it’s a good thing to know the tricks, and I’m all for the ones who learn early.

“Faye won’t be here,” I said.

“Why not?” she said. “Has something happened to her?”

“The last thing that ever will. She’s dead. Someone killed her.”

She sat staring at me with her mouth hanging slightly open, her eyes wide and sick with sudden shock. Under the eyes and on her cheeks, blue shadows and crimson paint stood out against drained flesh in stark and ugly relief. I watched for another sign than shock, but there was none. No fear, no anger, no slight beginning of grief. In her life, I thought, Faye Bratton had incited often the easy expression of love, but now in death she had taken away nothing that would be missed for more than a little while, if at all, and she had left not even sorrow. Thinking of Faye, I watched Dolly, and after a while Dolly’s breath escaped in a long sigh. The tip of a pink tongue slipped out to wet her lips.

“So he did it after all!” she said.

“He says not.”

“Did you expect him to confess?”

“Sometimes killers do. I guess I couldn’t have any such good luck as that, though.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“Tonight. Little more than an hour ago.”

“How did it happen?”

“I’m not sure. She was strangled, I think.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, how did it happen that you talked to him.”

“That’s routine, Dolly. If a wife’s killed, you naturally talk to the husband.”

“Crawley? My God, Colby, I wasn’t thinking of Crawley.”

“No? It seems to me, under the circumstances, that Crawley would be a natural one to think of. Who did you have in mind?”

“Fergus Cass.”

It was a name I hadn’t expected, and it took me a while to adjust. In the few seconds of adjustment, I tried to think of what I knew about Fergus Cass, and what I knew was practically nothing. He’d come into the county only about six months before, and he’d been living with an aunt and uncle on their farm across the creek from Crawley’s place, about a mile from house to house. He was from St. Louis, as I remembered, and there had been a rumor circulated at the time of his coming that he’d been sick, tuberculosis or something like that, and had spent some time in a sanitarium somewhere before coming to the country for rest and fresh air. This seemed a reasonable explanation, for he didn’t do anything in the way of work that anyone had ever noticed. I’d seen him in town a number of times, and once or twice tramping through the fields in the country carrying a rough hand-cut walking stick. He was a dark, lean man, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, with heavy black hair and eyes so deeply brown that they too looked black. There was a kind of unusual grace in the way he moved and held his head. He didn’t really look as if he’d ever been seriously sick, but of course you can’t always tell about such things from appearances.

“I never thought of Fergus Cass,” I said. “Tell me about him. Him and Faye, I mean.”

“They had something going. It’s been going four, five months, Colby. Since soon after Fergus came here to stay.”

“My understanding is, Faye almost always had something going. Isn’t that right?”

“Oh, sure. Faye always had to have something going with a man, but most of the time it didn’t amount to much. This was different. Bigger. Because of Fergus, the kind of guy he is. I told Faye she’d better leave him alone, but you know how she was. She wouldn’t listen.”

“You said the kind of guy Fergus is. What kind is he?”

“It’s hard to say, Colby. Nothing he’s done. Nothing he’s said. I guess it’s just the feeling he gives you, and the way he looks sometimes. You ever seen his eyes when something happens he doesn’t like? They get a kind of glaze on them. It’s like he’s gone suddenly blind. He’s so damn intense, Colby, that’s what he is.”

“I’ve never noticed. Maybe I haven’t looked into his eyes as often as you and Faye. Anyhow, it’s pretty thin. You can’t condemn a man for the look of his eyes.”

“That’s not all, Colby. Like I said, they’ve had this thing going for months. They used to meet down by the creek between Faye’s place and the Cass’s, but lately, the last two or three weeks, Faye’s been trying to break it up. I think she was getting a little scared or something. Fergus wanted her to leave Crawley and go back to St. Louis with him, but Faye wouldn’t go, and Fergus kept staying on and on, forcing her to meet him and trying to change her mind. He was supposed to go back a month ago, Faye told me, but he kept staying on.”

“Why didn’t Faye go? She didn’t give a damn for Crawley, that’s plain enough, and it seems to me it should have suited her fine to go running off to St. Louis with a good-looking guy like Fergus Cass.”

“Hell, Colby, good-looking guys are a dime a dozen, from St. Louis or anywhere else. You got any idea what Crawley Bratton’s worth?”

“I never gave it much thought. Quite a bundle, come to think of it.”

“It comes to six figures, at least.”

“Well, that’s something to take care of. It’s funny Faye took so many chances with it.”

“She couldn’t help taking chances. That was Faye for you. But she wasn’t going to throw it all away deliberately just for a good-looking nothing from a big town. He was all right to have a thing with, a big thing, but he was intended to be strictly temporary.”

“The same as others who could be named.”

“Name them if you want. What does it get you?”

“I don’t want to. Not now, anyhow. Maybe later. Hobby Langerham said Faye came to see you this afternoon. What did she want?”

“Nothing special. I was busy, and she didn’t stay. She just asked how about dinner and a movie tonight, and she left.”

“She say where she was going?”

“No.”

“Anything about meeting Fergus Cass down by the creek where you said they met?”

“No.”

“All right, Dolly. You’ve been a help. Thanks.”

“Sure. Make me a deputy.”

She didn’t get up to show me out. At the door, I looked back for a moment, and I thought she looked scared. Maybe she was seeing Fergus Cass staring at her with black eyes that had the glaze of blindness on them. I went on down to the street and back to the patrol car in front of the Bonny. In the car, I drove out of town to the Cass place. There was a light in the front room and in the kitchen at the rear. I went around back and knocked on the door, and pretty soon Elmo Cass, the uncle, came out of the living room and across the kitchen in his sock feet.

“Who is it?” he said.

“Colby Adams,” I said.

He opened the screen door and peered out at me. He was a big man with a shock of gray hair and a bushel of eyebrows. The eyebrows made him look fierce, and it was reported that he sometimes was. He didn’t invite me in.

“What you want, Colby?”

“I’d like to talk to Fergus, Elmo.”

“What about?”

“I said to Fergus, Elmo. If you want to listen, you can.”

“If it’s about that Bratton slut, Fergus doesn’t know anything. You’re wasting your time.”

“I don’t remember seeing you at the fire, Elmo.”

“That’s right. You didn’t. I don’t go running across the fields to watch every little fire that starts up.”

“Who told you about Faye Bratton being in that stack? Was it Fergus?”

“Fergus ain’t here. He drove off in the car about five. He hasn’t been back.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. Fergus ain’t much of one for confiding.”

“You expecting him back soon?”

“I’m not expecting him any time in particular. Fergus goes and comes as he pleases. Sometimes he’s late.”

“I think I’ll wait around for him, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.”

He closed the screen door and hooked it on the inside. If I wanted to wait, I could wait on the outside. I went back to the patrol car and got in and waited. About ten, the lights went out downstairs in the house, and one came on upstairs. About ten-fifteen, the light upstairs went out. I waited till midnight and gave up. If Fergus was back in the morning, I could talk to him then. If he wasn’t, I could get a warrant and start looking for him. I drove back to the jail, and Rudy was still waiting in the office when I got there.

“How’d it go, Colby?” he said.

“I’m tired, Rudy,” I said. “I’ll tell you later.”

“I told Lard about the lumps in the mashed potatoes.”

“Good for you, Rudy. What’d he say?”

“He said for you to go to hell.”

Instead, I went to bed on a cot in the next room. It was hot in there, and I didn’t sleep well.

Chapter 3

The next morning I drove back to Crawley’s place. I didn’t stop at the house. Passing the barn, I drove on down the wide lane to the pasture and left the car at the gate. Crossing the pasture on foot, I crawled over the fence on the far side and walked on across the fallow field to the scorched patch of earth where the haystack had stood. I didn’t know what I was looking for, nothing special in mind, but the fire bothered me, and I couldn’t help thinking about it. What bothered me was why the hell it had happened. It just didn’t make any kind of sense that I could see.

After poking around for a couple of minutes, I found something. It was lying inside the blackened area, near the outer edge, and it was still warm to the touch when I picked it up. Nothing much, really. Just a small, flat can with a hinged lid. The paint was burned off the outside, but it was easy enough to identify anyhow, for I had seen thousands like it and had emptied at least a thousand myself in my time. A tobacco can, I mean. Probably Prince Albert. Maybe Velvet. I forced the narrow lid open and saw that the can still contained tobacco. It had not, then, been discarded. It had been dropped accidentally in the hay, which meant that maybe someone had been smoking in the hay, which meant that maybe the hay had been accidentally set on fire. Just maybe, of course. Just guessing. But it was an explanation that made sense. It was the only one I had been able to think of that did. There was something about it, to tell the truth, that tickled my fancy as well as my reason.

How had it happened, approximately? Well, say that someone had killed Faye Bratton, which someone had. That much was no guessing. Say the killer, needing to make a quick disposition of the body, had buried it in the hay until night came to give him time and cover to do something more adequate and permanent about it. Something like digging a hole, maybe. Then, say, someone had wandered along and stopped to lie down and rest and smoke a roll-your-own and maybe doze off in the sun with the smoke burning dangerously between his fingers, and all the while the body was there beneath him in the hay. There was a kind of grim comedy in it, the crazy disruption of a desperate plan by pure chance in the form of someone dumb enough to smoke a cigarette while lying on a haystack. And who might have been along this way late yesterday afternoon who was dumb enough? I could think of several, actually, but I began to think of one in particular. He had probably been along yesterday, as he had probably been the day before and would be today, following the course of the winding creek. Turning away from the black patch of earth, I went on across the field and over a fence and into the brush and timber along the creek. I sat down on the bank of the creek to wait a while before going on up the back way to the Cass place.

I was waiting for a kid named Snuffy Cleaker, but you could just as well have called him Snuffy Jukes or Snuffy Kallikak. He was that kind of kid, I mean, from that kind of family. As a matter of fact, he didn’t really have any family, except his old man, who lived in a shack on the west side of town and hauled a little trash and garbage now and then when he needed the price of a bottle. Snuffy lived there with the old man off and on, but you could never count on finding him there, especially in the warm months, because most of the time he was out prowling the countryside, following the creek, living on catfish and stolen chickens and vegetables and melons, sleeping in haystacks or beside hedge rows or wherever he got tired and dropped. Cherokee County’s Huck Finn. When he was a few years younger, we tried to keep him in school according to the law, but he was too stupid to learn, and we gave up before the law said we ought to. He was now about fifteen, maybe sixteen. Most people considered him harmless.

I didn’t really expect him to oblige me by coming along just when I wanted him to, but luck was with me for a change, and damned if he didn’t. I heard him in the brush before I saw him, and I got up quietly and slipped out of sight behind a tree. He came ambling leisurely into sight, cutting at the brush with a stick he’d cut, and when he came abreast of the tree, I jumped out and grabbed him. He yowled like a scared cat and tried to jerk away.

“Got you, you little son of a bitch,” I said. “Stop squirming!”

He went limp and quiet all of a sudden, and I could see that he was scared, all right. His eyes skittered wildly, refusing to look at me, and he kept making through his long nose the exaggerated snuffing sound that had given him his name. Probably he had another name, duly recorded in the courthouse, but no one could ever think of it.

“Lemme go,” he said. “I ain’t doing anything.”

“Sure you’re not, Snuffy. You’ve never been known to do anything except smoke and chew and steal and everything else a kid’s got no business doing. Where you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Sure you are, Snuffy. You’re going to reform school, that’s where you’re going. I’ve got a belly full of complaints about you prowling and stealing and making a general damn nuisance of yourself.”

“I ain’t done anything to be sent to reform school for.”

“Is that so? Wouldn’t you say it was something to burn Crawley Bratton’s haystack down?”

It was still a guess, nothing more, but I knew it was true the instant I said it, and it was in the same instant that I was aware for the first time of the dirty rag he had wrapped around his right hand. Under the rag, I was sure, was seared and blistered flesh. He jerked the hand behind his back and tried again to pull away and run. He wasn’t a strong kid, though, skinny and undersized. I held him easily.

“What’s the matter with your hand, Snuffy?” I said. “Don’t you know any better than to try to beat out a flame with your bare palm?”

“I didn’t aim to burn it down,” he said. “It was an accident.”

“That’s more like it. If you want to stay out of reform school, you’d better tell me the exact truth.”

“I was having a smoke, that’s all. Just stretched out there in the hay having a smoke and thinking about staying the night. I dozed off, I guess, and pretty soon I woke up with the fire blazing up beside me. I didn’t try to beat it out, the way you said. I got more sense than that. The fire just burned my hand, and I guess that’s why I woke when I did. If I hadn’t, I might have burned to death. All I did afterward was cut and run. I went into town and stayed the night with my old man.”

“It was a damn good thing for you that you woke when you did, Snuffy. No question about that. If you hadn’t, we might have had two bodies in the fire. Yours and Mrs. Bratton’s.”

“I don’t know anything about Mrs. Bratton. I heard in town that she was burned in the fire, but I don’t know anything about her.”

“That’s what you say. To me, it’s beginning to look different. Maybe you met Mrs. Bratton down here and got fresh with her. Maybe you decided to kill her to keep her from telling what you did to her. Then maybe you decided to put her body in the stack and burn it up. It’s just what a dumb, no-good kid like you might do.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that, Mr. Adams! Honest to God, I wouldn’t!”

“I’m not so sure. Anyhow, it looks pretty bad, far as you’re concerned. Lots of folks around here have been thinking you might get dangerous, once you got a little age on you. It’s beginning to look like you might not go to reform school after all, Snuffy. It’s beginning to look like you might go straight to the penitentiary for all the rest of your life.”

He was a stupid kid and plenty scared. His eyes were wild and his teeth were chattering. Truth was, I was ashamed of myself for saying those things, which I didn’t believe, but I thought they might bring something out, and they did.

“Don’t say such things about me, Mr. Adams,” he said. “Please don’t say such things. You quit saying such things, I’ll tell you something you might like to know.”

“You tell me, and I’ll see. Chances are you’re fixing to tell a lot of lies to get yourself out of trouble.”

“I’ll tell the truth, Mr. Adams. I swear to God I will!”

“Never mind the swearing. Just tell me.”

“It was that Fergus Cass who did it. Killed Mrs. Bratton, I mean. I know he did.”

“There you go, Snuffy. Telling a damn lie already. Why would Fergus want to kill Mrs. Bratton?”

He licked his lips, and a sly expression came into his eyes and reminded me that even a stupid kid like Snuffy Cleaker can develop a kind of shrewdness within his limitations.

“They were carrying on with each other,” he said. “I’ve seen them more than once down here by the creek.”

“You mean you spied on them.”

“Well, I just happened to see them the first time, quite a while ago, and I couldn’t help it if they kept meeting here and I happened to come along sometimes when they were together.”

“That’s right, Snuffy. You couldn’t help it. You couldn’t help it if you came sneaking along through the brush. You’re nothing but a nasty little Peeping Tom, but you can’t help it any more than you can help being a thief, because that’s just what you naturally are. Never mind that, though. If Mrs. Bratton and Fergus Cass liked each other well enough to meet down here, what makes you think he killed her? Doesn’t seem to me it would work out that way at all.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Adams. Lately they haven’t been getting along so good. I heard them have a couple of fierce fights, him calling her a lot of dirty names and threatening to kill her, and then yesterday afternoon when I come along they were up the creek from here about fifty feet, under the trees where the creek bends, and he hit her in the face because of something she said, and she started to run, but he ran after her and caught her and began choking her.”

“What did she say to him?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to hear.”

“What did you do when he started choking her?”

“I ran. I didn’t want to mix in any trouble like that. I got scared and cut out of there in a hurry.”

“Where did you go?”

“Just up the creek. Just fooling around. When I came back quite a while later, Mrs. Bratton and Fergus Cass were both gone, so I figured he probably hadn’t hurt her much, and I went up in the field to the haystack and had a smoke, like I admitted, but when I heard in town that Mrs. Bratton’s body had been in the hay and burned, I knew he’d killed her and put her there, and she’d been in the hay right while I was having the smoke that set the stack on fire.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell somebody about it?”

“I was scared, that’s why. I didn’t want to get mixed into any trouble like that.”

He was telling the truth, all right. He’d never have told it if I hadn’t caught him and scared him into it, but he was telling it now to save his scurvy little hide, and it was just what I needed. True, he hadn’t actually seen Fergus Cass kill Faye Bratton, but he’d seen him choking her, and what he’d actually seen and what he might later remember seeing when a sharp county attorney got hold of him could damn well be two different stories.

“You’re mixed now,” I said, “and you’re mixed good. You come along with me.”

“Where you taking me?”

“I’m taking you to jail, that’s where. You’re what we call a material witness, you little devil, and I’m not taking any chances on your skinning out on me.”

“You can’t arrest me, Mr. Adams. I ain’t done anything to be arrested for.”

“Who said I was arresting you? I’m just sort of holding you in protective custody to save myself the trouble of running you down later. Come on. Let’s move out of here.”

We walked up across the field and the pasture to the car at the foot of the lane. I maneuvered the car between the barbed wire fences, turning it around, and drove up toward the house with Snuffy beside me in the front seat. When I got out to close the gate to the lane, after driving through, Crawley Bratton came out of the barn and stood there watching us. He looked tired and gaunt, his eyes darkly circled and his coarse, thick hair hanging down over his forehead from under his battered hat. Suddenly, walking toward him, I felt a sharp stab of genuine pity.

“Who’s that you got with you, Colby?” he said. “It looks like Snuffy Cleaker.”

“That’s who it is,” I said. “I’m taking him back to town.”

“What for? He been getting himself into trouble again?”

“Chances are he’s getting someone else into trouble this time, Crawley. He was down there at the creek yesterday when Faye was killed. He set the stack on fire.”

“Why would he want to do a thing like that?”

“He didn’t aim to. It was an accident. The point is, he saw something before the fire.”

“Is that right? What did he see?”

“He saw Faye being choked.”

“You mean he saw who killed her?”

He was looking across at Snuffy in the car, not at me, and his expression was calm and tired, no anger in it — not even, it seemed to me, much interest. After a while, he sighed and rubbed the back of a hand across his eyes.

“Who was it, Colby?” he said.

“I’m not ready to say yet. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

He didn’t protest, and I still had the strange impression that he really wasn’t very interested, but then I had the sudden notion that it wasn’t really lack of interest at all. It was only, I thought, that he’d already guessed. Crawley was no fool, and it was entirely possible that he had known, or guessed, that Faye had been meeting Fergus Cass down by the creek, and it was almost certain, if he had, that he’d also guessed who’d killed her. Some deep and distorted anger and shame and sense of pride had kept him from making any accusation or showing in any way the knowledge of her affair. It was Crawley’s way. He’d either keep quiet and do nothing, or he’d kill Fergus Cass himself, when he was completely sure, in his own time.

“Besides, Crawley,” I said, “You don’t need me to tell you. You know as well as I do who it was.”

“Sure, Colby.” He sighed again, rubbing his hand across his eyes as if they pained him. “I know.”

I turned and started back for the car, and when I was almost there he called after me.

“Thanks, Colby,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

Chapter 4

Rudy was in the office with his feet on the desk. When I came in with Snuffy, he dropped his feet and stood up looking as guilty as a kid caught in a cookie jar. Between Snuffy and Rudy, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to choose. Rudy was cleaner, but not much brighter.

“I’ve got a guest for you, Rudy,” I said. “Tell Lard there’ll be another one for dinner.”

“Snuffy?” Rudy said. “You mean Snuffy Cleaker?”

“That’s right. Lock him up.”

“What for?”

“Never mind what for. Just pick out a nice cell and put him in it.”

“Sure, Colby, if you say so.”

“I say so. Where’s Virg?”

“He went up north in the other patrol car to investigate a brawl. Someone got cut up.”

“Okay. We had any word from Emil Coker?”

“I was going to tell you about that. Emil called and said he figured Faye Bratton was strangled before she was burned in that fire. He says he’ll have a doctor work on her.”

“Good old Emil. Tell him to take his own sweet time if he calls again. No hurry at all.”

“I’ll do that, Colby. You going away somewhere again?”

“I’m going out to the Cass place.”

“What for?”

“Never mind what for.”

“Where you been, Colby? I’ve been wondering.”

“Never mind where I’ve been.”

“All right, Colby. If you say so. You got any orders or anything?”

“Yeah. Take care of Snuffy and keep your God-damn feet off my desk.”

I went out and got in the patrol car and drove west again. This time I turned off before reaching Crawley Bratton’s and drove around the country square to the front of the Cass place. I didn’t really figure Fergus would be there, to tell the truth. I thought I’d have to swear out a warrant and put out an alarm and have him brought back from wherever he’d got on the way to wherever he was running. That was my mistake, to my surprise. He was there. I found him sitting on a block of wood in the sun in front of a corn crib. He was dressed in a clean white shirt and a pair of blue jeans, his feet, in heavy white socks, shoved into a pair of soft black loafers. He looked lean and dark and handsome and mean. He had the cut of cruelty in his thin face, and I saw what Dolly meant by the glaze of blindness in his eyes. It was in them as he watched me approach.

“Hello, Sheriff,” he said. “Uncle Elmo said you were looking for me last night.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I waited till midnight.”

“That’s too bad. I didn’t get home till two.”

“You mind telling me where you were?”

“Unless you’ve got a good reason for knowing, I do.”

“I’ve got a good reason, but let it go. I’m more interested in knowing where you were in the afternoon. Between three and five, say.”

“I suppose you’ve got a good reason for knowing that, too?”

“The best. I figure Faye Bratton was killed sometime during those two hours.”

“I heard about Faye. Too bad. She was a common little bitch, but a looker. I hate to think of her being dead.”

“Do you? I can understand that. Seems to me you’d hate it more than most, having been so close.”

“Oh.” He shrugged and smiled at a secret joke. “I thought you’d probably found out about that. I couldn’t think of any other reason why you’d want to talk to me.”

“Such things have a way of being found out.”

“I guess they do. It’s a shame, too. Causes a lot of unnecessary trouble. We did our best to be discreet.”

“You must have been, to tell the truth. Only two or three people knew about it, apparently. One of them told me you wanted Faye to run away to St. Louis with you. Is that right?”

“Who told you?”

“No matter. I was told.”

“So I wanted her to go away with me. She wouldn’t. I thought she’d jump at the chance to get the hell away from here and see what living could really be. My mistake. She was just as stupid as she was good-looking. No imagination. She wasn’t about to fly out of that soft nest Crawley Bratton kept for her on the other side of the creek.”

“Was that what you had the fight about yesterday afternoon?”

“What fight?”

“The one you had down by the creek. The one that ended with you strangling her to death.”

He had been looking over my shoulder, talking to me but acting all the while as if I wasn’t really there. Now he looked at me directly in sudden stillness, but I had a feeling that he couldn’t see me at all through his bright glaze of blindness.

“That’s a lie,” he said. “I didn’t strangle her to death.”

“I didn’t expect you to admit it. It doesn’t matter. There was a witness. You might be interested in knowing that there was a witness to a lot of what went on between you and Faye down there.”

“I didn’t strangle her to death. Anyone who says I did is lying.”

“Next thing you’ll be telling me you didn’t even see her yesterday afternoon.”

“No. I saw her, and we had a fight, and I choked her. But not to death. I wanted to, and I thought for a few seconds that I had, but I didn’t. I let her go alive. The last I saw of her, she was leaning against a tree and breathing easy. I came up here and got the car and went off on a drunk. I never wanted to see her again, and that much was given me. I never will.”

“Well, you never know. Could be you’ll wind up in the same place pretty soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll stand trial for murder. Maybe you’ll hang.”

He sat there staring at me with his blind eyes, and I had an uneasy notion that he was going to spring at me any second, but he didn’t. He took a deep breath and looked away, over my shoulder again.

“Am I under arrest?” he said.

“That’s right. You are.”

“You’re making a mistake. You’ll see.” He stood up and looked toward the house. “If you’ll wait out here, I’ll get some things together and say good-by.”

I let him go. He went across the yard and into the house, and he was in there for maybe fifteen minutes. He came out carrying a little leather bag, and we got into the patrol car and drove back to town. In the office at the jail, Rudy was sitting in a chair away from the desk with his feet on the floor. He must have heard us coming.

“Hello, Colby,” he said. “Hello, Fergus. What you two doing together?”

“He’s under arrest for murder,” I said. “Lock him up.”

“Murder!” Rudy jumped as if his chair was wired and someone had thrown the switch. “Whose murder?”

“How many murders we had around here lately, Rudy?”

“Faye Bratton’s, you mean?”

“Faye Bratton’s, I mean.”

“Well, Jesus, Colby. I got to thinking after you left, and what I thought was Snuffy Cleaker must have done it.”

“You weren’t thinking, Rudy. Your brain was just turning over. There’s a difference.”

“That may be, Colby, if you say so, but I’m thinking now for sure, and what I’m thinking is you ought to tell me more about what’s going on.”

“Excuse me, Rudy. I’ll try to do better. Right now I’m going back to Crawley Bratton’s to tell him we’ve made an arrest, and then I’m coming in to see the county attorney. Tell Lard two more for dinner instead of one.”

I went out and got into the patrol car and drove west for the third time that day. I stood beside the car in Crawley’s back yard and looked out over all the fields as far as I could see, but there wasn’t any sign of Crawley out there, and so I went over and hammered on the back door of the house, but there wasn’t any sight or sound of him there, either. Then I went out to the barn and inside, and there he was. He was lying on his back on the rough plank floor, and nearby, where it had fallen from his hands, was a double barreled 12-gauge shotgun. Most of the top of Crawley’s head was off. Some of it was on the floor, and the rest was on the wall behind him. There was something else on the wall, too. It was a note pinned to the planking with Crawley’s pocket knife. I went over and ripped the note loose and read it, and this is what Crawley had written:

Colby:

I thought you’d find out, and I’m glad you did. Thanks again for letting me know you knew, and for giving me time to get out of it my own way. This is it, Colby. This is the way. It was a tough break, that dumb kid seeing me kill Faye, but it’s all right. I don’t think I could have lived with myself very long, knowing all the time I was a murderer. I wasn’t cut out for it.

I didn’t really plan to kill her. I just walked down to the creek to find her and bring her back, and there she was with her dress torn, and she’d been crying, and I could see someone had treated her rough. She said it was Fergus Cass who did it, and wanted me to go find him and kill him. Instead, I killed her. I finished what he’d started, and killed her. I guess I knew right along that she’d been carrying on with him. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. A man’s pride keeps him from admitting things sometimes. Maybe later I’d have killed Fergus Cass, too. I was thinking about it, and so I guess it’s better it’s ending this way before I could.

You can imagine how surprised I was when the haystack caught fire. I was going back after dark to bury her. I had a place picked out.

I hope you find me soon, Colby. See that we’re buried together.

Chapter 5

Well, hell. So it was just a misunderstanding. So I figured it was Fergus Cass, and all the time it was Crawley. I can see, looking back, how the misunderstanding came about naturally. When I came up from the creek with Snuffy Cleaker and said that Snuffy had seen someone choking Faye, not saying who it was Snuffy had seen, and then making that crack about Crawley knowing as well as I did who it was, why, what the hell was he naturally to think? Being guilty, although I didn’t know it, he thought there was only one person I could possibly mean, and that person was Crawley Bratton, although it wasn’t. The only reason he could see for my not arresting him then was just to give him a chance to take his own way out, and that’s why he said thanks when I left, and took the way when I was gone.

I’m glad he did, and I think it’s time Virgil had my job.

Tune Me In

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1960.

“Wake up,” the voice said.

Freda opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling and waited for the voice to continue, but it was silent. This was not in the least disturbing, however, for sometimes it did not speak to her for hours and hours on end, and then it would speak suddenly, at some odd moment, with specific instructions to do this or that in a particular way at such and such a time. In the beginning the voice had frightened Freda, in the very beginning, but she had soon understood that there was nothing at all to be frightened of, quite the contrary, and she had begun waiting for the voice and listening for it, but she never knew when it would speak. Sometimes it spoke to her when she was quite alone, but at other times it would speak when she was in company, even when she was herself speaking to someone else, and then she would have to quit speaking, perhaps in the middle of a sentence, and listen intently to what the voice said. This was always disconcerting to the other person, of course, the one she was speaking to, and it was really very amusing, in a sense, a kind of comic situation to be laughed at silently.

A strange thing about it was that the voice, although it spoke quite clearly, was never heard by anyone but herself. Another strange thing, even stranger, was that it was never necessary to answer the voice aloud, but only to think quite deliberately the words she wanted heard, and the voice heard them and answered them, and so it was possible to carry on conversations, quite long ones sometimes, without being overheard by anyone else who might be present. These things were strange, however, only in the sense that they were exceptional, undoubtedly beyond the belief of someone who had never experienced them, but they were really conceivable realities. There was nothing supernatural about them, like the presence of light in darkness and a world of sound below the level of hearing.

It was the voice that had brought her to this city, where she had arrived last night, and to this room in this hotel, where she had just awakened. The voice told her what to do, exactly when and how, but she knew perfectly well what she must do in the end, after all the little things that must be done before, and it was to do this, the thing that must be done, that she had come to this place at this time. She had come to kill a man named Hugo Weis.

“You had better get out of bed,” the voice said.

It was a gentle reminder. There was in the voice no trace of anger at her lethargy, nor even a suggestion of impatience. The voice was always gentle, always soft, and it was, in truth, a voice of poignant beauty, with a whisper of sadness running through the sounds of vowels and consonants like the slightest soughing of wind among trees at dusk.

“Yes,” she thought. “I’d better.”

She arose and went into the bathroom and turned on a light. Her face reflected in the mirror above the lavatory seemed somehow the face of another person, not of a stranger but of a person she had known a long time ago in another place and could not now clearly remember. She felt sorry for the face, for the person it belonged to, and she wanted suddenly to cry and tell the face how sorry she was. Instead, she took off her pajamas and showered and went back into the bedroom and dressed and began to brush her hair. She sat on the edge of the bed and brushed with short, quick strokes, her head tilted first to one side and then the other, and as she brushed she began to think about the voice, which did not now respond to her thoughts, and about Hugo Weis, whom she was going to kill.

The voice had told her so, the very first time it had spoken to her, at the same time she had first become aware of Hugo Weis as a monstrous evil. She had been critically ill, had endured extreme fevers, and after her illness there was nothing much to do during a long recuperative period, except to think and read and wait for the long days and nights to pass, and on the morning of this particular day she had opened a newspaper that had been brought to her room by her mother, and there on the front page was a picture of Hugo Weis. She had known about him before, of course, for everyone knew about Hugo Weis, but it was the first time she had ever seen a picture of him, or at least the first time she had ever been really aware of seeing one. He was being investigated by a grand jury for his connections with a vice ring, supposedly international, and there under the black banner of the story was this picture. Only his head and shoulders were shown, and the picture must surely have been blown up from a shot snapped on a street or somewhere by an alert photographer, for Hugo Weis never would have sat for a studio portrait or have voluntarily permitted his picture to be taken anywhere.

He was incredibly ugly, which was not in itself anything to condemn him for, but his ugliness was abnormal, almost terrifying. His face, she thought, was a gross obscenity. Sitting there in her room and staring at the picture, she had studied intently the flat nose with exposed nostrils like black holes burned through the flesh, the mouth like a raw sore about to bleed, the coarse skin pocked by disease. The eyes were almost completely hidden behind lowered lids. She felt in her own flesh a cold and subtle crawling, and she wondered how a man so monstrously marked by evil ugliness could have acquired in his way so much power over other men. It was then, as she wondered, that the voice spoke to her for the first time.

“Hugo Weis must die,” the voice said, “and you must kill him.”

She had known instantly that it was no hallucination. The voice was real. She could hear it. It spoke clearly and softly from a point just behind her right ear, and it would have been futile to try to convince herself, even if she had wanted to, that it was no more than an echo of her own thoughts. And so, after the first shock of fear and wonder, she accepted the voice quite calmly, almost as if she had been expecting it unconsciously all these years, had been waiting for it to come.

“Why is it I who must kill him?” she wondered.

“Because it is you who have finally answered me.”

“Will no one else listen?”

“It’s not a question of listening. It’s a question of hearing.”

“Am I, alone in all the world, the only one who can hear you?”

“You are the first, at least.”

“What gives me the power to hear you, and you the power to make me hear? Has my recent illness had anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know the answer to your questions. What is the explanation of any miracle, except that it is not a miracle at all, but only the rare effect of natural causes we don’t understand? I speak and you hear and that’s enough.”

“Who is speaking to me?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know that, either. I am, as a voice, merely the expression of an unconscious imperative. I express the imperative, but I can’t have knowledge of the source from which it has sprung.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Never mind. I’ll speak to you again later.”

That was the beginning of her relationship with the voice. She had never thought about killing anyone before, and it was truly remarkable how she had been able to begin thinking about it, with a kind of detached serenity, as if it were someone else thinking and planning, someone else entirely who listened to the voice and lived at ease with thoughts of violent death. There was apparently no hurry, however. The voice did not urge her or force her to commitments she was not prepared to make. She began in a rather leisurely way to gather all the information she could find on Hugo Weis, and there was very little to be found and still less to be relied upon, for Hugo Weis was elusive, preferring to operate through others while remaining in the heavy shadows of obscurity. He was the son of a laborer. By cunning, treachery and Machiavellian ruthlessness, all working through a strangely compelling personality in an ugly, stunted body, he had made himself the greatest power in the state. He controlled the city in which he lived. He controlled the governor of the state and most of its lawmakers. There were men of consequence in Washington who listened carefully when he spoke. And he spoke always in whispers, behind his hand. The grand jury investigation never came to anything, of course. One witness died in unusual circumstances, another lost his memory, and another disappeared. In any event, it was doubtful that an indictment would have been returned.

It was in the spring that it all began, and that summer the voice kept returning, speaking to her when it pleased, with no consistency of time or place. In the fall, she resumed her duties as teacher of a sixth grade class in an elementary school near her home, and occasionally the voice visited her during school hours, which some times turned out to be embarrassing. It was necessary to become instantly quite still in order to hear what the voice said, it spoke so softly, and these periods of sudden withdrawal, in which she sat or stood as immobile as stone in an attitude of intent listening, were noticed, naturally, by the students. She was afraid that she was gaining a reputation of being odd, but it was impossible to explain that her apparent lapses were actually quite normal and necessary, for no one would have understood, and after awhile she found that it no longer mattered what anyone thought about her.

By this time there was no doubt, if there had ever been any, that she would eventually kill Hugo Weis. She did not feel messianic about it. It was simply something that had to be done. For awhile the possible consequences to herself were disturbing, even frightening, but soon she found herself unable to think beyond the act of killing, as if her own life would also end in that instant and make her eternally invulnerable to earthly harm. It amused her at night, lying in her bed in her dark room, to think of Hugo Weis, wherever he was, doing whatever he might be, completely unaware that he would surely soon die by the hand of a woman he had never seen and would never really know. It was amusing, very amusing, and she laughed softly to herself in the darkness, a whisper of sound in the still room. The face of Hugo Weis floated above her like an ectoplasmic obscenity, ugly and evil.

In March she bought a gun, a 32 caliber revolver, explaining to the local hardware dealer from whom she bought it that it would give her a sense of security, even though she had never fired a revolver in her life. Since she and her mother lived alone in a large house, she said, it seemed unwise to be without any kind of protection at all. The dealer agreed and suggested that she practice firing the revolver in the country Sunday afternoons. He sold her several boxes of cartridges for the revolver, and she carried the revolver and the cartridges home and put them away carefully in a drawer of the dressing table in her room. She did not practice firing the revolver Sunday afternoons, however, for it wasn’t necessary. Whatever was necessary would be taken care of in its own time.

Early in June, soon after school was let out for the summer, the long period of waiting came to an end. It ended abruptly, without warning, one afternoon in the reading room of the public library. Freda had gone there for no particular reason, except that the public library was a pleasant place to be, quiet and restful with sunlight slanting in through high windows, and she had been going there regularly for almost as long as she could remember. She was sitting alone at a table by a window, a book open before her, but she was not concentrating, was only dimly conscious of words between long intervals of dreaming, and she could not later remember the name of the book or anything in it that she had read.

“It’s time now to do it,” the voice said softly and suddenly.

“What?” she thought.

“It’s time to kill Hugo Weis. We have waited long enough.”

“How?”

“With the gun. Didn’t you buy the gun?”

“Yes. The gun and cartridges.”

“Good. It will be quite simple, really. You’ll see.”

“What should I do?”

“First you must go to the city where he is, of course.”

“What then?”

“Go to a hotel. Later, at the right time, you will go to his office. He sees all sorts of people there, mostly people who come for favors, and no one will think it odd that you have come too. Have you learned where the office is?”

“Yes. It’s on the south side of the city, near the railroad station. On Euclid Street.”

“So it is. I see you have been preparing yourself well.”

“Won’t I have trouble getting in to see him?”

“Probably none at all. He makes a point of trying to see personally all the supplicants who come to him. It’s a trick. He sustains much of his power that way.”

“What will happen to me afterward?”

“Never mind that. Don’t worry about anything.”

Having asked the question, what would happen to her afterward, she felt for an instant a terrible fear, but in the next instant the fear had passed, and she arose and returned the book to the stacks and left the library. Home, she told her mother that she had decided to go up to the city for a day or two, which was something she had done occasionally ever since she had been old enough, and then she went upstairs to her room and at once began to pack the loaded gun and a few things in a small bag. She had no feeling of having come to a point of crisis in her life, not the beginning of anything or the end of anything or even a radical change from what had been. There was a train, she knew, that left for the city at five o’clock, and having packed and said good-by to her mother, she called a taxi and reached the station with several minutes to spare.

That was yesterday and last night, and now here she was in a room of the hotel to which she’d come, and it was, she saw by her watch, nine o’clock in the morning. She stopped brushing her hair and stood up and put on the light coat she had worn on the train. After putting on the coat, she stood quietly with her head bent forward in a posture of abstraction, as if, now that she was prepared to leave, she had forgotten where she was going or for what purpose. Then, moving all at once, she took the loaded revolver from the small traveling bag and put it in her purse and went out into the hall and downstairs. She walked down, ignoring the elevator, and she walked slowly, not like one reluctant to reach a destination, but with a kind of implicit aimlessness suggesting no destination at all.

She had, in fact, plenty of time. It was over a mile from the hotel to the office of Hugo Weis, and it would not be wise, she thought, to get there too early. From the lobby of the hotel, she passed into a coffee shop and sat down at a small table in the rear. A waitress came with a breakfast menu, but she was not in the least hungry, although she had not eaten since noon of the day before. She ordered only a cup of coffee. She drank the coffee so slowly that it was quite cold before it was half gone, and then she sat on over the cold cup for another ten minutes before leaving. By that time it was just past nine-thirty.

Reaching Euclid Street, carrying the purse under her arm and still walking with the implicit aimlessness of one with no place in particular to go, she turned south in the direction of Hugo Weis’ office. She could not recall exactly how she had learned where the office was. Probably it was something she had known for a long time. It was a rather famous location, after all, and had received a lot of publicity at various times. It was the first office Hugo Weis had ever had, two dark rooms in a shabby building in a poor section, and it was evidence of his great vanity that he had remained there all these years, exercising his swollen power and gathering a fortune in the same place where he had begun. It was another trick, she thought. A lie. An illusion of humility sustained by a monster of conceit.

Walking along the street, she felt wonderfully good, almost exhilarated. She felt, indeed, rather gaseous, hardly touching the concrete pavement with her feet, on the verge of rising and floating away with every step. She had felt this way sometimes as a girl, especially early in the morning of a spring day when she had got up ahead of all the others and gone alone into the yard. And there in the window of a department store was a thin dress of palest blue that was just the kind of dress for the effervescent girl that she had been and now wasn’t. She stopped in front of the window and gazed at the dress for several minutes, clutching under her arm the purse, and the gun in the purse, and then she turned away and walked on and came pretty soon to the certain shabby building in the poor section. On the street outside the building, as she waited before entering, the voice spoke to her for the next to the last time it ever would. As always, it was a voice of poignant beauty, with a whisper of sadness running through it.

“Here you are at last,” the voice said. “It took a long time.”

“Yes,” she thought. “A long time.”

She continued to wait, her head inclined and cocked a little to one side, but the voice did not speak again, and after a minute or two she crossed to the entrance of the building and went into a dark hallway from which a narrow staircase ascended through shadows to the second floor. She went up the stairs, hesitating for a moment at the top, then turning back toward the street along a kind of narrow gallery at the edge of the stair well. There were two doors spaced along the gallery, each with a pane of frosted glass on which nothing was printed. She went past the first to the second, the one nearer the street, and opened it and entered a small room that seemed to make a special point of its drab bareness. The floor was uncovered, blackened and greasy from the application of sweeping compound. A dozen straight chairs stood at intervals against three walls. On one chair sat an old man in a stained and wrinkled seersucker suit, his withered hands twisted together in his lap. On another chair, against the opposite wall, sat a woman with bright yellow hair who was wearing an expensive fur piece around her shoulders and a bored, carefully detached expression on her face.

These two appeared to be the only occupants of the room, but then Freda saw a man behind a desk beside a door in the fourth wall. She crossed to the desk and stood looking down at the man. He had a thin face with a long nose above a lipless line of a mouth. His quality of deadliness was as discernible as scent or sound, and although he was serving as a receptionist, his first function was obviously that of bodyguard. Looking down at him, Freda had a feeling of immeasurable superiority, a singing sense of exhilaration that was the climax of the effervescence she had felt on the way to this place. No one, she thought, could prevent her from doing what she had come to do. No one on earth.

“I would like to see Mr. Weis,” she said.

“Your name?”

“Freda Barkley.”

The man looked up at her with a glitter of contempt in his eyes and down again immediately at his hands lying spread on the desk as if they were fingering silent chords on an invisible keyboard.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but I’ve come a long way, from out of town, and I would like to see him only for a few minutes. It’s very important.”

“It’s always important. Always.” The man shrugged and folded the fingers of his hands. “Have a chair over there. He’ll see you, all right. He sees everyone.”

She turned away and sat down on the nearest chair. She sat erect, primly, her ankles together. Her purse lay in her lap under her hands, and she could feel the gun in it. Once she even opened the purse enough to slip a hand inside and touch the naked steel. It was an intensely intimate and exciting gesture, like touching the flesh of someone loved, and she nearly whimpered in the excitement of it. But then she must have become quite abstracted and withdrawn, for after awhile, however much time had passed, she became aware that the old man was gone, and the woman with yellow hair and the fur piece was crossing to the door to the next room and was quickly gone also. She continued to sit primly on the chair, no longer exhilarated as before, but quietly assured in a feeling that was more like resignation than anything else, and very soon the man at the desk looked across at her and jerked his head slightly toward the door behind him.

“You can go in now,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

She wondered what signal he had received to tell him it was time. Perhaps there was a little light on the front of the desk. Something of the sort that made no sound. Standing, her purse held in both hands in front of her, she walked over to the door and into the next room, from which the yellow-haired woman had apparently gone directly into the hall, and there behind an old desk of dark oak beyond six feet of bare floor was Hugo Weis, whom she would shoot dead in exactly sixteen seconds.

He was so short of stature that only his head and shoulders were visible above the desk, but as she moved toward him, he stood up suddenly and came around the desk to meet her, his stunted and gnarled body exposed, his face touched, when he stopped, by the light from a single window. It was the same face she had seen in the newspaper and floating like an ectoplasmic vision in her dark room at home, obscenely ugly, except for a single difference which was now apparent in the weak light, and she was arrested by this difference, held by it for seconds, and the difference was in his eyes. They were soft eyes, the eyes of a grieving woman.

“My name is Freda Bane,” she said, feeling in these last seconds that it was somehow decidedly important that she identify herself.

When she spoke, it seemed to her that his soft eyes widened with a kind of shock and filled instantly afterward with what seemed to her a light of infinite relief. She had a wild notion that he suddenly recognized her voice, as if it had materialized from a dream he had often had, but had never, until now, quite been able to remember after waking.

“Come in,” he said. “Come in.” His voice was gentle, compatible with his eyes.

It was, in truth, a voice of poignant beauty, with a whisper of sadness running through the sounds of vowels and consonants like the slightest soughing of wind among trees at dusk.

The Spent Days

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1961.

Cora Rogan came upon the girl at a curve in the walk where a white birch cast a pattern of light shade. She was sitting cross-legged on the grass under the birch, just at the edge of the walk, and shadows of leaves danced with the warm breeze in her hair and on her white dress.

She was playing jacks. She would lean forward and scatter the small metal pieces on the smooth concrete, and then she would toss a rubber ball into the air, letting it bounce once, and between the time it rose and fell and rose on the bounce, she would scoop up some of the jacks, whatever number was required at that particular stage of the game, and catch in the same hand the ball as it descended. She was wonderfully adept at it.

Cora stood and watched her do her twos and threes without a miss.

If she was aware of Cora’s presence, she gave no sign.

“Hello,” Cora said, after a while. The girl looked up and smiled, holding the jacks and rubber ball in her right hand. She had a small, heart-shaped face with large gray eyes. Although she was very pretty, it was not her prettiness that Cora was struck with, but the serenity in her eyes and smile that seemed to be of a piece with the way she held her hands and head and sat so quietly cross-legged on the grass. “Hello,” she said.

“I was watching you play. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Why should I?”

“I don’t know. It might make you nervous and cause you to miss.”

“I never get nervous, and I hardly ever miss. Only once in a while, when I get to some of the more difficult things.”

“You’re quite good, all right. I could see that.”

“Would you care to play a game with me?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Oh, it’s very simple. I’ll show you as we go along.”

“All right, but you mustn’t expect me to be much competition.” Cora sat down beside the girl in position to use the concrete walk to play on. She could hear someone whistling a tune behind a spirae a bush farther along the walk, but no one was in sight.

“You must throw out the jacks,” the girl said, “and pick them up while the ball bounces. Then you must catch the ball in the same hand with the jacks. First you do one at a time, and then two at a time, until finally you must pick them all up together. After that, there are some more difficult things to do.”

“Perhaps you’d better explain the more difficult things when we come to them.”

“Yes. I thought that would be better. What you must remember is that it’s very important how you throw the jacks out. You must try to throw them so that it’s easy to pick them up in ones or twos or threes or whatever number.”

“I see.”

“If you touch a jack you aren’t supposed to pick up, or even make it move by pushing another jack against it, that means you miss and must give up your turn.”

“All right. I think I understand it up to the more difficult things.”

“Then you may have first turn.” She handed Cora the ball and jacks, and Cora threw out the jacks and began to play. She went through the ones all right, and through the twos, but she missed on the threes.

“That was very good for a beginning,” the girl said.

“Do you think so? Thank you.”

“If you had thrown out the threes a little more carefully, you could have gone right on.”

“I threw them too hard, I think.”

“Yes, they were too scattered for threes. The ball bounced twice before you could pick them up. Did you understand that it’s a miss if the ball bounces twice?”

“Yes. I understood that.”

“I believe I neglected to tell you.”

“That’s all right. I knew it.”

“Then it’s my turn.”

She gathered up the jacks and threw them out and began to play and was soon through the game as far as she had explained it. Then she began to do the more difficult plays, explaining each one carefully and clearly before attempting it, so that Cora would know in advance exactly what was required of her.

Some of the plays demanded considerable dexterity, but she completed them all in order, after explanations, and then she laughed with pleasure in her skill, at the same time looking at Cora ruefully because of beating her so easily.

“You’re far too good for me,” Cora said.

“Well, it’s mostly a matter of practice. I shouldn’t be surprised if you became quite good after you’ve played a while.”

“I could never become as good as you.”

“Would you like to play on through, just to learn? Misses won’t count. I’ll explain things again as you go along.”

“Oh, no. That wouldn’t be any fun for you.”

“I don’t mind. We could play another game after you’ve practiced.”

“No, thank you. I know when I’m thoroughly beaten.” Cora laughed and stood up, looking down at the shadows of leaves in pale hair. “I’m on my way up to the house to see your mother. Is she there?”

“Yes. She’s on the back terrace, I think.”

“Is your father there too?”

“My father’s dead. He died before I was born.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“My mother killed him. She shot him accidentally.”

“What a terrible mistake!”

“She told me about it herself when I was old enough to understand. She thought it would be better than having me hear it from someone else.”

“Your mother was wise to tell it to you in her own way.”

“What do you want to see my mother about?”

“I thought she might like to contribute to a charity I’m interested in.

“Well, I don’t know. Mother’s very rich, of course, because of all the money Father left her, but she already has certain charities she supports.”

“In any case, it will do no harm to ask her, will it?”

“No. You can go right around the house to the terrace if you like.”

“I don’t think I’d better do that. I’ll ring at the front door and ask permission to see her first.”

“Perhaps that would be better. Will you be back this way soon?”

“Probably. Pretty soon.”

“If I’m still here, I’ll say goodbye to you then.”

“That would be nice.”

“Thank you for playing jacks with me.”

“You’re quite welcome, I’m sure. The pleasure was mine.”

Cora turned away and went on up the curving concrete walk past a small fountain showering water like shards of glittering glass into the sunlight. Beyond the fountain she ascended three wide steps and passed between tall columns onto the veranda of a Colonial-style house.

The house was white with dark green shutters at the windows, and it looked cool and gracious in the white, hot light of the afternoon. It was, in fact, much cooler on the veranda, out of the sun, and Cora waited for a few seconds with the most delicious sense of relief and pleasure before ringing the doorbell.

She was still thinking of the little girl under the white birch beside the walk, and it seemed to her a favorable omen that she had come across her on this particular day.

It takes Jacks or better to open, she thought, feeling with the thought the delightful, tremulous sensation of inner laughter.

She rang the doorbell and waited, listening to the sounds of diminishing chimes, and soon the door was opened by a woman in the uniform of a maid. Conditioned air, escaping, flowed outward.

“Yes?” the maid said.

“I would like to see Mrs. Morrow,” Cora said.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Cora Rogan.”

“Will you state the nature of your visit, please?”

“It’s personal. If Mrs. Morrow will be so kind as to see me, I’ll take only a few minutes of her time.”

“If you’ll step in and wait a minute, I’ll speak with Mrs. Morrow.”

Cora stepped into a wide hall which divided ahead of her, ascending spirally on the right to the second floor and running on the left through the house to the rear.

The maid closed the front door and walked down the hall past the staircase, turning and disappearing into a room on the right side, and Cora remained standing in the cool, conditioned air. Her reflection waited with her, trapped in glass on a wall beside her, and she exchanged long looks with the reflection and smiled a little and was, on the whole, rather pleased.

She was thirty-eight now, no longer young, but she was slender as a girl in a beige linen suit, and her flesh was still firm, with only the slightest deepening of lines around the eyes and mouth, and she could still pass in soft light for what she really no longer was. Nowadays she grew tired more often than she had used to, of course, and once in a while she became a little frightened when she thought of the years that had gone so swiftly and the years that had still, somehow, to come and go.

Turning away from the reflection of herself, she looked slowly around the hall, her eyes moving deliberately from one thing to another, and she thought as she looked that it was much the same as it used to be. There was a new runner on the stairs, and the telephone on the table against the wall was pale green instead of black, and the painting on the wall above the telephone was different from the one that had hung there before — but nothing of any significance had changed, not even the basic colors or the subtle sense of character that houses have.

She took a couple of steps toward the stairs, her thin heels tapping sharply on the gleaming hardwood floor, and at that moment the maid reappeared suddenly in the hall at the rear and came forward.

“If you will come this way, please,” she said, “Mrs. Morrow will see you.”

Cora followed her down the hall and off to the right into a large room with high, wide windows and a pair of glass doors opening onto a flagstone terrace. The maid stopped just inside the room and nodded toward the doors, through which Cora could see, sitting in a bright canvas chair beside a glass-topped table, a woman in a sheer flowered dress. On the table were an open book, lying face down, and a pitcher and matching glasses.

Cora crossed to the glass doors and let herself out onto the terrace, and the woman, Julia Morrow, stood up beside the table and greeted her with an expression in which there was the slightest suggestion of curiosity.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rogan,” she said. “Will you sit down?”

“Thank you,” Cora said. “It’s kind of you to see me.”

It was clear, she thought, that her name meant nothing to Julia Morrow, for there was no evidence of recognition in the tone of her voice, nor even the careful kind of control one might exercise to exclude such evidence.

Moving across the flagstones to the glass-topped table, Cora sat down in a bright chair, and Julia Morrow resumed the one from which she had just risen. The chairs were not placed directly opposite each other across the table, only a small arc of the circumference separating the two women. Their relative positions seemed to indicate a condition of intimacy, as if they had drawn together to exchange confidences.

“May I offer you some iced tea?” Julia Morrow said.

“No, thank you.”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“To tell the truth, it’s rather difficult to begin. I see that you don’t recognize my name.”

“You name? Cora Rogan? I’m sorry. Should I recognize it?”

“Perhaps not. I was our husband’s first wife.”

Now the expression of curiosity, wholly confined to Julia Morrow’s eyes, gave way for an instant to a flare of surprise. It was gone, however, almost before it was discernible, and afterward there was no expression except courteous reserve.

“I see. I knew that my husband’s first wife was named Cora, of course, but I had forgotten the rest of it. I understood that you had remarried.”

“So I had, but it pleases me to use my maiden name. I lived with my second husband in Europe. He’s dead now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was no great loss. We lived well, one way and another, but he left next to nothing. It’s apparent that you have done much better.”

“I have all that I need. Have you come to see me simply because we shared, at different times, the same man?”

“It occurred to me that I didn’t offer my sympathy at the time of his death. I thought I should come and do so.”

“After all this time? It was eight years ago — nearly nine.”

“So long as that? Time goes, doesn’t it? Or is it we? Someone wrote a poem about that once. About its being we who go instead of time. Was it Ronsard?”

“I don’t know. I read very little poetry.”

“It must have been terrible for you. To kill your own husband by mistake, I mean.”

“Yes. It was terrible.”

“As I recall, you thought he was a prowler. You shot him with a shotgun, I believe, as he was coming up the stairs. The light on the stairs, I remember, had gone out for some reason.”

“There was a prowler scare in the neighborhood. James had left the shotgun, loaded, in our room. I wasn’t expecting him home that night, and I was terrified. The recollection is painful, however, and I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Forgive me. The inquest, of course, was quite brief. Hardly more than a formality. You had, it seemed, absolutely no motive for killing your husband intentionally. Besides, your condition at the time solicited a great deal of sympathy.”

“I was expecting a child, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes. Your daughter. A charming little girl. I met her beside the walk as I came up to the house. We played a game of jacks.”

“She’s rather casual with strangers. It disturbs me sometimes.”

“I envy you. I have no child of my own, even after two marriages. I remember how astonished I was when I first learned that you were going to have one.”

“Really? I wonder why.”

“I was, as I said, your husband’s first wife.” Cora smiled gently and looked away for a few moments with an air of abstraction, as if the remembrance were pleasant, although a little sad. “It was quite impossible for him to have children.”

Julia Morrow was also suddenly withdrawn. Only a faint expression of fastidious distaste indicated that she had heard the words and understood their implication.

“That’s absurd,” she said. “Are you suggesting that James was mutilated like that foolish character in the Hemingway novel?”

“Nothing so romantic.” Cora laughed softly and returned her gaze to the woman across the arc of glass. “To use your own term, it was really rather absurd. A kind of bad joke. Orchitis is the name for it. A complication of mumps.” She laughed again, softly, with a note of genuine amusement. “It was terribly humiliating to a man as vain as poor James. You don’t object to my calling him James, do you? It made him a comic character in his own eyes, and he wouldn’t have dreamed of confiding in anyone about his misfortune. At the time of his death, his doctor having died before him, I rather imagine no one alive was aware of it except three people. You and me, Mrs. Morrow, and James himself. I wonder, if it had been generally known, how it would have affected the inquest — in the matter of motive, I mean. It’s an interesting speculation, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly.” Julia Morrow’s voice, under perfect control, was the vocal equivalent of her fastidious expression. “I find it boring, as well as absurd. However, allowing the motive, I should think it would have worked in reverse. The wrong person was killed.”

“It might seem so, superficially. However, you must admit that we are in the position of knowing who was killed and who was not.” Cora was silent for a few seconds, seeming to consider what she had said, and then she spoke again casually. “Tell me, Mrs. Morrow, why did you kill him? Was he going to divorce you? But of course he was. He was so vain, poor dear, that he could never have tolerated infidelity in his wife, even at the price of publicizing his own inadequacy. Under the circumstances, it would have been a disaster, wouldn’t it? You would have received nothing, of course. As it is, you now have all that you need, haven’t you?”

“You twist my words against me.” Julia spoke and then was still. If she was shocked or greatly concerned, she didn’t show it. After a while she sighed. “What do you want, Cora Rogan? Surely you realize that it would be extremely difficult to establish anything against me after so long a time.”

“It’s hard to tell.” Cora reflected and shrugged. “Who knows what would happen if it were all to be revived? At the worst, ruin. At the best, a great deal of unpleasantness. Especially, it seems to me, for the charming little girl I met on my way to the house. Did I tell you that we played a game of jacks?” Julia Morrow rose abruptly and moved a few steps away. She stood for a minute staring across the sunlit yard to a row of Russian olive trees at the rear, silvery-green in the light, and then she turned and came back to the table; but did not sit down again.

Cora smiled secretively.

“Why have you waited so long?” Julia Morrow said.

“I am not an avaricious person,” Cora said. “Until recently I lived well and had no need. Now I’m in need.”

“Tell me what you want”

“What do I want?” Cora spoke dreamily, like a child with an impossible wish. “I think, more than anything else, I should like to return to Europe and live the rest of my life there. I know of a small villa in the south of France where I could live quite cheaply. For one who is clever in making the best of things, fifty thousand dollars should be quite sufficient for me — for a long, long time.”

“For the rest of one’s life, I should think.”

“Yes. For the rest of one’s life.” Julia Morrow sat down. She closed her eyes, apparently tired, but her face was composed.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you some tea before you go?” she said.

“Quite sure.” It was Cora Rogan’s time to stand. “I’ve intruded long enough.”

“Are you staying nearby?”

“At the hotel in town.”

“How uncomfortable for you. The accommodations are deplorable, I understand, but of course there are very few guests in such a small place. You probably won’t want to stay long.”

“I hope to leave tomorrow afternoon. I’m expecting a small package before then.”

“I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

“You’re very kind and thank you again for seeing me.”

Cora left without looking back; but she did not go, as she had come, through the house. She walked around the outside along a walk bordering beds of bright flowers, and so past the fountain and around the concrete curve to the white birch and the little girl.

“Did you see Mother?”

“Yes. We had a nice talk.”

“Did she give you something for your charity?”

“She’s thinking about it. I’m sure she will.”

“I’m glad. Would you like to play another game of jacks?”

“No, thank you. I really must go.”

“All right. I guess I had better go back to the house now, anyway. Goodbye.”

Cora watched her go up the walk alone. For a few yards she walked sedately, and then she broke suddenly into the gait that seems peculiar to small girls — something between a trot and a skip, or perhaps a little of both by turns.

Standing under the white birch and staring after her, Cora had suddenly so intense and terrible a sense of loss and loneliness that she cried softly aloud, unaware, in anguish. In that instant the small villa in the south of France was a far and empty place of exile, and she envied the vulnerable woman she had just left on the terrace — the woman who had saved something, as Cora had not, from the sterile years.

The girl had gone away and left her jacks in a little pile on the grass beside the walk. Bending down, Cora picked up the small metal pieces and dropped them into a pocket of her linen jacket.

She would keep them, she thought, as a memento of this day — and all the spent days before.

Bonus Boy

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1963.

His name was Steve Miklos, although that wasn’t the name on the register downstairs. He had signed the register with the false name at three o’clock that morning, and now, after sleeping for ten hours, he was playing solitaire on a small table by a window of his room overlooking the street. Every once in a while, he would look away from the cards and down into the street, which was one side of a square in a small town. The street was white and burning hot with summer sunlight.

He had taken the deck of cards from one of the two bags he had carried upstairs at three o’clock. It was on a chair beside the bed now, spread open to make available the items in it, which were merely some clothing and some toilet articles. The other bag, much smaller, was on the floor beside the bed, closed and locked. Inside it was one hundred thousand dollars in bills.

He kept looking at intervals down into the street because he was waiting for someone. He had arranged to meet someone here today, a woman, but the time was indefinite, and there was no reason to expect that he would just happen to be looking into the street at the time when she appeared, if she appeared there at all.

His reasons for arriving at three o’clock in the morning in this small town and registering under a false name in this small hotel were related to the money in the small bag, and to the woman for whom he was waiting. Last night he had taken the money from another man’s safe, and the woman he was waiting for was another man’s wife. The money and the woman had belonged to the same man, and the man was powerful and dangerous.

Steve Miklos, playing solitaire and looking at intervals down into the street, was neither. He wasn’t even very intelligent, as intelligence is measured. He was, however, very handsome, and women usually liked him in excess of discretion. As if to reassure himself that this was true, that he was handsome and frequently desired by women, he got up suddenly from the table by the window and went into the bathroom. He snapped on the light above the lavatory and inspected himself in the mirror with what seemed narcissistic absorption, but as a matter of fact, he accepted his good looks with no more than lethargic satisfaction and a kind of undirected gratitude. He was not inordinately vain, and valued his appearance only for the advantages it gave him. Removing a comb from the hip pocket of his trousers, he began to draw it through his black hair, which was thick and lustrous and curly. The curls, released from the teeth of the comb, sprang crisply into soft coils. After a minute or two, he replaced the comb in the hip pocket and returned to the table beside the window. Gathering the cards, still lying in the precise arrangement of his last defeat, he began to shuffle them swiftly with a skill that suggested professional intimacy; and this was indeed the case, for he had worked, among other things, as a dealer of blackjack.

Holding the deck in his left hand, prepared to lay out another game, he paused to look down into the street, and he continued to sit very still in that position, suddenly fixed, the cards cupped neatly in his left hand and the right poised above them, for a bus had pulled up to the curb in front of the hotel, which also served as a depot, and a woman was descending from the bus. He could see, as she descended, a flash of nylon knees below a short skirt. She took a couple of steps along the side of the bus and stood waiting with a kind of arrogant grace that was apparent, even from the sharp angle of his vision from above, while the driver got her luggage from a compartment, matched cases, and put it out on the sidewalk. After he had closed the compartment, the driver picked up the bags and carried them into the hotel, the woman following two or three paces behind. She walked with the same grace with which she had stood waiting, breasts high and long legs scissoring, and she gave the effect of an expensive woman, which was what she was. She was an expensive and well-kept woman, the wife of a rich man, the woman Steve Miklos was waiting for.

He had risen and leaned toward the window as she walked behind the bus driver toward the hotel entrance, to sharpen his angle of vision and keep her in sight for seconds longer, and he was aware of a rising excitement within him. This was unusual and slightly disturbing, for he was usually rather brutally phlegmatic in his response to women, although he disguised it, and his intensity with this one, who was different from all the others who had been and would be, made him feel naked and vulnerable. He had a strong compulsion to go downstairs immediately to meet her, but this was contrary to their plans, which had been carefully made, and so he sank back onto the chair, acutely conscious of the hard beating of his heart.

She would take a room, paying for a day in advance, as he had paid for two. She would give as a reason, as he had, that she planned to leave very early in the morning of the next day and did not wish to be delayed by paying when she left. In her room, after an interval, she would call the desk and ask to be connected with the room of Stephen Miklos, using, of course, the name that Stephen Miklos had used. The disclosure of a room number, his or hers, would then bring them together, here or there.

In the meanwhile, there were the long, last minutes of waiting to be endured and survived. Getting up again from the chair, he lit a cigarette and went over and lay down across the bed on his back, drawling on the cigarette and blowing smoke upward in long plumes. The smoke rose and thinned and disintegrated against the faded ceiling. Waiting for her to call, in order to relieve the tedium of time, he began to review deliberately the way they had come from where they had been to where they now were.

Her name was Hannah Archer, and she was married to a man named Hugo Archer, who was a man with many interests in many places about which certain authorities had more curiosity than knowledge. One of his local places, a minor interest, was a combination restaurant and casino. You could eat fine food on the first floor to the muted sounds of a string ensemble that played routinely the music of such composers as Victor Herbert and Rudolph Friml and Jerome Kern, and was capable of playing something else upon request. On the second floor was the casino, and it was here that Steve Miklos worked. It was here, at least, that he was seen each night, although the character and purpose of his work were never clearly defined. He merely moved among the guests, being charming and decorative in a white tie, especially to the guests on the distaff side, and extra especially, among those, to Hannah Archer, who was entitled to preferred treatment by virtue of being, not a guest, but Mr. Big’s wife. Hannah had spent many nights in the casino, for she loved the quiet crowd, richly dressed, and the subtle suspense that was part of the quality of games of chance. If she began spending even more nights there after the sudden appearance of Steve, Hugo Archer seemed not to notice, or if he noticed, not to mind. This could have been a result of Hannah’s discretion, of course, for even after she began seeing Steve alone and away from the casino, she managed to sustain with him in company an overt attitude that was never more than the kind of sophisticated flirtation that she engaged in harmlessly with a dozen others.

Even when they were alone, her discretion, although considerably qualified, was not abandoned, and she was clearly not inclined to commit herself in passion to some-thing she would regret in satiety. There was far too much to lose, and Hugo Archer was always a threat. Squat and ugly in a strangely alluring way, he was richer than anyone knew, and he wielded immense power in a shadowy world without appreciable inhibitions. He commanded, Steve knew, a small army of dedicated men who would do for him at a word whatever he wanted done but no longer wanted to do for himself, having acquired a certain position. He was not a man, in brief, to betray. He could, when it suited him, forget a friend or a favor, but he never forgot an enemy or an offense.

And so that was the way things had been before becoming as they now were, and they had begun to change, to become different from before, suddenly yesterday afternoon, only twenty-four hours ago. They had been then, yesterday, in Hannah’s home, which was a place he had rarely been, and he was there at this time only because Hugo Archer was away on one of the mysterious business trips that sometimes took him out into his shadowy world. Hannah was lying propped on her elbows on the floor. She was wearing a white jersey blouse and a pair of tight black velvet pants, her legs bent back above her thighs from the knees and her heels dangling above her lovely stern. She looked beautiful and at least ten years younger than she was, which was thirty-five. Balanced precariously in the thick pile of off-white carpeting a few inches from her nose was a tall glass filled with ice and vodka and orange juice. A long, transparent plastic straw was leaning against the glass on the inside, and every once in a while, Hannah, without ever touching the glass with her hands, would stretch a little forward and suck briefly on the straw. Doing this now, she smiled lazily at Steve, who was sitting on a soft white leather ottoman and watching her with candid desire in brown eyes that looked black in passion and anger.

“Darling,” she said, “if only you weren’t so dreadfully poor.”

“Excuse me,” he said. “I know it’s depressing.”

“It’s just that it would be so wonderful if you weren’t.”

“Everyone can’t be as rich as Hugo.”

“That’s true. Hardly anyone can be as rich as Hugo, but it is hardly necessary. Not for you, darling. With you as a bonus, I’d be willing to settle for less.”

“How much less?”

“It could be a great deal less and still be enough. There is no advantage in having far more money than one can spend.”

“I’m happy to know that you’re prepared to be reasonable.”

“Darling, I am almost entirely free from avarice. All I require is enough to supply the simple necessities.”

“Did you say necessities or luxuries?”

“Darling, for me they are the same thing.”

“Well, let’s get down to specifications. How much, would you say, would be enough to supply the simple necessities for a person who is almost entirely free from avarice? Name a figure.”

“Make me an offer.”

“Would one hundred G’s be enough?”

“I should think that would do very well for quite a while. Do you happen to have that much?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Darling, you mustn’t imagine that you can trick me or anything like that. I’m very shrewd in such matters.”

“Perhaps I could get it, however.”

“You mustn’t indulge in fantasies, either, darling. It’s hard on the mind.”

“I could get it tonight. By nine o’clock, say. One hundred thousand in large bills.”

“That’s the way I like it. Large bills is absolutely the nicest way that money comes. Darling, you are so charming when you dream. So small-boyish. If you will come down here beside me, I think I would like to kiss you.”

He came down beside her, as directed, and they kissed each other, as it turned out. It did not turn out, however, to be the kind of kiss a woman gives a small boy, nor on the other hand the kind a small boy gives a woman. It was too long and too ardent. When it was over, she rolled back onto her tummy and sucked again on the clear plastic straw and looked at him sidewise from smoky eyes.

“If only you really could,” she said.

“I can.”

“No, no. You mustn’t torment yourself and me with delusions, darling. You are charming and lovable and exciting, but you are simply not the type to acquire that much money tonight or any other night or ever at all.”

“If I can get the money tonight, will you go away with me before Hugo gets back?”

“Permanently?”

“Yes.”

“Certainly, darling.

“Then you had better be prepared to go, because I know just where it is, and I’ll get it.”

She had been watching him closely sidewise all the while, and now she rolled over suddenly and sat up, hugging her knees in her arms and staring at him intently over them. In her eyes, behind the smoke, there was a new glitter of excitement.

“I do believe you’re serious.”

“You’d better believe it. I’ll simply take it.”

“Steal it?”

“Yes, if you want to put it that way.”

“Darling, there is no good in speaking in euphemisms. We may as well be candid.”

“Would you object to spending stolen money?”

“Not at all. I would only object if you were caught stealing it.”

“I won’t be caught.”

“Where is all this money? Just lying somewhere waiting for you to pick it up?”

“That’s right. Just lying there waiting.”

“Waiting where?”

“In Hugo’s safe at the casino.”

“Steal from Hugo! Darling, are you insane?”

“No, I’m not.”

“He would certainly have you killed. Me, too.”

“He would have to find us first.”

“I must confess that I didn’t dream you could have the nerve. Perhaps you won’t, when it comes down to it.”

“You’ll see.”

“How do you know the money is in the safe? Did you see it?”

“Hugo told me. You know he likes me. Sometimes he invites me into his office for a cigarette and a drink of private stock. The night before he left town, I was in there, and he had this package, just a brown paper package tied with heavy twine, lying on his desk. He was in an expansive mood, a little tight, and he asked me if I knew what was in the package, and I said no, and he said one hundred thousand dollars in large bills. Then he said, as a joke, that I had better watch over things closely while he was gone, because he was leaving the package in the office safe until he returned from wherever he was going.”

“That’s a lot of money for someone just to leave in an office safe. Even Hugo. Is it his personal money?”

“He said so, but I have a notion, if the truth were known, that the internal revenue boys might think differently. Chances are, Hugo would never report the theft of it to the police.”

“He wouldn’t need to. He has men of his own to take care of such things.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No, darling. Not for one hundred grand and a bonus. You are much more daring and exciting than I knew, and I can’t imagine how I underestimated you so.”

“In that case, we had better make some plans.”

She had been much more easily persuaded than he had hoped or expected, and they sat on the floor like childish conspirators and made all the arrangements, which were very simple, and her excitement had grown and grown inside her until her eyes were shining with such a bright light that they gave the effect of blindness, and her breath was drawn and released with labor between moist pink lips.

“I’ll get the money early,” he said. “As shortly after eight as possible. The office is locked, but that won’t be any problem. The safe will be a slightly greater problem, but I can manage it all right. It won’t take longer than ten minutes to open it. I’ve always had sensitive fingers. There’s an alarm, of course, but I know where it is and how to shut it off. I will simply take the money and leave the office and walk directly down the back stairs to the alley door. The door is barred on the inside, and that’s where you will have to help me. The only thing you will have to do is wait there to bar the door after me, for if it were discovered unbarred, it might touch off an investigation before we were ready for it.”

“That leaves me on the inside and you on the outside, darling. Where will I meet you later?”

“I don’t think you had better come with me immediately. There is a little town I know about three hundred miles in the direction I want to go. I’ll stop there and take a room in the hotel. You follow tomorrow and take a room, too. You will have to ride a bus, for there’s no train or air service, and we won’t want a second car on our hands. You’d better travel light, but don’t forget your jewels. In the places we are going we may need a little extra money.”

“What is the name of the town?”

He told her the name of the town and the name he would use there instead of his own, and all the plans were simply made and perfectly executed, everything going exactly right, and everything was still going right, according to plan, for the telephone was ringing in his room in the hotel in the small town, and he got up and answered it.

“Hello, darling,” she said. “How’s my bonus boy?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “What room are you in?”

“Never mind. I’ll come to yours. I want to see my base pay, and my bonus together, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. We’re both in room 306, and we’ll be waiting for you. We both sort of missed you.”

“Darling, I’ll be right there.”

While waiting the last two minutes, which were what she took in coming, he went over to the open bag and took a silver flask from it and a large swallow of scotch from the flask. He did not drink much, hardly ever alone, and he wasn’t nervous or afraid, not needing the drink especially, and he took it simply because he was satisfied and excited and felt like having a drink of scotch to what had been committed and done and would be done hereafter. He capped the flask and dropped it into the bag. There was a knock on the door, and he went over and opened it.

She came in quickly, and he could see at once that the excitement was still burning inside her. Its heat was high in her cheeks and in her eyes.

“Darling,” she said, “here we are, aren’t we?”

“Yes. Here we are, and there it is. In the little bag on the floor.”

“One hundred thousand dollars in that little bag? It seems incredible.”

“It’s in big bills.”

“Do you mind if I just look at it and feel it? Darling, it would be such a comfort and give me such pleasure.”

“Comforted and pleased are how I want to keep you. Help yourself.” He handed her the key to the bag, and she went over and lifted it onto the bed and opened it. The brown paper wrapping had been removed, the large bills loose in packets in the bag, and she stood there for more than a minute, caressing a packet with her fingers, her eyes bright and her breathing deep. Then she turned to face him, and she was for the first time standing frilly on his side of discretion, her own position abandoned somewhere behind her and them.

“Will Hugo find us, darling?”

“He never will.”

“Aren’t you afraid at all?”

“Not at all.”

“Neither am I. I’m only terribly excited.” She sat down on the edge of the bed beside the small bag containing the money. “Darling, please come here.”

He went over and sat down beside her, and they were all there on the bed together, he and she and all the beautiful money that made it possible, and in the meanwhile the hot, white light diminished in the street outside, and it grew dark in the room.

“Darling,” she said, “whatever time is it?”

Looking at his wrist watch, he was surprised to see that he couldn’t read it. He got up and lowered the blinds at the windows and turned on a light beside the bed. “It’s almost eight,” he said. “We’d better leave here about nine. It’s a long way to Miami.”

“Is that where we’re going? To Miami?”

“Miami and points south.”

“I suppose I had better go back to my room and get ready.”

“I suppose. My car is parked in the lot beside the hotel. There’s a door leading out at the foot of the stairs. You won’t have to go through the lobby. I’ll meet you at the car at nine. Can you manage your own bags?”

“I can manage. Darling, I hate to leave you, even until nine. It will seem like forever.”

“Forever is what comes after,” he said.

When she was gone, he lit a cigarette and smoked it. Then he went over to the telephone and put through a long distance call, charges reversed, to a number he had been given. The voice that answered, after a while, was flat and hard, committed to speaking directly and being done with it.

“Is that you, Steve? How’s everything?”

“Everything’s fine, Mr. Archer. Going according to plan.”

“Good. I can go home tomorrow.”

“I want to thank you again for giving me this break.”

“Forget it. You’ve done a job for a price, that’s all. The first time I saw her look at you, I knew you were the one to do it. It would have cost twice as much for a divorce and five times as much to keep her on the side. I hope you’re making it realistic.”

“Don’t worry about that. She thinks it’s for real. She’s giving up something in the long run for a bonus now.”

“Have fun. Don’t think that hundred grand is going to last you and Hannah forever, though. It won’t.”

“Well,” Steve said, “it will probably last as long as we will.”

He hung up and looked at his watch again. Eight exactly. One hour to wait. He took a tiny gold penknife from a pocket and began to pare his fingernails.

Mrs. Dearly’s Special Day

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1963.

After what had been done last night, it was mostly a day of waiting for something to happen. Waiting, however, can be a great excitement. If one possesses the quality of character to sustain composure, the excitement all inside and growing, waiting can be the most exhilarating experience imaginable.

The day began consciously for Mrs. Dearly at exactly nine o’clock, when she wakened. She had left her windows open and the drapes drawn back before going to bed, and her room was now, at nine o’clock in the morning, full of warm and golden light. It was clearly going to be one of those andante days expiring through minutes and hours to slumberous summer sounds.

Mrs. Dearly loved that kind of day, so softly sensuous and replete with drowsy dreams, and she was aware of this one instantly in her flesh and bones. She yawned and stretched, lifting golden arms into the golden light. Looking down the length of her body, its senses astir in a sheer mist of blue nylon, she felt a kind of innocent narcissistic delight. Holding herself in child-like affection, quite uncorrupted by vanity, she was truly grateful for being what she was — so perfectly made for love and lovely things; but her gratitude was unformed and undirected, and she hadn’t the faintest notion to whom it was owed, or how it might be acknowledged.

She lay in bed for perhaps another half hour, absorbing and transforming all the subtle manifestations of the day, and then she stretched again and got up and shed the blue mist on the way to the bathroom. It lay on the floor like something conjured out of her dreams, a giant handful of the bubble bath foam in which she soaked until ten. Returning then to the bedroom, she began to remove the bright enamel from her fingernails, and when this was accomplished she began, with equally meticulous attention, to put on another coat of enamel.

Inasmuch as the new coat was the same color and shade as the old, the effect, when she was finished, was identical with the one it replaced; but in the meanwhile she had measured the heightening of her anticipation and excitement by the precise performance of a small task that occupied her pleasantly and brought her so much closer to where the day was taking her.

It was almost noon when she was finally dressed in a tan sleeveless dress, tan stockings and shoes, and a tiny hat of deeper shade. She inspected herself in her full-length mirror with the same child-like innocence and delight with which she had looked at herself earlier in the blue mist, turning slowly now for the effect from all sides; and then, carrying her purse and a pair of white gloves, she went downstairs prepared to leave the house, going out the back way to a terrace where she expected her husband to be — and there he was, sure enough, reclining in a blue and yellow sling chair.

Mrs. Dearly crossed the terrace and kissed him lightly over one eye, patting his head at the same time with a display of that kind of affection one generally bestows on small boys and dogs.

“Good morning, dear,” she said.

“Morning? In case you don’t realize it, it’s noon.”

The words alone, unqualified by inflection, had a carping connotation; but his voice was, in fact, amused and indulgent — as if it were understood and agreed that she should be immune to the imposition and demands of time, and that it would, really, be rather absurd if she were otherwise.

“Oh, I’ve been up for hours,” she said. “Honestly I have.”

“You’re dressed for the street,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“I have some shopping to do downtown. Do you mind?”

“Not in the least. But don’t you want some lunch before you go? I suppose it’s too late for breakfast.”

“I hardly ever eat breakfast, as you know, and I’ll have lunch downtown. What will you do?”

“There’s plenty to do in the flower beds, and I’m going to mow the grass.”

“I knew it. I was looking out at the lawn last evening, and I said to myself that the grass was getting high. Cal will mow the grass tomorrow, I said.”

“You were right. That’s exactly what Cal is going to do.”

“You shouldn’t work so hard at it, dear. Why don’t you hire a gardener to do such things?”

“Because I wouldn’t get any pleasure out of having a gardener do it. I enjoy doing the yard work — you know that perfectly well. All week I look forward to the weekend when I can get my green thumb into the ground. Things grow for me, and the grass somehow looks better when I mow it. I’m a frustrated horticulturist, I guess.”

This was true. He had made several millions in real estate speculations, but he took more pride in his grass, his roses, his flowering and evergreen shrubs. He even had the rough look of a man who lived close to the earth. Now, on the wide terrace behind his costly house, he was wearing a coarse blue shirt tucked into worn jeans, and his shoes were the shoes of a working man, not of a dilettante gardener — thick-soled, hard-toed shoes laced up around his ankles.

Mrs. Dearly, although willing to concede something to his more numerous years — which were twenty more than her own — still felt that the addiction of a rich man to rough pursuits, like digging in the ground and mowing grass, should adhere to more fashionable lines. There was no reason, for example, why Cal couldn’t work just as well in a colorful sports shirt and in presentable trousers and shoes as in the crude outfit he was now wearing. Moreover, to put it candidly, he stank. When she had bent over to kiss him and pat his head, the odor of perspiration had been strong. She could not see that it was made less offensive by being the result of earthly labor.

“Well, you must be careful of the heat,” she said. “You may have a stroke or something if you’re not careful.”

“I’ll be careful, thank you. An old fellow like me has to be, you know.”

“Nonsense. You’re a perennial boy. Will you look after yourself properly while I’m gone? Have a good lunch, I mean, and don’t stay too long in the sun without resting.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’m strong as a bull.”

Bending to kiss him again, she thought that he not only was as strong as one, he also smelled like one.

“Goodbye, dear,” she said. “I may be just a little late.”

“Shall I back your car out for you?”

“Don’t bother, thanks. I don’t in the least mind doing it myself.”

As a matter of fact, she preferred it. His handling of her beautiful little Jaguar was, she felt, a kind of physical violation only a little less disturbing than that imposed infrequently on herself. Having now evaded the former — as she did, whenever possible, the latter — she drove the ten or twelve miles downtown in a considerably shorter time than obedience to the speed limits would have permitted.

She loved driving fast, could not resist the sense and excitement of high speeds, and it was fortunate that she also drove expertly, with a casual mastery to which the Jaguar submitted as if it were somehow an extension of its driver. Sometimes she really felt this, especially on the highway, that she and the powerful little car were organically joined, and that it experienced in its tempered-steel body the same thrill she experienced in her soft and yielding body. This was nonsense, of course, a private fantasy, but it amused her...

Downtown, she parked in the Municipal Garage two levels underground and walked through a brightly lighted tunnel to an elevator that carried her up into the lobby of a hotel across the street. She was hungry by then, so she had lunch by herself in the hotel, and after eating like a bird she went to several department stores in the area where she bought a great many things, mostly personal and wearable, all of which she left in the stores for delivery. This took quite a while, lunch and shopping requiring about three hours; but the time passed agreeably and almost before she knew it, it was 3:30 — which was the time she was supposed to meet Douglas.

She returned to the hotel where she had lunched, going this time to the cocktail lounge instead of the restaurant, and it was cool and seductive there, in an artificial dusk suspended mistily between light and darkness. She paused just inside the door while her eyes adjusted to the shadows, listening to the soft serenade of recorded strings and feeling her happiness and quiet excitement stir and swell inside her with an effect of almost painful pleasure; and all the while she was looking around for Douglas, and there he was, as she had hoped and expected, at a small table in a corner.

There was such a sudden sharp intensification of her pleasurable pain that she almost whimpered, and she thought at the same time, with incongruous detachment, that it was odd that he should have the capacity to make her feel that way, for he was not an exceptional young man at all. He was, in fact, rather dull at times, and incited her at once to exasperation and tenderness.

Seeing her approach, he started to rise, but she slipped so quickly into the chair across from him that he was no more than half up when she was entirely down. He resumed his seat after remaining a moment half risen, as if he were fighting an impulse to leave at once, and she took one of his hands and held it lightly on the table.

“Darling,” she said, “have you been waiting long?”

“No. Just a few minutes.”

“Have you had a drink?”

“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”

“That was nice of you. You are always so nice. What shall we have? Martinis?”

“I suppose so. We always do, don’t we?”

He gave the order to a girl who was waiting for it, and after the Martinis had been mixed and brought, Mrs. Dearly looked at him fondly — and wondered why she was here looking at him at all. His face in repose, boyishly handsome beneath a falling lock of dark hair that seemed contrived, was like a cheap air-brush portrait by an inferior artist in which all other features were subordinated to a sulky mouth. Douglas was, in fact, an inferior artist himself, an instructor in an art school, and she had met him almost six months ago when she had gone to the school to learn to paint in water colors, for which, as she quickly learned, she had no talent whatever. This knowledge — and Douglas — were all she had acquired from the effort.

Sipping her Martini and speaking over the thin edge of glass, she said, “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Nothing much. Nothing of consequence.”

“Are you working on something remarkable?”

“I’m not working on anything at all. It’s impossible.”

“Darling, are you still feeling guilty about Cal? If only you could understand what a waste your guilty conscience is. You have done him no harm, and neither have I, and we have done each other a great deal of good.”

“I doubt that Cal would think so.”

“Oh, nonsense. Cal doesn’t think about it one way or another. While you are sitting here making yourself miserable, he is at home this instant as happy as can be, digging in the flower gardens and mowing the grass.”

“You make everything sound so simple and acceptable.”

“Because it is. You must learn to accept things as they are and without complicating them in your mind.”

“Well, it’s not so easy to accept your going on indefinitely as Cal’s wife.”

“You must be patient, darling. Something will work out for us eventually — perhaps sooner than you think. In the meanwhile, let’s have another Martini before I go.”

“Why must you go so soon?”

“Something to do at home — but it’s really too tiresome to talk about.”

Her second Martini, which was consumed slowly to the sound of strings, proved a considerable challenge to her resolution to go home; but she went, nevertheless, about 4:30. The traffic was heavy on the streets, crippling the Jaguar, which could not get free to run until the last few miles-so that it was five when she pulled into the driveway behind a car which sat there, blocking the way to the garage.

Mrs. Dearly, mildly annoyed by the trespasser, got out of the Jaguar and walked around the house to the rear; but there was no sign of Cal or anyone else. She went into the house through the kitchen, and there in the hall which ran forward from the kitchen to the front entrance was a short man in a dark blue suit, a stranger with an odd little potbelly like a melon held in position by his belt; and this man had obviously come out of the living room to meet her, as if he had become, by some strange trickery in her absence, the master of the house and she the stranger.

“Mrs. Dearly?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Dickson. Police.”

“Police? What on earth are you doing here? Where is my husband?”

“You had better talk with Lieutenant Hardy about that. He’s waiting for you in the living room.”

He half turned and gestured toward a doorway, still with that curious implication of inviting her to be his guest. She walked past him into the living room, where another man was standing in the middle of the room with his back to a bank of windows bright with the late afternoon sun. He was even shorter than the man who had called himself Dickson — a thin, consumptive-looking man of indeterminate age in a wilted seersucker suit.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Dearly,” he said. His voice was as wilted as his suit, and perfectly supplemented by a languid, hesitant gesture of his right hand, its middle and index fingers stained by the smoke of countless cigarettes. “I’m Lieutenant Hardy. Sorry to intrude.”

The apology was hollow, a mere concession to form. For a moment Mrs. Dearly had a terrifying feeling of helplessness, of being swept into a play of forces she could not control, and at whatever cost she was compelled to assert herself in a way that would restore her position and assurance.

“Your car is blocking the drive,” she said. “Please be good enough to move it.”

“Certainly.” His right hand moved again, seeming to gather in Dickson. “Go move the car, Dickson, and drive Mrs. Dearly’s back to the garage.”

“The key is in the ignition,” Mrs. Dearly said. “Have you ever driven a Jaguar?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Dickson said.

He went out, and Mrs. Dearly turned back to Hardy.

“Perhaps now, Lieutenant, you’ll explain why you are here. And I would like to see my husband, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. He isn’t here.”

“Where is he? Has something happened to him? Tell me at once.”

“I had hoped to break it to you a little more gently, but I see that I can’t. The fact is, your husband is dead.”

“Dead? Did you say — dead?”

She moved to a chair and sat down with an effect of excessive care, as if moving and sitting had become all of a sudden a precarious business. She sat erect in the chair, her back unsupported, her eyes staring past Hardy through a bright pane of glass behind him into the side yard beyond the drive.

She was oddly sensitive in that moment to the details of sight and sound, and she noticed that the yard had been partly mowed, the power mower standing at rest on the clean line dividing the clipped and shaggy grass. She heard the rich roar, quickly reduced, of the Jaguar in the drive.

“Are you all right?” Hardy said.

“Yes, thank you. I’m quite all right.”

“Would you like me to tell you about it?”

“I think you had better.”

“Well, there isn’t much to tell, when you come right down to it. Our only witness is your neighbor on the west, Mr. Winslow, and he didn’t really see anything much. He was upstairs in a room on the second floor of his house this afternoon about two or two thirty, he couldn’t be exact, and he looked out the window and saw your husband reclining in one of those canvas sling chairs on your rear terrace. He said your husband had been mowing the grass, and Winslow assumed, naturally, that he had merely taken a break to rest and cool off, which was probably true. It’s been a pretty hot day, as you know.

“Anyhow, Winslow happened to look out the window again about twenty minutes later, and your husband was no longer in the sling chair. He was lying on his face on the terrace. Apparently he had stood up, taken a step or two, and collapsed. Winslow was alarmed, as you might expect, and he hurried over. To put it bluntly, if you will excuse me, your husband was dead. Before dying, he had been very ill. To his stomach, I mean.”

Hardy stopped, watching Mrs. Dearly, and Mrs. Dearly continued to stare through the bright glass into the bright yard. Her face in profile was beautiful and composed. It was almost, Hardy thought, serene. Being basically an old-fashioned man, he found an old-fashioned simile in his head: she has a face like a cameo, he thought.

“I’ve warned him and warned him about it,” she said at last.

“About what, Mrs. Dearly?”

“Working so hard in the hot sun. He loved working in the yard, you know, and he insisted on spending practically every week-end at it. Sometimes, whenever he could, week days also. He was getting too old for such work, especially in the hot sun. He had a stroke, I guess. A heat stroke or something. Doesn’t someone with a heat stroke become violently ill to his stomach?”

“I think so. I’m not sure about it.”

“Where is my husband now? His body, I mean. And why are the police involved? Is it normal for the police to be involved in such a matter?”

“We were called by the doctor who was summoned by Mr. Winslow.”

“Why should the doctor call the police?”

“He thought it wise, considering the circumstances of the death. He was not prepared to certify the cause without an autopsy.”

“An autopsy? Is that where Cal is? Have you taken him away somewhere for an autopsy?”

“Yes. Sorry. We tried to locate you, but we couldn’t.”

“Can you perform an autopsy on my husband without my permission?”

“If you want to make an issue of it, we can get an order. But it would be much better if you would simply agree. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”

“Since you will obviously do it in any event, I might just as well agree. You are right, anyway. There is no reason why I shouldn’t.”

“Thank you. The body will be returned to you as soon as possible.” He paused for a moment, apparently trying to put in order the words to express properly what needed to be said. “I must say that I admire the way you are taking this. I was afraid it might be all ordeal.”

She turned her face toward him then, lighted by the sun on one side and softened by shadows on the other. Her lips assumed the shape of the merest smile.

“I’m not the hysterical type, Lieutenant. I suppose I’m a bit numb, really. I can hardly believe that Cal is dead. It’s often that way when someone dies suddenly, isn’t it? Later it will strike me fully and all at once.”

“Will you be all right here alone? It’s a large house, but apparently there are no servants around.”

“We have a cook and a housekeeper, but they were given the week-end off. Cal and I were on our own for two days.”

“Too bad. If someone had been around, something might have been done in time to save him.”

“Yes. Poor Cal. Dying alone like that. I think, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, that I would like to go upstairs. Is there anything more you want of me?”

“No. I’m finished here. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we had to intrude this way.”

“Not at all. Under the circumstances, as you said, there was nothing else you could do.”

“You’re gracious to say so. Goodbye, Mrs. Dearly.”

“Goodbye, Lieutenant. Please find your own way out.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He looked thin and worn, almost ravaged, in his wilted seersucker. His right hand moved again in that hesitant gesture as he turned and went out of the room.

Standing quite still, listening, Mrs. Dearly heard his steps receding in the hall, then the front door closing behind him. She continued to stand there, listening intently. She had heard the movements of the police car and the Jaguar in the drive, and now, after several minutes, she heard the police car in the street, its engine starting and the swiftly diminishing sound of it as it sped away.

The silence of the house gathered around her, and she turned in silence and went through the hall into the kitchen and downstairs from the kitchen into the basement. She walked directly to the wall to her left, the wall toward the side yard where the power mower stood at rest between the clipped and shaggy grass; and she was just reaching overhead for the circular handle of a valve when someone spoke behind her.

“I don’t believe I’d do that if I were you, Mrs. Dearly,” the voice said.

How strange it was! she thought afterward. Following the first moment of terror, when her breath stopped and her heart withered, she was immediately calm and lucid and without any fear whatever. She thought clearly before turning around that Douglas must surely be kept a secret now, however difficult it might be, for he would be considered a motive at the very least, if not a conspirator — and the funny thing about it was that Douglas was not a motive at all, but only a kind of fringe benefit.

“I thought you had gone, Lieutenant,” she said.

“Dickson went,” he said. “As for me, I must confess to intruding again. I came in through the basement window there.”

He walked over and stood beside her, looking up at the valve she had intended to turn. To the right of the valve, slanting down toward the basement floor, were about six feet of pipe that made a right turn, by means of an elbow joint, and passed through the concrete foundation.

The Lieutenant began again. “While I was waiting for you to come home this afternoon from wherever you were, I got to wondering how your husband might have been poisoned — if he was poisoned, which was at least a possibility. In a container of something to drink, perhaps? In something he ate, perhaps? But that would have been dangerous, and foolishly so. The container to be analyzed. The remains of the food, ditto. Then I walked along the side of the house, and I noticed that the ground under the outside faucet was damp — and it came to me. What does the kind of man who loves working in the yard, as your husband did, almost invariably do when he gets hot and thirsty? He takes a drink from the outside faucet. Usually from his cupped hands. That’s what your husband did, Mrs. Dearly, and that’s what you knew he would do.”

The Lieutenant paused, still staring up at the valve with an expression of admiration, almost of wonder. Perhaps he was waiting for Mrs. Dearly to speak, but at the moment Mrs. Dearly did not feel like speaking.

“It was clever,” he went on. “You’re a clever woman, Mrs. Dearly. Between that inside valve and the outside faucet there are six feet of one-inch pipe. It was almost perfect for your purpose, wasn’t it? A perfect container. First, you closed the inside valve and drained the six feet of pipe. This you did merely by opening the outside faucet, letting the water in the pipe flow out, then closing the faucet afterward. Then, with a wrench, you disconnected the six feet of pipe below the valve and put into the pipe, your perfect container, whatever you used to kill your husband. This done, you reconnected the pipe to the valve, opening the valve to let water run through and fill the pipe. By closing the valve after the pipe was filled, you had a deadly liquid ready to run from the outside faucet whenever it was opened.

“It wouldn’t run long or as freely as it would have run with the valve open, of course, for six feet of one-inch pipe will hold by my arithmetic only about one quart of water. But that was enough. It was sufficient to give your husband a long, fatal drink. And now you have come down here to open the valve again and to flush from the pipe what may be left of the poison. What kind of poison did you use, Mrs. Dearly? Well, never mind. I don’t expect you to tell me. Something nearly tasteless, of course, and soluble in water. We’ll find out.”

Mrs. Dearly sighed and dusted her hands by brushing them softly together. She was feeling positively exhilarated.

“It is not I who is clever, Lieutenant,” she said. “It’s you. What you have said is logical and rather convincing, I’m sure, but it is only a theory, and it will be quite exciting to see if you can prove it or not.”

But Mrs. Dearly’s exhilaration was only that of excitement, no more. The Lieutenant had no difficulty proving his theory — there was enough poison left in the pipe, and it wasn’t long before they found Douglas...

Six Reasons for Murder

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964.

Fanny Bauer had an idea how to kill Loren. It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and the more she thought about it the better it looked. She got the idea from watching a late movie on television. This is not intended as a criticism of television, which already gets more than its share, but just shows you how simply a murder can sometimes begin.

If you have to blame someone, blame the Sioux — or the Cheyenne — or was it the Apaches? They were in the movie that Fanny saw, an old Western, and they took the hero, tied him up with wet rawhide thongs, and left him out in the sun. Wet rawhide shrinks as it dries, as almost everyone knows if he will only stop to think about it, and the idea was to make the rawhide cut into the flesh of the hero. It turned out that the hero was rescued by the United States Cavalry, but he was only tied by the wrists and ankles, anyhow, which would have been painful for a while, but not fatal.

What if a wet rawhide thong were tied around someone’s throat? Fanny thought.

She kept it impersonal to start with, sort of academic, and it wasn’t until later that the throat became Loren’s. She didn’t know if the Sioux — or Cheyenne or Apaches — had ever used this method to strangle a captive, for it wasn’t in the movie; but she did have a vague memory of having read about it in a mystery story sometime or other. The movie merely stirred up the memory of the story and so she couldn’t claim any originality for the idea — although it required, after all, a certain amount of cleverness to apply it.

And Loren Bauer was certainly an ideal subject. Or victim.

In the first place, as a retired political boss with a severe deficiency of ethics, he had made at least a hundred bitter enemies who would gladly strangle him if given the chance.

In the second place, he was now relatively vulnerable, having had a stroke that left him with legs that were practically useless.

In the third place, he was always taking some kind of drug for the relief of his physical discomfort or his conscience or both, and it would be quite easy to give him enough to knock him out, although not enough actually to kill him, because of what might be discovered post mortem.

In the fourth place, he was rich.

In the fifth place, it was beginning to look as if he were going on indefinitely refusing to die naturally, for his heart was sound, in spite of the stroke, and he adhered rigidly to his low cholesterol diet and had given up smoking.

In the sixth place, he was too old for Fanny by some thirty years, and it was high time he was discarded, if not replaced.

Six reasons for murder. Fanny could probably have added a few more, if pressed, but surely six were enough. She decided, after much thought, that she would discuss the matter in general terms with Stuart, who was Loren’s nephew. As a matter of fact, Stuart might have been Fanny’s seventh reason.

“I’ve thought of a way to kill Loren,” she said to Stuart one day.

“Your rate of production is low,” he said. “I’ve thought of a dozen ways.”

“If you’re so clever, why haven’t you done something about it?”

“Thinking and doing are two different things, honey. Doing is far too risky.”

“Well, my way, if properly executed, is hardly risky at all.”

“I’m intrigued, to say the least. What way do you have in mind?”

“I don’t believe I’ll tell you. You’re rather weak, however charming, and you’d only be a handicap in a touchy project like this.”

This suited Stuart perfectly. He always preferred, if possible, to profit from the efforts of others. As for Fanny, the brief conversation had the effect of making a plan, and the very next time she was downtown she went to a small leather shop on a side street and bought a strip of rawhide to be used, she explained, as a lacing. A minimum of research had taught her that rawhide was frequently used as lacing, and the purchase was routine.

She took the strip of rawhide home and put it in a basin in the basement to soak. It was necessary, of course, to wait for an appropriate day.

The year was still in the first half of June, and it had been, moreover, unusually cool. Then, just when one might have expected warmer weather, it began to rain, and it rained steadily for almost a week — a gray drizzle every day.

Fanny was impatient to get something accomplished, now that she had made a decision, and she was about to despair of ever having a warm fair day. She listened to the weather forecast each evening on radio and television, and even verified the daily forecasts by consulting the evening paper.

Finally, of course, the wet spell ended, and the mercury in thermometers began to climb, and the days became as appropriate as she could possibly ask for — appropriate for murder.

The day she chose was a Saturday. The cook and the maid left at noon for the remainder of the week-end, and Loren himself, ironically enough, made a certainty of what had been, so far, no more than a plan. He had his lunch in his wheelchair in the library, which was used for almost anything except reading, and later, just before the servants left, Fanny went in to get his tray and take it back to the kitchen.

“Do you know what?” he said.

“No,” Fanny said. “What?”

“I believe I’ll sit out in the sun for a while.”

Fanny was, naturally, quite pleased and excited by this opportunity, which required no clever maneuvering on her part; but she was careful not to seem too eager.

“It’s pretty warm out there,” she said. “In the eighties.”

“That’s all right. I need some sun for a change. I’ll come in when I’ve had enough.”

“Would you like me to push you out on the terrace?”

“Don’t bother. I can manage by myself.”

“I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fix you a tall cold drink of something and bring it out to you. Would you like that?”

He said he would, which was his mistake, and Fanny went to fix him a tall cold anesthetic highball that contained incidental ingredients of citrus juice and gin and carbonated water. As a gesture of innocence, she asked the maid to take it to him on her way out of the house for the week-end, and five minutes later, seeing the cook off, she found the glass already half empty when she went out herself.

“It’s such a warm day,” she said, “I think I’ll go out to the Country Club and have a swim in the pool. Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead,” he said. “You’ll be all alone if I do.”

“I like being alone.”

“You aren’t expecting anyone?”

“No, I’m not. And if anyone comes, I’ll pretend I’m not here. You run along. Call Stuart to come pick you up, if you like. Being an escort is about ail he’s good for.”

“That’s a good idea. It’s better than my going alone.”

She went inside and phoned Stuart. It took him quite a while to answer the telephone, because he wasn’t up yet. Stuart was hardly ever out of bed before early afternoon, and Fanny had counted on this when she called.

Stuart agreed to pick her up, although he was somewhat less than enthusiastic about taking a swim, and it took him slightly longer than half an hour to dress and get there.

In the meanwhile Fanny used the time profitably. Returning to the terrace, having detoured en route by way of the basement, she found the tall glass empty and Loren dead to this world if not yet alive in the next. He was, indeed, in such a deep sleep that it gave her a little shock of fear. She was afraid she had been too generous with the drug, and it would never do to have him dying because of that. It couldn’t reasonably be passed off as heart failure, not with Loren’s recent electrocardiograms on record, and the excess of drugs would certainly be detected in an autopsy.

But after a close inspection she was satisfied that she was safe. Loren would not die of the drug, and any dose less than lethal would surely be accepted as normal, for he took the stuff all the time, as was well known.

And so, satisfied, she had merely to tie the wet rawhide strip snugly around Loren’s throat. It was easy to do — Loren was wearing an open-neck sports shirt. Then she carried the tall glass inside, washed it and dried it and put it away, and went upstairs to get a beach bag, into which she put a black swimming suit, brief, a striped towel, immense, and a tube of suntan lotion, economy size. She was waiting downstairs, ready to go, when Stuart arrived.

He was so grumpy from having been wakened early that Fanny was tempted to tell him what she had done, just to cheer him up a little; but she decided that it wouldn’t be wise. She resisted temptation all the way to the Country Club, and finally compromised, as they were arriving, by hinting at just enough to give him something pleasant to anticipate.

“I have a notion,” she said, “that there is going to be a happy surprise in your life today.”

“Yes?” He looked at her disagreeably. “What are you, an astrologer or something?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “You need only be a little patient.”

She wouldn’t tell him any more, not a word, but his humor did improve, and they had a cool pleasant swim in the pool and sat for a while in deck chairs along the side. It was really quite warm in the sun, and so they dressed pretty soon and moved into the clubhouse, where they had cold drinks and played several hands of gin rummy. All in all, it was quite a pleasant afternoon that passed quickly, and it was a little later than Fanny had planned when Stuart got her home again.

“Come in and say hello to Loren,” Fanny said.

“Well, I don’t want to, but I suppose I’d better,” he said.

They walked inside together and Fanny went off ostensibly to look for Loren. She ran upstairs and down again. She looked into several rooms. She called his name. At last, after putting on a good show, she went out to the terrace — and all of a sudden she had the most terrible feeling that things had gone wrong and that Loren would be alive and waiting for her.

But as it turned out, the feeling was no more than a foolish apprehension, for the rawhide had shrunk, as guaranteed by the old Western, and Loren was stone dead.

Working as fast as she could, Fanny began trying to remove the strip of rawhide from Loren’s throat. But it had drawn deeply into the flesh and had become very hard in the sun, and for a fearful moment she thought she might have to call Stuart to help her remove it. Then she remembered the penknife that Loren invariably carried in his pocket.

She finished out the knife, cut the rawhide, and dropped it and the knife into her beach bag, which she had carried all this time. Then, feeling relieved and composed, she went back into the house and found Stuart waiting where she had left him.

“Loren is still out on the terrace,” she said. “He seems to be dead. You had better call the police.”

“Police!” Stuart jumped and stared at her. “Why the devil should I call the police?”

“If I’m not mistaken, Loren has been murdered. Strangled, I believe. He had many enemies, you know. Apparently one of them slipped up behind him and choked him to death.”

“Oh, sure!” Stuart’s eyes, which had popped wide open, were now narrowed. “This wouldn’t be the happy surprise you were talking about, would it?”

“Please don’t waste time, Stuart. Are you going to call the police, or aren’t you?”

“I am not. What I’m going to do is get out of here immediately.”

“Don’t be absurd. You can’t possibly be involved, and neither can I. After all, we were away together all afternoon. Besides, it will only look worse for you if you leave.”

“Not if you don’t tell anyone I was here.”

“I’ll certainly have to tell the police. You know very well that it’s illegal to withhold information in a murder case.”

“It’s also illegal to strangle husbands.”

“I haven’t strangled a husband — not mine nor anyone else’s. Stuart, do as I say. Go and call the police immediately.”

“Well, it looks like I’m hooked, and I’ll have to.”

“That’s a good boy. In the meantime, I’ll go up to my room and lie down. It’s expected of widows to behave properly in these matters, and I don’t want to create a bad impression — especially for the police.”

She went upstairs, carrying her beach bag. In her room she hung the bag on a hook far back in her closet, then kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed. She was inwardly far too excited to continue lying there, however, and after a while she got up and sat in a chair by a window.

She wished that the window overlooked the terrace so that she could watch what would go on down there; but the terrace was on the other side of the house. It would be necessary, she thought to dispose of the strip of rawhide, but there would be plenty of time for that later. Meanwhile it would be safe enough where it was, in the beach bag, for there was no reason in the world why anyone should look into it, or even think of looking.

Now that it was so nearly finished, she felt a great urgency to have it finished altogether. She sat quietly, listening for sounds, but she could hear nothing in the big house and see nothing pertinent from the window. After a long time she began to suspect that Stuart had not even called the police as he was instructed to do. She was almost ready to go downstairs and see for herself if he was still there or had sneaked away like a coward, when there was suddenly, without the prelude of any other sound, a brisk rapping on her door and a voice that sounded somehow official. “Mrs. Bauer. Are you there?”

“Yes,” she said. “Who is it, please?”

“Lieutenant Peavy. Police. I’d like to talk with you if you feel up to it.”

“Of course. Just a moment.”

She stood up and put on her shoes and opened the door.

“I’ve been lying down,” she said. “I understand. Are you sure you’re ready to talk?”

“Quite ready.”

“Will you come downstairs, or would you prefer to talk here?”

“Here, if you don’t mind. Please come in.”

She crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it, while he pulled the chair around from the window and sat facing her. As a policeman, she thought, he looked remarkably inoffensive. To be perfectly candid, from her particular point of view, he looked relatively safe if not inept. He was slight of build, with limp brown hair brushed over from the side, and his tired suit hung loosely on his body. He held his hands clasped between his knees, as if he were embarrassed and uncertain of himself.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you would just tell me just what happened.”

“There isn’t much to tell, really. I’ve been away this afternoon. I went swimming at the Country Club with Mr. Bauer’s nephew. I believe you met him downstairs. When we left here, Loren was sitting on the terrace in the sun. He was going to wheel himself inside when he’d had enough. Stuart and I didn’t return until rather late, and I found Loren still on the terrace. You know how he was when I found him.”

“Yes. Dead. Strangled. Tell me, Mrs. Bauer, did you see the weapon?”

“The weapon?”

“Yes. Whatever was used to strangle him. From the appearance of his throat it must have been a very stout cord or a steel wire. Something like that.”

“I didn’t see it whatever it was. The murderer must have taken it away with him. Wouldn’t he naturally do that?”

“He might. He might not. In this case, he did. Or he didn’t. What I mean is, the weapon was taken away — but not at the time of the murder. It remained in place around the victim’s throat all the time he was on the terrace. Until you came home, Mrs. Bauer?”

“What’s that? What did you say?” Lieutenant Peavy twisted his hands together, giving the impression of wringing them in an agony of embarrassment.

“I see that you got the beginning of a tan on your face and throat this afternoon, Mrs. Bauer. So did your husband. Except on the narrow line around his throat that the sun didn’t touch. Can you explain that?”

She couldn’t, of course. She couldn’t even try. She wondered desperately if she could somehow put the blame on Stuart, but it didn’t seem likely. Most of all, she wondered how she could have failed to think of such a simple thing while being so clever about everything else. Now they would certainly search her room and look into her beach bag — and there was not a thing she could do to prevent it.

What was Peavy saying?

“I’ve been trying to figure out how you did it, Mrs. Bauer,” he was saying, “and I think I’ve got it.” His expression was almost ludicrously apologetic. “You see, I watch the late movies on television too.”

How? When? Who?

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1964.

In the first place, this Dr. Wade Loos went to see Detective-Lieutenant Jesse Risen. In the second place, Detective-Lieutenant Jesse Risen came to see me. In the third place, naturally, we caught the poisoner. My name, by the way, is Roscoe Fay.

It was a cold overcast afternoon in November, shortly before Thanksgiving, and I had a small fire on the hearth for cheer, supported by central heating for comfort. Lieutenant Risen came into my study, tossing his deplorable hat and topcoat into a chair by the door, and dropped heavily into another chair which, anticipating him, I had pulled up before the fire. It was apparent that he was in an ugly frame of mind, resulting from a severe case of frustration, and I offered him some bourbon and water as an alleviative, which he accepted.

I had, of course, anticipated his mood as well as his person. Risen sneers at me as an amateur criminologist in fair weather, but every time the weather turns foul, figuratively speaking, he comes running to consult me. He comes, in brief, to pick my brains. I may as well, I think, be candid about it.

“Now,” I said, when he had swallowed some of his bourbon and water, “what’s the problem this time?”

He scowled at his glass. “Who says there’s a problem?”

“Oh, come off it, Risen. Let’s not delay the accomplishment of your mission. The only time you come to see me is when you do have a problem. You have one now, and I confess that I’m eager to hear about it.”

“All right, all right. So I have a problem. Do you happen to know a Dr. Wade Loos?”

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Well, I know him, and it’s no pleasure. The damned man has made a perfect nuisance of himself.”

“Is that so? In what way?”

“He’s the attending physician of a family named Coker, and he’s convinced that someone is slowly poisoning old Rufus Coker, the head of the family.”

“I must say I’m intrigued. I’ve heard of old Rufus, of course. An extremely wealthy man. He must be seventy now, at least. What evidence does Dr. Loos have that the old man is being poisoned?”

“That’s the hell of it. He doesn’t have any genuine evidence at all. Old Rufus, he says, is basically sound physically, not a thing wrong with him, and yet he is chronically ill and keeps failing with every day that passes. He’s slowly dying, no question about it, and the doctor is thoroughly convinced, after making every effort to find a natural cause, that he’s being poisoned.”

“By someone in the house?”

“Yes. Certainly. No one else would have the opportunity.”

“Except, perhaps, Dr. Loos.”

“I’ve thought of that, but it won’t wash. No one else in the family has expressed any suspicions. If the doctor were poisoning the old man, why would he deliberately call the attention of the police to it?”

“You’re perfectly right, Risen. I was just testing to see if you had made that simple and essential elimination.”

“Oh, I’m not so dull as you seem to think. I can at least see the obvious.”

“Can you? Well, go on with your story, and we’ll see if you can really see.”

“Thank you. To get on with it, then, Dr. Loos suggested that the old man leave the house — get away from the family long enough, at least, to see if his condition improves. But the old man was merely enraged. He considers it absolutely incredible that any member of his family would wish to kill him. He even refused to submit to any tests that might reveal poison, and he berated the doctor for trying to disguise his own incompetence in failing to diagnose a natural ailment of some kind.”

“Perhaps you had better identify the members of the household.”

“Right. I’m coming to it. There are, to begin with, the daughter of old Rufus, and her husband. Caroline, her name is. She is, I’d guess, between thirty-five and forty. The husband is a bit younger — between thirty and thirty-five. His name is Warren Townsend, and he’s a doctor too.”

“Shades of Swope!”

“Swope? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Surely you’ve heard of the famous Swope case? It happened out in Kansas City soon after the turn of the century. In Independence, to be exact. Old Colonel Swope was a tremendously wealthy man. He lived in a Victorian mansion with several members of his family, including a daughter with a husband who was a doctor. An epidemic of slow poisoning began to kill off the family one by one, the Colonel included. There is a public park in Kansas City today that bears his name. He donated the land, as I recall. It offers, among other things, quite a nice little zoo and one of those open air theaters in which musical comedies are presented during the summer season.”

“That’s very interesting, I’m sure, but who the devil was the poisoner?”

“Didn’t I mention that? It was the son-in-law. The doctor. He was also the family physician. I wonder why Dr. Townsend isn’t?”

“I don’t believe it’s considered good practice nowadays for a doctor to attend the members of his own family. Nevertheless, if there is any poisoning going on, he is certainly in the best position to do it. I’m keeping him in mind.”

“Good. In the meanwhile, please tell me about the others.”

“There is a sister. About sixty. A spinster. There is a grandson, the only child of another daughter, who is dead. Name of Jack Riley. A worthless fellow, I gather, but not without charm. There is, finally, a grandniece who is called Fanny. Last name Burnett. A lovely girl, always cheerful and vivacious. She’s the only one, according to the doctor and Mrs. Weed, who ever shows any real affection for the old man.”

“Mrs. Weed?”

“The housekeeper. Besides her, there are a cook, a maid, and a yard man. Mrs. Weed has been with old Rufus for many years. She has developed a kind of possessive feeling about him, and is apparently fiercely protective of what she considers his interests. Dr. Loos has made an ally of her in this business. She watches over the old man like a mother hawk and personally checks everything he eats and drinks.”

“And still he continues in suspiciously failing health?”

“He does.”

“That rather puts the good Mrs. Weed on a spot, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“The doctor wouldn’t be the first to make a mistake in an ally.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Lieutenant, I am thoroughly captivated by your little drama. The cast of characters offers fascinating possibilities. Tell me, what are the provisions of the old man’s will? I suppose, since a considerable fortune is involved, that avarice is a possible motive.”

“It is, and it applies to all of them. There’s nothing devious or secretive about old Rufus. All five are generously provided for, and they all know it. After his death none of them will need to worry about money, I should say, for as long as he or she lives.”

“Well, I don’t think we need to pursue that any further at the moment. Someone, apparently, is simply in a hurry to collect. What I would like to know now is what method or technique is suspected. In what way is the poison being introduced into the old man’s system? Surely, if the doctor is right in his conviction, it must be something quite clever to be sustained so effectively in spite of all vigilance.”

The Lieutenant sat staring into the small blaze, rolling his empty glass between his palms. I relieved him of the glass and filled it.

“In the beginning and for some time afterward,” he said, “Dr. Loos was convinced that the old man was taking the poison orally. That’s when he came to me for help. With his assistance, and that of Mrs. Weed, we sampled and analyzed, I’ll swear, everything the old man took into his mouth — food, drink, mouth wash, medicine, even the solution he puts his dentures in. But we found nothing unusual — not the slightest trace of any poison.”

“What kind of poison, by the way, does the doctor suspect?”

“The symptoms point to arsenic, but he contends, and I agree with him, that it should be a simple matter to identify the poison and the poisoner once we determine how it is being given.”

“I also agree with that. In this case, as you have presented it, motive is obviously secondary to method.”

“That brings me to Dr. Loos’ current conviction. Failing to find the slightest evidence of oral ingestion, he is now convinced that the poison is being absorbed.”

“So? Regular external applications absorbed by the skin?”

“Something like that.”

“Have you also thoroughly investigated and analyzed pertinent items suggested by this theory?”

“Oh, of course. Right down to the old man’s shaving lather and lotion. Even the blade of the old straightedge razor he uses. He is confined to his bed now, and his physical contacts are easily kept under strict observation.”

“Do the members of the household visit him in his bedroom?”

“Yes. He’s a great family man, as I said — he won’t listen to a word against any of them. However, Mrs. Weed usually manages to be present. A devil of a lot depends on the integrity of this woman, I know, but Dr. Loos has complete confidence in her, and I have a feeling his confidence is justified.”

Risen sighed and drank from his glass, then leaned back in his chair with the definite indication that he had finished a wearisome account.

I waited quietly to see if he would take it up again, but he did not.

“Is that all?” I said.

“That’s all.”

“I must say that you have brought me a rare puzzle, Risen.”

“Is that all you have to say?” He gave me a sardonic sidewise glance. “You know all the characters and you have all the facts. Now let’s have the solution. Tell me who is poisoning old Coker, and how.”

I had been waiting for the challenge, and I’ll not deny there was an element of malice in my reply.

“As to the solution,” I said, “I am not prepared to claim that much. I have, however, formed a working hypothesis, based strictly on your account, which I think you should at least put to the test.”

“The devil you have! What is it?”

“As one must in mathematics, in order to proceed at all, I’ve made certain assumptions. I assume that Dr. Loos is a competent physician and that his evaluation of the situation is therefore basically correct. I assume that you are a competent policeman and reporter, and have given me a completely accurate report. I do not, however, assume that Dr. Loos’ absorption theory is necessarily valid. In my opinion, you have not exhausted the possibilities of oral ingestion.”

“I’d like to know what possibility we’ve overlooked.”

“So you shall. I suggest that Rufus Coker is swallowing minute doses of white arsenic. The doses would have to be minute, for two-tenths of one gram of white arsenic can be fatal. Such a minute dose could be carried into the mouth by a swallow of food or liquid, by any one of innumerable small and ordinary actions — provided the minute dose were already on the lips.”

“What in God’s name are you trying to say?”

“Let us clarify the matter by employing the Socratic method. Who, by your account, is the one person who shows affection for the old man? How, between the sexes, is affection traditionally demonstrated? What part of the anatomy, on the distaff side, is usually coated with a kind of perfumed and colored salve that could act both as a protective shield for the wearer and an adherent which could hold a minute dose of deadly powder until it could literally, with all the aspects of innocent affection, be rubbed off onto the corresponding part of someone else?

“If I were you, Lieutenant, I would interrupt this little demonstration the next time it occurs. In the words of the song so popular in my youth, A little kiss each morning, a little kiss each night...

We sat for a while in silence. Then Risen deliberately set his empty glass on the edge of the hearth and slowly stood up.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, my God!”

He walked over to the door, and taking up his hat and coat he went out into the late gray afternoon.

I did not see him again until about forty-eight hours later when he returned to concede that I had been precisely right. He had two long scratches on his left cheek, but he wore them with pride as the marks of a triumphant encounter. It was the first time to his knowledge, he said, that anyone in his precarious trade had ever wiped poison from the lips of a pretty girl.

The Satin-Quilted Box

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1964.

Folk who had known Miriam Sterling for a long time were occasionally surprised to remember that she had once been a pretty girl. She may have been somewhat too thin, which had given her a deceptive look of frailty; but her flesh was nicely distributed on a frame of fine bones, and she had, besides, a kind of inner glow and intensity that made her quite appealing.

Having remembered this, these same folk were likely to realize — again with a mild feeling of surprise — that Miriam still had the basic ingredients of prettiness, and to wonder, therefore, why she was not considered a pretty woman. Her bones were still good, and her flesh was still firm, but she seemed, somehow, to have faded. Indeed, she gave a kind of spinsterish impression, but she had been married for fifteen years, and only the most perceptive understood that she was not really faded, as she seemed, but cold and hungry for want of love.

The truth was, she had married the wrong man and had been faithful for fifteen years to the wrong husband. Martin Sterling was a bully. He was not, however, a bully of the garden variety. He was abusive without ever raising his voice. He was menacing without ever making a direct threat. He was cruel without violence.

But even the most perceptive observer, noting the change in Miriam over the years, would hardly have blamed it on her husband. As a good husband, Martin took his pleasure only from his wife; but as a gentleman of some discrimination, he preferred the needle to the ax...

It was Martin himself who first remarked on the new change in Miriam. It was not actually so much a change as a reversal of the change that had been occurring for fifteen years. Somehow, for some reason, she was recovering that inner glow and intensity that had always been, for her, the difference between plainness and prettiness.

Seating himself across from her at the breakfast table, reaching with one hand for his coffee and with the other for his newspaper, Martin glanced at her indifferently, as usual, and then stopped, his hands suspended in two directions, to peer sharply.

“What’s come over you?” he said.

“Nothing at all,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

But color had risen in her cheeks, and she had difficulty for a moment in taking a slice of bread out of the toaster.

“Why, you’re almost pretty again,” he said, “which is something I haven’t been able to say truthfully for years.”

“You haven’t said it at all,” she said, “truthfully or otherwise.”

“Perhaps someone else has been saying it. Have you found a lover, my dear?”

She was about to protest hotly when she saw the sheen of malice in his eyes and the faint curve of contempt on his lips. Knowing then that he was deliberately taunting her, she merely shrugged and buttered her toast.

“You’re being absurd,” she said, hardly above a whisper.

“Well, never mind.” His voice was derisive as he completed his movements toward coffee and newspaper. “You mustn’t expect too much, my dear Miriam. It’s wise to recognize one’s limitations.”

He read his paper and drank his coffee and ate his two eggs, and then he left for his brokerage office downtown, dressed impeccably in a dark blue suit and a dark blue tie with a thin diagonal pinstripe of dark red. After he was gone, she left the breakfast things until later and went directly upstairs to her bedroom.

It was a pleasant room with a high ceiling and pale walls and eastern windows that collected the morning sun and splashed it in patterns across the floor. It was, moreover, neat and orderly — everything in its place and rarely moved; for it had been a long time since she had shared the room with another person. But in spite of the bright cheeriness, the room seemed, like Miriam, faded and cold and somehow hungry.

She went over and sat on the edge of the bed, which she had made herself just after rising. Sitting with her ankles and knees primly together and her back and head erect, she gave the impression of waiting in anticipation of some sound or movement; and she was, indeed, engaged in a small ritual that had lately given her a measure of warmth and hope and pleasure.

She was waiting for release — the silent word of an inner voice that would tell her, at the climax of her anticipation, when it was precisely the right instant to do what she had come here to do.

Having heard the voice, she got up abruptly and went across to her dressing table. Kneeling, she took from a bottom drawer a small box quilted with satin and returned with it to the bed. She unlocked the box with a tiny key that she had been carrying in a pocket of her dress.

The box unlocked, she waited again, apparently for a second word from the inner voice; and then, with hands that suggested reverence, she raised the lid and removed a thick packet of letters. She began slowly to read the letters in the exact order in which she had received them.

The first letter had come on a Tuesday about six months ago. At first, on reading it, she had been offended and slightly angry, for it was a tender letter expressing the love of an anonymous writer. The signature, underscored, was simply Devoted.

For a minute she had considered turning the first letter over to Martin, but she had dreaded the certainty of his mockery, which would have been far worse than his anger, and she had quickly rejected the idea. But neither had she destroyed the letter. She had, instead, put it away in the quilted box, and in the next week, driven by a hunger that the letter’s tenderness fed, she had removed it and read it at least half a dozen times.

The next Tuesday the second letter had come, and all the others had followed on that precise weekly schedule. Once the schedule had been established, she awaited the arrival of each letter eagerly, for she had lost her initial anger and instead felt a stirring and strengthening response to the tenderness of the writer.

Martin, at breakfast, had been right in a way. Miriam had found a lover. She did not know what he looked like, for he had never described himself. She had not known his name, for he had never named himself. She did not know where he lived, for he gave no address. She only knew that he had the felicity of phrase to express a gentle and enduring love in terms that warmed her flesh and awakened her heart. He often watched her from afar, he wrote, and she had begun going out more frequently and for longer periods.

Meanwhile, as Martin had remarked at breakfast, she had recovered the inner light and warmth that came from the feeling of being loved and wanted.

But now, after six months, there would be no more letters. The last one in the packet, the one that had come the preceding Tuesday, told her so. In her reading of the letters she had come finally to this one, and she took it from its envelope and read it again, lingering over each word, repeating in her mind the phrases that incited her to the most intense response.

I shall write no more, she read. You must understand, my darling, that the time for writing is past. Now we must act. We must meet now or never. There is a small cocktail lounge in town where lovers go, and I ask you to come there at three o’clock on the afternoon of Friday next. That is three days from now, and you will have time to free yourself of any commitments you may have made. If you do not come, I shall never hold your hands and tell you of my love. I shall go away in silence and we shall always thereafter be alone, you and I, each in a separate place. Please don’t let me go. Please come. The place is called the Candlelight Lounge, and I shall be wearing, so that you may know me before we speak, a white carnation in my lapel.

And now it was Friday, ten o’clock in the morning of the day, and time was out, or nearly out, for indecision. She must decide definitely if she would go or not; but there was really no decision to make that had not been made instantly three days ago, and she knew, as she had known all along, that she would go.

Finally conceding this to herself, she began at once to feel the excitement grow and grow within her until she thought she could not possibly contain it for five minutes, let alone for five hours.

She returned the letters to the satin-quilted box, and the box to the drawer, and went downstairs again. She cleared the breakfast table and did the dishes and went about her light housekeeping as usual, because it was absolutely essential for her to do something, anything — and somehow time was endured, and somehow excitement was contained...

She bathed at one o’clock and began to dress at 1:30. She selected her dress and accessories with great care, but she was, even so, finished and ready to leave by two o’clock, which was too early; so she forced herself to sit down and smoke a cigarette.

She left the house at 2:15 and drove downtown to a municipal parking lot, where she left her car. From the lot it was only a short distance to the Candlelight Lounge, and she walked. She arrived there at five minutes before three.

Inside, the lounge was soft with shadows that were pricked here and there by the tiny lights of guttering candles. Additional light came from fluorescent tubing that ran around the walls just below the ceiling, and from the bright face of an electric clock behind the bar.

Miriam paused near the door until her eyes were adjusted to the shadows, and then she picked her way among tables to one on the far side. At this early hour there were only a few patrons in the lounge, and only one waitress on duty. After a proper interval the waitress came to take her order, but Miriam, looking up, shook her head and smiled.

“Not just yet,” she said. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

Her excitement was now so intense, was such a throbbing thing, so alive and aching in her breast, that it was a wonder to her that any words came freely from her throat. How could she speak at all? By what miracle did she even draw her breath?

It was now, on the bright face of the clock behind the bar exactly three o’clock.

Then she saw Martin. He was standing at the entrance, staring directly at her. In the first shock of seeing him she thought wildly of escape, of hiding where there was no place to hide, but he had caught sight of her and was walking toward her, and she realized she could not move.

She raged inwardly at the improbable coincidence of his coming to this particular place at this particular time, and she searched her mind frantically for an appropriate lie to save herself. But then she understood, as he came nearer, that there was no coincidence, and that no lie was necessary. His eyes were shining with a kind of unholy glee.

His teeth were exposed in silent laughter.

“Hello, my, dear,” he said. “How sweet of you to keep our little tryst.”

Strangely, she was neither angry nor afraid. She could only wonder at the devilish perversion of a mind that had conceived and executed such a cruel deception. She could only recognize in utter despair the depth of her own shame. But she was, in feet, quite calm and controlled, having died in an instant and being dead.

Gathering up her purse, she rose to her feet and looked down at him for a moment almost with detachment.

“Wicked!” she whispered. “Oh, how wicked!”

His amusement was rich and depraved. Walking away, she heard his mocking laughter behind her. His voice followed her, each word enunciated with stabbing precision.

“I shall expect my dinner at seven tonight — as usual,” he said.

She seemed to be walking naked through the streets, but she did not care — for her shame was absolute and could not be increased. At the municipal parking lot she claimed her car and drove home. In her room she changed her clothes and sat down on the bed with her hands folded in her lap.

She must have sat there for a long, time, much longer than she had intended, for suddenly she was aware of the clock striking in the hall below, and carefully she counted five strokes. It would be necessary to go down at once and begin preparing dinner if it was to be ready at seven, and she got up and went down and put a roast of beef in the oven.

Then she began to consider what should go with the roast, and she thought she would have, to start off with, a generous shrimp appetizer. Martin was quite fond of shrimp, and his appetite would surely have been whetted by the complete success of his cruel trick.

Besides, the spicy sauce, with horseradish and all, would disguise the taste of the cyanide that she had discovered, some months ago, tucked away among the gardening supplies in the basement...

The doctor had come, of course, and the doctor had called the police, and the police had been, on the whole, quite considerate. She had spent the night in her own bed, and no one had disturbed her all the next morning. But then, early in the afternoon, a man had called for her with an invitation to come to police headquarters for a little talk, and she had gone with him, for she understood perfectly well that the invitation was really an order.

She now sat in a straight chair in a bare little room, and the only others in the room were a man in a corner with a notebook of some kind and another man whose name was Ryan.

Ryan was sitting on the edge of a desk and he smiled at her; he was young and nice and very friendly.

“Mrs. Sterling,” he said, “there is no good in pretending any longer. You killed your husband, and we know you killed him. Isn’t that so?” She looked up from her hands, which she was holding quietly in her lap.

“Oh, yes. Yes, I killed him. I put poison in his shrimp cocktail. It’s really rather obvious, isn’t it?”

“It is. Did you actually believe you could get away with it?”

“I don’t think so. No, not really. I just thought it would be better to let you make up your own minds.”

“I see. Would you care to tell us why you did it?”

She looked down at her hands again, apparently considering her answer with great care; and when she looked up, Ryan was surprised to see that she was suddenly quite pretty. Color had risen in her cheeks, and her flesh seemed warmed by a kind of inner glow.

“I had a lover,” she said. “I shall never tell you his name, but you will find some letters from him in my room at home.”

My Father Died Young

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1965.

There is no way better calculated to recall old times and old places than opening the grave of a person you once knew long ago. It was not actually a grave, though. It was merely a niche in the wall of my family mausoleum, which stood aloof and slightly apart within an iron picket fence in the cemetery east of town.

Nor did I do the opening myself. It was done by competent workmen, hired for the purpose with official sanction, while I waited at the open door of the old tomb and looked out across green grass and gray headstones, scoured by a morning rain and now drying in the afternoon sun. I could smell red clover in a nearby field.

When had I come with my mother to bury my father in this old place? It was a long time ago, but a time easily remembered, for there were associations vivid enough and grim enough to have impressed even a ten-year-old boy. It was a time of soup kitchens and doles and idle men. A man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just been nominated for the presidency of his country, and in the fall he would be elected.

There was unrest everywhere at that time, and in the midwest there was an extraordinary number of bank robbers, although the banks, unfortunately, were failing fast enough, without help. It was, in brief, 1932, and my father died in August of that year.

The best that can be said of him is that he was a young man. Otherwise, he was sadly deficient in the qualities that make a good husband and father, and my mother’s marriage to him was a mistake she eventually regretted. He had no capacity to earn money or to apply himself for any length of time to constructive work, but his faults were not all negative. He had more than his share on the positive side, and the quality I remember most vividly was his insatiable appetite for bootleg gin. Not that he was ever abusive or brutal; he was merely indifferent to his family responsibilities.

However, my mother and I did not go hungry. In fact, we did not want for anything. Her family had accumulated some money and property in our town, and my memory of the depression was fixed mainly by things that hardly touched me personally. My maternal grandfather had been a prosperous undertaker, and my Uncle Ned had succeeded to his trade and condition. Folk must bury their dead in any time, good or bad, and there is usually a small insurance policy to guarantee payment for services.

Uncle Ned used to complain about the depression and make a great show of pinching pennies, but he gave us a generous allowance every month, and delivered it promptly along with a stereotype lecture to my mother on the foolishness of young girls who married wastrels and drunkards before they were old enough to make sound judgments.

My father died suddenly. He was, as I have said, a young man. To me, of course, he seemed old enough, but I learned later that he was three months younger than the century. I was shielded from most of the unpleasant experiences connected with his death, and he seemed not so much to die as simply to disappear. I was first told that he was sick, and then that he was dead, and the next thing I knew he had been taken to one of the rooms behind the little chapel in Uncle Ned’s establishment, where Uncle Ned, as a concession to my mother’s sensibilities, was giving him individual attention. Before the funeral, I saw the body only once, and that was when, with my mother’s permission and in her company, I was allowed to look at my father in his casket in the chapel.

When he was alive, he had earned scant respect, and now that he was dead, he excited little regret. For that reason, it was decided to make his last rites as simple and unostentatious as possible. The funeral was private, and the casket was kept closed. However, for those who were motivated by more than morbid curiosity to look at my father for the last time, it was arranged to make the body available to the public for an hour on the evening before the day of the burial, and for another hour on the morning of the day.

During these two brief periods his casket lay open in the chapel, and friends could pass by it to the recorded music of an organ. Not many took advantage of the opportunity. In the vestibule of the little chapel there was a registry for visitors to sign, and this was later taken by my mother, who gave it to me, and I have kept it all these years, for some strange reason, and have it still. In it are less than a dozen signatures.

I was not, of course, required to compete with even this small group for a last look at my father. I was taken to the chapel early on the evening before the funeral, and there, with my mother’s hand holding mine and Uncle Ned’s arm around my shoulders, I stood briefly beside the casket.

My father’s face looked quite natural, hardly more drawn and drained than I had often seen it on the morning after a night devoted to a bottle. I could not feel any great sadness or sense of loss, and I was sorry that I couldn’t, and wished that I could. After a while Uncle Ned took me home, told me I was a good boy, and left me with a neighbor woman who had come in to watch over me.

I did not sleep well that night. I was troubled because I had been able to feel so little for my father who was, whatever else he may have been, young and dead and almost friendless. My troubled thoughts nagged me well into the next morning, and finally I decided that I should go, before it was too late, and see him again. The unnatural stiffness of the circumstances, I thought, had dulled my feelings and made it impossible for me to react properly. If I could see him once more, perhaps alone, sorrow might come to ease my guilty conscience. My mother had already left the house, and so it was an easy matter for me to slip away undetected and make my way to the chapel.

But it was too early for the final hour of public visits, and the chapel was closed. I tried the door and found it locked. Leaving the vestibule, I went around the chapel, through Uncle Ned’s office, and into the area in the rear. But all the other doors were closed, and there didn’t seem to be a soul there, which was odd and unusual; and then I heard the murmur of a voice and of another voice in apparent reply. They came from one of the closed rooms, and I went to the door and listened. The words were faint, a little blurred, but distinguishable.

“Did you get my ticket and reservation?” a voice said.

“Here they are,” another voice responded. “The reservation is for the ten o’clock train to Chicago tonight.”

“You’ll have to drive me to the city in time to catch it.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you there.”

“Thanks, Ned. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”

So one of the speakers was Uncle Ned. I felt relieved, somehow exonerated of eavesdropping, and I promptly announced my presence by knocking on the door. There was, following this, a rather prolonged interval in which nothing happened, and then Uncle Ned opened the door and saw me standing there.

“Why, Calvin!” he said. “What on earth are you doing here? Come in, boy, come in.”

Entering the room. I was surprised and a little alarmed to find my mother present. I was afraid she would be angry with me for coming to Uncle Ned’s funeral parlor without permission, but apparently she was not. She smiled in a kind of abstracted way, as if she were thinking about something quite remote from my petty delinquency, and came over and put her hand on my head.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “This is a nice surprise. Say hello to Dr. Crandall.”

Dr. Crandall was the only other person in the room. He seemed to me at the time tremendously experienced and wise, but he was actually in his late thirties and had been in practice no longer than ten years at most. Besides being a personal friend to my mother and Uncle Ned, he was our family physician and had attended my father before his death, and so his presence was not unusual. I spoke to him politely, as he did to me.

“Why have you come here, Calvin?” Uncle Ned said. “You were to wait at home until we called for you before the services.”

“I came to see Father again,” I said, “but the chapel’s locked.”

“Father’s not in the chapel now, dear,” my mother said. “Uncle Ned had to bring him back here until it was time for his friends to come to see him. It’s nearly time now, isn’t it, Ned?”

“Very nearly,” said Uncle Ned, looking at his wrist watch. “I’ll take him back to the chapel in a few minutes. If you want to see him again, Calvin, I’ll let you into the chapel now. You may wait for us there.”

My mother’s comment, followed by Uncle Ned’s, called my attention to a casket resting on a mobile table against the wall. My father was obviously in it, awaiting his return to the chapel, but now that I was here, I was strangely reluctant to see his face again. It was better, I rationalized, to remember him as he had been when alive rather than try to force an unnatural emotional response. Suddenly I wished I had not come, and wanted to go home again. Compulsively, I said so.

“There’s a sensible boy,” said Uncle Ned. “We’ll fetch you later for the services.”

“You must walk straight home, dear,” my mother said. “It would be bad to cause any alarm in case you are missed.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Crandall. “I have to be leaving, and I’ll be happy to drop him off. Wait for me in the vestibule, young fellow.”

My mother kissed me and patted my head again, and after I had waited a while in the vestibule, Dr. Crandall and I left together. My mother came home later, and we were fetched on schedule for the services that afternoon. There were only a few people there, the services were brief, and Father’s casket was sealed afterward in its niche in the mausoleum.

Father had not been a good man or a reliable provider, and his short life had left a residue of bitterness; but I was astonished to discover that he had recently taken out a life insurance policy in favor of my mother for $50,000. This was a small fortune in those hard times, and I was inclined to modify my harsh judgment of Father until I learned that Uncle Ned had negotiated the policy and paid the premiums in order to protect my mother in the event of my father’s death.

My mother did not regret my father’s passing. If she felt a little sadness, the feeling was tempered with relief. Always a pretty woman, she became prettier and more animated. Dr. Crandall, who was a bachelor, began after a decent interval to pay serious attention to her, and in two years they were married.

I approved of the marriage and was fond of my stepfather. He was a kindly, generous man, and by treating me without condescension he made me feel significant and mature. He had, moreover, an active curiosity about a variety of subjects, and was especially a devoted student of hypnosis. He argued strongly for its beneficial use in the practice of medicine, and I have even heard him make out a good case for its prospects as an anesthetic in certain kinds of surgery.

Following his example, I eventually entered State University as a pre-med student, and after three years was admitted to medical college. It was during my third year as a medical student, slightly more than a year before my internship, that the pieces of the pattern began to fall into place in my mind. Most of the pieces were old — fragments of memory that had lain dormant for more than a decade; but the final piece in the pattern, the one that wakened all the others, was something that happened that year, my third year in medical college, when I was home briefly for the Christmas holiday.

I had been out with a local girl who had proved both shy and dull, perhaps the latter because of the former, consequently I was home rather early. My mother and stepfather were entertaining a couple in the living room, and I was passing down the hall on the way to the stairs when I heard my stepfather say something that made me stop.

I could see the four of them, my parents and their two guests, from my position in the hall, and they could have seen me if they had looked in my direction. But they were interested in what they were discussing, and my stepfather, in fact, seemed quite intense about it.

“I can make you stiff as a post in sixty seconds,” he said.

“Nonsense,” said his male guest, a lawyer named Phillips.

“Would you care to have me demonstrate?” my stepfather said.

“Perhaps you’d better be a bit more specific before demonstrating.”

“Agreed. I’ll tell you exactly what will take place. As I said, I’ll hypnotize you within sixty seconds. You will fall over, but don’t worry — I’ll catch you and let you down easy. Your body will be rigid. While you are in this state, I’ll suspend your body on its back between two straight chairs. Your head will barely be in contact with one chair, your heels with the other. You will admit, I think, that such a suspension would be absolutely impossible under normal circumstances. However, to make the feat even more incredible, I’ll sit on your abdomen while your body is suspended and you still will not bend at the neck or hips.”

“Oh, come now! That’s absurd. You’re going too far.”

“It sounds dangerous to me,” said Phillips’ wife. “I forbid any such foolishness.”

“There’s no danger,” my stepfather said to Mrs. Phillips. “His breathing will be indiscernible, but I assure you that all the life processes will be going on as usual. He will awaken at my command in perfectly normal, healthy condition, and he will call us all liars when we report what happened.”

“You’re on!” said Phillips. “I challenge you here and now to give such a demonstration.”

That’s the gist of it. I cannot, of course, after all these years, reproduce their conversation verbatim, but I can still see that demonstration as my stepfather performed it in our living room. Every claim he made was substantiated. The lawyer lay suspended between two chairs as rigid as a steel rod, and he did not bend a fraction under the weight of my stepfather on his stomach. I have seen the thing done since on the stage, but at that time it was the most incredible performance I had ever witnessed.

Phillips was brought out of his trance, and I immediately went on upstairs, still undetected. Lying in bed in the marginal state between waking and sleeping, I kept reviewing in my mind the remarkable show I had just seen. As I have said, I had known for years that my stepfather was a student of hypnosis, but I had not dreamed he was capable of anything so extraordinary.

I would have suspected a trick — collusion perhaps between the two men — but I had actually seen the thing done, and I knew that trickery was impossible. There is simply no way for a normal human body to sustain suspension under the circumstances I had witnessed. I could hear my stepfather’s voice repeating in the stillness and darkness of my room a word or a phrase or a sentence that I had heard from the hall, and suddenly I was listening intently.

You will have the appearance of a corpse, he was saying.

And then a strange thing happened. I was hearing all at once another voice in another time in another place. It came to me as a whisper over more than a decade of intervening years, and I was a boy again outside a door in a building that smelled of death.

Did you get my ticket and reservation? the voice had said.

It trailed away, a whisper diminishing to a sigh. After a silent interval of seconds or years, it came back.

Thanks, Ned. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.

When I had first heard those words, so long ago, I had assumed they were spoken by Dr. Crandall, the man who was later to become my stepfather. I had made this assumption, hardly thinking about it, simply because he was the only man, besides Uncle Ned, to be seen in that room when I was admitted. But another man had been there. A third man who had spoken with an irony that I had mistaken for simple gratitude.

My father had been there in his casket, and it was his voice I had heard.

Call this a revelation if you wish. Call it what you will. As for me, I prefer to believe that it was an instance of long-delayed insight, a tardy wakening of dormant truth that had been waiting in my subconscious all those years for the one missing fragment of knowledge that it needed to rouse it.

Whatever you call it, whatever it was, I did not reveal it to my mother and stepfather. I took it with me as my secret to the medical center where I was studying, and in the following week or two, between practice diagnosis and theoretical treatments, I reassessed the circumstances of my father’s death, and every odd circumstance fell into a new and startling pattern.

Let me itemize them, one by one.

In the first place, consider the cast. There was my father, a wastrel and an alcoholic and altogether a problem. There was my mother, who wanted to be rid of him. There was my Uncle Ned, who loved my mother and despised my father and practiced an essential trade. There was, finally, the man who became my stepfather, Dr. Crandall, who also loved my mother and also despised my father and also practiced an essential trade.

Consider the strange factors of my father’s death. Attended by Dr. Crandall, taken care of later by Uncle Ned personally, he was ill, he died, and he was prepared for the grave in what amounted to almost complete secrecy.

Then the funeral. Remember that the services were conducted with a closed casket. The two brief periods when my father had been exposed to the public view had been daring and brilliant strokes. Hypnotized, lying in the appearance of death with his breathing reduced to an indiscernible level, he had allayed all possible suspicions that might arise. Between the two periods — the night before and the morning after — he was revived and fed and rested in secrecy. After the second period — before the funeral in the afternoon — he was revived again and held in secrecy until Uncle Ned, that night, could take him to the city to catch the train to Chicago. There was very small risk in this. After all, my father had been observed in death by nearly a dozen people. Even if he had been seen later by someone who happened to know him, the slightest disguise would have been sufficient to maintain the deception.

Finally, consider the insurance policy. It had been arranged by my Uncle Ned, not as protection for my mother, but as a bribe to induce my father to participate in the conspiracy. No doubt Uncle Ned could have raised $50,000 if he had been forced to, but it was, after all, much less painful to have it paid by an insurance company. And no doubt my father, being what he was, was glad to leave with the money either in his pocket or soon to be delivered.

Shall I confess something? Once I had reassessed the circumstances and become convinced of the truth, I felt, far from shame or guilt, a kind of perverse pride. It was surely one of the most bizarre and daring conspiracies to commit fraud that had ever victimized an insurance company. Moreover, the fraud had been incidental. The primary purpose of the conspiracy had been to rid my mother of my father.

I did not know what happened to my father later, and I must say I had singularly little curiosity about it. Inasmuch as my mother had remarried two years after my father was last seen, I could assume that he had died, or had secured a quiet divorce in some remote place, or that my mother and Dr. Crandall, protected by father’s part in the conspiracy, had boldly committed bigamy. To me, it didn’t much matter. I loved my mother and respected my stepfather, and I was certainly not going to divulge anything to hurt them. Besides, you see, I had no tangible evidence. However much I knew, I could prove nothing.

And so I lived comfortably with my guilty knowledge until all the parties to the conspiracy were dead. Uncle Ned was the first to go, then my stepfather, and finally, my mother. Then, when all were beyond hurt or harm, my mental attitude changed. I was beset by a persistent and intolerable itch to know once and for all, and beyond any possible doubt, whether I was right or wrong. In brief, I simply had to know if my father had gone to heaven or to hell or to Chicago. Did his casket hold his bones or merely ballast?

I came back to find out. As I said in the beginning, I arranged to have the niche and the casket opened, and I employed competent workmen to do the job. I waited at the open door of the mausoleum, and remembered all these things, and smelled red clover in the sunlight following rain, and the work was eventually done.

The casket was laid out on the floor, and the lid was opened. The workmen, in deference to me, had gone outside.

I went over and kneeled beside the casket and looked in — and I wish I hadn’t. I would give anything now if only I hadn’t.

For, you see, my father’s bones were there, still wearing the blue suit that had, in the dry niche, survived the years that had made dust of his less durable flesh.

But that was not the horror.

The horror was peeping over the edge of his breast pocket, where he himself had put it so that it would be immediately available for use when he should awaken to a command that was never given.

Even before looking closer, I knew that it was a train ticket to Chicago.

Wait and See

Originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1965.

The hotel was a tower of glass and white stone rising above the sand and tile sea. High in the tower in a room overlooking the beach, Kate Wilde faced her sister across a vast distance of ten feet and ten years, a virtual stranger trying with quiet desperation to find the magic word or gesture that would wipe out a decade of silence. But there was no word, no gesture, no magic at all. Kate, with her hard, embittered mind and strong body burned brown by the semi-tropical sun, could hardly recognize the frail and diminishing woman she faced.

In the long decade since they had parted, she had heard from Ruth only three times. A letter had come when Ruth’s husband had been killed in an accident. Another had followed long afterward when Ruth, motivated by some obscure yearning of blood for blood, had felt impelled to confess her own illness and encroaching death. Kate had been unmoved by the first letter, and hardly touched by the second.

Ruth’s death had not much mattered to her then, and it did not matter now. She hoped that it would impose, when it came, no claim that could not be readily adjusted and forgotten.

The third letter, which had arranged this reunion, had reached Kate only two weeks ago, forwarded from her former to her present address, which was a cheaper place in a meaner street. The years in Miami had not been easy, although there had been good intervals, but she had lived her own life and had no complaints about the kind of life it had been. Lifting her eyes, she stared out the shining glass seafront wall to where the white gulls soared between the Atlantic and the sun.

“Why have you never married?” Ruth said.

“Because I didn’t choose to,” Kate said. Then, aware of the harshness of her reply, she added, “I never seemed to meet the right man.”

“You were always difficult to please, Kate.”

“Was I? I don’t remember.”

“I suppose I was too, however. After Jim was killed, I never wanted to marry again.”

“You were lucky that it wasn’t necessary. He must have left you comfortably off.”

“A bit better than that, as a matter of fact. He left me more than a million dollars, and I’ve taken good care of it.”

“That much?” Kate’s eyes, following the gulls, were as blue and clear and hard as the sky beyond them. “I didn’t realize.”

“You should have come to me after Jim’s death, Kate. There was plenty for both of us. I would have been glad to share.”

“I don’t like Chicago. It gets too cold there. I’ll never go back.”

“Are you so determined? I was hoping you’d go home with me.”

“Home? This is home. I have no other.”

“Won’t you come, Kate? I’d be grateful if you would.”

“Why should I?”

“You’re my sister, and I’m dying.”

“So you said in your letter. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve grown used to the idea. It only matters, really, because of Little Jim. Whatever will become of him?”

“With a million dollars?” Kate’s voice assumed for a moment a faint note of derision. “I should imagine that he’ll manage somehow.”

“He’s only a little boy, Kate. Only nine years old. He’ll be no more than ten when I’m gone.”

“There must be someone to look after him. His father’s people or someone.”

“Only an aunt and uncle who are not greatly concerned. I want you to do it, Kate. You’re my only sister. I’d feel so much better if I knew it were going to be you.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Will you at least stay here in the hotel with us for a week?”

“Yes. I promised you that, and I’ll stay.”

“You’ll love Little Jim. I’m sure you will. You’ll change your mind before the week is gone.”

“You may hope so, if you wish. I doubt it.”

“I want Little Jim to go on living in our house in Chicago, of course. It’s our home, and he loves it there. It’s where he belongs. But you could bring him down here sometimes to visit. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep you happy?”

“Living on charity is unsatisfactory, however you look at it.”

“It wouldn’t be charity, Kate. Not really. Everything will be left to Little Jim when I die, but there’s a provision in my will for you.”

“Oh? What’s left after everything?”

“If Little Jim should die, it will all come to you.”

“What on earth possessed you to make such a provision?”

“I’ve told you, Kate. I keep telling you. You’re my sister.”

“I see. And I keep forgetting.” The sharp edge of derision was again in Kate’s voice, a glint of bitter amusement in her eyes. “Well, no matter. We must at least enjoy our week together. Is Little Jim on the beach?”

“Yes. I promised that we’d join him there. Would you like to go down?”

“God, yes! This air-conditioning depresses me. Let’s go and lie in the sun.”

“Little Jim,” said Ruth, “this is your Aunt Kate.”

Little Jim squinted in the bright sunlight. His thin face, despite the squint, was grave and somehow composed. His body, which had been heavily coated with lotion, was straight and strong, but it was conspicuously pale among all the brown bodies on the beach, and it seemed, therefore, excessively naked where near-nakedness was almost a cult. He dug his toes into the hot sand and extended a hand.

“Hello, Aunt Kate,” he said.

“How are you, Little Jim? Do you like to be called that?”

“I guess so. Everyone does it. Father was Big Jim and I’m Little Jim.”

“I see.”

“Are you coming back home with Mother and me?”

“Why do you ask? Do you expect me to?”

“Mother said you might.”

“We’ll see. For the present, we must simply enjoy ourselves. Have you been swimming?”

“Not yet. I promised Mother that I’d wait for you and her.”

“Well, here we are, and you can swim all you like. Do you know how?”

“Oh, yes. I haven’t been this year, but one never forgets.”

“That’s true.”

“Would you like to come in with me?”

“Not just now. I’ll lie here in the sand with your mother. This is your first visit to Florida, isn’t it? How do you like it here?”

“It’s nice to visit. I wouldn’t want to live here, though. I like living in Chicago.”

“Run along, Little Jim,” Ruth said. “But don’t go too far out.”

“It’s quite shallow for a long way,” Kate said. “He’ll be all right.”

Turning, Little Jim ran down the beach past a little girl who sat digging intently in the sand just above the reach of the quiet tide. About twenty yards away, posed like a bronze model beside his observation tower, the lifeguard was allowing himself to be admired by a blond in a bikini. The admiration was apparently mutual and absorbing. On the terrace of the hotel, sun-soaked guests were dispersed at tables or stretched indolently in lounge chairs. Voices and laughter and the clinking of glasses drifted over the beach.

“He’s a nice boy,” Kate said.

“Yes,” said Ruth.

“But he needs more sun. He’s far too pale.”

“He had a bad experience earlier this summer. He was very ill for a little while.”

“Oh? I didn’t know, of course.”

“He nearly died, and it was all so cruelly absurd. The doctor said he has something called acute anaphylactic reaction.”

“It sounds deadly, but I have no idea what it is.”

“It’s being hyper-sensitive to something that is ordinarily not dangerous at all. Sometimes it’s a drug of some sort. In Little Jim’s case, it’s the venom of certain stings.”

“Stings?”

“Yes. We were in the country one day, outside Chicago, and Little Jim was stung twice by wasps. At least, we think they were wasps. Anyhow, Little Jim nearly died before we could get him to a doctor. It was frightening and horrible.”

Remembering the fright and the horror, Ruth shuddered in the bright warmth, the skin visibly crawling on her frail and wasting body. Turning away, she spread a vivid towel on the white sand and lay down upon it. She closed her eyes against the glare.

“But surely something can be done about it,” Kate said.

“Oh, yes.” Ruth’s eyes remained closed, her thin face haggard and old in the merciless light. “Something called hyposensitization. Injections of the allergen over a period of time. But one can never be certain that it will be effective in all instances. Only wait and see.”

Her fragmented speech was an effect of weariness. Waiting herself for death, alone and lonely wherever she was, she was resigned to waiting as an integral quality of truncated living.

How much time had passed?

Lying on the glittering beach beneath the high, hot sun, Kate raised her head and turned to see the frail body of her sister. Ruth’s thin arms were spread wide on the sand, as if open to receive the last precious degree of solar heat, and her meager bosom rose and fell in a rhythm of rationed breath. Kate had a sudden notion that she was in that instant slowly bleeding to death, her thin and colorless blood seeping away through an invisible wound into the hot absorbent sand. With a feeling of faint and fastidious revulsion, she turned her eyes again into the glare of the sun. Between the sun and her, a gull slanted to a landing. Higher and farther out, above the sea and between the beach and the remote, discernible curve of Earth, a small airplane dragged across the sky a series of connected letters that spelled out the name of a nightclub in downtown Miami.

Beside his observation tower, the lifeguard still posed for the blond in the bikini. She tilted her face and laughed with her lips stretched wide, and the sun struck sparks from her polished teeth. The little girl still dug in the sand just out of the reach of the climbing tide, and beyond the girl in the blue water of the Atlantic, moving slowly into Kate’s range of vision with an awkward flailing of arms, was the head of a swimming boy.

It was Little Jim, she saw, and he was really quite far out. Perhaps too far. It was apparent from his flailing strokes that he was not a strong or practiced swimmer, and the angle of his course was taking him steadily farther from shore. He seemed, moreover, to be swimming with intent, a steadfast purpose, as if he had set himself a goal this side of Cuba. And so he had. Ahead of him some ten yards, afloat on the water, was a shimmering blue balloon, a pale and delicate transparency of seductive beauty. A small boy, an innocent inlander, he was straining to reach and to hold a casual wonder of the miraculous alien sea.

Kate sat erect in the sand, her lean body tense and a cry of warning rising in her throat. The shimmering bauble, blown in by the winds, was a Portuguese Man-of-War, that strange drifter of tropical waters that trails below its seductive pneumatophore a colony of long filaments armed with powerful nettle-cells. The multiple stings of the Man-of-War, she knew, were capable of causing paralysis, and perhaps even, in rare instances, death. What would be their effect on a small boy who was critically allergic to the sting of a wasp?

If Little Jim should die, it will all come to you.

Was that Ruth’s voice? Hadn’t she said that? Had she now repeated the words, lying sick and wasted on her bright towel in the white sand, or were they an echo in Kate’s brain?

Down the beach, the lifeguard lifted his eyes with longing to the sun-soaked guests on the hotel terrace.

Close enough to touch, arms spread to embrace the warmth, Ruth whimpered like an uneasy child in her half-sleep.

Out in the blue water, the ten yards were now five.

Deliberately, her unuttered cry a stone in her throat, Kate lay back in the sand beside her sister.

The shadow of a gull passed over her closed eyes.

Obituary

Originally published in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, March 1966.

Mr. Cameron Fleming belonged to another age. In a time of sprawling urban growth, two-car garages and super-markets, he remained what he had always been, and what his father had been before him. He was, in brief, the sole and independent proprietor of a neighborhood grocery.

As a boy in better days, when his father had kept the store, he had fallen under the spell generated by that special and seductive mixture of scents peculiar to places where foods were gathered in the bulk, in barrels and boxes and jars and wooden tubs, and he had never escaped the spell.

It is true that the enchanting odor was gone now, or greatly diminished, but it was not gone from the memory of Cameron Fleming. In a mute and simple way, Cameron was a poet, and he had the poet’s capacity for intense recollection.

As everyone has realized at one time or another, there is nothing so tenacious as a remembered odor, nothing so calculated to bring back by association all the objects and events and emotions connected with it.

And that’s how it was with Cameron Fleming.

Every morning, when he unlocked the front door of his store and entered from the street, he could actually smell the magic effluvium of yesterday as surely as if the pickle barrel still stood, the tub of peanut butter still leaked the oily scent of goobers, and the hanging stalk of bananas still trailed a spoor of golden tropical fruit.

It was relatively late when Cameron married Millicent Hooker. He was, to be exact, thirty-two at the time. The marriage was hardly a success, but neither was it a disaster. It was merely dull.

Cameron was not greatly upset by the barrenness of his domestic life. He had the store, and the store was enough. For a time, that is. Until, to give a beginning to his decline, the day that Mrs. Hardy came in for a pound of round steak and a dime’s worth of onions.

Caroline Hardy was about Cameron’s age, about forty, but she was, so to speak, much older and younger at the same time. She had married young and lived hard and buried her husband, who had died at the age of thirty-eight, and she was tired. She did not, however, look tired. Neither did she look forty. She looked maybe thirty-five or thirty, depending upon the time of day and the degree of light and sometimes the character of the night before.

She was not actually pretty, and probably had never been, but she had magnetism and flair; even the simple gingham dress that she wore into the store was somehow, on her, like a party frock.

Cameron Fleming, approaching her, felt suddenly wistful, as if he had, after all, missed more in his life than he had known.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “May I help you?”

“I’d like a pound of round steak, please,” she said.

Behind the meat counter, he cut the steak and weighed it and wrapped it. Portent of the future, passing unnoticed, he gave her a pound and a quarter.

“Will there be anything else?”

“One large onion, please.”

“I’m afraid the onions aren’t large today. Two or three smaller ones, perhaps?”

“Two should be sufficient.” He selected two, the largest he had, and put them on the scales. They weighed out at twelve cents.

“That will be a dime,” he said, blowing his profit.

With her purchases in hand, she seemed loathe to leave. She looked slowly around her, and her pink lips formed the smile for which they were always prepared.

“What a perfectly charming store,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s been in the family for years. My father ran it before me.”

“So much better, I think, than these great cold barns that pass for markets nowadays.”

“I’ve never had the pleasure of waiting on you before, have I?”

“No. This is the first time, but I assure you it won’t be the last.”

“I hope not. I sincerely do. Are you new in the neighborhood?”

“I moved into the house at the other end of the block just two days ago.”

“If you’d care to open a charge account, I’d be glad to accommodate you.”

“I’ll think about it. It might be convenient. My husband is dead, and I must work for my living. That’s why I moved here. Starting Monday, I have a job as file clerk at the cement plant.”

“I’m sure an account would work out satisfactorily for both of us.”

“You’re very kind. Anyhow, I shall certainly come again. My name, incidentally, is Mrs. Hardy. Caroline Hardy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Hardy. I’m Cameron Fleming.”

She smiled again and nodded briskly.

“Well, I must get back. I’m really not quite settled yet. Good-by, Mr. Fleming.”

That was on Thursday. On Saturday she returned to open an account and buy a week’s supply of groceries.

Although she arrived at a time when trade was slack, the store being empty of other customers, their second encounter lacked, nevertheless, the delicious intimacy of the first. This was due to the presence of Jimmy Cobb, an explosion of red hair and freckles that Cameron employed as a part-time assistant for fifty cents an hour. His presence this day did not actually hamper Cameron’s actions in any way, for they would have been totally innocent in any event, but he managed, just by being there, to take the fine edge off things.

In the end, however, Jimmy proved himself useful, for Cameron ordered him home with Mrs. Hardy to carry the two large sacks of groceries that she bought.

Like all merchants, Cameron delighted in making large sales, but it must be said that his delight on this occasion was qualified by regret. Mrs. Hardy having bought for the week, it followed that it would be that long before he would see her again. The thought depressed him, but soon he was whistling softly as he went about his work.

It was entirely possible, after all, that Mrs. Hardy had forgotten some necessary staple and would have to return for it during the coming week. In Cameron’s experience, women were always remembering the cakes and caviar and completely forgetting the sugar and salt.

And so, indeed, it turned out. Wednesday afternoon, about five-thirty, the telephone rang, and Cameron answered with the routine phrase.

“Fleming’s Grocery.”

“This is Caroline Hardy, Mr. Fleming.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hardy. What can I do for you?”

“Is Jimmy Cobb there?”

“Yes, Jimmy’s here.”

“Well, I’m in the middle of baking, and I discover that I have no baking powder. I wonder if you could have Jimmy run right up with a can?”

“Certainly. Right away, Mrs. Hardy.”

“It’s very accommodating of you.”

Cameron’s accommodation did not end with his agreement to send the baking powder. Leaving Jimmy to mind the store, a rare occurrence, he gave the delivery his personal attention. Three minutes later, having walked up the block by way of the alley, he was approaching Mrs. Hardy’s back door.

Mrs. Hardy, in the kitchen, was at once domestic and alluring in stretch pants protected by a bright patch of apron. Millicent, thought Cameron sadly, never wore stretch pants in the kitchen or elsewhere, and if she had the effect would hardly have been comparable.

“Why... Mr. Fleming!” Mrs. Hardy said. “How kind of you to come yourself. I’ve put you to no end of trouble.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Cameron said. “Jimmy was busy, and I thought the walk would do me good.”

“Well, you must stay and rest a moment. May I offer you something? Coffee? A glass of sherry?”

Strangely exhilarated, shedding restraint with a sense of daring, Cameron accepted sherry. The sherry, poured from a bottle taken from a kitchen cabinet, was of cooking quality, but, being no connoisseur of wines, he did not know the difference.

Mrs. Hardy had a glass with him as a convivial gesture, and he was astonished, consulting his watch on the return trip down the alley, to discover that he had lingered in the kitchen a full ten minutes. In the store, under the completely innocent observation of Jimmy Cobb, he had a delicious sense of guilt, as if he had just come hot and smoking from an assignation.

Gradually thereafter, over a period of several months, his relationship with Caroline Hardy took on the aspects of discreet infidelity — a thoroughly chaste affair. As time passed it seemed that Mrs. Hardy found it necessary more and more often to call for emergency deliveries, and by some odd trick of circumstances they invariably came just when Cameron was feeling that a short walk would do him good. The quality of the sherry did not improve, but the consumption of it materially increased.

Cameron could not remember later just when titles and surnames were abandoned. They simply became to each other, at some point is the lapse of time, Caroline and Cameron. And it became apparent, even to a man as modest as he, that she responded to his unexpressed feelings with an emotion equally intense, although equally mute.

He could hardly believe his incredible good luck. It seemed impossible that she could actually be attracted to such a dull fellow, and he began to wonder, examining his reflection in the glass door of his refrigerator, if he was such a dull fellow after all.

Without ever touching each other, they became lovers. At least they did in the mind of Cameron Fleming. He took her tenderly in a dozen repeated dreams, and it was only a small step from there to the bitter wish that he were free to take her in fact. Perhaps he would have been if he had tried, but he was deterred by his natural timidity and the conviction that she would be amenable to seduction only if it were not extramarital.

Having no grounds for divorce, and no hope of it, he was forced to find his freedom, as he took his love, only in fantasy.

But divorce is merely one way to lose a wife. There are other ways, and death is one of them. The death of Millicent began to share his dreams with the love of Caroline, the former being in his judgment a prerequisite to the latter. Millicent, of course, showed no signs whatever of dying, but natural dying is merely one kind of death.

There are other kinds, and murder is one of them. The murder of Millicent began to replace in his dreams the natural death of Millicent, the former being in his judgment the only reasonable alternative to the latter.

It was Caroline herself who gave urgency to his dream. She had come into the store quite late, just before closing time, and had asked for a can of peas. He had squatted down before the bottom shelf on which the canned peas were stocked and had asked her choice of brands. She had squatted beside him to see for herself what choice there was, and suddenly, side by side on their haunches and touching each other with only their lips, they were kissing.

After a while, she stood up and sighed and smoothed her skirt over her hips with her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?” he said, rising beside her.

“Because it was wrong.”

“Why was it wrong?”

“Because you’re married.”

“I wish I weren’t.”

“If you want to know the truth,” she said, “so do I.”

But if it was she who thus gave his dream urgency, it was chance that gave it purpose and direction.

As if he were simply playing a deadly game to amuse himself, he began to think, of all the ways a woman could be made to die, and the game was made immensely she went first info the bathroom, for this arrangement gave her time, while he himself executed the essential small functions dictated by hygiene, and biology, to brew his coffee and poach his egg and toast his bread.

While he waited for her, he listened rather sadly to her activities behind the closed door. He heard the water-closet empty and fill. He heard water running into the lavatory. After a flurry of splashing, he heard the brisk, bristly sound of the brushing of teeth. Then she came out, wrapped in a robe, and went directly to the kitchen. It was indicative of their status that they did not speak all this while, and his feeling of vague sadness persisted. If he regretted what he was going to do, or attempt to do, it was not because of what she was, but because of what she had failed to be.

In the bathroom, after hurrying through what was necessary to prepare himself for the day, he took the bottle of bleach from the linen closet, where he had tucked it away the night before, and poured it all, a full quart, into the small amount of water at the bottom of the toilet bowl. The harsh odor of the bleach pervaded the small room, but he was reasonably certain that it would incite Millicent to no more than a sour resentment toward him for creating it.

After all, a woman would hardly recognize a danger signal when she was completely unaware of being in danger. He wondered if Millicent was even aware of the deadly reaction set off by chlorine bleach and any acid-producing substance, such as a toilet bowl cleaner, and he doubted it. Like many housewives, she rarely read labels.

Anyhow, it was done. It was done, so far, so simply. Of course, the crucial part remained. It was necessary now to make certain that Millicent cleaned this morning, but he was already fairly certain that she would. She did her housework on schedule, as he had learned in the years of their marriage, and he knew that this was the morning for the bathroom. It was for this reason, to exploit the schedule, that he had waited the two days after bringing the bleach home.

In the kitchen, he sat down to his egg and toast and coffee. “What are you going to do this morning?” he said.

“Housework, as usual,” she said. “What else is there?”

“This is your morning for the bathroom, isn’t it?”

“It is. Why?”

“I noticed that the toilet bowl is a bit stained. It needs cleaning.”

“Well, don’t let it disturb you. I’ll get to it as soon as you’re out of the way.”

“Of course, dear. I didn’t mean to complain.”

At the front door, he received the habitual peck on the cheek that always seemed to convey more animosity than affection. He walked the three blocks to his store, and it was then, for him, the beginning of a long, long day. There were so many things that could go wrong, and all of them plagued his mind as the long day dragged by.

What if Millicent staged a petty domestic rebellion and refused to clean the bathroom at all? Not likely, and if she did he could always try again. What if she flushed the bowl before adding the cleaner? The answer as before: he could try again. What if the gases were not fatal? A possibility certainly, but the possibility was just as good that they would be. Fatal or not, the incident would surely pass as an accident. Failure in this event would make it impossible, of course, to try the same method again, but there were other methods, and there would be other chances.

At noon he made himself a bologna sandwich and drank a pint of milk. At four Jimmy Cobb came in and began delivering the neighborhood orders that had accumulated during the day. Caroline Hardy did not come or call, and for once Cameron was glad that she didn’t. When next he saw her, he hoped that it would be with the expanded vision and prospects of a free agent.

At six, he locked the store and walked home. At six-five, his hopes neatly realized, he found Millicent dead just inside the bathroom door.

He summoned the family physician at once, who came and pronounced her dead and summoned the police, as required in such cases. The police, in the person of a detective, called the coroner, who delivered, for lack of anything constructive to do, a bitter little lecture on the incredible stupidity of the average housewife.

All the evidence of death by misadventure was present. There was the can of cleaner, lying where it had fallen, a few crystals spilled out from its lip upon the floor. There was the bottle that had contained the bleach. There was the fallen brush on the floor beside the cleaner. There, finally was the bereaved husband, roundly berating himself for having never warned his wife against the deadly danger of bleach and cleaners mixed.

“Millicent never read labels,” he said dully. “I could never teach her to read labels.”

Thereafter, he was too busily engaged to permit the intrusion of fears, real or imaginative, or the grim indictment of his conscious. There were relatives to notify. There were arrangements to make with a local undertaker. There were insurance agents to see. There were callers to receive, expressions of condolence to acknowledge.

Later, there were relatives in the house, and at last, on the following Monday, the funeral itself. It was not until Monday evening that he was really left alone to assess his feelings.

Somehow, he did not feel as elated as the success of his venture warranted. Not even the vision of Caroline Hardy, now invoked, was enough to lift his spirits. Perhaps it was because he was so tired. Perhaps he would have to survive a period of adjustment — of convalescence, so to speak. Suddenly he was intensely eager for tomorrow to come. Suddenly he longed in anguished loneliness for the sweet-smelling sanctuary of his enchanted store.

The longing could not be denied. Leaving the house, he walked in darkness to the store and let himself in. A small night light was burning at the rear.

In the shadows, he found his apron and put it on and stood behind the counter as if he waited for a nocturnal customer. He stood there for a long time, and he was aware that it was not the same, that something was lacking, and then he realized that he could smell nothing.

The magic odor, recovered daily from the enchanted past, was dissipated, gone, lost forever in the acrid stench of chlorine and acid, and lost and gone with it were the thousand and one associations that had sweetened his days for all his years.

What have I done? he thought dully.

And standing alone in bleak sterility, he answered his own question.

I’m dead, he thought. I’ve killed myself.

The next afternoon, when Jimmy Cobb reported for work and found the store closed, he merely decided that Mr. Fleming was observing a brief period of mourning, and he went quietly away.

It was, in fact, two days before Mr. Fleming was widely missed, and still another day before authority could be prevailed upon to enter the store. Inasmuch as the neighbors had been incited by anxiety to grim expectations, no one was greatly surprised when Mr. Fleming was found dead in his cooler, a tight little death chamber. There was a tin pail on the floor of the cooler.

Beside the pail, empty, were a bottle that had contained bleach and a can that had contained toilet-bowl cleaner.

Mr. Fleming’s body, thanks to the low temperature in the cooler, was very well preserved.

It was considered both pitiable and romantic that Mr. Fleming, in his grief, had chosen to die deliberately by the same domestic devil’s brew that had killed his wife accidentally. But it must be remembered that Mr. Fleming, being a kind of poet, was given to poetic fancies.

The Happenstance Snatch

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1966.

Banty was all brains and no luck. That was his trouble. You kept thinking he was a guy on his way to somewhere, with all those brains under black curly hair, but he never did have the luck when he needed it. It makes no difference how smart or good-looking you are; you aren’t going to attain your objective if you don’t have a little luck here and there along the way.

You take the triplets Banty held in a stud game in Kansas City. Anyone would consider it the best kind of luck in the world to hold a hand like that in a game of stud, one in the hole and two showing, and anyone with any brains at all would back it up with his grandmother’s pension if necessary. But what seems like good luck one minute may turn out to be bad the next, and it’s just about as bad as luck can be, when you consider the consequences, to hold triplets when the guy across the table is holding a straight. About the only way you could make it worse would be to bet your triplets with money you didn’t have on the table, or anywhere else, and to have someone like Archie Flowers holding the straight. And Banty did. And Archie was.

I wasn’t there, but Banty told me about it. I hadn’t seen him around for a day or two, so I went up to his room to see if he was there, and there he was. He hadn’t shaved, and he’d been drinking. He’d have been drinking still, except that the bottle was empty and he didn’t have enough money to buy one that wasn’t.

“What’s the matter, Banty? You don’t look good.”

“Look, stupid,” he said, “don’t come up here telling me how I look.”

He called me stupid lots of times, and some of the times I didn’t like it, even though it was true, which I admit, but I never made a big thing of it because we had been pals for a long time, and I kept waiting around for him to start having the luck to go with his brains, and hoping that some of it, when he did, would rub off on me. Anyhow, I let it pass, not saying anything, and pretty soon he told me about the stud game and losing a bundle on the triplets.

“How much did you lose?” I asked.

“Three grand.”

“Where did you get three grand?”

“I didn’t have it,” he said, “and that’s what’s got me worried.”

“You mean you owe Archie Flowers three grand?”

“Minus about five hundred that was on the table.”

“That leaves twenty-five hundred.”

“You’re a real genius, Carny. You can do arithmetic problems in your head.”

“Well, I don’t blame you for being worried. How long did Archie give you to raise it?”

“I’ve got until morning, and morning’s coming too soon. You got any money?”

“Not that kind, Banty. You know that.”

“I don’t mean the kind it would take to pay off Archie. I mean enough to get me out of town.”

“Not enough to get you far enough.”

“How much is that?”

“Maybe a hundred. Maybe a little less.”

“That’s better than nothing. What I’ve got to do is get away and give this some thought, and you can’t think very clearly in the hospital with a broken head, not to mention other bones, and you can’t think at all, if bad comes to worse, on a slab in the morgue.”

“Where you planning to go?”

“I was thinking about going down to Uncle Oakley’s farm.”

“Who’s Uncle Oakley?”

“Not is. Was. He’s dead. He had this farm down in the hills, about a couple hundred miles south, and he left it to my cousin Theodore when he died, but Theodore doesn’t live on it and can’t sell it, because it’s nothing but a shack on forty acres of rock. So there it is with no one home, and it’s a place to go until I can think of a better place.”

“What I’d like to know is how you plan to raise twenty-five centuries on forty acres of rock.”

“Never mind. I’ll do the thinking, which is out of your line. Uncle Oakley’s farm is safe, if not productive, and that’s what’s important at the moment. My mind is made up to go there, and now’s the time for us to start.”

“Us? Did you say us?”

“Certainly I said us. Do you expect me to go off to the hills without even someone to play two-handed stud with? Besides, there will be a certain amount of work to do, and you may be useful.”

“Dammit, Banty, I don’t want to go down to Uncle Oakley’s farm.”

“The hell you don’t!”

“I don’t, and I won’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

“All right, Carny. We’ve been pals a long time, and I thought we’d be pals forever, but I guess I was wrong. If you won’t go, you won’t, and I won’t either, and I hope I never see you again. You get out of here and don’t come back, and don’t even bother coming to my funeral if Archie Flowers kills me tomorrow for not paying off the twenty-five hundred I owe him.”

Well, how do you feel and what can you do when a pal talks like that? You feel like a heel, that’s how, and you do whatever he asks to get him out of the trouble he’s in, that’s what, and that’s how I felt and what I did. Banty packed some things in a bag, and we went over to my place on Troost, a room over a secondhand furniture store, and I packed some things in a bag, and we started out together for Uncle Oakley’s farm in Banty’s ’56 jalopy. While we were driving south out of town, I counted the money I had, and it came to $98.63. Banty took it and put it in his pocket and said he’d pay me back every cent of it, even though I’d be using my share of it for food and cigarettes and things like that, and even though he was furnishing the car for the trip besides. It shows how Banty was. He was a free-spender and knew how to treat a pal.

We got out of town on a highway going south, and after a while we came to a service station, and Banty drove in and stopped at the pumps, because the car needed gas. There was a little restaurant attached to the station, a short-order joint for truck drivers, really, and this reminded Banty that he’d been on a bourbon diet for quite a while, until the bourbon ran out, after which he’d been on a diet of nothing at all, nothing being all he could afford after the stud game. We went inside and had hamburgers and pie and coffee, which took maybe half an hour, and when we came out again, the jalopy was gone, but the attendant said he’d only parked it off to one side, out of the drive. He’d parked it in an open space between the station and a place next door, and this place was one of these highway nightclubs, and it wasn’t any cheap dump, not by a long shot. It was built of gray stone and glass brick, and there was a formal hedge all around it, and a lot of green plants growing in stone urns along a curved drive coming up to the entrance from the highway. When someone opened the front door, going in or coming out, I could hear music for a few seconds, a classy jazz combo, and I wished Banty and I could go in there and have a few drinks and some fun, but we didn’t have the time or the money, and so we got in the jalopy and started south again for Uncle Oakley’s farm.

We drove along pretty fast for about an hour, and then I went to sleep. I must have slept for almost another hour, and when I woke up we were at least a hundred miles down the highway with maybe another hundred to go. Banty was smoking a cigarette and humming a little tune off-key. I listened to the tune for a while, trying to place it, but I kept thinking all the time that I could hear something else, another sound besides the engine and the wind and Banty’s humming, but I couldn’t decide what it was exactly, or if it was really anything at all besides my imagination. I kept listening and listening and trying to decide what it was and where it came from, if anything from anywhere, and finally I decided it was the sound of snoring in the back seat, which didn’t seem likely. I turned my head, though, to see if it possibly was, and damned if it wasn’t. The sound was snoring, and it was a girl doing it.

“Banty,” I said, “who’s that girl in the back seat? You know her?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Banty said. “You crazy or something?”

“Honest.” I said. “There’s a girl in the back seat, and if you’ll only listen you can hear her snore.”

Banty listened for a few seconds, his head cocked, and then he pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and stopped the car and listened for a few seconds longer before twisting around slowly and looking over the back of the seat. I had a wild notion all of a sudden that I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there, he seemed so unconcerned, but then he cursed softly under his breath and pinched the end of his nose, which was a gesture he had when he was puzzled by something, and I knew she was there, all right, and Banty saw her.

“Wake her up and throw her out,” he said.

That suited me fine, because I don’t mind saying that I’m afraid of strange women who turn up all of a sudden in places where they aren’t wanted or expected. I reached over the back of the front seat and shook her a little, but she only turned away on her side and made a little whimpering sound, and drew up her knees like a kid sleeping, clutching them in her arms.

I shook her again, harder, and said, “Come on, come on, you crazy dame, get out of there!” and pretty soon she came wide awake in an instant and sat up with a jerk. She yawned and rubbed her eyes and began to scratch in her short, tousled hair.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in the back seat of my car, that’s where you are,” Banty said.

“Really? Is that really where I am? Actually in the back seat of your car?”

“That’s what I said,” Banty said, “and what I want to know is how the devil you got there.”

She kept on scratching in her short hair, staring at us with wide eyes, but she didn’t seem to be scared or confused or anything like that. In fact, there was a little smile on her face that gave me a notion she thought it was all pretty funny, a good joke on someone, but I couldn’t see the joke. What I could see, now that she was sitting up looking at us, was that she was too pretty for her own good, and maybe mine and Banty’s, and I wished she would pull down her dress, which was one of these sheaths that keep riding up.

“Well,” she said, “I confess I’m a little vague about it, to tell the truth, but I must have simply come out of the Roman Gardens and crawled into your car and gone to sleep. I can’t think of any other way it could have happened, so that must be the way.”

“What’s the Roman Gardens?” Banty asked. “Is that the place back up the highway with all the hedges and plants and things growing around?”

“That’s it. It’s a nightclub, and I went there with a friend of mine named Tommy. I drank quite a few martinis, and so did Tommy, and he was getting some unacceptable ideas, and matters were complicated by all the martinis I had drunk, which made it impossible for me to be as clever defensively as I usually am. Finally, as I recall, I went to the powder room and then on outside with the intention of getting some air to clear my head. I was feeling dizzy from the martinis, and I thought I’d sit down for a while until I wasn’t dizzy anymore, and the back seat of a car seemed like a good place to sit. I got into one which was handy, and which now turns out to be yours, and it would have been all right, of course, except that I apparently went to sleep, and here I am.”

“Here you are, and there you go,” Banty said. “Get out of here and go back to Tommy.”

“How far have we come?”

“About a hundred miles.”

“In that case, don’t be absurd. A girl can hardly walk a hundred miles anytime at all, let alone on high heels at night by herself on a highway.”

“That’s your problem, sister. I didn’t invite you go crawl in my car and go to sleep.”

“Well, that’s no reason why you can’t be a gentleman about it. What was done is done, however unfortunate, and you will simply have to take me back where you found me.”

“This is where we found you, sister, and this is as far as we take you.”

She was looking at Banty with this queer little smile still on her face, as if she was still convinced that she was a good joke on someone, but I could have told her, knowing Banty, that the joke was on her, and it wasn’t a very good one, either.

“I promise to make it worth your while if you take me back,” she said.

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Come off. Where would a tramp like you get a grand?”

“You might be surprised. Take me back, I’ll give it to you.”

“Let me see it.”

“You insist upon being absurd, don’t you? You must not be very intelligent. I don’t have it with me, of course.”

“You don’t have it anywhere. I may not be very intelligent, sister, but I’m intelligent enough to know when a common little tramp is telling a fat lie. Besides, I happen to need about three grand at the moment, and I couldn’t take less for my trouble.”

“All right. Three thousand. It makes no difference to me. It isn’t my money.”

“No? Whose is it?”

“My father’s, of course.”

“Oh, sure. You old man’s a millionaire, that’s what he is.”

“That’s right. He is.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name is Arnold Gotlot, and I’m Felicia Gotlot, and we live at Number One, Gotlot Place. It’s a private street that belongs to my father, and so it’s named after him, and we have the only house on it.” Well, if she was a liar, she was a good one. She said it casually, with the sound of truth, as if it were something she was used to saying, and she couldn’t have picked a better old man if she had tried all night, for Arnold Gotlot was a millionaire, sure enough, and everyone knew that much about him, although not much more than that, for he was a reclusive old devil who didn’t say much and wasn’t seen much and, in fact, made a kind of principle or something out of his privacy.

Banty had begun to pinch the end of his nose now, which might be a good sign or a bad sign, depending on what caused it and what came of it, and he and Felicia Gotlot, if that’s who she was, were still staring at each other and seemed to be taking each other’s measure. I was on Banty’s side in whatever might develop, but I was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that I might not be backing the winner.

“In my opinion,” Banty said, “you’re a liar.”

“In my opinion,” she said, “you’re a fool.”

“Get out,” he said.

“If I do, you’ll be sorry.”

“You’re the one who will be sorry if you don’t,” he said.

“Kidnapping’s a serious offense,” she said. “Isn’t it Federal? Don’t they put you in the gas chamber for it?”

Well, now, just like that! Just like explaining something simple to a kid. I felt as if I’d been hit in the belly with a ball bat. It even shook old Banty up. His mouth popped open, and he stopped pinching the end of his nose, and I could tell that he was trying to keep a clear head in spite of being surprised and confused by what she’d suddenly said.

“What do you mean, kidnapping? Who’s kidnapped anyone?”

“That depends on whether you take me back to Kansas City,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ve been kidnapped, and you’d better believe it.”

“You think you can get away with something like that? You just told us you were loaded on gin and went to sleep in the back seat.”

“That’s what I told you. What I tell my father and the police could be something else entirely.”

“Banty,” I said, “I don’t like it. Let’s take her back and be done with it.”

“Wait a minute. I’m thinking.” Banty was pinching the end of his nose again, staring at Felicia Gotlot with odd intensity, and it was apparent that he was thinking hard and fast about something that just come into his head. “I’m beginning to believe this dame. She is Felicia Gotlot, all right. Look at that dress. It doesn’t look like much, and there isn’t much to it, that’s for sure, but I’ll bet it cost three, four hundred at least, if it cost a penny. Look at that bracelet on her wrist. Those are real diamonds, if I ever saw one. Look at that fur piece. It could be mink, and I’ll bet it is.”

He started out talking quietly enough, but the more he said, taking inventory, the more his voice changed. It didn’t get louder or faster, nothing like that, but a kind of excitement came into it, something you could feel more than hear. After the inventory, he was silent for quite a while, still staring at her, and that sense of excitement was as real then, when he was silent, as it was before, when he was talking. All of a sudden he reached inside his coat with his right hand, and I thought he was reaching for a cigarette, but he wasn’t. He was reaching for a gun, a .38, and he pointed it over the back of the seat at Felicia Gotlot.

“Get up front,” he said. “Never mind getting out. Just crawl over.”

I said, “You lost your marbles, Banty?”

“Don’t ask questions,” Banty said. “She wants a kidnapping, she’ll get one. A real one.” The excitement was so big inside him now that his voice began to shake a little from it, but the gun in his hand was steady. “Don’t you get it, Carny? This is the big break. This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is good luck coming after bad. And it just walked in. Just walked right in and went to sleep. A rich little tramp with a load of gin. It’s like fate or something. A man can’t turn his back on fate, Carny. A man who did that would never have any luck again, never as long as he lived.”

It scared me, honest, hearing him talk like that, almost as if he were in a kind of spell, and he meant it all, every word of it. I knew it, and Felicia Gotlot knew it.

“I don’t want any part of it,” I said.

“It doesn’t make any difference what you want,” he said. “You’ve got part of it whether you want it or not. This is a snatch, as of right now, and you’re in it just as much as I am. You take my advice and play along, Carny, because the stakes are big. Five hundred grand against the chamber. Think of that, Carny. A cool half million. Peanuts to old Gotlot for his precious daughter. Maybe we could make it a million. I’ll think about it.”

There was no use arguing with him, or trying to get him to be reasonable at all in that queer mood he was so suddenly in, and Felicia Gotlot understood this as well as I did, for she simply crawled over the back of the seat with a big display of nylon that I’d have appreciated more some other time. She settled down between me and Banty, and Banty handed me the .38 and said, “If she makes a sound or a move, belt her over the head with it,” and we went on down the highway toward the forty acres of rock that Uncle Oakley had left to Cousin Theodore.

We had the devil of a time finding it in the dark, because it was a long way off the highway on a little gravel road leading into the hills, but we finally found it, after a lot of wrong turns and dead ends, and it was hardly worth finding at all, let alone with so much trouble, for it was nothing but a three-room shack made of rough native lumber that was as gray and weathered against the side of its hill as all the rocks around it. It turned out, though, that there was a good fishing stream on the place, and Cousin Theodore came down here often to fish. As a consequence, the place was stocked with sheets and blankets and cooking utensils and things like that, including a lot of canned goods.

There wasn’t any gas or electricity, only kerosene lamps and a wood stove in the kitchen for cooking, and Banty, who had clearly been here before, found some kerosene and lit some lamps while I watched Felicia Gotlot to keep her from getting away, although I don’t know where she’d have gone in those dark hills so far from anywhere. The truth is, she didn’t seem to have going anywhere in mind at the moment, and I don’t blame her.

One of the three rooms was a bedroom, with nothing in it but a bed and a chest with a mirror over it, and we put Felicia Gotlot in there. There was no way of locking her in, which was a problem, and Banty said we’d have to tie her feet and hands.

“It isn’t necessary to tie me,” she said. “There’s nowhere to go, and I wouldn’t know which direction it was if there were.”

“We’ll tie you anyhow, just to be safe,” Banty said. “It won’t hurt you, and it won’t be for long, because this job is hot, and I intend to work fast with it.”

She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, and we tore a sheet into strips to tie her with. We tied her hands together and her feet together and tied her at both ends to the head and the foot of the bed. We left enough slack so she could move some and be fairly comfortable, but not enough so she could sit up or reach her feet with her hands by bending. Then Banty went out to the kitchen to build a fire in the stove and make some coffee, but I hung back after he was gone. I don’t know why I did, exactly, except that I was feeling kind of bad about tying her to the bed that way, like an animal or something. To tell the truth, I admired her and respected her and wished we weren’t doing to her what we were. You had to admire and respect her, I mean. She had plenty of moxie, besides being kidnapped and all, without crying or making a big fuss, and she knew it was her fault for talking too much, letting Banty know who she was, after getting loaded on gin and crawling into the car and going to sleep. She took the blame, as I figured it, and was quiet and sensible.

“You want some coffee?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, good-night, then,” I said.

“Go to hell,” she said.

I went out to the kitchen instead, and Banty and I sat down at a table and had some coffee when it was ready.

“When you’ve had your coffee,” Banty said, “you’d better get some sleep because after I leave in the morning you probably won’t get much.”

“Where you going?”

“To Kansas City to get the money. Half a million. I’ve decided not to press our luck.”

It seemed to me he was already pressing it, but I didn’t say so. “You’d better get some sleep yourself,” I said.

“I’ll catch a few hours after I get back to KC. Then I’ll call old Gotlot and arrange for the payoff.”

“What if he won’t pay?”

“He’ll pay. I’ll tell him we’ll kill his precious daughter if he doesn’t.”

“What if he won’t?”

“Then we’ll kill her.”

“I hope he pays,” I said. I took a drink of coffee and wished it was whiskey. “What then?”

“I’ll drive back here with the money, and we go on south.”

“What do we do with Felicia?”

“We leave her here, tied to the bed. We’ll send a letter to the police after we leave, telling where she is. She’ll get hungry and thirsty waiting, but she won’t be hurt any.”

“Just a minute. We’ll have to wait until we’re a long way south before sending the letter, and the postmark will tell which way we’re heading.”

“There’s the difference between you and me, Carny. You’re stupid, and I’m not. We’ll send the letter from the nearest town. Only we’ll send it to the police in New York or Los Angeles or someplace like that, and they’ll have to call back to KC. It’ll give us plenty of time to get a long way away, and no one but us will know which way it is.”

“I have to hand it to you,” I said. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, all right.”

“I’ve always been a thinker,” he said. “I’ve just been waiting for my luck.”

“I don’t like leaving Felicia Gotlot tied to the bed for so long,” I said, “and I admit it.”

“You’ll like the quarter million well enough,” he said.

“When will you be back with it? That pretty green moolah.”

“Forty to fifty hours at the longest. I’ll work fast.”

“It’s a lot of money. I never thought I’d have so much.”

“Get some sleep,” he said.

I tried, but I didn’t do much good at it. I lay down on an old leather sofa in the living room and closed my eyes, but I kept seeing things behind my lids that I didn’t want to see, and I kept thinking about how Banty had never had any luck, and wondering if he could possibly have any this time, when we needed it most, and altogether it must have been a couple of hours before I finally went to sleep, which was almost time for me to wake up again. Banty woke me, and I got up, and he was ready to leave. It wasn’t light outside yet, but you had the feeling that it would be all of a sudden before long.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

“Good luck!”

“Keep an eye on that dame. She’s tricky.”

“You can count on me,” I said.

“I’ve got to,” he said, “and I do.”

He went out, and I could hear the jalopy start up and move off down the gravel road toward the highway, the sound of it growing fainter and fainter until it was gone completely, and then I went into the kitchen and lit a kerosene lamp and made a fire in the wood-burning stove. There was a full pail of spring water that Banty had brought in last night, and I put coffee on to perk and checked the supplies to see what I could find for breakfast. There was no bread or eggs or milk or butter, of course, nothing fresh, but there was a package of ready-mixed pancake flour and some cans of condensed milk. I found a skillet, made some batter with the flour and condensed milk, and fried some pancakes in the skillet that looked as good as you could want, if I do say so myself. By this time the coffee was done, and I went through the living room into the bedroom where Felicia Gotlot was, and she was awake.

“You sleep all right?” I asked.

“Wonderful,” she said. “It’s so comfortable being tied in bed that I’m going to sleep that way all the time from now on.”

“You want some breakfast?”

“If that’s coffee I smell, I’ll have some of that.”

“It’s coffee, all right. If you promise to behave yourself, I’ll untie you and you can come out to the kitchen.”

“My behavior, it seems to me, is pretty well determined. It’s your behavior that concerns me.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t bother you any.”

I untied her, and she swung her legs over the side of the bed, smoothing down the narrow skirt that had slipped up her thighs in the night. After rubbing her wrists for a minute and bending over to rub her ankles afterward, she stood up and went out ahead of me into the kitchen. I poured two cups of coffee and divided the pancakes into two stacks on a pair of tin plates that I found in a cabinet.

“I’d like to wash my face and hands,” she said.

“Go ahead. There’s some water in the pail there.”

“Where did it come from? Is there a well or something?”

“Not a well. A spring. There are springs all through these hills. Springs and caves.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I was born down here. Not far from here.”

“Truly? I had the impression you were probably hatched from a billiard ball someplace in KC.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Never mind.”

She washed in the cold water, using a pan beside the pail, and dried herself on a towel hanging from a nail in the wall. Then she combed her short hair with her fingers, lacking anything else to do it with, and we sat down at the table and began to drink coffee and eat pancakes. She ate as if she were hungry, which she probably was, and didn’t complain about not having any butter for her pancakes or sugar and real cream for her coffee, nothing like that. She was altogether a remarkable young dame, I’ve got to admit it, besides being the prettiest one I had ever seen close up in my life, or far away either, for that matter, in spite of being rumpled and tousled with last night still in her face.

She gave me an uneasy feeling, and I didn’t like it. It was the kind of feeling you get over some girl when you’re a kid, before you’re old enough to know better, and it makes you think crazy and act crazy. It’s bad in a kid and worse in a man. I wasn’t acting crazy yet because I hadn’t had time, but I found myself wishing all at once that she was someone besides who she was, Felicia Gotlot, and I was someone besides who I was, a guy called Carny, and that there was a chance of our being something to each other besides what we were and had to be but she wasn’t, and I wasn’t, and there wasn’t. I hoped Banty would hurry back from KC, and meanwhile, I decided, I’d better think less about her and more about the quarter of a million dollars I was going to have all for my own to spend as I pleased.

It had got light outside, and by the time we’d finished our cakes and coffee it was light inside too, light enough to blow out the kerosene lamp, which I did. We washed up the tin plates and the skillet and went into the living room, and it looked like a long day, waiting and waiting for Banty and wondering all the time where he was and what he was doing and how long he would be, and it was made longer and worse by having started so early, and by the problem of what to do with Felicia Gotlot.

I decided not to tie her up again until night, unless she tried something tricky that made it necessary, and I told her this, and she said thanks, she appreciated it. Sarcasm.

“Remember I’ve got this .38 in my pocket,” I said.

“I remember.”

“Don’t think I won’t use it if you make me.”

“Would you?”

She found some old magazines and began to leaf through them, and I smoked and watched her for a while. Then I thought I’d have another cup of coffee, and went after it, and she said she’d have another cup too, and so I brought it. I sat down and began to drink my coffee, and she drank hers, but she kept looking at me over her cup with this odd expression.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“You,” she said.

“Well, cut it out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking about what you might have been like as a kid in these hills.”

“I was dirty and ragged and ignorant.”

“You must have had a lot of fun.”

“Sure I did! My old man was a drunken bum and my old lady was a drunken slob.”

“Is that why you left home?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Just to get away from these rocks and see if I could find a dollar to carry in my pocket.”

“Did you find one?”

“I’ve been doing all right.”

“Now you’re going to do even better, aren’t you? Now you’re going to have a whole quarter of a million dollars to carry in your pocket.”

“That’s right.”

“No, it isn’t. That’s wrong.”

“You think so? Wait and see.”

“Do you really imagine that fellow you called Banty can pull off something like this?”

“Sure. Why not? Banty’s smart.”

“I doubt it. Anyhow, he’s weak. He doesn’t have anything inside. He’s just some curly hair on top of nothing.”

“You don’t know him, that’s all.”

“I don’t have to know him. All I had to do was look at him and hear him talk. You’ll find out. He’ll botch the job and squeal on you, and both of you will end up in prison, and maybe in the gas chamber.”

“Shut up. If you haven’t got anything sensible to say, just keep your mouth shut.”

“Take my advice. Get out while you can. You could get away if you left right now.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“It makes no difference to me, really. I just hate to see you get into any more trouble than you’re already in. That Banty’s bad luck.”

“I should tie you in bed and leave you there.”

“Have it your own way,” she said.

She shrugged and began leafing through another old magazine, and I began to think again about Banty and try to figure when he’d probably be back. He hadn’t told me any schedule, of course, because that was something he’d have to work out in KC after he got there, but I figured he’d probably contact Arnold Gotlot tonight, or maybe even this afternoon, since the job was hot. Besides, he wouldn’t want to prolong his chances of running accidentally into Archie Flowers or one of his boys. He’d tell Arnold Gotlot about having Felicia and wanting the half million to give her back alive, and then he’d probably hang up and let Gotlot think about it for a while. Later on, maybe tonight or early tomorrow, he’d call again from another phone and set the time and place exactly for the payoff. I didn’t know where the place or when the time would be, naturally, but I knew, knowing Banty, that the place would be one he’d choose carefully and the time would be soon, and it was my bet that it would be tomorrow night. That meant Banty would be back early the next morning at the latest, probably between midnight and daylight.

As I expected, it was a long day and a bad one, and I thought it would never pass, but it did. We ate something from cans about noon, and something else from cans before dark, and between the two times, Felicia Gotlot went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed and had a nap. I was tired and sleepy myself, having started the day so early after a hard night, but I didn’t dare go to sleep because of having to watch Felicia Gotlot, to see that she didn’t run away, maybe hitting me over the head or shooting me with my own .38 before running. I made her leave the door to the bedroom open so I could see her lying in there from where I sat, and I played Old Sol ten times with a pack of cards I found, and he beat me every time.

A little while after dark, I was so tired and sleepy I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I told her I was going to bed and she’d have to go too.

“Are you going to tie me in bed already?”

“That’s right.”

“Would you let me sit up by myself if I promise not to do anything you told me not to?”

“No.”

“You aren’t quite as dumb as I thought you were.”

“I’m not dumb enough to think you wouldn’t lie to me if it suited you.”

“I’m quite an accomplished liar. I have a particular talent for it.”

“And that’s the truth,” I said.

I tied her in bed the same way Banty and I had tied her before. She didn’t fight it, or try to talk me out of it anymore, but just lay there quietly looking up at me with that odd little smile on her face.

“Enjoy yourself while you can,” I said.

“You aren’t as dumb as I thought,” she said, “but you’re still pretty dumb.”

“You may change your mind,” I said.

“What makes you so sure Banty’s coming back?”

“He’ll be back.”

“Well,” she said, “half a million is twice as much as a quarter million, and I don’t see what’s to keep him from going north or east or west instead of south.”

Then she closed her eyes, still smiling, and I don’t mind admitting that I couldn’t put what she’d said out of my mind, and I couldn’t sleep because of it, tired as I was and much as I needed to. I got up and began smoking cigarettes, but I had to quit after a while because I only had about half a pack left to last me until Banty came back, if he ever did, and I sat there in the dark for almost ten years trying to convince myself that he surely would. Finally I lay down on the sofa again and shut my eyes, but I kept seeing Banty heading any direction but south, and it was after midnight before I went to sleep and began dreaming about the same thing. It was a dirty trick of Felicia Gotlot’s to put me deliberately in such a frame of mind, and I hoped she was having as much trouble sleeping as I was, but she said the next morning she hadn’t.

I got back at her a little by leaving her tied in bed until the middle of the morning, but then I let her up for coffee, and let her stay up afterward. Things were strained between us, though, and it wasn’t until afternoon, after we’d had something to eat out of cans, that she finally said any more to me than was strictly demanded by necessity. Then she said she was sick of staying inside all the time and would like to take a walk.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Oh, come on. We could just walk up the hill to the crest and back. What harm could it do?”

“Well, none, I guess.”

The truth was, I wanted to get out of the house myself, and I was glad to go. We walked on up the hill at an angle to the crest, and it was something to see how well she managed to walk among the rocks in her high heels and tight skirt, and she was, as I’ve said, pretty remarkable at more things than you’d think. There was a fallen tree near the crest, and we sat down to rest on the trunk of the tree. It was mighty nice up there, if you care for rocks and scrub timber, and I could see, glittering in the sunlight at the foot of the hill below the house, the good fishing stream that Cousin Theodore came here to fish in.

“I’ve made up my mind to tell you something,” Felicia Gotlot said.

“Don’t bother,” I said.

“I’ve made up my mind to tell you the truth, and you’d better listen.”

“I’ll bet it’s the truth!”

“You know why I’ve made up my mind to tell you? Because you’re not a really bad fellow, only dumb. It’s that bad Banty who makes you do things that get you into trouble, but Banty won’t do it anymore, because Banty won’t be back.”

“There you go again, and you may as well quit.”

“I don’t mean because he’ll run away. I just said that to bother you and make you realize how dumb it is to trust someone like that Banty. I mean because the police will get him.”

“Not Banty.”

“Yes, they will, and I’ll tell you why. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Suit yourself.”

“The police will get him because when he goes for the payoff, whenever and wherever it is, Arnold Gotlot will have enough men there to fight a small war.”

“No, he won’t. Not after Banty tells him what will happen to his precious daughter if he tries any tricks.”

“That’s what I’ve been getting around to telling you. Nothing is going to happen to Arnold Gotlot’s daughter, and Arnold Gotlot knows it, because his daughter is at home this minute with a broken leg, where she has been for nearly a week.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Felicia Gotlot’s leg, which is broken. She fell off a horse.”

“Oh, sure. And I suppose you’re Felicia Gotlot’s grandmother or someone like that. Is that it?”

“No one like that at all. My name is Amanda Swanson, and I’m a maid in the Gotlot home. Felicia likes me and humors me, and when I go out at night she lets me wear her clothes and jewelry. When that Banty was so nasty last night, refusing to take me back to Kansas City and all, I lied about being Felicia because I thought it would impress him and make him take me. Then when he got the idea to kidnap me, it was too late to tell the truth, because he wouldn’t have believed me. Besides, I didn’t like him, and wanted to get him into trouble, which I have, and he deserves every bit of it.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re always telling lies, you said so yourself, and you’re lying now.”

“I admit I’m a good liar, and I lie when it pleases me, but now it pleases me to tell the truth, and you’d better believe me. I know old Arnold Gotlot like the palm of my hand, and I know how he hates con men and blackmailers and crooks of all sorts. The minute Banty contacts him, he’ll start laying the trap to catch him. He won’t let on or say a word about Felicia’s being at home, because that would scare Banty off. What he’ll do, he’ll play along and agree to everything, setting the trap all the while, and then, probably tonight, it’ll be the end of Banty, and if you don’t get out of here right away, it’ll be the end of you too.”

I’ll say that I was excited, and I almost lost my head. All I wanted to do, all at once, was to start running and keep on running, without ever looking back, until I couldn’t run any farther, and I wished I’d never seen or heard of Felicia Gotlot, or Amanda Swanson, whichever she was, or of Banty either. I was sort of crazy for a minute, that’s what I was, and I did actually jump up and take a couple of steps downhill, almost on my way, when I suddenly stopped and thought better of it.

“Hold on,” I said. “How do I know you weren’t telling the truth before, and telling lies now?”

“So far as that goes,” she said, “you don’t.”

“You’re Felicia Gotlot, all right. You’re just trying to get me to run away so you can walk somewhere and call Kansas City and get Bandy caught.”

“Your concern for Banty is touching. Too bad he wouldn’t feel the same about you. However, you could prevent my going anywhere by tying me in bed again. It wouldn’t matter much to me. The police will be here sometime tonight in my opinion.”

“Banty will be here, that’s who. He’ll be here with half a million dollars, and I’ll be right here to get my share of it. Nothing doing, sister. You’d just as well quit lying, because it won’t do you any good.”

“I was wrong,” she said. “You’re just as dumb as I thought you were at first. You’re simply too dumb to take proper care of yourself.”

“You’d better quit calling me names too. I’m getting tired of it. Come on. Let’s get back down to the house.”

She walked down ahead of me, without saying another word. In the house, she went directly to the bedroom and stayed in there all the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to open some more cans, and afterward she went back and stayed in there alone all evening until I decided it was time to tie her in bed again in case I fell asleep, although I was getting more and more nervous as it got later and later, and didn’t feel like sleeping in spite of being as tired as I can remember ever being.

“So you’re really going to wait for Banty,” she said.

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Pleasant waiting,” she said. “Wake me up when the police come.”

“That will be a couple days after Banty and I are gone,” I said. “I hope you don’t get too lonesome in the meanwhile.”

“It will be an interesting speculation for you,” she said. “Maybe it will help to pass the night faster. It ought to be quite exciting as time grows shorter and shorter. Will it be Banty or the police? The police or Banty? A simple thing like that can get into your head and drive you crazy if you don’t get it out soon enough.”

You can see that she’d done it again. Just like she’d done it last night about Banty running off with the money. She’d put it in my head, and I couldn’t get it out. It stayed right there and kept repeating itself over and over again, first one way and then the other, Banty or the police, the police or Banty, and to make matters worse I ran out of cigarettes. I gathered up all the butts I’d left in saucers around the place, and I smoked these, a few drags off each one, but pretty soon they were all gone too, and it was only about ten o’clock with a long, long time still to wait.

I didn’t know exactly how long, of course, and I began trying to guess, and I guessed four hours. There wasn’t any reason for guessing four instead of three or five, but it somehow made me feel better and surer to have a certain time to look forward to. I guessed that Banty would make the contact for the payoff at eleven sharp, which would leave him three hours to get back down here if he hurried, which he sure as hell would, and after eleven I began to try to follow him along the highway in the jalopy, placing him at certain places at certain times. As it turned out I wasn’t far wrong, for he was only about fifty miles away in my head when someone suddenly kicked the front door open, and five cops jumped into the room with their guns out, and every cop was nine feet tall.

Well, that’s the way it ended, and it’s over, and I’m almost glad. As you can see, Banty was bright but had no luck, and I had no luck and was stupid besides.

Not that Felicia Gotlot, though. She was bright and lucky both, besides being the best liar I ever met. It was simply impossible to know when to believe her, because she told the truth like a lie and a lie like the truth. I don’t hold anything against her, though. I liked her, and still do, and I remember that she tried her best to get me out of it before it was too late, which it now is. The prettiest and altogether the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known was Felicia Gotlot — Amanda Swanson, I mean.

Cousin Kelly

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1967.

She had an intimate little liturgy which she repeated every morning when she wakened, as if it were somehow essential, by the repetition, to orient herself anew to an ancient and confusing world in which, otherwise, she might easily become lost: I am Teresa Standish. I am eight years old, and I live at the Eastland Arms in Apartment 515. Today I am going to...

From there on the liturgy varied, of course, according to what she had planned yesterday to do today. She did not include the tedious details of what had been planned for her, or what, in the nature of things as they were, she would do simply because it had been ordained that she must. She included only the item or items on the day’s agenda which offered the promise of being exceptional and exciting and of saving the day from the burden of expectations that did not. Sometimes the promise was fulfilled and sometimes it wasn’t, for life is loaded with disappointments, but on Saturdays and Sundays it was always fulfilled, and Saturdays and Sundays were, therefore, the very best days of the week.

When she awakened in the morning of those days, the liturgy was invariably completed: Today I am going to see Cousin Kelly.

This particular day to which she wakened was Saturday, and between it and the preceding Sunday there had been six long days of broken promises, of hope and expectations unfulfilled. After repeating the liturgy, which was like an incantation to the shining sun that spilled its golden light through her window and across her bed, she lay quietly for a while in the warm and secure assurance of what the day surely held, and then she got up and began to dress.

Because it was the beginning of a bright and golden day, she put on a pale yellow jumper with a crisp white blouse. She would meet Cousin Kelly, she decided, in the park across the boulevard from the apartment building. Last Sunday had been a gray and sunless day, expiring interminably to the tearful sound of persistent rain, and Cousin Kelly had come to the apartment, right up to her room where she now was, and they had listened to some music on her phonograph and had talked about what had happened during the week and had played a long and delightful game of Monopoly, which she had won. It had been a good day, that part of it in the afternoon when Cousin Kelly was here, but it had not been as good by half as this one would be on the bright green grass of the park under the warm sun. They would sit on a bench and walk along the path under the trees and laugh with delight at their distorted reflections in the pool of clear water around the fountain. Cousin Kelly was actually old, over twenty, but he didn’t look or act old, and he was more fun to be with than anyone else in all the world.

It was odd that Mother didn’t like him. After all, he was really Mother’s cousin, the son of her father’s sister. Of course, lots of people didn’t necessarily like their cousins, because there was no law saying you had to or anything, but Teresa couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like Cousin Kelly, cousin or not. But Mother didn’t. Neither did Father. Teresa could tell from the way their eyes went blank whenever she, Teresa, happened to mention seeing Cousin Kelly, and from the way, immediately after the mentioning, they deliberately tried to change the subject. Cousin Kelly knew, too. He knew, but he never talked about it. Maybe something had happened once in the family. Maybe something dreadful had happened to change everything from the way everything had been, and to make enemies of people who should have been friends.

Teresa didn’t care. At first she had, but not any longer. Whatever the trouble, she liked Cousin Kelly better than anyone else. She loved Cousin Kelly. She wished and wished that he could come to live with them in the apartment. She loved him far more, to tell the truth, than she loved Mother and Father. In fact, she didn’t love Mother and Father at all, although she didn’t, on the contrary, hate them, either. She was merely indifferent to them. In the beginning it had made her feel guilty and unhappy, the secret knowledge of her indifference, but now it was just something that she lived with every day and hardly ever thought about.

Dressed in her pale yellow jumper and white blouse, she went out of the room and onto a gallery that ran along the wall above the deep pit of the living room. She descended the stairs at one end of the gallery and turned back from there through a dining room to the kitchen, where Hannah was. Hannah came in every day from nine to six to cook and clean. Sometimes, when Mother and Father entertained, she stayed later. She was fat and jolly and ages old, and Teresa liked her.

“Good-morning, missy,” Hannah said. “You’re mighty prettied up this morning, I must say.”

“This afternoon,” said Teresa, “I’m going to the park to meet a friend.”

“That’s nice. Meanwhile, what would you like for breakfast?”

“A poached egg, please, with two strips of bacon. And one slice of toast.”

“Simple enough. You just sit down there and keep Hannah company while she’s fixing it.”

Teresa sat at the kitchen table and watched while Hannah broke the egg in the funny little poaching pan and put two strips of bacon on the grill. The bacon began to sizzle, and the water began to boil in the little pan under the cup the egg was in. Teresa liked to sit in the kitchen and watch Hannah cook her breakfast. Hannah always said it kept her company, and it was true, although they talked very little while Hannah worked, or not at all. That was one of the nice things about Hannah. You could sit with her and say nothing and still feel comfortably that you were keeping company. It was different with Mother. When you sat with Mother and said nothing for a long time, you always felt uneasily that something should be said, and after a while you tried to say it, and it always came out wrong and awkward, and then you wished you hadn’t tried.

Teresa ate her egg and bacon and toast at the kitchen table, and then, leaving Hannah to her work, went back into the living room and wondered how she could spend the time, which was almost forever, until it was afternoon. She thought about going down in the elevator and outside to talk to the doorman and stroll up and down the sidewalk, but she didn’t want to do that because there was the day out there, warm and golden and waiting, and she wanted to enter it for the first time, fresh and exciting with nothing worn off, when she went out to meet Cousin Kelly. So, saving the day for a special hour, she looked at magazines in the living room until it was after eleven and she could go up to see Mother, who was now probably awake.

Sure enough, she was. Mother was sitting up in bed, braced against the headboard, and in one hand was a saucer, and in the other, momentarily stopped halfway between the saucer and her mouth, was a cup of coffee, which had been served by Hannah and from which Mother had just taken a sip. A second bed near Mother’s was rumpled and empty. This bed was Father’s, of course, and it was apparent that Father had risen early and gone away somewhere, probably downtown to his office. Father did not usually go to his office on Saturdays, but once in a while he went when he had an appointment that promised to be profitable, and you could always tell by Father’s humor when he got home if things had gone well or not. If things had gone well, he was expansive and tolerant. If things had gone ill, he was cross and critical and could hardly wait for five o’clock, when he allowed himself his first cocktail of the day.

Mother’s cup rattled in her saucer, and she spoke to Teresa with a cheerfulness that was forced and bright and artificial. Mother, in fact, looked as if she needed a cocktail already, although it was not yet noon; or perhaps she only needed a little longer to recover from those she had had the night before. The flesh was smudged beneath her eyes, and her face, cleaned of makeup, looked drawn and tired and older than it was.

“Good morning, darling.” Mother said. “Have you been up long?

“Oh, yes,” Teresa said. “It’s almost noon.”

“That late? Did Hannah give you your breakfast?”

“Yes. I had an egg and two strips of bacon.”

Mother reacted as if the words were painful to her. Her mouth turned down, becoming for a moment really ugly, and she set her cup and saucer carefully aside on the table between her bed and Father’s.

“What have you been doing?”

“Nothing much. I looked at some magazines.” Teresa hesitated, feeling within her the sudden singing exhilaration of her anticipation. “This afternoon I would like to go across to the park. May I, please?”

“I think it would be all right if you are careful crossing the boulevard. Why do you want to go to the park?”

“I’m going to meet Cousin Kelly there.”

There it was again, that strange blankness in Mother’s eyes, the curious cold hardening of her face.

“I hope you are not going to be difficult, Teresa,” Mother said.

The remark seemed so irrational, so utterly unrelated to anything that had been said or to any intention that Teresa had, that it was quite hopeless to try to respond to it. Teresa in her hopelessness was silent, and after a moment Mother’s shoulders moved slightly in a gesture that was not big enough to be a shrug.

“Well, you have a nice time in the park, darling, and be sure you have your lunch before you go.”

This was clearly a dismissal, and Teresa, relieved, went downstairs and out to the kitchen to keep Hannah company. At one o’clock, Hannah gave her lunch, tomato soup and crackers spread with soft cheese and a green salad and milk. After she had eaten her lunch it was almost one-thirty, and Teresa returned to the living room and sat down on the edge of a chair and deliberately waited and waited while her anticipation of the afternoon grew and grew and became so intense that it could no longer be borne, and then, at last, she left the apartment and went downstairs and out into the golden, sunbathed street. At the curb she paused and looked left for traffic, and then she ran across to a medial strip that divided the boulevard, there pausing again and this time looking right. Safely all the way across, she entered the park, passing between stone pillars, and followed a concrete walk as far as a green wooden bench within sight of the fountain, which tossed into the air a glittering shower that fell, the upward force of the fountain spent, back into the surrounding pool with a sound of summer rain. Sitting there on the bench, watching the fountain, she waited.

Waiting, she tried to remember where and when she had first seen Cousin Kelly, and she couldn’t. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t for the life of her. He had just suddenly come into her life, that was all, and her life, which had been lonely, was filled thereafter with love requited and promises kept. It did not matter where and when he had come. It only mattered that he had come somewhere and sometime, and that he was, having approached quietly in the midst of her pondering, there at this instant.

He stood a step away on the concrete walk and smiled down at her. His hair was thick and pale blond; he never wore a hat, winter or summer, and the sunlight touched the hair and turned it to silver. His eyes were blue, brimming with grave and secret laughter, and below one of the eyes, running down at an angle across his cheek, was the lingering trace of an old scar. “Hello, Tess,” he said.

He was the only one who called her that. Hannah called her missy or Teresa, and Mother called her Teresa or darling, and Father called her Teresa or child, but Cousin Kelly always called her by the warm diminutive, and it was something special between them, another secret shared. Rising, she held out a hand, and he took it and kept it in his.

“Hello, Cousin Kelly. I’ve been waiting: for you.”

“Am I late?”

“Oh, no. I was early.”

“I’m flattered. Shall we walk over to the fountain?”

“I’d like that. And then perhaps we can walk under the trees.”

So they went over to the fountain and laughed at their distorted reflections in the pool, and Cousin Kelly told her about the foolish Grecian boy who had fallen in love with himself when looking at his reflection in another pool long ago. She had heard the story before, but it seemed new and much more exciting the way Cousin Kelly told it. Afterward they began walking on the grass beneath the trees, trying to identify each tree by the size and shape of its leaves, and they held hands all the while. There was only one tiny blemish on the nearly perfect afternoon.

That was when they met Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter lived in the apartment building on the fourth floor, and she was walking her poodle in the park on a leash. Teresa and Cousin Kelly had come across the grass, and Mrs. Carter was strolling along the walk, pausing now and again to let the poodle sniff at things and do his duty, and they all just happened to reach a certain point from different directions at the same time. Teresa spoke politely to Mrs. Carter, who pulled up the poodle and stopped to exchange a few words with Teresa, and this was all right except that Mrs. Carter paid absolutely no attention to Cousin Kelly, although he was standing there holding Teresa by the hand all the while. For all the recognition Mrs. Carter gave him, Cousin Kelly might as well have been somewhere else, and Teresa thought it was very rude of Mrs. Carter. Afterward she told Cousin Kelly how rude she thought Mrs. Carter had been, but Cousin Kelly only laughed and said it didn’t matter, and actually, considering all the rest of the wonderful afternoon, it didn’t.

Eventually they came back to the bench from which they had started. They sat down together to rest and talk, and Teresa was beginning to feel sad because it was getting late, almost five o’clock, and soon she would have to leave.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Teresa asked.

“If you wish.”

“Where shall I meet your”

“If it’s another nice day, we can meet here. Otherwise, wait for me in your room, like last Sunday, and I’ll slip up.”

It had gotten a little cooler, and the shadows of everything lay longer to the east on the grass, and Teresa’s sense of sadness was growing stronger.

“It’s so long from Sunday to Saturday,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

“I wish you could come and live with me all the time.”

“Do you. Tess? So do I.”

“Why don’t Mother and Father like you?”

“It’s an old story, but never mind. You could make them like me if you tried.”

“How could I?”

Fie reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out a sealed white envelope with something in it. His voice was light, and the grave laughter was in his eyes.

“By putting some of this in something they drink,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a love potion.”

“You mean like in fairy stories?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that was only make-believe.”

“Oh, no. There is more truth than you imagine in fairy stories. When your mother and father drink something with some of this powder in it, they will immediately like me, just as you do, and then they will ask me to come and stay with you all the time.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Try it and see.”

He extended the envelope, and she took it and put it in the pocket of her yellow jumper.

“I will,” she said.

Then it was time to go. Father would surely be home from the office, and Mother would be getting cross and anxious, and pretty soon, if Teresa didn’t hurry, would be sending Hannah across the boulevard to fetch her. Parting from Cousin Kelly was not so hard on Saturdays as it was on Sundays, anyhow, because the time between parting and meeting was so much shorter. So, saying good-bye, she hurried off down the walk toward the stone gate. Once she stopped and turned and waved, and Cousin Kelly, waiting and watching by the bench, waved back, then turned and went away himself in the opposite direction.

In the apartment. Mother and Father were sitting together in the living room. It was immediately apparent to Teresa from Father’s expression that his day had not gone well, and the atmosphere in the living room was oppressive, but there was, fortunately, imminent hope of relief, for it was time for cocktails. Teresa said hello politely to Father, who grunted, and Mother looked as she invariably did when she was about to be moderately severe about something.

“Where have you been all this time, Teresa?” Mother asked.

“I told you where I was going. Mother. I went to the park. You gave me permission.”

“I didn’t give you permission to stay indefinitely.”

“I’m sorry. It was such a nice afternoon, and I was with Cousin Kelly.”

Father looked up angrily and slapped the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand.

“Cousin Kelly again! However did the child get started on this thing? When did she ever even hear of Kelly?”

Mother must have heard Father’s outburst, but she gave no sign of it. Her expression had changed suddenly to the cold and stony one which warned that she had at last had all of something that she could stand, and had determined to resolve a problem, no matter how unpleasant the resolving might be. Her voice, as if in compensation, was softly fraught with dreadful reasonableness.

“You did not see Cousin Kelly,” she said. “You did not see Cousin Kelly this afternoon or any other afternoon, because Cousin Kelly is dead. He was dead and buried, Teresa, before you were born.” Teresa heard the words, of course, but they had no higher meaning. They did not prick her intelligence or elicit an emotional reaction. How could Cousin Kelly be dead when she had just parted from him in the park?

“I saw him this afternoon,” she said, “and I’ll sec him again tomorrow. I see him every Saturday and Sunday.”

“The child has a morbid imagination, that’s all,” Father said. “She needs professional attention. Tell me, Teresa, what docs Cousin Kelly look like? Describe him for me.”

“He is about as tall as you,” Teresa said, “but much thinner. He has very light hair that looks silver in the sun, and he has blue eyes that laugh. On one cheek he has a scar that sometimes you can hardly see.”

Father looked stunned for a moment, and Mother caught her breath with a sharp gasp.

“She’s seen a picture somewhere;’ Father said. “She’s surely seen a picture.”

“This must stop!” Mother’s voice still held that dreadful reasonableness, her face the expression of grim decision. “Listen to me, Teresa. Cousin Kelly is dead. He is dead because I killed him. It was an accident, a tragic accident, and it happened years ago. We had taken an outing in the country, Kelly and I and our parents. We had gone to a place high on a bluff above a river. Kelly and I had quarreled. I was furious with him. I wanted to be alone, and I walked away from the others to the edge of the bluff, but Kelly followed. He came up beside me and took me by the arm and started to say something. I turned and jerked my arm free. I don’t know what happened exactly. I must have pushed him without thinking or meaning to.” Mother’s voice was silent, the horror of that remote moment invoked again by the telling, and then it went on quietly and quickly, as if to be done as soon as could be. “He was standing at the edge of the bluff, and he fell over. He was killed. He was dead when my father and my uncle reached him. They always blamed me, my aunt and uncle — Kelly’s mother and father. They still do. They thought I pushed him deliberately in a fit of anger. But it was an accident. That’s all it was, Teresa. It was a terrible accident, and Cousin Kelly is dead.”

Teresa turned and walked away to the far end of the living room. Turning again, she looked back at Mother and Father.

“Cousin Kelly is alive,” she said, “and he is coming soon to live with us here.”

She went on into the dining room, passing from view. Ahead of her, beyond the louvered swinging door to the kitchen, she heard Hannah at work. She pushed through the door and saw that Hannah had deserted her cleaning paraphernalia long enough to prepare cocktails. The silver shaker was on a tray on the cabinet, and beside the shaker were two fragile, long-stemmed glasses. Hannah looked hurried and harassed. It was after five, and she was obviously anxious to be away by six.

“Let me take the tray, Hannah,” Teresa said.

“I’m sure I’d be grateful to you for saving me the steps.” Hannah said. “Mind you don’t spill it, missy. Watch where you’re going.” Teresa took the tray and pushed back through the louvered door into the dining room. In the pocket of her yellow jumper, the love potion felt as heavy as gold dust.

It was all over, everything done that needed doing, and everyone gone who had been there except a worn and rather seedy little man and Teresa and Hannah. The man spoke with gentle weariness in a tone of futility.

“Now, Teresa,” he said, “tell me again exactly where you got the pois — the ‘love potion’.”

“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. We were in the park.”

“Why did Cousin Kelly give it to you?”

“It was supposed to make Mother and Father love him. Then he could come and live with us here.”

“Your mother and father didn’t love Cousin Kelly?”

“No.” She paused, a shadow passing across her eyes, as if she were struck for a moment by a presentiment of wonder. “Mother said that Cousin Kelly was dead.”

“I know.”

“She said he died years ago. He fell off a cliff. But he wasn’t. Dead, I mean. I was in the park with him this afternoon.”

“And you met your neighbor there? What is her name?”

“Mrs. Carter. She was rude to Cousin Kelly. He was standing right there, holding my hand, and she ignored him.”

“Are you sure she saw him?”

“How could she have helped? He was standing right there.”

“Mrs. Carter told me that you were alone when she saw you. There was no one with you at all.”

“I don’t understand it.” Again the shadow passed over her eyes. “He was holding my hand, and later he gave me the love potion.”

“All right.” The little policeman stirred uneasily. He was feeling, for some reason, a chill in his bones. “Last Sunday it rained. You couldn’t go to the park, and so Cousin Kelly visited you here. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes. He came right up to my room. He was there all afternoon.”

“Poor little dear.” Hannah reached an arm toward Teresa as if to brush from the child the gathering shadows of evil. “She has been alone too much. She lives in fantasy.”

“You are certain that no one came last Sunday?”

“There was no one here but the family and me. No one. The hall door is kept locked on the inside. No one could have entered without being admitted.”

“Do you think that Mrs. Carter would deliberately lie about not seeing Cousin Kelly in the park?”

“No.”

“Do you think your mother would have lied about his being dead?”

“No.”

“Do you think Hannah would have lied about his not being here last Sunday?”

“No.”

“There you are, then.” Leaning forward, he spoke slowly with a kind of dreadful reasonableness, and every tired syllable was an echo of his dread and a measure of his futility. “Listen to me, Teresa. You must tell me exactly where you got the love potion. It’s very important.”

And she met his dreadful reasonableness, as he had known she would, with dreadful innocence.

“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. In the park. He was there.”

Refuge

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1968.

She had walked all the way to her father’s house, three miles across the town, and now she had been sitting alone in her old room for more than an hour. She knew that it was more than an hour because the clock in the front hall had said almost a quarter to four when she arrived, and the five o’clock whistle had just sounded up north at the roundhouse in the railroad yards. At the first shrill blast of the whistle, she had raised her eyes and cocked her head in an attitude of listening, as if she were hearing something new and strange that only she in all the world could hear, but when the sound had diminished and died away she had lowered her eyes again and sat staring, as before, at her hands folded in her lap. In all the time she had been here, except for the brief interval when the whistle blew, she had hardly moved. She wondered if she should get up and go into the kitchen and begin preparing supper for her father, who would soon be getting home from his job in the yards. No matter. She had burned all her energy in the simple and exhausting ordeal of getting here. She had come, indeed, only because there was no place else to go. Now that she was here, there was nothing else to do.

She was an intruder in the little room that she had known so intimately for so many years. She was not welcome here. The room wanted her to leave. She could feel the pervasive hostility in the still, stale air, the corrosive bitterness of the abandoned, the sad, sour lassitude of the lost. But this was just her imagination, of course. It was part of the encroaching terror she had brought with her across town. The room was no different. The room was the same. There was the desk at which she had written daily in her diary, the fanciful log of hopeful days, and there above the desk was the framed copy of Gauguin’s Yellow Christ, which she had admired and hung to appease some distorted hunger in her heart. There on the walls was the same pale blue paper, perhaps a little more faded and soiled, stained at one corner of the ceiling where the probing rain had seeped through from the attic below the low roof. And there against the wall between the room’s two windows was the long mirror that had reflected her imperceptible growth from day to day and year to year, and had told her all the while that she was a pretty girl and would be a lovely woman. She wanted suddenly to run away from the walls and the mirror and the Yellow Christ, but she sat and stared at her folded hands. She wanted to scream, but she was mute. She sat fixed and mute in the terror she had brought with her. Having fled from the fear of death, she wished irrationally that she could die.

She heard her father’s steps on the porch outside. She heard them in the hall, moving toward the rear of the house. For a while, after they were gone, she continued to sit quite still on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap, and then she got up abruptly, as though prodded by sudden compulsion, and went out of the room and followed the footsteps into the kitchen. Her father, his back turned to her, was standing before the open door of the refrigerator. Hearing her behind him, he turned, holding a can of beer in one hand, pushing the refrigerator door closed with the other. He was a tall, lean man with stooped shoulders and long, lank hair grown shaggy over his ears and on the back of his neck. About him, like a miasma sensed but not seen, there was an air of stale accommodation to dismal years, the atmosphere of repeated frustrations. He peered at his daughter through the dim light of the kitchen.

“Ellen?” he said. “Is that you, Ellen?”

“You can see very well that it’s me,” she said.

He carried the can of beer to the kitchen table and sat down facing her. There was a metal opener on the table. He plugged the can and took a long drink of the beer.

“I was just surprised to see you here, that’s all.”

“Is it so surprising that I’d come to see my own father?”

“I didn’t see your car outside. Where’s your car?”

“I didn’t drive today. I walked.”

“All the way here?”

“All the way.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice thinned, took on an angry, querulous tone. “You know I don’t have a car. Now it will be late before you can get back.”

“That’s all right. I’m not going back.”

“You’ll have to call a taxi, that’s what you’ll have to do.”

“Listen to me. I said I’m not going back.”

He looked at her for a moment, now that he had listened and heard, as if he was unable to understand. He drank again from the beer can, wiping his lips afterward with the palm of his hand. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. If I can’t stay here, I’ll go somewhere.”

“You’ll go back, that’s where you’ll go. You’ll go right back where you belong.”

“Do you think so? I don’t.”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you out of your head?”

“Don’t start that. I’ve heard enough of that.”

He apparently received some kind of warning from her words, for his attitude changed suddenly. He smiled, nodding his head, but the smile was more an expression of slyness than of understanding or affection. “Well, something has upset you, that’s plain. Come. Sit down and talk it over with your father. You’ll feel better then. You’ll see. Will you have a beer?”

Knowing him for what he was, recognizing from long experience another of his repeated efforts to deceive her, she sat down across the table from him, nevertheless, simply because she was tired and it was easier to sit than to stand. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want a beer.”

“Well, then, tell me what’s wrong. You’ve had a foolish quarrel with Clay. Is that it?”

“Clay doesn’t quarrel with me. Clay doesn’t quarrel with anyone. He’s far too cold and contained. He has other methods.”

“Clay’s rich. A successful man. They say at the yards that he’s worth millions. The richest man in town. You can’t expect a man like that to be like other men.”

“He hates me. I can see it in his eyes. When we are alone, I can hear it in his voice.”

“Oh, hell! That’s crazy. He married you, didn’t he? Just two years ago, he came and took you away and married you. He didn’t have to do it, either. Don’t try to tell me he did, because I know better. I was here. I remember how you were. No crazy talk about hate then. He could have had whatever he wanted from you, marriage or nor, and he probably did.”

“That’s right. I sold myself. And you — because he was rich, you thought you were onto something big. You didn’t care about anything else.”

“You were lucky — lucky to be born with a face and body to rile a man’s blood and make him lose his head. How many poor girls from this part of town get a chance to marry a rich and powerful man liked Clay Moran?”

“They’re the lucky ones. The girls who don’t get the chance.”

“What kind of curse has been placed upon me? It’s almost more than a man can bear, and that’s the truth. I’ve never had any luck with my women. All those years I had your mother on my hands, and now I’ve got you.”

“Don’t start on Mother! Don’t start!”

“She was my wife, and I’ll say what I please. She was crazy — so crazy I had to put her away.”

“She wasn’t crazy. She had a nervous breakdown. Small wonder, being married to you.”

“She died in an institution. The same place you’ll die if you keep on.”

“It would be better than dying before my time in the house of Clay Moran.”

“What’s that: What did you say? You really must be crazy!”

“He wants me to die. He plans to murder me.”

His mouth hung open, his mind groping in darkness behind his eyes for some sense and sanity in her words. Then, stunned by the enormity of what she had clearly said, he pushed back from the table in his chair and stood up deliberately. “I knew it. I’ve been fearful of it. You’re crazy like your mother. Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I’ll say it again. He wants me to die. He murdered his first wife, and he plans to murder me.”

“His first wife drowned. It was an accident. What kind of hellish trouble are you trying to breed for yourself and for me? Clay Moran is a powerful man in this town. A rich and powerful man. What do you think he’s going to do if he hears his wife has been going around making such insane accusations? I won’t hear anymore. I won’t listen to you.”

“Don’t. I knew you wouldn’t. I should never have come here.”

“Be reasonable. Try to be sane for a minute. Has he ever tried to murder you?”

“Not yet. You don’t know Clay. He’ll only need to try once.”

“Has he ever threatened you?”

“He looks at me. He says sly things with double meanings. It’s not his way to threaten directly. He’s incredibly cruel and clever.”

“It’s in your mind. Can’t you understand that? You imagine these things.”

“He plans to murder me, as he murdered his first wife, because he hates me, as he surely hated her. I think he must hate anyone who marries him. It’s a kind of madness in him.”

“Now look who’s crazy! You ought to be right back where you came from, and that’s where you’re going. It’s not right for you to bring this kind of trouble into my house.”

He jerked his narrow shoulders, as if shaking off an intolerable burden, and started for the door. She could hear him in the hall, dialing the telephone. After a few seconds, she could hear his voice, angry and urgent.

“Is Mr. Moran at home? Let me speak with him, please. It’s important.”

She didn’t hear anymore. She isolated herself in silence, hearing nothing, sitting still and mute. She had wasted her strength and will. Having fled this short way to no good end, she could flee no farther.

Sitting so, futile and spent, she thought of Roger. She had not thought of him for a long time, and now that she did, after all this while, she was filled with regret and fruitless pain.

She awoke with a start and was instantly attuned to the sounds of the day, perception hypersensitized by apprehension. She could hear the soft whirring sound of the electric current driving the delicate mechanism of the little ivory clock on her bedside table. She could hear the remote and measured drip of a lavatory tap in the bathroom between her room and the next. She heard the gimping footsteps of the upstairs maid, who had suffered as a child from poliomyelitis, pass by her door in the hall. She heard from a tree outside her window the clear, repeated call of a cardinal. She thought that she could hear, deep below her in the bowels of the house, the deadly, definitive closing of a door.

It was about eight o’clock. She could tell by the slant of the sun through a window in the east wall of the room. She could measure time by the distance the sunlight reached into the room. Not exactly, of course, not with the precision of the little ivory clock she could hear on her bedside table, for the distance was longer or shorter at any given time of the morning as the sun rose earlier or later in the course of the season, but she was, nevertheless, surprisingly accurate in spite of having to make minute adjustments from time to time to the inflexible schedule of the universe. It was, like her keen perception of almost indiscernible sounds, a part of her hypersensitive attunement to everything around her. Her senses had been refined and directed by persisting danger.

She turned her head and looked at the other bed, the twin of her own, across an intervening aisle. It was empty. Neatly made. Clay had not slept in it last night. It gave her an exorbitant sense of relief, the empty bed, although she had known perfectly well, before turning her head, that no one was in it. If Clay had been there, she would have been aware without looking. She would have been aware in the instant of waking even if he had lain as still as stone and made no sound whatever. She would have known through the cold, instinctive shrinkage of her flesh. She would have smelled him, the aura of him, the sickening, sweet, pervasive scent of death.

He was in the other room, beyond the bath. She could not hear him. She sensed him through her infallible senses. He was standing in utter and deliberate silence, motionless, his head canted and his eyes watching her through double walls, waiting to detect through his own acute senses the slightest movement of her body, the merest whisper of her bated breathing. Slowly she closed her eyes in an effort to preserve the secret of her wakefulness. No use. He knew her secret. He was coming. She heard him in the bathroom. She heard him crossing the room to her bed. She heard his voice.

“Good morning, Ellen,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Knowing the futility of simulation, she opened her eyes and looked at him. He was, she had to admit, very deceptive. He did not look at all like a man, a devil, who had murdered his first wife and was planning to murder his second. His body was slender and supple, just under six feet, and his expensive and impeccable clothes hung upon it with an effect of casual elegance. His smooth blond hair fitted his round skull like a pale cap. His mouth was small, the lips full, prepared to part unpredictably, at the oddest times, in an expression of silent laughter. His eyes were azure blue, brimming with a kind of candid innocence, a childlike wonder, as if he were listening always to a private voice telling an interminable fairy tale. Oh, he was deceptive, all right. He was deceptive and deadly.

“I’m feeling quite well, thank you,” she said.

“Improved from last night, I hope.”

“Wasn’t I feeling well last night? I can’t remember that I wasn’t.”

“Well, never mind. A good sleep will sometimes work wonders. Did you sleep well?”

“I slept quite well, thank you.”

“You see? It was the work of the sedative I gave you. You were a bad girl to try to avoid taking it. They have done some remarkable things in drugs these days. It’s absolutely amazing what can be done with them.”

What did that mean? Why did he suddenly, when you least expected it, say such disturbing things? Why did his words, so overtly innocent, have so often under the surface a sinister second meaning?

“I don’t like to take drugs,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid of them.”

“Well, one must be cautious with them, of course, but it’s foolish to avoid them when they’re needed. I was very careful not to give you too much. Did you imagine for an instant that I would be careless where you were concerned?”

There! There! Did you hear that?

“They make you vulnerable,” she said.

“Vulnerable? Nonsense. Vulnerable to what?”

“Who knows? Who knows what the effects may be?”

“My dear, you sound like a Christian Scientist. Or do you? I’m afraid I don’t know just what Christian Scientists believe.” He revealed his small white teeth in the unpredictable expression of silent laughter. “Anyhow, I assure you that you were sleeping like a baby when I looked in on you later last night. I didn’t want to risk rousing you, so I slept in the next room. Did you miss me this morning?” There he had stood. There he had stood in the dark and dangerous hours of the night, surrounded by the silent, waiting house, watching her and watching her as she slept a drugged sleep, and death had stood at his side.

“Your bed hadn’t been slept in,” she said. “I saw that when I awoke.”

He sat clown and took one of her cold hands and held it in both of his. “Tell me, Ellen,” he said, “why did you run away yesterday?”

“I didn’t run away. I went to see my father.”

“Your father was disturbed about you. He said you didn’t want to come home again.”

“My father is a foolish man. He says foolish things.”

“He seemed to be concerned about your mother — or about you, rather, as your mother’s daughter.”

“What do you know about my mother?”

“I know that she died in a mental institution. I knew it when I married you. After all, it was no secret.”

“There was nothing wrong with my mother that my father didn’t cause.”

“It’s all right, Ellen. Everything will be all right. I was just wondering about something, that’s all. Would it make you feel better to see a good doctor?”

“A psychiatrist, you mean?”

“If you wish.”

“I don’t wish. I don’t wish at all.”

“It might be the best thing for you. To tell the truth, I’ve been concerned about you myself the past year or so. I don’t know what it is, exactly. You changed somehow. You seem to be more imaginative. Confused about things.”

“I’m not confused.” In a moment of defiance, she looked squarely into the wonder of his childlike eyes. “I see everything quite clearly.”

“Well, I only want to help if I can. You know that, my dear.” He leaned forward from his position on the side of the bed and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Now I must be off to the office. You had better stay in bed and rest. Would you like me to have your breakfast brought up?”

“No. I can’t just lie here. I’ll go down.”

“As you wish. I suggest, however, that you stay in the house today.”

“Is that an order?”

He had stood up and turned away, and now he turned back, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “Certainly not. Whatever made you say such a thing?”

“I thought perhaps I was being put under a kind of house arrest to keep me from running away again.”

“Run away? Nonsense. You are my wife, not my prisoner. You are free to go whenever and wherever you please.”

“Thank you.”

He walked to the door and turned to look back at her once more. Blue, candid eyes. The sudden unpredictable expression of silent laughter. “You are my wife, my dear. Remember that. Whatever your trouble is, if there is trouble at all, we will work it out together, you and I. There is a cure for everything, you know. One balm for many fevers.”

He opened the door and went out, leaving his words hanging in italics in the breathless air of the room.

One balm for many fevers! Hadn’t she heard that before? Had she read it somewhere? It meant death. Death was the balm. Death was the only cure for all ills and troubles.

Her thoughts acted on her like a catalyst. She got out of bed immediately and started for the bathroom, but on the way, between her bed and the bathroom door, she caught an oblique glimpse of herself in a full-length mirror on the wall. She halted abruptly, as if fixed and held static in the flow of action by cataleptic trance, turned her head slowly and looked at her reflection directly. Then, drawn magnetically by what she saw, she moved toward the mirror and stood in front of it. Slowly she turned this way and that, assuming positions as a model assumes them on display, and her slim body in her sheer nightgown was the body of a dryad rising in a cloud of cool blue mist from the floor of an ancient forest.

Oh, she was lovely! She was all gold and old rose and loveliness. She felt for her lovely body a fierce pride and an agony of tenderness. She enclosed herself in her own arms, in love and apprehension. It was incredible that the passing years would destroy her. It was a monstrous and unholy crime that anyone should want to do now what the years would surely do soon enough.

She must delay no longer in a narcissistic spell, entranced before her mirror by the vision of herself. She had made precipitately the decision to do what must be done, the last desperate measure she must take to save herself, and now was the time, now if ever, to do it.

Wrenching herself away from the mirror with a feeling of dreadful urgency, she went on, hurrying now, into the bathroom.

His name was Collins. He was an old man, tired. With a small treasure of petty graft which he had tucked away over the years, he had bought five acres in the country, and when he retired next year he was going to build a nice house on the acreage to die in. He had a coarse thatch of grizzled hair growing low on the forehead of a worn leather face. The approach of retirement had made him cautious, inclined to act slowly if he acted at all, but at least he was the chief. That, anyhow, was hopeful. It was a special concession to her, of course, because she was the wife of Clay Moran. The wife of the richest and most powerful man in town, majority stockholder of its only steel plant and chairman of the board of directors of its most prosperous bank was entitled, after all, to every courtesy and consideration. If she had been someone other than who she was, she would surely have been forced to talk with a sergeant or someone like that.

The chief looked at her blankly, wondering if his hearing, like his sight, was becoming impaired.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moran,” he said. “I don’t believe I heard you correctly. Would you mind repeating that?”

“My husband,” she repeated deliberately, “intends to murder me.”

Crazy, he thought. Crazy as all hell. Hadn’t her mother had trouble that way? He seemed to remember that she had. Anyhow, what do you do with a crazy woman when she walks into your office and throws a bomb into your lap? Well, in the first place, you understand that the bomb is a dud.

Don’t get excited. In the second place, you humor her. You play along. In the third place, after you’ve got rid of her, you protect your pension by reporting to her husband. From there on, it’s his baby, and welcome to it he is!

“That’s a startling accusation, Mrs. Moran,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“It seems incredible. Your husband is a very prominent man. One of the most respected citizens of this community.”

“I know how he’s regarded. I’m telling you what he is.”

“No breath of scandal has ever touched his name.”

“He’s very clever.”

“Well, let’s look at this thing objectively. Without emotion.”

“It is somewhat difficult to be unemotional about your own murder.”

“Yes. I understand that. Tell me exactly what makes you think your husband plans to murder you.”

“The way he looks at me. The things he says to me when we’re alone.”

“Oh, come, Mrs. Moran. That’s tenuous evidence at best.”

“You don’t understand my husband. You don’t know him. He’s clever and cruel. It gives him pleasure to taunt me. He likes to terrify me and watch me suffer.”

“Has he ever threatened directly to kill you?”

“He is much too devious and subtle for that.”

“Even if he had, it wouldn’t necessarily mean much. I’ve been married for forty years, Mrs. Moran. Hard to tell how many times I’ve threatened to brain my wife. Maybe, sometimes, I’ve even felt like doing it. But I never have, and I never will.”

“That’s different. You are not my husband. If something isn’t done to save me, he will surely murder me.”

“Has he ever made any attempt to murder you?”

“There will be no attempts. There will only be, if he is not prevented, the accomplished murder.”

“Until he makes an attempt on your life, or at least commits a chargeable offense against your person, I don’t see how the police can help you.”

“It will be too late for help then. His first attempt will be successful.”

“Surely you understand that we can take no action on so grave a charge as this when there is nothing to support it but questionable interpretations of words, gestures, looks. An assumption of intent without proof.”

“I see. I see that you won’t help me.”

The dull despair in her voice, hopeless submission to what he was convinced was an imaginary danger, pricked his leathery heart for a moment and incited a rare flicker of genuine pity. She was hot, this one. She had smoke and flame coming out her ears. She needed help, all right, but not the kind of help the police could give.

“Look at it this way, Mrs. Moran,” he said. “What reason could your husband possibly have for murdering you? You are a beautiful woman. I’m sure you are a faithful wife. You and your husband have been married for how long? Two years? The honeymoon is hardly over yet. There is no reason at all to believe that he has the slightest interest in another woman, is there? I thought not. If he did have, seeing you, I’d have to say he was nuts. You see what I mean? There’s no motive for him to murder you.”

“He wants to murder me because he hates me.”

“Oh, please. Frankly, I find that impossible to believe,” he argued.

“He hates all women. Especially the women he marries. I can’t explain it. It’s something inside him, something sick, insane. You’ll believe me when it’s too late. He will murder me, just as he murdered his first wife.”

“What? What’s that?”

“His first wife. He murdered her.”

“Stop it, Mrs. Moran! His first wife drowned. It was an accident. As an accident, it had to be investigated, of course. Your husband and his first wife were out on the lake west of town. They were in a motorboat, fishing. Your husband is a dedicated fisherman, as you must know. The first Mrs. Moran was not, although she apparently made an effort to share your husband’s enthusiasm. It was late in the evening of this particular day, almost dark. According to testimony, they were about to come back to shore. Mrs. Moran was wearing her swimming suit, and she decided, before coming back, that she would take a dip in the lake. She went over the side of the boat. It was the end of a hot day, and the water there was deep and cold. She took a cramp and drowned. She was quite a distance from the boat. Your husband tried to save her, but he couldn’t reach her in time. She drowned, that’s all. She just accidentally drowned.”

“Are you so sure?”

“I’ve just told you what happened.”

“Did anyone see the accident?”

“No.”

“You had to depend on my husband’s version.”

“There was no reason to doubt it.”

“On the other hand, there was no way to verify it.”

“He was heartbroken. His grief was genuine. Anyone who saw him could tell.”

“Clay is very clever.”

“He had no reason to murder her, no more to murder her than to murder you. There was absolutely no evidence that he murdered her. All the evidence, circumstances and possible motivation and method, all considered together, pointed clearly to an accident.”

“He killed her because he hated her, as he hates me.” She stood up abruptly, clutching her purse with both hands in front of her. Her face in defeat was composed, touched by sadness and despair. “You will remember what I have told you when I’m dead.”

The door had hardly closed behind her before he was reaching for the telephone on his desk.

Outside, she stood with her head bowed, crushed by the monstrous burden of her hopelessness. She had neither the strength to run nor the cleverness to hide. In any event, even if she had the strength and cleverness, running and hiding were clearly impossible. Clay was too rich. His power reached too far. Wherever she went, he would find her. Whatever she did, he would kill her. No one would believe her. No one on earth would help her.

Then, for the second time on the second day after not thinking of him at all for a long while, she thought of Roger.

She listened to the ringing of the telephone at the other end of the line. In her ears, the ringing was converted by the wire into a series of angry, waspish sounds. She counted the sequence of sounds, one, two, three, four, five. After the fifth, she hung up the receiver and stepped out of the telephone booth in the drugstore where she had gone to call. She stood for a minute outside the booth with her head bowed, as if she was trying intensely to remember something that she had forgotten. She had now reached, in fact, the nadir of her despair. Roger was not at home. Even if he had been at home, she conceded dumbly, there was no good reason why he should want to talk with her or see her or lift a hand to help her. Even if he were willing to help her, which he probably would not be, there was surely nothing that he could do. There was nothing anyone could do, and there was nothing now to be done. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Nothing and nowhere on earth.

Yet it was necessary, absolutely necessary, to go somewhere and do something. One simply could not, after all, stand forever motionless outside a phone booth in a drugstore. At the rear of the store, across from the booth, there was a lunch counter with a row of unoccupied stools in front of it and a girl in a starched white dress behind it. As a beginning, the lunch counter would be a place to go, and drinking a cup of coffee would be a thing to do. Having made this decision, or having had it thrust upon her by circumstances, she walked across to the counter, sat down on one of the stools and ordered the cup of coffee from the girl in the starched white dress.

What day was it? Was it Saturday or was it Friday? She thought about this question for a moment, frowning with concentrated effort into her cup of coffee, and finally she was certain, although previously she had somehow felt that it was Saturday, that the day was in fact Friday. She had, for some reason or other, the impression that this was enormously important, making a vast difference to something significant, and she began now to try to think of whatever it was that was significant and different because it was Friday instead of Saturday. Then it came to her suddenly, accompanied by such an agony of relief and resurgent hope that she was forced to clutch her throat to choke back a burst of frantic laughter.

Friday was a school day, that was what was important, and Roger was a school teacher, and school teachers on school days are at school and not at home. If one wanted to call a school teacher, then, one could wait until school was out and the teacher was home, or one could, if the matter was urgent, call the office of the school and have the teacher summoned to the phone there, which was, she understood, a procedure generally frowned upon by the administration. Well, her need was urgent, desperately urgent, but she was reluctant, nevertheless, to resort to the emergency procedure of calling Roger at school. Having injured him cruelly already, she could not now impose upon him the slightest inconvenience. Besides, if she called him at school, it would be difficult for her to say what needed saying, and for him, in return, to say what she wanted to hear.

What, precisely, did she want to hear him say? What, if anything, did she want him to do? Save her from Clay, somehow give her sanctuary from death, yes, but most of all, she realized with a searing flash of insight, whatever was said and if nothing was done at all, she wanted him to recognize the truth.

He must believe, she thought. If only he believes!

Looking at her watch, she saw that it was almost noon. Did school let out at three-thirty or four? She tried to remember from her own years there as a student, and she thought that it was four, but she wasn’t positive, and schedules, besides, are sometimes changed. No matter. She would call Roger again at four-thirty, after he had had time to get home, and she would keep calling him at intervals, if necessary, until he answered. In this resolution she was supported at last by the blind, unreasoned faith that he was her last good hope.

There at this instant was the remote, shrill sound of the noon whistle in the railroad yards. There were four hours and a half that must be spent somewhere, and it was impossible to return to the house of Clay Moran. She could never, after today, go there again. Neither could she sit indefinitely at a lunch counter in a drugstore.

Wondering where to go and what to do, she remembered seeing her checkbook when digging in her purse for a dime for her coffee. She opened her purse again and looked in the checkbook and saw that her account showed a balance of slightly more than a thousand dollars. Well, there was one more place to go and one more thing to do, one place and one thing at a time and in turn.

She went to the bank and cashed a check for an even thousand dollars. After leaving the bank, she went to a restaurant and ordered lunch. She wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat, but over food and coffee, growing cold, she was able to spend almost an interminable hour. Then, walking down the street from the restaurant, she saw the unlighted neon sign of a cocktail lounge and turned in, although it was something she would not ordinarily have done, and spent a second hour over two martinis, only the first of which she drank. It was then almost two o’clock. Spent piecemeal, a fragment here and a fragment there, time crept. It was an unconscionable drag from one hour to the next. She must somehow find a way to hurry the hour she wanted it to be, or to make less laggard the hours between then and now. Outside the cocktail lounge she saw, across the street and down a block, the marquee of a movie theater. She walked to the theater, hurrying as she wished time to hurry, bought a ticket and went in.

She never knew what the movie was. She did not read the posters outside, and inside she did not watch the screen. Sitting in cool and blessed darkness in the back row of seats, she closed her eyes and tried not to think, but this was impossible, she discovered, and so she began deliberately to think of the days and years before Clay, the tender time of sweet sadness when she had loved Roger and Roger had loved her. In the end she had rejected his enduring love with cruel contempt when Clay, much older and immensely richer, had seen her and wanted her. That was before the smell of death crept in. She had sold herself for wealth and security and enviable status. Good-bye, Roger. Forget me if you can. Here’s stone for bread and vinegar for wine.

Time passed in darkness before the silver screen, and it was four-thirty. She read her watch and left the theater and walked down the street until she came to a sidewalk telephone booth. She deposited her dime and dialed Roger’s number, but again there was no answer. She dialed three times more, waiting outside the booth for ten minutes between each attempted call, and then, on the fourth attempt, he answered at last. His voice, speaking after two years with the sound of yesterday, brought into her throat a hard knot around which she forced her response with a sensation of physical pain.

“Hello, Roger,” she said. “Do you know who this is?”

There was a silence so long that she had a bad moment of incipient panic, thinking that he had simply put down the phone and walked away, but then his voice came back, interrogative and listless, as if he were asking a question with an answer he did not really wish to hear.

“Ellen? Is it Ellen?”

“I’ve been trying and trying to call you, Roger.”

“I was at school. I just got home.”

“I know. I remembered. Listen to me, Roger. I want to see you again. Will you meet me somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Please, Roger. Please do.”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right, then. There’s no use. No one will help me, and there’s nothing I can do.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“If you don’t help me, I’m going to die.”

“What? What did you just say?”

“Nothing. It’s no use. Good-bye, Roger.”

“Wait a minute. Did you say you were doing to die? Is that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. What does it matter? No one else will help me, and neither will you.”

“How can I help you?”

“I don’t know. I only know there’s no one else.”

“I see. When there’s no one else, ask Roger.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Never mind. Where are you?”

“Downtown. In a phone booth.”

“Do you have a car?”

“Yes. It’s parked in a lot.”

“Come out here. I’ll wait for you.”

“To your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure it would be wise. Maybe we had better meet somewhere else.”

“Come or not. I’ll wait here.”

“You don’t understand. It might be dangerous for you.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“All right. I’ll come. Oh, Roger, it will be good to see you and talk with you again.”

“Yes,” he said, “it will be good.” She hung up. She had now, after a long time of terror, a blessed feeling of security and peace. Roger would believe. Roger would help. He would be her refuge and her strength, and it was time, past time, for her to go to him. First, before going, she leaned her head against the telephone in the little booth and began silently to cry.

Roger had been sitting, when the phone rang, on the edge of his bed holding a revolver. It was an old revolver that he had acquired from his father at the time of his father’s death. He did not like guns, and had never fired this one, although he longed to fire it, just once, and it gave him comfort sometimes to sit and hold it. He was holding it again now, having returned after the telephone call to his place on the bed.

It had been a bad day at school. He’d had discipline problems. He was not good at discipline, and he often had problems of that kind. The principal had talked with him seriously about the problems several times. It was unlikely that he would be rehired next year, but he didn’t care. It was just another failure in his life. His life was full of failures. All his days were bad.

His headache was back. It always came back. In fact, it rarely left. There was a contracting steel band around his head, slowly crushing his skull.

Ellen was coming. Coming here. She would be here soon. Ellen had been the most beautiful thing in his life, and he had loved her, but in the end she had deserted him. Another failure for him. After Ellen, his life had been sick, and all his days were bad. It had been wrong of Ellen to make him sick with hate instead of love. Now she might die. She had said so herself.

He broke the revolver in his hand. Because of a kind of inherent petty meanness in his nature which would not permit him to provide for any effort in excess of what was needed to complete it, there was only one cartridge in the cylinder. One bullet for one death.

Carrying the revolver over to a chest of drawers where other cartridges were, he loaded a second chamber.

Something Priceless

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1968.

Dinner was served at seven, the routine hour, just as if it were an ordinary evening of an ordinary day. The courses were served in order by the maid, whose name was Clara. Neva Durward sat at one end of the long dining table, and Dwight, her husband, at the other. By a scale of three inches to the year, the interval between them was a measure of the disparity of their ages. It was also a fair indication of the climate of their relationship. Neva was thirty-two. Dwight was double that.

After the final course, Dwight asked to be excused and told Clara that he would have coffee and brandy in the library. This was predictable. Dwight was always proper. He was always dull. He always had coffee and brandy in the library. As for Neva, who was not always proper and rarely dull, she excused him gravely and escaped, when he had retired, to the living room.

Dinner had not taken long. Consulting her jeweled watch, Neva saw that it was just past seven-thirty. Seven-thirty from nine left one-thirty; an hour and a half. Ninety minutes. This was a long time to wait under the circumstances, a very long time, but Neva was not, strangely enough, impatient or apprehensive. She was, indeed, almost serene. A little restless, perhaps, but nothing more. She considered television and rejected it. She thought of reading and was not tempted. Music, she decided, was what she needed now. Not, however, just any music. Music to excite the mind and heat the blood. Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss? Yes, Strauss. Richard, not Johann. Moving to the stereo, she selected a recording and put it on the machine. Don Quixote. Standing there, her head bowed, her fingers spread and touching tips to the console top, she listened intently to the sounds of a madman’s dream.

Clara came into the room. She walked a few steps toward Neva and stopped, not speaking, her eyes fixed on the back of her mistress. Neva could not see her and did not hear her, but she knew, after a while, that Clara was there. She could sense it in the electric prickling of her skin. She was certain from her sudden illusion of nakedness. She stood quite still for a few moments longer, listening in illusory nakedness to the fantasies of madness, and then she raised her head and turned it slowly to look at Clara over a shoulder, turned her body as slowly afterward to conform.

“There you are, Clara,” she said.

“Have you served Mr. Durward his coffee and brandy?”

“Yes, Mrs. Durward.”

“We’re alone here, Clara. Never mind the formality.”

Clara’s lips had been set in the faintest of smiles, and now the smile, with no change whatever in the set of the lips, seemed to spread subtly and gather in her eyes with bright intensity.

“Yes, Neva.”

“That’s better. I have enough of propriety. Do you want something, Clara?”

“I was wondering if you’d like some coffee and brandy yourself.”

“Brandy. No coffee.”

Clara turned and went out the way she had come. She was a lovely girl, Neva thought. A strange and lovely girl with strange and mute commitments. Being herself a beautiful woman, Neva could afford the generosity of such a concession. She had no cause to envy the endowments of her maid. Crossing the room to a sofa near the fireplace, in which there was no fire, she sat down at one end, resting in a corner against an arm and the back. She wondered what Dwight was doing this moment in the library. This, too, like so many other things Dwight did, was predictable. He was surely sitting in the deep leather chair under the reading lamp, surrounded by shadow outside a small perimeter of light, his glasses slipped down on the bridge of his nose, and in his lap, lying open, whatever book he had chosen to read in snatches between naps until it was ten o’clock and time for bed.

The book, whatever its exact title, would be in some way related to the life and times of Savanarola. Since his heart attack and his subsequent retirement from active engagement in his business affairs, Dwight had sustained the fiction, somehow essential to his vision of himself, that he was hard at work on what would be the definitive biography of the Florentine friar. His work had never progressed beyond the preparatory stage, undisciplined reading and disorderly data, and Neva knew, as he did in his heart, that it never would. No loss to the world, Neva thought. It was evidence of the quality of Dwight’s character that he had chosen to admire, from a time of renaissance literally glutted with giants of the arts, a strident and bothersome reformer who had eventually succeeded, quite properly, in getting himself burned at the stake. Dwight’s nose, unfortunately, was as blue as litmus paper in an alkaline solution.

Clara returned with a bottle of brandy and a snifter on a silver tray. She set the tray on a low table at Neva’s elbow and poured from the bottle into the snifter. Stepping back, she stood watching her mistress with the faint, strange smile that gathered intensity in her eyes.

“Will there be anything else?” she said.

“No. Nothing. Thank you, Clara.”

“May I offer a suggestion?”

“Yes. Of course. What is it, Clara?”

“I’d drink lightly of the brandy if I were you.”

“So I shall. So I always do. Have you ever known me to drink to excess, Clara?”

“Never. I thought, however, that you might be tempted tonight.”

“You’re mistaken. I don’t need to look for courage in a bottle.”

“Are you offended? I’m sorry.”

“Offended, Clara? On the contrary, I’m touched by your concern.”

“I should be very unhappy if you came to harm.”

“Believe me, so should I. We must do our best to avoid it. Tell me, Clara, are you certain that you want to play a part in this?”

“Yes. I’m certain.”

“Why should you do so much for me?”

“Because you ask it.”

“I have no right. You might be wise to refuse.”

“I don’t think so at all, Neva.”

“Are you so devoted to me, then?”

“I would do a great deal more if more were needed.”

“How much more, Clara? Would you die for me?”

“It takes courage to die. If I had the courage, I would die for you.”

“Well, you are committed to enough as it is. I prefer you alive.”

“Thank you, Neva.”

“Has Mrs. Kelsey gone yet?”

“She’s just finishing in the kitchen. She’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”

“Good. Make sure the back door is locked behind her.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure. Shall I remind you when it is a quarter to nine?”

“It won’t be necessary. I’ll not fail to watch the time.”

It was then eight. Turning away, Clara left the room. Neva watched her go. From the shining goblet which she had lifted from the tray beside her, the bouquet of the brandy drifted up to her and seeped into her head. She raised the glass and tilted a little of the brandy into her mouth. Don Quixote’s mad dream, diminishing on the sound of a mellow horn, was interrupted by the click of automatic mechanism and ensuing silence. Neva sat still, draining her goblet by sips in the silence, and then she set it aside, got up and started the latter half of the dream. Returning to the sofa, she poured more brandy and sat down. Time passed. Don Quixote floated down the Ebro in an enchanted boat. Mrs. Kelsey, her kitchen clean, was surely gone. Somewhere near was Clara, and in the library was Dwight, napping and waking and reading on an island of light in a sea of shadows. They were alone in the house, she and Clara and Dwight, and it was eight-thirty. His mad dream done, Don Quixote died slowly to the sad, sane sound of strings.

When Neva looked at her watch again, it was seventeen minutes till nine. She sat without moving, holding her arm bent at a right angle across her breasts, staring steadily at the face of the watch. The hour and minute hands crept imperceptibly. The sweep hand, measuring the swift flight of seconds, rushed apace around the dial. Once. Twice. At a quarter to nine precisely, as if a second or a minute soon or late would somehow be disastrous, she stood up and walked across the room and into the hall. Clara was standing there, across the hall at the foot of the stairs, and may have been waiting there in silence, for all that Neva knew or could guess, for most of an hour.

“If Martin Crandell arrives while I am in the library,” Neva said, “show him into the living room to wait. Meanwhile, I will do what must be done. Wish me luck, Clara.”

“I wish you luck,” Clara said.

Neva walked down the hall to the library door. She paused for a moment outside, a hand on the knob, her head slightly bowed in an attitude of listening, and then she turned the knob and opened the door and slipped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Silence. In the silence, nothing moved. There was the massive leather chair, and there in the chair was Dwight. His head had fallen forward until his chin touched his chest. His glasses had ridden down the bridge of his nose and clung precariously to the tip. In his lap, still held open by a hand that rested flat on the pages across the fold, was the thick volume he had been reading before he fell asleep. The pages, Neva noticed with a sharpened awareness of details, had very fine print and wide margins and the faded, brittle look of age. She watched and listened. She could detect the merest movement of his chest, the shallow pumping of his lungs, and after a moment she could hear, hardly more audible than a drift of smoke, the whisper of his breath between his lips, closer to death than to life.

Hurry. Hurry now. But hurry, remember, with caution.

She knew from experience that Dwight in his naps slept lightly in the dim twilight just below the surface of consciousness, and so, although the pile of the carpet was thick beneath her feet, she stooped over, standing first on one leg and then the other, and removed her shoes. Leaving the shoes by the door, she walked swiftly and directly, without discernible sound, to Dwight’s desk beside the draped windows a little beyond and behind the chair in which he slept. She opened the top drawer to the right of the kneehole, and there was the revolver, just as she expected, where Dwight had always kept it.

She knew, on the whole, very little about revolvers, and she had no notion of the caliber of this one, but she knew that Dwight kept it loaded, even though she had never known him to fire it, because it gave him, apparently, a sense of security. Taking it from the drawer, she made sure the bullets were in place, and then, quiet as a kitten in her stocking feet, she turned and walked to Dwight’s chair and around it from the rear and knelt on one knee on the floor at his right side. He did not move. She could hear clearly now the sibilant sound of his shallow breathing. Holding the revolver so that it just touched the fabric of his jacket, the snub barrel angled slightly up between a pair of ribs, she shot him in the heart.

She stood up and stepped back and watched him die. Afterward, swiftly again, she dropped the revolver and grasped him by the legs between the ankles and the knees and hauled him out of his chair onto the floor and across the floor to a position approximately midway between the chair and the desk. She returned to the chair and picked up the revolver. Lacking a handkerchief, she held the revolver in a fold of her skirt and scrubbed it clean of fingerprints. Still holding the revolver in the fold of her skirt, her skirt raised to her waist, she went back to the body and released the revolver to let it fall onto the floor near the right hand. On her knees, carefully, she took the hand and wrapped the fingers around the butt of the revolver, drawing them off afterward across the butt so as to smudge the prints slightly. Then, standing, with the toe tips of one foot she nudged the revolver away from the body into a position where, being dropped, it might have naturally fallen.

There. It was done. The worst was done. Standing there beside Dwight’s body, her eyes closed and lowered in anomalous effect of obscene prayer, she suffered, in the brief suspension of action between what had been accomplished and what remained to be done, a quite genuine feeling of regret. She had killed in exigency without compunction but not without pity, and she would have preferred it otherwise. She would have chosen, if she could, to have him live out his days in his own way, dull and oppressive to her as his way had been, and to see him die in his bed in his own good time, which would not have been, at the longest, very long. But never mind. She had no choice. Or she had been forced, rather, to a choice she would not willingly have made. Now there was more to do, and little enough time, surely, to do it.

Methodically, in the immediate area surrounding the body, she began to create signs of a struggle. She overturned a table lamp. She pushed askew the table on which it had sat. She swept a brass ashtray onto the floor. She was careful not to overdo the scene. Dwight, attacked, could have managed no more than token resistance.

The scene set, she went to the drapes and parted them and unlocked a sliding glass door that opened onto a terrace outside. She opened the door a couple of feet and left it open, permitting the drapes to close again across it. Her fingerprints were of no concern. Her own would be expected, and it would be assumed that anyone fleeing this way in guilt would take sufficient care to leave none. From the door to the terrace, she crossed directly to the door to the hall. She looked at her watch. It was three minutes until nine. It had taken her about ten minutes to murder her husband and to accomplish the other necessary things. She picked, up her shoes and put them on, standing, as before, first on one foot and then the other. Opening the door, she went put and: walked down the hall to the living room. Clara was waiting there, standing just inside the entrance, her eyes shining, her lips slightly parted, her breasts rising and falling, in a measured cadence of leashed excitement.

“Is it done?” she said.

“Yes, it’s done.”

“Is it all right?”

“Yes, it’s all right.”

Neva poured brandy into her goblet and sat down. The doorbell rang, and Clara; went to answer it. Neva could hear Clara’s voice, and the voice of a man, in the hall. She finished her brandy and set aside her glass.

Martin Crandell came into the room. He was a fairly tall man, just over six feet, with the carefully preserved and tended body of a perennial beach boy prepared to go regularly on display in next to nothing. Now he was wearing a conservative gray suit with a white shirt and maroon tie and burnished black shoes. His shoulders were broad, his waist and hips narrow. His hair was pale blond, brushed smoothly across a narrow skull, and his eyes were a faded blue, restless in their sockets, probing always for secrets. He crossed the room to Neva with a kind of subdued grace, his legs swinging easily, his arms and torso hardly moving.

“Darling,” he said, “how are you?”

“Don’t call me that,” she said.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot for a moment that things have changed between us. Neva, then, if you prefer.”

“I prefer Mrs. Durward.”

“Well, let it go. I see that this visit is to be strictly business. Fair enough. That being so, are you prepared to settle our little affair?”

“That depends. In what way?”

“Is there more than one way? To put it crassly, do you have the money? Fifty thousand dollars, I believe, was the amount agreed upon.”

She stood up and moved away from him, and then, as if suddenly changing her mind, turned back to face him squarely.

“No,” she said, “I don’t have it.”

“That’s too bad. And not quite honest, if you don’t mind my saying so. When you called and asked me to see you here, you assured me that you would have the money. Could I possibly have come on the wrong night?”

“No. It’s the right night.”

“At the wrong time? You did nine o’clock sharp, didn’t you?”

“It’s the right time.”

“I must say, then, that I can see no excuse for your negligence. Or is it deception? Perhaps, however, you’ve simply decided that this is not the right place. I admit that our own home hardly seems appropriate. Not that I have any objection, you understand, but it seems that you are taking unnecessary risks yourself. I was fully prepared to meet you in a neutral place. Skulking in an obscure bar, for instance, or lurking in the bushes of some remote park.”

“There is no need for skulking or lurking, one place or another. I have decided not to pay you the money.”

“What’s that?”

“You heard me. I don’t have the money, I don’t intend to get the money, and if I had it or could get it. I wouldn’t give it to you.”

He was perfectly still and silent, watching her. His pale eyes seemed to have gone suddenly blind behind cataractal film. “I believe you’re serious,” he said at last.

“You had better believe it,” she said.

“Are you aware of the consequences?”

“Perfectly.”

“Nevertheless, let us review them. I shall be forced by your obstinacy to reveal the details of our illicit little affair to the formidable Dwight, who is a prig and a moralist and a snob. I shall be prepared to support my revelations, of course, with sufficient documentary proof in the way of indiscreet notes and several naughty photographs that I was cad enough to collect surreptitiously as mementos of our tender relationship. Dwight, as you know, will pay through his blue nose to avert a scandal. But that’s not all. He will also throw you out, darling, Neva, Mrs. Durward, bag and baggage. He will divorce you forthwith and disinherit you in the time it takes to call his lawyer. Come; let us reason together. Are you prepared to lose millions in order to save a paltry fifty thousand?”

“I’m prepared for anything.”

“In that case, I must confess everything to Dwight as soon as may be. I regret it, of course, but a man must live. If you won’t pay, Dwight must.”

“Go on and confess. Confess and be damned.”

“I hope you are not suffering the fatal illusion that I won’t.”

“Not at all. Why should I? I know you perfectly well for the iniquitous bloodsucker you are.”

“Quite so. We understand each other. Well, I won’t intrude any longer, for I can see that I’m not wanted. I’ll have a chat with Dwight at my earliest convenience. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Tomorrow? Why delay? Why not now?”

“Now?”

“Certainly. It will save you the time and trouble of an extra trip. Dwight’s in the library. I’m sure he’d be happy to spare you a few minutes to entertain him with the story of his wife’s infidelity.”

He was silent again for a moment, staring at her intently, his pale eyes glittering through narrowed lids. “What’s the gimmick?”

“No gimmick. I invited you here to settle our business with each other. I’m sick of it and wish to be done with it. Let’s get it settled.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“That’s as may be.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right. There’s nothing to be gained by delaying what would be better done at once. Where’s the library, love?”

“I’ll show you. In fact, I’ll stay and hear your confession. I may be able to supply a few details if you happen to omit them.”

She brushed past him and went out of the room and down the hall, hearing his steps match hers a pace behind. Opening the library door without hesitation, she stepped in and aside, permitting him to pass in front of her. He came, after two steps, to an abrupt halt. His body went rigid, still as stone. She heard the breath whinny shrilly in his nostrils. She closed the door.

“There’s Dwight,” she said. “Tell him whatever you wish.”

He whirled half around to face her. His body was drawn into a crouch, as if he were about to spring at her, and in his pale, probing eyes there was sudden shock and a flicker of nascent fear. His voice was harsh, an exaggerated whisper from a constricted throat.

“What the hell are you trying to pull on me?”

“Pull? Nothing whatever. I have just shown you that Dwight is dead. He’s been killed. You can surely understand that any threat to my security has been removed. Dwight is dead, and I am neither divorced nor disinherited. I shall be free and rich. Did you ever imagine for a moment that I cared for more than that? Do you think I give a solitary damn for my precious reputation? Nonsense. Tell the world that we went to bed together. See if I care. Publish the story with pictures. Have it syndicated. Do whatever you please.”

He straightened his body with a long sigh. An expression of deadly slyness replaced the flickering fear in his eyes. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Not so fast. Dwight is dead, all right, and you killed him. That’s obvious enough.”

“Did I? You’re free to make that assumption if it pleases you. The truth is, I’m rather sorry that he’s dead. I’d have much preferred killing you, if I were going to kill anyone.”

“No doubt. But you didn’t. You’ve killed your husband, and you’ve made, in my opinion, a bad botch of the job. From the appearance of things, you shot him. I wonder why. Why didn’t you simply put something in his coffee or brandy, for instance? Everyone knew his heart was bad. It might have passed as a natural death.”

“Do you think so? I doubt it. Not without suspicion, at least.

“The police have nasty minds, and young widows of rich old husbands are naturally suspect. Suspicion calls for autopsies, and autopsies reveal poisons. As it is, he has clearly been shot by an intruder, or perhaps by someone he had expected. See for yourself. The gun on the floor is Dwight’s own revolver. He kept it loaded in the right top drawer of his desk. There are several indications of a struggle. You don’t have to be very clever to reconstruct what happened. Dwight was impelled for some reason to threaten his visitor, whoever he was, with the revolver. There was a struggle. The revolver discharged, and Dwight was killed. The killer then escaped through the door onto the terrace there behind the drapes. You will see that the door has been left partially open if you care to look.”

“Very neat. But not very convincing. If the police are suspicious of young widows of old husbands, they are also inclined to be skeptical about mysterious intruders and invisible guests.” He laughed harshly and snapped his fingers loudly in a kind of reflex to some obscure stimulus. “No, no, Neva, darling. It won’t do. You killed him with your own lovely hands. If you hadn’t, you’d have called the police long before this. What I can’t understand is what you hoped to gain by it. It would surely have been more direct and effective if you had simply killed me.”

“And more pleasurable, certainly. However, as I said, I know you too well. No doubt you made arrangements to incriminate me in the event of your murder.”

“So I did. But I still fail to see what you have gained. In the first place, if I choose to be a good citizen, I can easily direct suspicion your way and probably get you convicted of murder.”

“If you care, in the process, to be sent to prison for attempted extortion.”

“A good point. I’ll concede that I don’t relish the prospect of trading even a few years of my life for all that’s left of yours. I really wish you no harm, and there would be no profit in it. Which brings me to the second place. If I choose not to be a good citizen, which is more likely, you can surely see that you have only strengthened my bargaining position, so to speak. If a few tumbles are worth fifty grand, what’s a murder worth?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Be careful. You may force me to be a good citizen in spite of myself. I’m sure I could point suspicion your way without getting involved. Anonymous letters and phone calls to the police, perhaps.”

“I’m sure you could. I’m sure you would. That’s why I’ve taken the precaution of anticipating you. You’ll keep quiet, that’s what you’ll do, and you will not be paid a cent of blackmail for doing so.”

“You’re damn sure of yourself, aren’t you? I wonder why.”

“Because I didn’t kill Dwight.”

“If you didn’t, who did?”

Neva did not answer directly. She turned her head and lifted her eyes to stare in sudden distraction at a spot on the wall near the junction of wall and ceiling. She seemed in effect to be listening intently for the repetition of some small sound she had heard behind her. After a moment, she raised her voice and called softly over her shoulder.

“Clara? Are you there, Clara? Come in, please.”

The library door opened, and Clara came into the room. She closed the door behind her and stood against it in a posture oddly demure. Her body was erect, her trim ankles placed neatly together, her hands folded loosely before her flat belly.

“Yes, Mrs. Durward?” she said.

“Please tell Mr. Crandell what occurred in this house tonight.”

“Yes, certainly, Mrs. Durward.” Clara’s eyes shifted slowly from Neva’s face to the face of Crandell, and visible in them for an instant, before her dark lashes lowered demurely to veil it, was an expression of immeasurable malice. “At what time do you want me to begin?” Clara asked naively.

“Begin at the time dinner was finished.”

“Well, Mr. Durward came here, to the library, and I brought him his coffee and brandy. You had developed a severe headache and went up immediately to your room. After I had served Mr. Durward in the library, I followed you up and gave you two aspirin, and you lay down in your clothes to rest until the headache went away.”

“Did I come down again?”

“Oh, no. Not until I went up much later to get you. That was after Mr. Durward’s caller had come and gone. I was in the hall or near the stairs the entire evening, and if you had come down, I should certainly have seen you.”

“Very well. You mentioned a caller, Clara. What time did he come?”

“Promptly at nine, as expected. Mr. Durward had told me earlier that a man had telephoned and made an appointment for that hour. I was instructed to admit him.”

“What happened then?”

“My instructions were to show him directly to the library, and that’s what I did.”

“Was Mr. Durward alive at that time?”

“Oh, yes. He answered immediately when I knocked, and when I opened the door to show the caller in, he was sitting in his big chair with a book in his hands.”

“Then you went away and left the two of them alone?”

“As it happened, I didn’t go far. I was nearby in the hall all the time.”

“Were you near enough to hear anything that was said?”

“I could hear nothing until Mr. Durward became angry and raised his voice. Even then his words were indistinct, but I’m sure that he said something about blackmail.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes, Mrs. Durward. Absolutely positive. I’d repeat it on oath in a court of law.”

“Go on, Clara. Tell us what happened afterward.”

“Well, almost at once there was the sound of a scuffle followed by what sounded like a kind of muffled shot. I started to go to the door and open it, to see what was going on, but then I thought better of it and came upstairs to get you. As you know, we came down together and found things as they are. Mr. Durward was dead, and the caller had escaped through the door onto the terrace.”

“You’re a clever girl, Clara. What is your explanation of all this?”

“It seems quite clear, really. Mr. Durward’s caller had come to extort money from him. To blackmail him. But Mr. Durward wouldn’t submit. He went to his desk and got his revolver and was going to hold the blackmailer until he could get the police here. The blackmailer attacked him. They struggled for the revolver, and Mr. Durward was shot.”

“Good. Now, Clara, I want to ask you a very important question. Think carefully and answer honestly. Do you think you would recognize Mr. Durward’s caller if you were to see him again?”

“Surely, Mrs. Durward. I’m very good at observing people.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Yes. He was about six feet tall. A little taller, I think. He had blond hair and pale blue eyes. He was wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and maroon tie and black shoes.” Her lashes flicked up, revealing the immeasurable malice still lying naked in her eyes. “In fact, he looked exactly like Mr. Crandell.”

Crandell laughed harshly. There was a tremor in his hands, and he thrust them into his pockets. “I wonder,” he said, “if you could really bring it off. It would, after all, only be your word against mine.”

“The word of a blackmailer,” Neva said, “against the word of his unfortunate victim and her innocent maid. Bear in mind that I would not hesitate for an instant to confess the sordid details of our affair.”

“I’m not a fool, you know. I might find a way to beat you.”

“You can try.”

“No.” He shook his head. “The game, as the saying goes, wouldn’t be worth the candle. I might beat you, but on the other hand there is always the unpleasant possibility that I might not. In addition, my position is otherwise untenable. In beating the big rap, I would necessarily expose myself to a lesser one, which would be bad enough.”

“In that event, I may be able to persuade Clara to be somewhat less precise in her recollection of poor Dwight’s caller, whoever he was and whatever he wanted. That is not to guarantee, of course, that her memory might not improve later, or that I would not be prepared, if the occasion arose, to sacrifice my precious reputation for the pleasure of seeing you hanged. You will remember, please, that there is no statute of limitations on murder.”

“In such matters, believe me, my memory is infallible.”

He made a slight bow for the sake of effect in the rags of his vanity, and walked to the door. Clara stepped aside to let him pass. The sound of his steps receded in the hall. The front door closed behind him.

“Now,” said Neva, “we must call the police without delay. I realize that the time of death cannot be established with anything like precision, but we are getting dangerously close, I imagine, to the extreme of any allowable latitude. Fortunately, Dwight kept the temperature in this room exorbitantly high.”

“It will be all right with the police,” Clara said. “You’ll see. I’m quite expert at telling lies.”

“Dear Clara. You have been priceless throughout. How can I ever thank you?”

Clara smiled. From where she stood beside the door, she reached out and touched Neva tenderly on her bare arm.

“Never mind,” she said. “We’ll think of a way.”

Additionally six additional stories

“The Collector Comes After Payday” was originally published in Manhunt, August 1953.

“Insurance (The Long Wait)” was originally published in Menace, January 1955.

“May I Come In?” was originally published in Manhunt, January 1955.

“Homicide and Gentlemen” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1961.

“IQ-184” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1962.

“The Seasons Come, the Seasons Go” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1966.

The Collector Comes After Payday

Originally published in Manhunt, August 1953

FRANKIE looked through a lot of bars before he found the old man. He was sitting in a booth in a joint on lower Market Street with a dame Frankie didn’t know. They were both sitting on the same side of the booth, and Frankie could see that their thighs were plastered together like a couple of strips of Scotch tape.

“Come on home, Pop,” Frankie said. “You come on home.”

The woman looked up at him, and her lips twisted in a scarlet sneer. The scarlet was smeared on the lips, as if she’d been doing a lot of kissing, and the lips had a kind of bruised and swollen look, as if the kisses had been pretty enthusiastic.

“Go to hell away, sonny,” she said.

She lifted her martini glass by its thin stem and tilted it against her mouth. Frankie reached across the booth in front of the old man and slapped the glass out of her hand. It shivered with a thin, musical sound against the wall, and gin and vermouth splashed down between the full, alert breasts that were half out of her low-cut dress. The olive bounced on the table and rolled off.

The woman raised up as far as she could in the cramped booth, her eyes hot and smoky with gin and rage.

“You little son of a bitch,” she said softly.

Frankie grabbed her by a wrist and twisted the skin around on the bone.

“Leave Pop alone,” he said. “You quit acting like a tramp and leave him alone.”

Then the old man hacked down on Frankie’s arm with the horny edge of his hand. It was like getting hit with a dull hatchet. Frankie’s fingers went numb, dropping away from the woman’s wrist, and he swung sideways with his left hand at the old man’s face. The old man caught the fist in a big palm and gave Frankie a hard shove backward.

“Blow, sonny,” he said.

For a guy not young at all, he was plenty tough. His eyes were like two yellow agates, and his mouth was a thin, cruel trap under a bold nose. From the way his body behaved, it was obvious that he still had good muscular coordination. He was poised, balanced like a trained fighter.

Frankie saw everything in a kind of pink, billowing mist. He moved back up to the booth with his fists clenched, and in spite of everything he could do, tears of fury and frustration spilled out of his eyes and streaked his cheeks.

“You get the hell out of this,” he said. “You ought to be ashamed, drinking and playing around this way.”

The old man slipped out of the booth, quick as a snake, and chopped Frankie in the mouth with a short right that traveled straight as a piston. Frankie hit the floor and rolled over, spitting a tooth and blood. He was crazy. Getting up, he staggered back at the old man, cursing and sobbing and swinging like a girl. This time the old man set him up with a left jab and threw a bomb. Frankie went over backward like a post, his head smacking with a wet rotten sound.

No one bothered about him. Except to laugh, that is. Lying there on the floor, he could hear the laughter rise and diminish and rise again. It was the final and utter degradation of a guy who’d never had much dignity to start with. Rolling over and struggling up to his hands and knees, he was violently sick, his stomach contracting and expanding in harsh spasms. After a long time, he got the rest of the way to his feet in slow, agonizing stages. His chin and shirt front were foul with blood and spittle.

In the booth, ignoring him, the old man and the woman were in a hot clinch, their mouths adhering in mutual suction. The lecherous old man’s right hand was busy, and Frankie saw through his private red fog the quivering reaction of the woman’s straining body. Turning away, Frankie went out. The floor kept tilting up under his feet and then dropping suddenly away. All around him, he could hear the ribald laughter.

It was six blocks to the place where he’d parked his old Plymouth. He walked slowly along the littered, narrow street, hugging the dark buildings, the night air a knife in his lungs. Now and then he stopped to lean against solid brick until the erratic pavement leveled off and held still. Once, at the mouth of an alley, he was sick again, bringing up a thin, bitter fluid into his mouth.

It took him almost an hour to get back to the shabby walkup apartment that was the best a guy with no luck could manage. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, gasping with pain. The smoky mirror above the lavatory distorted his face, exaggerating the ugliness of smashed, swollen lips drawn back from bloody gums. He patted his face dry with a towel and poured himself a double shot in the living room. He tossed the whiskey far back into his mouth beyond his raw lips, gagging and choking from the sudden fiery wash in his throat.

Dropping into a chair, he began to think. Not with any conscious direction. His mind functioned, with everything coming now to a bad end, in a kind of numb and lucid detachment. Suddenly, he was strangely indifferent. Nothing had happened, after all, that couldn’t have been anticipated by a guy with no luck whatever.

It was funny, the way he was no longer very concerned about anything. Sitting there in the drab living room in the dull immunity to shame that comes from the ultimate humiliation, he found his mind working itself back at random to the early days at home with the old man. Back to the days when his mother, a beaten nonentity, had been alive. Not a lovable character, the old man. Not easy on wife or kid. A harsh meter of stern discipline for all delinquencies but his own. A master of the deferred payment technique. In the old days, when Frankie was a kid at home, wrongdoing had never been met with swift and unconsidered punishment that would have been as quickly forgotten. The old man had remarked and remembered. Later, often after Frankie had completely forgotten the adolescent evil he’d committed, there was sure to be something that he wanted very much to do. Then the old man would look at him with skimmed milk eyes and say, “No. Have you forgotten the offense for which you haven’t paid? For that, you cannot do this thing.”

Wait till it really hurts. That had been the old man’s way.

Remembering, Frankie laughed softly, air hissing with no inflection of humor through the hole where his lost tooth had been. No luck. Never any luck. He’d even been a loser in drawing an old man — a bastard with a memory like an elephant and a perverted set of values.

The laughter hurt Frankie’s mangled lips, and he cut it off, sitting slumped in the chair with his eyes in a dead focus on the floor. It was really very strange, the way he felt. Not tired. Not sleepy. Not much of anything. Just sort of released and out of it, like a religious queer staring at his belly button.

He was still sitting there at three o’clock in the morning when the old man came in. He was sloppy drunk, and the lines of his face had blurred, letting his features run together in a kind of soft smear. His eyes were rheumy infections in the smear, and his mouth still wore enough of the cheap lipstick to give him the appearance of wearing a grotesque clown’s mask. He stood, swaying, almost helpless, with his legs spread wide and his hands on his hips in a posture of defiance, and Frankie looked back at him from his chair. It made him sick to see the old man so ugly, satiety in his flaccid face and the nauseous perfume of juniper berries like a fog around him.

The old man spit and laughed hoarsely. The saliva landed on the toe of Frankie’s shoe, a milky blob. Without moving, Frankie watched the old man weave into the bedroom with erratic manipulation of legs and hips.

Frankie kept on sitting in the chair for perhaps five minutes longer, then he sighed and got up and walked into the bedroom after the old man. The old man was standing in the middle of the room in his underwear. His legs were corded with swollen blue veins that bulged the fish-belly skin. On the right thigh there was an angry red spot that would probably blacken. When he saw Frankie watching him, his rheumy eyes went hot with scorn.

“My son,” he said. “My precious son, Frankie.”

Frankie didn’t answer. As he moved toward the old man slowly, smiling faintly, the pain of the smile on his mangled lips was a pale reflection of the dull pain in his heart. He had almost closed the distance between them before the old man’s gin-soaked brain understood that Frankie was going to kill him. And he was too drunk now to defend himself, even against Frankie. The scorn faded from his eyes and terror flooded in, cold and incredulous.

“No, Frankie,” he whispered. “For God’s sake, no.”

Frankie still didn’t say anything, and the old man tried to back away, but by that time it was too late, and Frankie’s thumbs were buried in his throat. His tongue came out, his legs beat in a hellish threshing, and his fists battered wildly at Frankie’s face. But it did no good, for Frankie was feeling very strong. He was feeling stronger than he had ever felt in his life before. And good, too. A powerful, surging sense of well-being. A wild, singing exhilaration that increased in ratio to the pressure of his grip.

The old man had been dead for minutes when Frankie finally let him go. He slipped down to the floor in a limp huddle of old flesh and fabric, and Frankie stood looking down at him, the narcotic-like pleasure draining out of him and leaving him again with that odd, incongruous feeling of detachment.

He realized, of course, that the end was his as much as the old man’s. It was the end for both of them. Recalling the .38 revolver on a shelf in the closet, he considered for a moment the idea of suicide, but not very seriously. Not that he was repelled by the thought of death. It was just that he didn’t quite have the guts.

He supposed that he should call the police, and he went so far as to turn away toward the living room and the telephone. Then he stopped, struck by an idea that captured his fancy. He saw himself walking into the precinct station with the old man’s dead body in his arms. He heard himself saying quietly, “This is my father. I’ve just killed him.” Drab little Frankie, no-luck Frankie, having in the end his moment of dramatic ascendancy. It was a prospect that fed an old and functional hunger of his soul, and he turned back, looking at the body on the floor. Smiling dreamily with his thick lips, he felt within himself a rebirth of that singing exhilaration.

At the last moment, he found in himself a sick horror that made it impossible for him to bear excessive contact with the dead flesh, so he dressed the body, struggling with uncooperative arms and legs. After that, it was so easy. It was so crazy easy. If he’d given a damn, if he’d really been trying to get away with it, he could never have pulled it off in a million years.

With the old man dead in his arms, he walked out of the apartment and down the stairs and across the walk to the Plymouth at the curb. He opened the front door and put him in the seat and closed the door again. Then, standing there beside the car, he looked around and saw that there was no one in sight. So far as he knew, not a soul had seen him.

It was then that the enormity of the thing struck him, and he began to laugh softly, hysteria threading the laughter. No-luck Frankie doing a thing like that. No-luck Frankie himself just walking out of an apartment house with a corpse in his arms and not a damned soul the wiser. You couldn’t get life any crazier than that. He kept on laughing, clutching the handle of the car door with one hand, his body shaking and his lips cracking open again to let a thin red line trace its way down his chin.

After a while, he choked off the laughter on a series of throaty little gasps that tore painfully at his throat. Lighting a cigarette, he went around the car and got in beside the old man on the driver’s side.

He drove at a moderate rate of speed, savoring morbidly the approach to his big scene. Now, in the process of execution, the drama of it gained even more in its appeal to him. It gave him a kind of satisfaction he had never known.

He was driving east on Mason Street. The side streets on the south descended to their intersections on forty-five-degree grades. Possessing the right-of-way, he crossed the intersections without looking, absorbed in his thoughts. For that reason, he neither saw nor heard the transport van until it was too late. At the last instant, he heard the shrill screaming of rubber on concrete and looked up and right to see the tremendous steel monster roaring down upon him.

His own scream cut across the complaint of giant tires, and he hurled himself away reflexively, striking the door with a shoulder and clawing at the handle. The door burst open at the precise instant of impact, and he was catapulted through the air like a flapping doll. Striking the pavement, he rolled over and over, protecting his head with his arms instinctively. The overwhelming crash of the Plymouth crumpling under the van was modified in his ears by the fading of consciousness.

On his back, he lay quietly and was aware of smaller sounds — distant screams, pounding feet, horrified voices, and, after a bit, the far away whine of sirens growing steadily nearer and louder.

Someone knelt beside him, felt his pulse, said in manifest incredulity, “This guy’s hardly scratched. It’s a God-damned miracle.”

A voice, more distant, rising on the threat of hysteria, “Christ! This one’s hamburger. Nothing but hamburger.”

And he continued to lie there in the screaming night with the laughter coming back and the wild wonder growing. What was it? What in God’s name was it? A guy who’d started and ended with a sour bastard of an old man and never any luck between. A guy who’d had it all, and most of it bad. A guy like that getting, all of a sudden, two fantastic breaks you wouldn’t have believed could happen. Walking out of a house with a body in his arms, scot-free and away. Surviving with no more than a few bruises a smash-up that should have smeared him for keeps. Maybe it was because he’d quit caring. Maybe the tide turns when you no longer give a damn.

Then, in a sudden comprehensive flash, the full significance of the situation struck him. Hamburger, someone had said. Nothing but hamburger. Thanks to the cock-eyed collaboration of the gods and a truck driver, he had disposed of the old man in a manner above suspicion. He lay on the pavement with the wonder of it still growing and growing, and his insides shook with delirious internal laughter.

In time, he rode a litter to an ambulance, and the ambulance to a hospital. He slept like a child in antiseptic cleanliness between cool sheets, and in the morning he had pictures taken of his head. Twenty-four hours later he was told that there was no concussion, and released. With the most sympathetic cooperation of officials, he collected the old man at the morgue and transferred him to a crematory.

When he left the crematory, he took the old man with him in an urn. In the apartment, he set the urn on a table in the living room and stood looking at it. He had developed for the old man, since the smash-up, a feeling of warm affection. In his heart there was no hard feeling, no lingering animosity. He found his parent in his present state, a handful of ashes, considerably more lovable than he had ever found him before. Besides, he had brought Frankie luck. In the end, in shame and violence and blood, he had brought him the luck he had never had.

Putting the old man away on a shelf in the closet, Frankie checked his finances and found that he could assemble forty dollars. He fingered the green stuff and considered possibilities. Eagerness to ride his luck had assumed the force of compulsion. In the saddle, he left the apartment and went over to Nick Loemke’s bar on Market Street.

He found Nick in a lull, polishing glass behind the mahogany. Nick examined him sleepily and made a swipe at the bar with his towel.

“What’s on your mind, Frankie?”

“Double shot of rye,” Frankie said.

His lips and gums were still a little raw, so he took it easy with the rye, tossing it in short swallows on the back of his tongue.

“Where’s Joe Tonty anchored this week?” he asked.

“What the hell do you care, Frankie? You can’t afford to operate in that class.”

“You never know. You never know until you try.”

Frankie finished his rye and spun the glass off his fingertips across the bar. It hit the trough on the inside edge and hopped up into the air. Nick had to grab it in a hurry to keep it from going off onto the floor. He glared at Frankie and doused the glass in the antiseptic solution under the bar.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Frankie? You lost your marbles?”

“Okay, okay,” Frankie said. “I ask for information and you give me lip. You going to tell me where Tonty’s anchored, or aren’t you?”

Nick shrugged. “All right, sucker. It’s your lettuce. Over on Third Street. Upstairs over the old Bonfile garage.”

Frankie dropped a skin on the bar and went out. Between Third and Fourth, he navigated a narrow, cluttered alley to the rear of the Bonfile garage and climbed a flight of iron, exterior stairs to a plank door that was locked. He pounded on the door with the meaty heel of his fist and got the response of a crack with an eye and a voice behind it.

The voice said, “Hello, Frankie. What the hell you doing here?”

“This where Tonty’s anchored?”

“That’s right.”

“Then what the hell you think I’m doing here? You want me to spell it out for you?”

The crack widened to reveal a flat face split in a grin between thick ears. “My, my. We’re riding high tonight, ain’t we?”

“You want my money or not?”

The crack spread still wider, and the grinning gorilla shuffled back out of it. “Sure, Frankie, sure. Every little bit helps.”

Frankie went in past the gorilla and down the long cement-floored room to the craps table. It was still early, and the big stuff wasn’t moving yet. Just right for forty bucks. Or thirty-nine, deducting a double shot.

Frankie got his belly against the edge of the table and laid a fast side bet that the point would come.

It came.

He laid three more in a hurry, betting the accumulation and mixing them pro and con without thinking much about it.

The points came or not, just as Frankie bet them.

When the dice came around to him, he was fat, and he laid the bundle. He tossed a seven, made his point twice, and tossed another seven, letting the bundle grow. Then, playing a hunch without benefit of thought, he drew most of the bundle off the table.

He crapped out and passed the dice.

Across the table, Joe Tonty’s face was a slab of gray rock. His eyes flicked over Frankie, and his shoulders twitched in a shrug.

“Your luck’s running, Frankie. You better ride it.”

“Sure,” Frankie said. “I’ll ride.”

It kept running for two hours, and Frankie rode it all the way. When he finally had a sudden flat feeling, a kind of interior collapse, he pulled out. Not that he felt his luck had quit running for keeps. Just resting. Just taking a breather. He descended the iron steps into the alley and crossed over to Market for a nightcap at Nick’s. A little later, in the living room of the apartment, he counted eight grand. It was hard to believe, little Frankie with eight big grand all at once and all his own. Not even any withholding tax.

He was shaken again by the silent delirium that was becoming an integral element of his chronic mood, and he went over to the closet and opened the door, looking up at the old man in his urn.

“Thanks, Pop,” he said. “Thanks.”

He slept soundly and got up about noon. After a hearty lunch, he went to the track with the eight grand in his pocket. He was in time for the second race, and he checked the entries. But he didn’t feel anything, so he let it go.

Checking the entries in the third, he still didn’t get any nudge. Something seemed to be getting in the way, coming between him and his luck. Maybe, he realized suddenly, it was the warm pressure of a long flank against his.

He turned, looking into brown eyes that were as warm and the touch of flank. Under the eyes there was a flash of white in a margin of red, and above them, a heavy sheen of pale yellow with streaks of off-white running through it. At first, Frankie thought she’d just been sloppy with a dye job, but then he saw that the two-toned effect was natural.

“Crowded, isn’t it?” she said.

Frankie grinned. “I like crowds.”

He was trying to think of what the hair reminded him of when he got the nudge. His eyes popped down to the program in his hands and back up to the dame. Inside, he’d gone breathless and tense, the way a guy does when he’s on the verge of something big.

“What’s your name, baby?”

The red and white smile flashed again. “Call me Taffy. Because of my hair, you see.”

He saw, all right. He saw a hell of a lot more than she thought he did. He saw number four in the third, and the name was Taffy Candy. One would bring ten if Taffy won, and even Frankie, who was no mental giant, could add another cipher to eight thousand and read the result.

Don’t give yourself time to think, that was the trick. If you start thinking, you start figuring odds and consequences, and you’re a dead duck. He stood up and slapped the program against his leg.

“Hold a spot for me, baby. If I’m on the beam, it’ll be a big day for you and me and a horse.”

He hit the window just before closing time and laid the eight grand on Taffy’s nose. At the rail of the track, he watched the horses run, and he wasn’t surprised, not even excited, when Taffy came in by the nose that had his eight grand on it. It was astonishing how quickly he was becoming accustomed to good fortune. He was already anticipating the breaks as if he’d had them forever. As if they were a natural right.

Like that girl in the stands, for instance. The girl who called herself Taffy. Standing there by the rail, he thought with glandular stirrings of the warm pressure of flank, the strangely alluring two-toned pastel hair, the brown eyes and scarlet smile. A few days ago, he wouldn’t have given himself a chance with a dame like that. He’d have taken it out in thinking. But now it was different. Luck and a few grand made a hell of a difference. The difference between thinking and acting.

With eight times ten in his pocket, he went back to the stands. Climbing up to her level with his eyes full of nylon, he grinned and said, “We all came in, baby, you and me and the horse. Let’s move out of here.”

She strained a mocking look through incredible lashes. “I’ve already got a date, honey. I’m supposed to meet a guy here.”

“To hell with him.”

Her eyebrows arched their plucked backs, and a practiced tease showed through the lashes. “What makes you think I’d just walk off with you, mister?”

Frankie dug into his pocket for enough green to make an impression. The bills were crisp. They made small ticking sounds when he flipped them with a thumb nail.

“This, maybe,” he said.

She eyed the persuasion and stood up. “That’s good thinking, honey,” she said.

A long time and a lot of places later, Frankie awoke to the gray light that filtered into his shabby apartment. It was depressing, he thought, to awake in a dump like this. It was something that had to be changed.

“Look, baby,” he said. “Today we shop for another place. A big place uptown. Carpets up to your knees, foam rubber stuff, the works. How about it, baby?”

Beside him, Taffy pressed closer, her lips moving against his naked shoulder with a sleepy animal purr of contentment.

So that day they rented the uptown place, and moved in, and a couple months later Frankie bought the Circle Club.

The club was a nice little spot tucked into a so-so block just outside the perimeter of the big-time glitter area. It was a good location for a brisk trade with the right guy handling it. The current owner was being pressed for the payment of debts by parties who didn’t like waiting, and Frankie bought him out for a song.

It was a swell break. Just one more in a long line. Frankie shot a wad on fancy trimmings, and booked a combination that could really jump. With the combo there was a sleek canary who had something for the eyes as well as the ears. The food and the liquor were fair, which is all anyone expects in a night spot, and up to the time of Linda Lee, business was good.

After Linda Lee, business was more than good. It was booming. The word always goes out on a gal like Linda. The guys come in with their dames, and after they’ve had the quota of looking that the tariff buys, they go someplace and turn off the lights and pretend that the dames are Linda.

Linda Lee wasn’t her real name, of course, but it suited her looks and her business. Ostensibly, the business was dancing. Actually, it was taking off her clothes. In Linda’s case, that was sufficient. As for the looks, they were Linda’s, and they were something. Dusky skin and eyes on the slant. Black hair with blue highlights, soft and shining, brushing her shoulders and slashing across her forehead in bangs above perfect unplucked brows. A lithe, vibrant body with an upswept effect that a guy couldn’t believe from seeing and so had to keep coming back for another look to convince himself.

She sent Frankie. At first, the day she came into his office at the Circle Club looking for a job, he didn’t see anything but a looker in a town that was littered with them. That was when she still had her clothes on.

He rocked back in his swivel and stared across his desk at her through the thin, lifting smoke from his cigarette.

“You a dancer, you say?”

“Yes.”

“A good one.”

“Not very.”

That surprised Frankie. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and let his eyes make a brief tour of her points of interest.

“No? What else you got that a guy would pay to see?”

She showed him what she had. Frankie sat there watching her emerge slowly from her clothes, and the small office got steadily smaller, so hot that it was almost suffocating. Frankie’s knitted tie was hemp instead of silk, and the knot was a hangman’s knot, cutting deeply into his throat until he was breathing in labored gasps. The palms of his hands dripped salty water. His whole body was wet with sweat.

When he was able to speak, he said, “Who the hell’s going to care about the dancing? Can you start tonight?”

She could and did. And so did Frankie. For a guy with a temperature as high as his, he played it pretty cool. He kept the pressure on her, all right, but he didn’t force it. Not that he was too good for it. It just wasn’t practical. The threat of being fired doesn’t mean much to a gal with a dozen other places to go. By the time Frankie was desperate enough for threats, he was having to raise her pay every second week to hang on to her.

She liked him, though. He knew damned well she liked him. He could tell by the way the heat came up in her slanted eyes when she looked at him. He could tell by the way her hands sometimes reached out for him, touching him lightly, straying with brief abandon. But she was like mercury. He couldn’t hold her when he reached back.

The night he decided to try mink, he came into the club late, just as Linda was moving onto the small circular floor in a blue spot. He stood for a minute against the wall, holding the long cardboard box under his arm, watching the emerging dusky body, his pulse matching the tropical tempo of drums in the darkness. Before the act was over, he moved on around the edge of the floor and back to the door of Linda’s room.

Inside, he lay the box on the dressing table and sat down. Waiting, he could hear faintly the crescendo of drums and muted brass that indicated Linda’s exit. The sound of her footsteps in the hall was lost in the surge of applause that continued long after she had left the floor.

She closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, head back and eyes shining, her breasts rising and falling in deep, rhythmic breathing. Light and shadow stressed the convexities and hollows of her body.

“Hello, Frankie,” she said. “Nice surprise.”

He stood up, pulses hammering. “Nicer than you think, baby. I’ve brought you something.”

She saw the box behind him on the dressing table and moved toward it, flat muscles rippling with silken smoothness beneath dusky skin. Her exclamation was like a delighted child’s.

“Tell me what it is.”

“Open it, baby.”

Her fingers worked deftly at the knot of the cord, lifted the top of the box away. Without speaking, she shook out the luxurious fur coat, slipped into it and hugged it around her body. She stood entranced, her back to Frankie, looking at her reflection in the dim depths of the mirror.

Closing in behind her, he took her shoulders in his hands. Capturing the hands in hers, she pulled them around her body and under the coat. Her head fell back onto his shoulder. Her breath sighed through parted lips. He could feel in his hands the vibrations of her shivering flesh.

She said sleepily, “You’re a sweet guy, Frankie. A lucky guy, too. You’re going places. Too bad I can’t go along.”

“Why not, baby? Why not go along?”

Her head rolled on his shoulder, her lips burning his neck. “Look, Frankie. When I go for a ride, I go first-class. No cheap tourist accommodations for Linda.”

“I don’t get you, baby. You call mink cheap?”

“It’s not the mink. It’s being second. It’s the idea of taking what’s left over.”

“You mean Taffy?”

She closed her eyes and said nothing, and Frankie laughed softly. “Taffy’s expendable, baby. Strictly expendable.”

“Just like that? Maybe she won’t let go.”

“How the hell can she help it?”

“She’s legal. That always helps.”

“Married? You think Taffy and I are married?” He laughed again, his shoulders shaking with it. “Taffy and I are temporary, baby. I never figure it any other way. Nothing on paper. All off the record. We last just as long as I want us to.”

She twisted against him, her arms coming up around his neck. Her breath was in his mouth.

“How long, Frankie? How long do you want?”

His hand moved down the soft curve of her spine, drawing her in. He said hoarsely, “As far as Taffy’s concerned, I quit wanting when I saw you. Tonight I’ll make it official.”

She put her mouth over his, and he felt the hot flicking of her tongue. Then she pushed away violently, staggering back against the dressing table. The mink hung open from her shoulders.

“Afterward, Frankie,” she whispered. “Afterward.”

He stood there blind, everything dissolved in shimmering waves of heat. At last, sight returning, he laughed shakily and moved to the door. Hand on the knob, he looked back at her.

“Like you say, baby — afterward.”

He went out into the hall and through the rear door into the alley. There was a small area back there in which he kept his convertible Caddy tucked away. Long, sleek, ice-blue and glittering chrome. A long way from the old Plymouth.

Behind the wheel, sending the big machine singing through the streets, he felt the tremendous uplift that comes to a man who approaches a crisis with assurance of triumph. His emotional drive was in harmony with the leashed power of the Caddy’s throbbing engine. Wearing his new personality, he could hardly remember the old Frankie. It was impossible to believe that he had once, not long ago, been driven by shame to a longing for death. Life was good. All it required was luck and guts. With luck and guts, a guy could do anything. A guy could live forever.

At the uptown apartment house, he ascended in the swift, whispering elevator and let himself into his living room with the key he carried. The living room itself was dark, but light sliced into the darkness from the partially open door of the bedroom. Silently, he crossed the carpet that wasn’t actually quite up to his knees and pushed the bedroom door all the way open.

Taffy was reading in bed. Her sheer nylon gown kept nothing hidden, but what it showed was nothing Frankie hadn’t seen before, and he was tired of it. He stood for a moment looking at her, wondering what would be the best way to do it. The direct way, he decided. The tough way. Get it over with, and to hell with it.

From the bed, Taffy said, “Hi, honey. You’re early tonight.”

Without answering, Frankie walked over to the closet and slammed back one of the sliding panels. He dragged a cowhide overnight bag off a shelf and carried it to the bed. Snapping the locks, he spread the bag open.

Taffy sat up straighter against her silk pillows, two small spots of color burning suddenly over her cheek bones. “What’s up, Frankie? You going someplace?”

He went to a chest of drawers, returned with pajamas and a clean shirt. “That ought to be obvious. As a matter of fact, I’m going to a hotel.”

“Why, Frankie? What’s the idea?”

He looked down at her, feeling the strong emotional drive. “The idea is that we’re through, baby. Finished. I’m moving out.”

Her breath whistled in a sharp sucking inhalation, and she swung out of bed in a fragile nylon mist. Her hands clutched at him.

“No, Frankie! Not like this. Not after all the luck I’ve brought you.”

He laughed brutally, remembering the old man. “It wasn’t you who brought me luck, baby. It was someone else. That’s something you’ll never know anything about.”

He turned, heading for the chest again, and she grabbed his arm, jerking. He spun with the force of the jerk, smashing his backhand across her mouth. She staggered off until the underside of her knees caught on the bed and held her steady. A bright drop of blood formed on her lower lip and dropped onto her chin. A whimper of pain crawled out of her throat.

“Why, Frankie? Just tell me why.”

He shrugged. “A guy grows. A guy goes on to something better. That’s just the way it is, baby.”

“It’s more than that. It’s a lot bigger than that. You think I’ve been two-timing you, Frankie?”

He repeated his brutal laugh. “Two-timing me? I’ll tell you something, baby. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were sleeping with every punk in town. That’s how much I care.” He paused, savoring sadism, finding it pleasant. “You want it straight, baby? It’s just that I’m sick of you. I’m sick to my guts with the sight of you. That clear enough?”

She came back to him, slowly, lifting her arms like a supplicant. He waited until she was close enough, then he hit her across the mouth again.

Turning his back, he returned to the chest and got the rest of the articles he needed. Just a few things. Enough for the night and tomorrow. In the morning he’d send someone around to clean things out.

At the bed, he tossed the stuff into the overnight bag and snapped it shut.

Over his shoulder, he said, “The rent’s paid to the end of the month. After that, you better look for another place to live.”

She didn’t respond, and remembering his tooth brush, he went into the bathroom for it. When he came out, she was standing there with a .38 in her hand. It was the same .38 he’d once considered killing himself with. That had been the old Frankie, of course.

Not the new Frankie. Death was no consideration in the life of the new Frankie.

“You rotten son of a bitch,” she said.

He laughed aloud and started for her, and he just couldn’t believe it when the slug slammed into his shoulder.

He looked down in amazement at the place where the crimson began to seep, and his incredulous eyes raised just in time to receive the second slug squarely between them.

And, like the night the old man died, it was funny. In the last split second of sight, it wasn’t Taffy standing there with the gun at all. It was the old man again.

The old man with a memory like an elephant.

The old man who always waited until it really hurt.

Insurance (The Long Wait)

Originally published in Menace, January 1955

He rented this shack down the beach, and he lived there over a year. Very few people paid any attention to him. He told the man who rented him the shack that he was a writer looking for seclusion, and the word got around. He’d grown a beard for the part, and he’d even bought a second-hand typewriter to substantiate it.

The first six months were easy, because he didn’t expect anything to happen then. Afterward, it kept getting harder. Tension mounted as the days passed, and he walked down the beach to the town to meet all ships from the States. When a year had elapsed, he began to think that Ella was never coming, and he lay on the beach during the days and in the shack at night, cursing himself for a fool for ever having believed that she would follow him according to their plan, and then she finally came. It was exactly one year, six weeks and three days from the time of his own arrival.

She came in from the ship and walked right past him on the pier. He could have reached out and touched her, and he wanted like hell to do it, but he didn’t. Her eyes flicked over him and away without any signs of recognition, and he turned and followed her up across the beach to the hotel. She was wearing a white sharkskin dress that fit her like a glove, and the bright light of the sun made a pale fire of her hair. He’d never been so glad to see anyone in his life. It’s hard to keep an image clear and focused in the mind, and even in so little time he’d forgotten how beautiful she was. His stomach was like a clenched fist all the way to the hotel.

In the lobby, she registered and went up in the elevator, and he crossed over into the bar and crawled onto a stool. He ordered a daiquiri and sat there sipping it, the taste and touch of the rum and citrus juices cold and tart on his tongue. During the past year, he hadn’t thought much about the murder itself, only about whether Ella would ever come or not, but now, waiting for her in the final minutes of his waiting, it came back into his mind in detail.

They had this place outside the city that Ella had inherited. It was really a farm, but they didn’t do any farming. Not Ella and him. They liked their green stuff to come faster and easier than you could get it out of the ground. They had a few grand, and they wondered how to make it grow, and finally they decided it would be a good thing to invest it in an insurance policy on a dead man. Double indemnity, of course. They paid for twenty-five and planned to collect fifty. On him. He was the dead man. The insurance outfit didn’t know that, of course. They had him examined, and the doctor signed a paper that said he was alive. Only Ella and he knew that he wasn’t. For practical purposes, that is.

He kept looking for a guy who would do. He wanted someone in a hurry, because there wasn’t any sense in sinking too much in premiums. Finally, the guy just stumbled into the setup and practically asked to be used. He was in the city when this guy came, and when he got back that evening, a cold evening in January, Ella met him out by the barn where he’d put the car.

“He’s here,” she said. “A young guy on the tramp. He asked for food and he wants to sleep in the barn. About your height and weight and age. He’s perfect.”

“How about his teeth?”

“No work on them at all. Just like yours. I told him you were in town to the dentist, and he said he’d been lucky. Said he’d never been to a dentist in his life.”

“Neither have I. You’re smart, honey. Beautiful and smart. Where is this guy?”

“In the kitchen eating.”

“Okay. I’ll go look at him.”

She moved in against him, and the breath of her whisper was hot on his face. “Tonight, Steve. Make it tonight.”

They lost time, the way they always lost time when she came at him like that, but after a while he went up to the house and into the kitchen where the young drifter was sitting.

Like Ella said, he was perfect. Steve told him it was okay to sleep in the barn, and when he’d finished eating, he took him down there. Inside the barn, in the darkness, it was easy to slip a leather strap around the drifter’s neck, but it was a lot harder to hang on when the guy understood what he’d walked into. He threshed like a maniac and tried to twist around to get at Steve with his hands, but he couldn’t keep it up long with the strap cutting into his throat, and pretty soon he was dead.

Steve improvised some braces and managed to prop the body upright in the opening of the stall where Reuben was kept. Reuben was a horse, a vicious devil, a fine killer. Steve went into the adjoining stall and, reaching over the partition, rammed him brutally in the flank with the handle of a fork. The horse lashed out with his hind legs, and one hoof caught the body of the drifter in the chest. The body was hurtled all the way across the central aisle of the barn. It smashed against the planking on the other side and bounced half way back before it hit the ground. Steve left it lying there and returned to the house.

Ella was waiting in the kitchen. She had a bag already packed and sitting on the linoleum by the door. Her cheeks were hot, and her eyes were bright with excitement. She looked as if she were burning up inside with a high fever. It made her more beautiful than ever. God, she was beautiful.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s done.”

“You’d better get away, Steve. You’d better start the fire and leave.”

He took her by the shoulders and let his hands slip in upon her throat. “Don’t forget to come, honey. And just don’t forget to come.”

“I’ll come, Steve. You know I’ll come. Just as soon as everything’s settled.”

“Sure, honey, I know. But it’ll be a long time. A long, long time. Can’t you tell a guy good-by?”

So they said good-by in a way he thought would last him through all the time of waiting, and then he took the bag she’d packed for him and went back down to the barn. He scattered some kerosene around, putting quite a bit on the drifter’s body, and then lit a lantern. He smashed the lantern on the planking where the body had struck and let it fall. Flames leaped up like spits of hell. He went out to the back side of the barn and ran with long, regular strides down the cowpath to the pasture. Behind him, he could hear old Reuben raising hell, could hear the crashing of his hooves against the stall.

He ran through the pasture to the creek, and, walking then, he followed the creek a couple of miles to a three-lane highway. He caught a ride on a pickup truck into the city, and next day he caught a bus to another city, and not long after that he caught a boat to another country, and so here he was, one year, six weeks and three days later, sitting in a bar with a daiquiri in his hands and Ella upstairs and the long wait almost over.

In about half an hour, she came. He could see her enter the room behind him, growing larger in the mirror, and she crawled onto a stool with one empty between them. She ordered a daiquiri of her own, and he watched her from the corners of his eyes, all the details once more sharp and clear that had been blurred by waiting too long on a beach, the sleepy eyes and red, sulky mouth, the body that even touching hardly made credible, the long twin sheens of nylon crossed at the knees. He thought of the way they’d said good-by, and he began to think that it was time to say hello, and as he sat there thinking about it, his pulse accelerated, and his heart knocked painfully at his ribs.

After a while, a guy angling for a pickup, he turned on his stool and said, “May I buy you a drink?”

She glanced at him and smiled a little and shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?”

He shifted over onto the intervening empty and told the bartender

two more daiquiris. Understanding that business was going forward, the

bartender supplied them quickly and faded. He was a good bartender. A guy sensitive to a situation.

“It’s been a long time,” Steve said softly. “I thought you were never coming.”

“I almost missed you on the pier, darling. The beard makes you look older.”

“How did it go?”

“There was a hassle. An investigation. They thought it was funny, a guy walking in behind a vicious horse like that. They paid off, though. Double. Fifty grand.”

“Where’s the money?”

“Upstairs, darling. Hidden in my baggage in a way it could never be noticed. Up there waiting for us, like we’ve been waiting for each other. When the three of us get together, that’s when we start living.”

“That’s now, baby. There’s you and me and the money and nothing left between us.”

She lifted the daiquiri to her lips and her eyes to the mirror, and it was then he got the feel of something wrong. An unease in her manner, an uncertainty in her voice. A last remnant of left-over fear.

“I’m worried,” she said. “I’m worried to hell.”

“What’s the matter?”

She lowered her glass to the bar and sat looking down into it, twisting it slowly by the stem between the scarlet tips of her fingers. “A man. He came down on the boat with me. I’m positive he’s an insurance dick.”

“You mean he’s following you?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think he’s a dick?”

“I saw him once before. I’m sure he’s the one. There was another dick out to the farm on the investigation. Later, in town, I happened to see him with this guy who came down on the boat. They were having some beers in a bar. I followed them when they left, and they went to the offices of the insurance company. I know damn well he’s a dick, Steve. I’ll swear he’s the same guy.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Look in the mirror, you can see for yourself. He’s at a table behind us. Tall. Black hair. Wearing a white suit.”

Steve lifted his eyes and sorted the dick out. He was concentrating on his drink, something in a tall glass with a peel curled over the edge, but Steve had the strange feeling that he was a guy trying too hard not to look at someone he wanted like hell to look at. A handsome guy. A tall, smooth, easy-to-look-at guy. Inside, Steve felt shrunken and icy cold, deadly with the pointed, purposeful deadliness of someone who’s waited too long.

“He shouldn’t have followed you,” he said. “He never should have come.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to kill him, of course. I’ll kill him fast, and we’ll move out of here.”

“No!” Her whisper possessed a desperate urgency. “No, Steve!”

“Why not? We killed once. This time it’ll be easier.”

“That’s just the point. Each time it’ll be easier. We can’t go on killing forever.”

“Who said forever? Just twice. After this one, nobody’ll ever find us.”

“Look, Steve. There’s another way. A better way. Give me a chance to convince you.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Just as soon as I can get to you after dark.”

He thought about the two of them on the dark beach after so long a time, and again his pulse was an acute and throbbing pain. “Can you shake the dick?”

“Leave it to me.”

“Okay. I’ve got a shack down the beach. There’s an outcropping of rock, jutting into the sea. The shack’s the first one beyond it.”

“I’ll be there, darling. Wait for me. Wait just a little bit longer.”

“Okay. For you and the money. Don’t forget to bring it with you.”

“I’ll bring it.”

He slipped off the stool and smiled at her like a guy who’d invested a drink in a project he intended to finish later. Without looking at the black-haired man in the white suit, he went out of the bar and the hotel and back down the beach beyond the outcropping of rock to the shack. He lay on his back in the sand with one arm bent up over his eyes to reinforce the thin, inadequate defense of his lids against the glaring white light, and all the tension that had mounted within him during the past half year seemed to dissolve and disappear, leaving his body relaxed and his mind functioning with a kind of dispassionate clarity. He lay without moving for a long time, until at last he became aware of a sudden chill in the air, and he opened his eyes to see the sun plunging into the sea. Almost before he could get up and go into the shack, the black, obliterating night had fallen with incredible suddenness and silence.

Inside the shack, he lit an oil lamp, turning the wick low. From his bag under the cot he slept on, he got a .38 revolver. He slipped the revolver under his belt, beneath the loose tail of his shirt, and sat down on the cot to wait some more. From his position, he could look through the open door of the shack and down across the beach at an angle to the mass of rock lapped by the sea. Once, after about half an hour, he got up and found a bottle and took a long pull from the neck. Then he resumed his seat on the cot and didn’t move again until, such a long time later that he’d become unable even to estimate the time, he saw Ella coming up across the sand from the rocks in the first light of the moon.

He stood up to meet her, and regret twisted within him like a sharp knife that there would be no time to say hello as they had said good-by. She came in through the door and into his arms, and the weight of her body against his pressed the .38 into his flesh until it felt like a belly cramp.

She felt the steel in her own flesh and arched back in his arms. “A gun, Steve? Why?”

He released her with one arm and took the gun out of his belt. He lifted it. “For you, honey. For you and your black-haired lover.”

The hot blood drained out of her face, and the smoke cleared from her eyes on a bitter wind of fear. She put a palm flat against his chest and tried to push away, but he held her trapped tightly against him with one arm.

“What’s the matter with you, Steve? You gone crazy?”

He laughed softly. “Maybe a guy who waits too long develops a lot of peculiar twists you could call crazy. One thing, he gets sensitive. He develops what the skull-shrinkers call ideas of reference. Everything seems to point at him. Everything has significance. Most of all, he doesn’t believe in coincidence.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steve. I swear to God.”

“Don’t you, honey? I’m talking about your phony insurance dick. I’m talking about your just happening to see him in town. About your just happening to tail him right to the insurance company’s offices. About how he just happens to be a tall, sleek guy. Just the kind of guy you’d like to buy with a hunk of fifty grand. But more than anything else, I’m talking about how you don’t want me to kill him. Don’t you remember me, honey? I’m the guy who killed for you once before. I’m the guy who remembers how you could hardly wait until I got the job done. Since when have you become so sensitive?”

“You are crazy, Steve!” She leaned against him again, letting her lips brush his in the formation of her words. “I’m here, aren’t I? Why would I have come, if I’d wanted to double-cross you? All I had wanted to do was stay away.”

He laughed again, feeling the soft, wet stirring of her lips, the stronger stirring inside of an almost sickening desire to believe her. “Why? I’ll tell you why, honey. Because you’re a gal who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of her life expecting someone she didn’t want to see. Because you knew damn well I’d come back eventually and find you. The only way to prevent that was to come down here to kill me. You and lover-boy.”

A violent tremor shook her flesh, and she beat his chest softly with a clenched fist. “No, Steve. It isn’t that way. For God’s sake, you’ve got to believe me! Would I have brought the money? Would I have brought it just the way you told me to?”

“Where is it? I told you to bring it here.”

“It’s in a belt around my waist, Steve. Fifty thousand-dollar bills, minus two for expenses. Let me go, I’ll show you.”

He released her and stepped back. “All right. Show me.”

She lifted her skirt and removed the belt. It was thin, flat, made of water-proof silk. She handed it to him, and he unzipped it and counted the forty-eight crisp pieces of paper. He stuffed the belt and the paper into the front of his shirt, tucking the loose tail into his trousers. Color had returned to her face in bright spots high on the cheek bones. Her breasts rose high and fell and rose again. Her tongue slipped out to dampen her dry lips.

“Now do you believe me? Now can you show a gal how you missed her?”

She came to him, but he held her off by the shoulders, shaking his head. “A guy who’s waited as long as I have can wait a little longer. This time we’ll do it together, honey. Down by the rocks.”

She shrugged angrily, the color burning hotter on her cheeks, and turned away and out the door into the sand. He followed, the gun held loosely at his side. Steps apart, they crossed the beach in thin moonlight and vanished into the cast shadow of the outcropping. Waiting there in darkness that had acquired a penetrating chill, the ancient rock towering above him, he could dimly see her, could smell her, could hear the heavy whisper of her breath pass in and out between her lips, and he prayed to whatever dark gods listen to prayers of ones like him that the black-haired man in the white suit would not come.

But he did. And soon. He came swiftly and silently down the beach, and his gun was already in his hand. When he came abreast, about five yards inland, Steve lifted his .38 and fired. The sound crashed against the rock and was thrown out across the sand at the man who had stopped suddenly, erect, to twist slowly in the direction of his death. The .38 crashed and jumped a second time, and the man stepped back, swayed, and sank to his hands and knees. He remained in that position for a moment, head hanging, and then very slowly, with tremendous effort, he lifted his head until his face was faintly visible in the moonlight, and his voice, distorted by anguish, carried clearly across the sand to the rocks.

“Ella,” he said. “Help me, Ella, for Christ’s sake...”

His elbows collapsed, and he lay down soundlessly in the sand, and it was at that moment, exposed by his words, that Ella took a deadly toy from between her breasts and shot Steve in the belly. She shot him three times and ran. He stood frozen in a kind of terrible shock, the .38 fallen to the sand and his arms outspread and his fingers clawing for support at the rock behind him. Watching her run and fall sprawling and rise to run again, he slipped down against the rock, dimly aware of jagged edges tearing at his flesh. He sat for a few seconds in the sand, his chin resting on his chest, then he fell over sideways and lay still.

He lay there and felt the red life run out of him in three thin streams, but he would not die. He was conscious all the time of the silk belt and the crisp paper inside his shirt. With a final deadly tenacity given to him by the certainty of death, he thought only of the money that would bring her back, and he would not die.

He closed his eyes to rest their heavy lids and almost never opened them again, almost missed her coming after all.

But then, prompted by a whisper of sand or a scent or a touch, he forced them open to see her bending over between him and the moon. She moved in a thick swimming mist of darkening red, and he reached up swiftly into the mist with a desperate expenditure of his remaining strength to jerk her down upon his body.

He was never aware of her scream or her frantic threshing and was even denied the last slight satisfaction of feeling the frail bones of her throat break beneath his thumbs.

May I Come In?

Originally published in Manhunt, January 1955

The night was hot and humid. I lay in my room on a sheet sodden with the seepage from my pores, and suspended above me in the dark like a design in ectoplasm was the face of the man named Marilla, and the hate within me stirred and flowed and seeped with the sweat from my pores, and the color of my hate was yellow.

I got off the bed and walked on bare feet across the warm floor to the window, but there was no air moving at the window or outside the window, and the adherent heat had saturated my flesh and soaked through my eyes into the cavity of my skull to lie like a thick, smothering fog over the contours of my brain. I could hear, across the narrow interval that separated houses, the whirr of blades beating the air, and because my eyes were like cat’s eyes, I could see behind the blades into the black, gasping room, and it was the bedroom of Mrs. Willkins, and she was lying nude on her bed under the contrived breeze, and her body was gross and ugly with flesh loose on its bones, and I hated her, just as I hated the ectoplasmic face of the man named Marilla, with all the force of my yellow hate.

Turning away from the window, I found in the darkness a pint of gin on a chest and poured two fingers into a tumbler. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the gin and then lay down again, and the face of Marilla was still suspended above me, and in a moment the face of Freda was there too, and I began to think deliberately about Marilla and Freda, and the reason I hated Marilla.

I stood with Freda in front of the shining glass window, and she pointed out the coat to me on the arrogant blonde dummy. I could see Freda’s reflected face in the glass from my angle of vision, and her lips were slightly open in excitement and desire, and I felt happy and a little sad at the same time to see her that way, because it wasn’t, after all, much of a coat, not mink or ermine or any kind of fur at all, but just a plain cloth coat that was a kind of pink color and looked like it would be as soft as down to the touch.

“It’s beautiful,” Freda said. “It’s, oh, so beautiful,” and I said, “You like it? You like to have it?” and she said, “Oh, yes,” in a kind of expiring, incredulous whisper that was like the expression of a child who just can’t believe the wonderful thing that’s about to happen.

We went into the store and up to the floor where the coats were sold, and Freda tried on the coat, turning around and around in front of the mirror and stroking the cloth as if it were a kitten and making a soft little purring sound as if she were the kitten she was stroking. I teased her a little, saying that, well, it was rather expensive and would raise hell with the budget, but I knew all the time that I was going to buy it for her, because she wanted it so much and because it made her look even more beautiful than before, and after a while I went up to the credit department and made arrangements for monthly payments, because I didn’t have the price. When I came back down, she was still standing in front of the mirror in the coat, and I said, “You going to wear it?” and she said, “Oh, yes, I’m going to wear it and sleep in it and never take it off,” and I kept remembering afterward that it wasn’t after all, so much of a coat, not fur or anything, but just pink cloth.

We went down in the elevator, and she clung to my arm and kissed me over and over with her eyes, and I thought it was the best buy I’d ever made and cheap at the price, even if I had had to arrange monthly payments. We went out onto the street through the revolving door, walking close together in the same section of the door because Freda wouldn’t let loose of my arm, and the street was bright and soft and cool with the cool, bright softness of April, and it was just the kind of day and street for a new pink coat. We walked down the street toward the drug store on the corner, and I was thinking that I’d take Freda into the store for some of the peppermint ice cream with chunks of stick peppermint in it that she liked so much, and it occurred to me that the ice cream was just about the color of the pink coat, and then there were a couple of explosions inside the drug store, and after a second or two a woman began to scream in a high, ragged voice that went on and on, and the door of the store flew open, and a man ran out with a gun in his hand, and the man was Marilla, the man they were later to call a psychopathic killer.

He ran toward us along the sidewalk waving the gun, and he ran with a queer, lurching gait, as if he were crippled, or one leg were shorter than the other, and as he ran he made a sound that was something like a whimper and something like a cry. Between us and him was a kid carrying a shoe shine box, and the kid stopped and stood stiffly with the box hanging at his side, and then the gun in Marilla’s hand began to explode again, and the kid set the box down on the sidewalk and fell over sideways across it. I stood looking at the kid, and I realized suddenly that Freda had let go of my arm, and I turned to see if she was still there, but she wasn’t, and I couldn’t see her anywhere. Marilla ran past me, and I could see directly into his big eyes that were like black puddles of liquid terror, and he pointed the gun at my face and pulled the trigger, and I could hear the dull click of the hammer on a dead shell. I could have tackled him and brought him down, but I didn’t, because just then I saw that Freda was lying on the sidewalk like the kid up ahead, but in a different position, on her back with the new coat spread open around her like something that had been put there in advance for her to lie on. I knelt down beside her on the sidewalk and lifted her head and began to say her name, and at first I thought she’d fainted, but then I saw the small black hole that was about three inches in a straight line below the hollow of her throat, and I knew that she was dead.

They caught Marilla in a blind alley. He was sitting in a corner with his knees drawn up and his head resting on his knees, and he was whimpering and crying, and his voice would rise now and then to a thin scream of terror, and the men who found him first almost beat him to death before the police came and took him away. Right after that, the next day or so, they began to say he was crazy, that he was just a crazy kid only twenty years old, and the psychiatrists had big words for the kind of craziness it was supposed to be, but I knew that nothing they could say would do him any good at all, because he had killed a man and a woman in the drug store and the shoe shine kid on the street, and above all he had killed Freda in her new pink coat.

They asked him why he had killed all those people, and they didn’t even make any distinction between Freda and the others, and he said he hadn’t hated any of them or anything like that, hadn’t even wanted to kill them at all, but had killed them anyhow because he’d been told time and again to do it and finally had to do as he was told. They asked him who had told him to kill the people, just any people, and he said it was a thin little man with a pointed nose and a pointed chin who wore yellow pointed shoes. The man had appeared in all sorts of odd places and told him to go out and kill some people.

It was part of the big lie, of course, that ridiculous part about the man coming and telling him to kill some people, it was part of the plan to keep him from paying for killing Freda, and anyone could see right through it, it was so transparent. You can buy some psychiatrist to verify something like that any time you’ve got the price, and I knew they’d hang him in spite of what any psychiatrist said, because God wanted him to hang just as much as I did, God and I hated him equally for what he’d done to Freda right when she was so happy.

I waited for them to try him, and finally they did, and I went and sat in the court room every day to watch him and to feel the yellow hate like pus inside me. He sat at the long table with the lawyers who defended him, and he always sat with his head bowed and his hands folded on top of the table in a posture of prayer, but once in a while he would look up briefly into the crowd, and the light of terror and inner cowering were there in his great liquid eyes, and I felt a fierce exaltation that he was suffering, and that the suffering he now felt was only the beginning of the suffering he would feel before he was through. He looked very small in the chair by the big table, hardly larger than a child, with narrow shoulders slumped forward and a slender neck supporting a head that was too big for his body, and the head looking even bigger than it really was because of the thick black shining curls that covered it. I kept watching him sit there like he was praying, and I kept thinking that he could pray all he wanted to, but God wouldn’t hear him, and that he could plead and lie and try all the tricks he could think of, but no one would believe him or pity him or do anything to help him, no one at all.

They put him on the stand at last to tell about the man who had come to tell him to kill, and he described the man again, just as he had to the psychiatrists, his pointed nose and pointed chin and yellow pointed shoes, and he spoke in a very soft voice that could barely be heard but contained all the time, somehow, the threat of rising abruptly to a shrill scream. It was all put on, part of the plan, but he was very clever, a great actor, and he told how the man had appeared the first time while he was standing on a bridge looking down at the water, and had sat down beside him another time in a movie theater, and had met him another time while he was walking along a path in the town park, and had then begun coming to his room late at night to knock softly on the door. No one was supposed to believe that the little man had actually come to him in those ways, or in any way at all, but everyone was supposed to believe that it had happened in his mind, that the little man was an hallucination of insanity, but I knew it hadn’t happened that way either, that the man hadn’t even appeared in Marilla’s mind, and that it was all a story made up to get him out of it. I knew they’d hang him, and I tried to feel within myself the way he’d feel while he was waiting, and walking out to the scaffold, and standing there in the last instant with the black hood over his head and the rope around his neck.

But in the end they didn’t hang him at all.

They let him out of it.

They said he wasn’t guilty because he wasn’t in his right mind and wasn’t responsible for his acts, and they sent him off somewhere to a place with cool white rooms and a cool green lawn and doctors to look after him and nurses to wait on him.

I thought a lot about the twelve people on the jury who let him out of it, and I began to hate them the same as Marilla, and I wished they were all dead, dead as Freda, but the more I thought about them the more they seemed like all other people, and after a long time I realized it was because they really were like all other people on earth. Freda was dead, and no one cared, all the people on earth had said it was all right because of a ridiculous story about a little man with a pointed nose and a pointed chin and yellow pointed shoes who had told a man named Marilla to kill her. Always I saw the face of Marilla and the face of Freda, and they seemed to get mixed up with other faces that I’d never seen before, and I wondered if I was insane myself, but I wasn’t, of course, any more than Marilla was.

And now I lay in my room in the hot and humid night, and across the interval between houses, behind the futile beating of blades, Mrs. Willkins’ gross body stirred in her black and gasping room.

And there was something else. Something new.

A man was walking the dark and airless streets of town beneath layers of lifeless leaves.

He walked with mincing steps, and he was far away in the beginning, when I first saw him, and I lay on my bed in my room and followed his progress with cat’s eyes through light and shadow across the pattern of the town. At times he was swallowed completely by darkness, and then no eyes could see him but mine, but the people who stirred in wakefulness in the houses he passed could hear the echo of his mincing steps, and he moved with surety of purpose and a pace that never varied through the silent, dappled streets until he came at last to the corner above my house and down the street to the house itself. Without moving from my bed, I could see him standing on the sidewalk below with his face lifted into the milky light of the moon, and then he came up across the porch into the house and up the stairs into the hall and stood outside my door.

I waited in the hot stillness, and after a while he knocked softly, and I got up in the dark, and my hand, swinging out, struck the tumbler on the table by the bed and knocked it to the floor with a sound of brittle thunder that rocked the room. I waited until the reverberations had diminished and died and the soft knock was repeated, and then I crossed to the door and opened it.

The warm fog inside my skull pressed closely on my brain, and though my head didn’t ache exactly, it felt very light and queer. The man in the hall looked at me and bowed in a peculiar, old-fashioned way from the waist and smiled politely.

“Excuse me for disturbing you at this hour,” he said, “but I must talk with you about a number of people. About Mrs. Willkins first of all, I think. May I come in?”

He was a little man with a long pointed nose and a pointed chin. He wore yellow pointed shoes.

I saw Marilla from my window. He was walking in the yard below with the same man in white who comes now and then to my room, and he sat for a while on a bench under a tree, and I could see him quite clearly. The queer thing is, there was no hate, no longer any hate, and I’m thinking that perhaps I will be allowed to walk in the yard soon, and that Marilla and I may meet and sit together under the tree and talk about these things that happened. It will be pleasant to talk with someone who knows and understands....

Homicide and Gentlemen

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1961

Lieutenant Joseph Marcus walked past the ninth hole, par-four, with a fine official disregard of the green. It wasn’t quite disregard, however, for there was in his performance a degree of deliberate malice that expressed itself by a digging-in of the heels and a scuffing of the toes. Lieutenant Marcus, who had been a poor boy and was still a poor man, felt an unreasonable animus for the game of golf and a modest contempt, in spite of certain famous devotees, for the folk who played it. He was by nature gentle and tolerant, though, and he was faintly ashamed of his feeling and its expression of petty vandalism.

With Sergeant Bobo Fuller at his side, although a half step to the rear, he descended from the green on a gentle slope and moved rapidly across clipped grass toward a place where the ground dipped suddenly to form a rather steep bank. Sergeant Fuller, whose name was really something besides Bobo that almost everyone had forgotten, did not lag the half step because he found it impossible to stay abreast. Neither did he lag as a pretty deference to rank. Sergeant Fuller did not give a damn about rank, to tell the truth. He didn’t give a damn about Lieutenant Marcus either, and that was why he maintained the half step interval. He considered Marcus a self-made snob who read books and put on airs, and the interval was subtle evidence of a dislike of which the sergeant was rather proud and the lieutenant was vaguely aware.

Going over the lip of the bank, Marcus dug in his heels again, this time with the perfectly valid purpose of retarding his descent. At the bottom he was on level ground that again tilted, after a bit, into a gentle slope. Fifty yards ahead was a small lake glittering in the morning sunlight. Between Marcus and the lake, somewhat nearer to him and almost in the shade of a distinguished and gnarled oak, was a group composed of four men and a boy. The boy was holding, in one hand, a fishing rod with a spinning reel attached; in the other, a small green tackle box. Two of the four men were uniformed policemen who had been dispatched from police headquarters to maintain the status quo for Marcus, who had not been on hand at the time, and a third was, as it turned out, a caretaker who had walked into a diversion on his way to work across the course. The fourth man was lying on his face on the grass, his head pointed in the direction of the bank behind Marcus, and Fuller, and he was, Marcus had been assured, dead. That was, in fact, why Marcus and Fuller were there. They were there because the man on the grass was dead in a manner and place considered suspicious by public authorities hired to consider such things, which included Marcus, who also secretly considered the whole development something of an imposition.

Speaking to the pair of policemen, with the air of abstraction that had contributed to his reputation for snobbishness, he knelt beside the body to make an examination that he felt certain would yield nothing of any particular significance. This pessimistic approach was natural to him, and he was always surprised when things turned out better than he had hoped or expected. Well, the man was dead, of course. He had been shot, Apparently in the heart, by what appeared to have been a small caliber gun. From the condition of the body, he judged that the shooting had occurred not many hours earlier, for rigor mortis was not advanced. These things were always hedged about by qualifications, however, and it was doubtful that the so-called estimate of the coroner, who was presumably on the way, would be much closer to the truth than Marcus’s guess. Sometime between was the way Marcus expressed it somewhat bitterly to himself. Between midnight, say, and dawn.

Still with the irrational feeling of being imposed upon, Marcus made other observations and guesses. Age, thirty to thirty-five. Height, about five-eleven. Weight, give or take ten pounds on either side of one-seventy. Hair, light brown and crew cut. Eyes, open and blind and blue. White shirt, blood stained. Narrow tie, striped with two shades of brown, and summer worsted trousers, also brown. Brown socks, brown shoes. Lying on the grass, about five paces away, a jacket to match the pants. In the right side pocket of the pants, coins amounting to the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents. Also a tiny gold pen knife. In the left hip pocket, buttoned in, a wallet. In the wallet, besides eighteen dollars in bills, several identifying items, including a driver’s license and a membership card in Blue Cross-Blue Shield. Well, Marcus thought, they won’t have to pay off on this one. According to both the license and the membership card, the dead man was someone named Alexander Gray. With all items officially appropriated and in his own jacket pocket, Marcus walked over to the brown jacket on the grass and found nothing in it. Nothing at all.

“Who found the body?” he asked of whoever wanted to answer.

“The kid found him,” one of the policemen said.

Marcus turned to the boy, about twelve from the looks of him, who still held the rod and reel and tackle box as if he feared that they, too, might be appropriated. Marcus had no such intention, of course, but he wished he could borrow them and spend the day using them instead of doing what he had to do. Marcus liked kids, but he seldom showed it. It was his misfortune that he seldom showed anything, and much of the little he did show was a kind of characteristic distortion of what he actually thought and felt.

“What’s your name, sonny?” he said.

“William Peyton Hausler,” the boy said.

It was obvious that he was stating his name fully in an attempt to secure a status, however limited by his minority, that would establish his innocence and insure the respectful treatment to which he was entitled.

“You live around here?”

“On the street over there, the other side of the golf course.” He gestured with the hand holding the rod and reel to indicate the direction.

“Looks like you’re going fishing.”

“Yes, sir. In the lake.”

“You fish here often?”

“Pretty often. The manager of the club said it was all right.”

“It doesn’t look like much of a lake. Any fish in it?”

“It’s stocked. Crappie and bass, mostly. Club members fish in it. I’m not a member — my dad isn’t — but the manager said it was all right for me to fish.”

“What time was it when you found the body?”

“I don’t know exactly. It hadn’t been light long. About six-thirty, I guess. I wanted to get to the lake early because the fish bite better then.”

“That’s what I hear. Early morning and late evening. What’d you do when you found the body?”

“Nothing much. I walked up close to it, and I spoke a couple of times to see if there’d be any answer, but there wasn’t, and I was pretty scared because I could tell something was wrong, and just then Mr. Tompkins came along.”

“You touch anything at all?”

“No, sir. Not a thing.”

“Who’s Mr. Tompkins?”

“This is him. He’s one of the caretakers.”

“Okay. Thanks, sonny. You better go and see if you can still catch some fish.”

The boy went on down the gentle slope to the little lake, and Marcus turned to Tompkins, who was a leathery-looking man who appeared to be in his sixties. He was dressed in faded twill pants and a blue work shirt of heavy material like the ones that Marcus had worn with roomy bib overalls as a kid.

“Is that right?” Marcus said. “What the kid told me?”

“I guess so. Far as I know. When I got here, he was just standing and staring at the body. He looked scared.”

“No wonder. Kids don’t find a body every day. What’d you do?”

“I looked at the body, not touching it, and I could see a little blood where it had seeped out in the grass. I told the kid to stay and watch things while I hustled up to the Club House to call the police.”

“The Club House open that early in the morning?”

“No. There’s a phone booth on the back terrace. I happened to have a dime.”

“Lucky you did. I usually don’t. After you called the police, did you come back here and wait?”

“That’s right. Just came back and waited with the kid and didn’t bother anything.”

“Good. You did just right. I don’t suppose you know this guy?”

“The dead man, you mean? I never saw him before.”

“All right. You might as well go on to work.” Marcus turned away to a uniform. “You go up to the Club House and bring the manager down here. You can tell him what’s happened if he’s curious.”

The caretaker and the policeman went off in different directions, one toward the Club House and the other, presumably, toward whatever building sheltered the equipment for taking care, and Marcus began to prowl slowly the area around the body. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just anything he could find, and he found nothing. No significant marks in the clipped grass growing from hard earth. No small item conveniently dropped that might later point to a place or person. Not even, he thought bitterly, a lousy cigarette butt.

The brown jacket bothered him. Why the hell had the dead man taken it off? Before he was dead, of course. And why had he left it lying on the ground five yards or so from where he had walked to be killed? Unless he had been moved after being killed, which didn’t seem probable. And why, for that matter, had he been here on the golf course at all? A golf course did not seem to Marcus to be a likely place to be in the hours between midnight and dawn, sometime between, but then a golf course did not seem to Marcus a likely place to be at any time whatever, unless you came, like the kid, to fish in a lake or to lie on the grass under a tree and wish that you were something besides what you had become.

Fuller, watching Marcus, was tempted to ask him what he was looking for, but he resisted the temptation. Anyhow, quite correctly, he guessed that Marcus didn’t know himself, and he was determined to avoid giving, in front of the uniform, the impression of a dumb cop appealing to his superior for enlightenment. Marcus was already, in Fuller’s opinion, sufficiently overrated at headquarters. As it turned out, after a few minutes, the appeal went the other way, but it was no triumph for Fuller, after all, for it only forced him to admit what he had hoped to conceal.

“Any ideas, Fuller?” Marcus said.

“Not yet,” Fuller said. “I’ve been trying to figure it.”

“So have I, but I haven’t had any luck, and I doubt if I ever do. As I see it, a guy who got himself shot on a golf course must have been crazy, and crazy people make the worst kind of murder victims from a cop’s point of view because it’s almost impossible to figure logically why they did what they did that got them killed.”

Sure, Fuller thought. Read me a lecture about it, you topnotch snob. The Psychology of Nuts by Dr. Joseph Marcus.

He was saved from making a reply by the return of the other uniform and a small man in Bermuda shorts and heavy ribbed stockings that reached almost to his knees. Marcus approved of the shorts, for he was always one for keeping comfortable, but he was damned if he could understand why anyone would deliberately qualify the effect of the shorts by wearing the stockings. Which was, however, he conceded, none of his business.

“You the manager of this club?” Marcus said.

“Yes,” the small man said. “Paul Iverson.”

“I’m Lieutenant Joseph Marcus, Mr. Iverson. We’ve got a body here.”

“Yes, yes. I know. The officer told me.”

“He was shot.”

“It’s incredible. I can hardly believe it.”

“It looks like someone took advantage of the privacy of your golf course to commit a murder.”

Iverson’s expression, although indicating shock and a shade of nausea, was primarily one of resentment. Among the activities of the club, he palpably felt, one expected and accepted certain indiscretions and transgressions of the peccadillo type, but murder was neither expected nor acceptable and ought to cause someone to lose his membership.

“Are you certain that it’s murder?” he said. “Perhaps he killed himself.”

“With his finger, maybe?”

“Oh, I see. There’s no gun.”

“Right. No gun. Besides, there’s no powder marks on his shirt. He was shot from a distance.”

“Do you think it could have been an accident of some sort?”

“It could have been, but I don’t think so.”

“Well, it’s a terrible thing. Simply terrible. I can’t understand it at all.”

“You’re luckier than me. You don’t have to understand it. All you have to do is see if you recognize the body.”

Iverson hesitated, then walked over to the body and looked intently for a moment into blind blue eyes. When he straightened and turned back to Marcus, the shade of nausea in his face had deepened, but there was also a new element of relief, as if the worst, which had been anticipated, had not developed.

“I don’t know him,” he said. “I can assure you that he was not a member of this club.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Marcus said with an unworthy feeling of spite. “Maybe the murderer is.”

“I believe you’ll find that he is not. I find it inconceivable that a member of this club should be involved in anything like this. It will create a dreadful fuss, I’m afraid, as it is. We may have some withdrawals.”

“Are you positive this man was not a member? His name was Alexander Gray.”

“I’m quite positive. Our membership is limited, rather exclusive, and I’m acquainted with all members. That’s why I’m convinced that none of them could be involved.”

“Even exclusive people can commit murder, Mr. Iverson. Possibly even exclusive people you happen to be acquainted with. Never mind, though. Thanks for coming down.”

Marcus turned away abruptly, and there was in his movement an implication of disdain that made Iverson flush and Sergeant Fuller curse softly under his breath. Aware that he had been dismissed, the manager went back across the course toward the Club House, only the roof of which was visible beyond the rise. Marcus went over and picked up the brown worsted jacket from the grass where he had dropped it after exploring the pockets.

“I wonder where the coroner is,” he said.

“He’ll be along,” Fuller said.

“Well, I won’t wait for him. You stay here and find out what he’s got to say. Nothing much, I suspect. Because he never does.”

Sergeant Fuller was curious about Marcus’s plans, but he was damned if he would give him the satisfaction of knowing it. He watched Marcus go off toward the Club House, where they’d left their car in the parking lot, and he cursed again under his breath, Marcus for what he was, and the coroner for not coming.

In the car, unaware that he had been cursed, or even that he had given cause for cursing, Marcus checked Alexander Gray’s driver’s license for an address. The street and number rang a faint bell, and he sat quietly for a minute, concentrating, trying to fit the location properly into a kind of mental map of the city. If his mental cartography was correct, which it was, Gray had lived not more than a mile from the entrance to this club. Probably somewhat less. Marcus looked at his watch and saw that it was two minutes after nine o’clock. Starting the car, he drove down a macadam drive and slipped into the traffic of a busy suburban street. He swung off after a while and was soon parked at the curb in front of a buff brick apartment building which displayed in large chrome numbers above the double front doors the address on the license.

Inside on the ground floor, he found the apartment of the building superintendent, who turned out to be, when he had opened his door in response to Marcus’s ring, a wispy little man with wispy gray hair and pince-nez clipped to the bridge of a surprisingly bold nose. Marcus introduced himself and received an introduction. The superintendent’s name was Mr. Everett Price.

“Is there an Alexander Gray living in the building?” Marcus asked.

“Yes.” Mr. Price removed the pince-nez, which were, of course attached to a black ribbon, and held them by the spring clip in his right hand. “He’s in three-o-six. He shares the apartment with Mr. Rufus Fleming.”

“Oh? Have Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming shared the apartment long?”

“About two years, I think. Yes, two years this summer. Perfect gentlemen, both of them. Quiet and good-mannered. There is, in fact, something old-fashioned in their manners. Rather courtly, you know. It isn’t often, nowadays, that you find that quality in younger men.”

“I agree. It’s rare. Do you know if Mr. Fleming is in at the moment?”

“No, I don’t. It’s possible, however, this being Saturday. Mr. Fleming doesn’t work on Saturday.”

“I wish I didn’t. I believe I’ll just go up and speak with Mr. Fleming, if you don’t mind.”

Mr. Price looked confused. He scrubbed the lenses of the pince-nez with a clean white handkerchief and clipped them to his big nose again, peering at Marcus as if he had decided that some revision of his first judgment of him had become necessary.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I thought you wanted to see Mr. Gray.”

“I didn’t say that,” Marcus said. “I only asked if Mr. Gray lived here.”

“Yes. So you did. I made an assumption, I suppose. In any event, it’s quite likely that both gentlemen are in this morning.”

“I wonder if you would come up with me. Just in case neither of them is.”

Now Mr. Price looked startled. Possibly he had suddenly gathered from Marcus’s tone that Marcus was certainly going up in spite of anything, although willing to make a nice pretense of asking permission, and that the superintendent was damn well coming up with him, whether he was agreeable or not.

“What on earth for?” Mr. Price said.

“So that you can let me into the apartment, if that is necessary.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that without authorization from the tenants. It’s unthinkable.”

“Is it? I don’t believe so. You can try thinking about it on the way up. You may change your mind.”

“I’m reasonably certain that either Mr. Fleming or Mr. Gray will be in on a Saturday morning.”

“Mr. Fleming, maybe. Not Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray will never be in again. He’s dead. He has, it seems, been murdered.”

The pince-nez popped off Mr. Price’s nose and jerked and swung at the end of their ribbon. Marcus had a bleak vision of a trap sprung, a body hanging.

“What did you say?”

Marcus didn’t bother to repeat himself. He merely waited for the information to soak in and become tenable.

“This is dreadful,” Mr. Price said.

“So it is.”

“Why would anyone murder Mr. Gray? He was such a pleasant man.”

“Pleasant people are sometimes murdered. Usually by unpleasant people.”

“When did it happen? Where?”

“Never mind that now. You’ll know soon enough. Everyone will. Now I would like to go upstairs and see Mr. Fleming if he’s in, or look through the apartment if he’s not.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Price. “Yes, of course.”

They went up three floors and rang the bell of three-o-six. Mr. Fleming was either not in or not answering. The former was true, as Marcus learned immediately after Mr. Price had opened the door for him. The apartment consisted of a living room, a large bedroom with two beds, a bath and a small kitchen. No one was there. The beds were made and the kitchen was clean and the living room was orderly. Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming had been tidy housekeepers. Mr. Fleming, so far as Marcus knew, still was.

“Did Fleming spend the night here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He was here early, as Mr. Gray was, but he may have gone out again and not returned.”

“All right. Thanks. I won’t need you any longer. And don’t worry about the apartment. I’ll leave it in good order.”

Mr. Price didn’t look convinced, but he left. Marcus went into the bedroom and began to prowl. He opened drawers and looked into closets, but all he achieved was confirmation of the judgment he had already made — that Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming were clean and orderly enough to please the most fastidious woman. In the living room, after poking into places and scanning the titles of books that struck him as being intolerably dull on the whole, he stopped before the mantel of a dummy fireplace to look at a picture. A photograph of a young woman. Inscribed. He took it down and read the inscription: For Rufe and Alex with all my love, Sandy. The double inscription implied a Platonic meaning at variance, it seemed to Marcus, with the totality of love. He scratched his head and examined Sandy’s face.

It was a lovely face. A wistful face. Shaped like a small, lean heart. Big eyes with sadness in them. Tenderness in them. Passion in them? Passion, at least, in the soft lips set in the merest of smiles. In spite of the suggested passion, however, there was — Marcus groped for the word — a kind of mysticism. He was falling, in an instant, half in love.

Putting the photograph back on the mantel, he turned away. Then he turned back. On the mantel, placed squarely below a reproduction of Daumier’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that hung on the wall above, was a sizable leather case. He removed the case and opened it. Inside, nested in plush, was a matched pair of .22 caliber target pistols. Both clean. Both lately oiled. Beautifully cared for. The purloined letter still makes its point, he thought. In his attention to drawers and closets, he had nearly overlooked the case in plain sight. Not, so far as he could see at the moment, that it would have made any particular difference if he had. Nevertheless, he appropriated the case and took it with him when he left. That was after he had returned once more to the bathroom and stood for a few minutes with an abstracted air before the open medicine cabinet above the lavatory.

Downstairs, he rang the superintendent’s bell again. Mr. Price, clearly relieved to see him on his way out, made a polite effort not to show it.

“Are you finished, Lieutenant?” he said.

“Yes. For the present, at least. I’m taking this with me. It’s a pair of matched target pistols. Was either Mr. Gray or Mr. Fleming an enthusiast for target shooting, do you know?”

“Both were, as a matter of fact. Sunday mornings, fair days, they have gone off regularly for matches. I believe they made small wagers. I do hope you will take good care of the pistols.”

“The best. I’ll give you a receipt for them if you want me to.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Thanks. By the way, there’s a photograph on the mantel upstairs. A young lady. Blonde hair cut quite short. Very pretty face. It’s signed Sandy. Do you know her by any chance?”

“I’ve met her. Miss Sandra Shore. She was introduced to me in the hall one evening when I happened to encounter her with Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming. Afterward, on several occasions, I exchanged a few words with her when she came to call.”

“Has she come here often?”

“Frequently. Many times, I suppose, when I didn’t see her. I’m sure that it was all quite proper. She was equally the friend of both gentlemen. They had been friends, she told me once, since childhood. It was quite a charming relationship.”

“I’m sure it was. Tell me, do you know Miss Shore’s address?”

“No, but it’s probably in the directory.”

“Would you mind checking it for me?”

“Not at all.”

Marcus was invited in, but he preferred to wait in the hall. After a few minutes Mr. Price returned with the address written down on a sheet from a memo pad. Engaging again in mental cartography, Marcus located the address in relation to where he was.

“One more question, if you don’t mind,” he said, “and I’ll run along. I assume both Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming own automobiles?”

“Only one between them, which they both used. One might think that such an arrangement would lead to difficulties, but they apparently worked it out very well.”

“Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming seem to have been extremely compatible. Share apartment. Share car. Share girl. Most commendable. Where is the car kept?”

“There’s a garage at the rear, just off the alley. Stall number five. The automobile, if you wish to know, is a Ford. I’m not sure of the model. Recent, however.”

“Thanks again. You’ve been most helpful.”

Marcus turned with his sometimes offensive abruptness and went out of the building and around to the garage. Stall number five was occupied by a 1960 Ford. Mr. Fleming, wherever he was, was obviously moving either by shank’s mare or in some other vehicle than his own. Marcus, in the one furnished by the department, drove to the address on the memo sheet, and this time it was unnecessary to disturb the superintendent, for there was a directory of tenants in the entrance hall that told him where to go, and he went.

The photographer who had taken Sandra Shore’s picture, he learned, was an artist. He had caught on paper precisely the elfin and haunting quality of her face. The sadness and tenderness and passion assembled in the lean heart. Now, in person, there was more, of course. A small and slender body exquisitely formed, suggesting its delights in a boyish white blouse and a narrow skirt. Marcus, in the hall, held his hat and offered up a short and silent paean.

“Yes?” Sandra Shore said.

“My name is Marcus,” Marcus said. “Lieutenant Joseph Marcus. Of the police. I wonder if I may speak with you for a few minutes?”

She surveyed him gravely, her head cocked a little to one side.

“Whatever for?”

“It will take only a few minutes. I’d appreciate it very much.”

“Well, if you are actually a policeman, you will certainly speak with me whether I am willing or not, so there isn’t really much use in asking my permission, is there?”

“It distresses me, but I must admit that you’re right. Thank you for clarifying the situation so nicely. May I come in?”

She nodded and closed the door after him, when he was across the threshold. Following her into the living room to a chair in which he sat, he admired her neat ankles and lovely legs. When she was in another chair across from him, the narrow skirt tucked primly beneath her knees, which showed, he continued to admire the legs for a moment, discreetly, but soon went back to her face, which was the best of her, after all, in spite of distractions.

“You don’t look like a policeman,” she said.

“Don’t I? I wouldn’t know. What is a policeman supposed to look like?”

“I’m not sure. Not like you, however. What do you wish to speak with me about?”

“Not what, really. Who. A young man named Alexander Gray.”

“Alex?” She managed to appear slightly incredulous without, somehow, disturbing the serenity of her expression. “What possible interest could the police have in Alex?”

“He’s dead. Murdered, apparently. Someone shot him sometime early this morning on the course of the Greenbrier Golf Club.”

She sat quite still, her only movement the folding of her hands in her lap. In her great, grave eyes there was a slight darkening, as if a light had been turned down.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“The truth is often ridiculous. Things don’t seem to make sense.”

“Alex isn’t even a member of the Greenbrier Golf Club.”

“Apparently you don’t have to be a member to be killed on the course.”

“I simply refuse to believe you. It’s cruel of you to come here and tell me such a lie.”

“It would be cruel if I did. And pointless.”

“I see what you mean. You would have no reason. Unless there’s a reason that I can’t understand. Is there?”

“No. None whatever. Surely you realize that.”

“I suppose I do. I suppose I must believe you after all.” She stood up suddenly and walked over to a window and stood there for a minute looking out, slim and erect against the glass, her pale hair catching afire from the slanting light. Then she returned, sitting again, tucking the skirt and folding her hands. “Poor Alex,” she said. “Poor little Alex.”

He hadn’t been so little. Average height, at least, but Marcus skipped it. Miss Sandra Shore was striking him as a remarkable young woman. There was genuine grief in her voice, in her darkened eyes, but her face was in repose, fixed as serenely in shock and grief as it had been in the photograph.

“You are very composed under the circumstances,” he said. “I’m relieved and thankful.”

“Perhaps I can’t quite accept it yet, in spite of knowing that it must be true.”

“Sometimes it takes a while for things to hit us hard. Do you feel like talking with me now?”

“What do you want to know?”

“You were a good friend of Alexander Gray’s. Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true, but I can’t imagine how you know. Unless you’ve talked with Rufe. Have you?”

“Rufus Fleming? No. I’d like to talk with him, however. I don’t know where he is.”

“Have you been to the apartment? Alex and Rufe lived together, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve been there. Do you have any idea where Fleming could be?”

“Just out somewhere, I imagine. He’ll show up soon.”

“His car was in the garage.”

“Rufe often walks places. Quite long distances sometimes. He enjoys it.”

“There was a photograph of you in their apartment. A very good one. I noticed that it was inscribed to both Gray and Fleming. All your love. Were you an equally good friend to both?”

“Equally? That’s so hard to judge, isn’t it? I loved them both. I still love them both, even though Alex must be dead, since you say so.”

“Did they both love you?”

“Oh, yes. We all loved each other.”

“Isn’t that a rather unusual relationship to exist among two men and a woman?”

“I don’t think so. Perhaps it is. It has been that way for so long that it seems perfectly natural to me.”

“Didn’t it ever get complicated?”

“Well, it was difficult in certain ways. They both loved me and wanted to marry me, and I loved both of them, which was all right, and wanted to marry both of them, which was not, and that’s where the difficulty was.”

“I understand. Bigamy is no solution. Besides being illegal.”

“Yes. Anyhow, I couldn’t bear to marry one of them and not the other, for that would surely have meant giving up entirely the one I didn’t marry. If only I could have married one of them and kept the other one around as always, it would have been all right, but it wouldn’t have worked, I’m sure, for a husband is different from a friend, no matter how good and tolerant he may be, and will become possessive and insistent upon his rights and resentful of the attentions to his wife of another man.”

Marcus didn’t quite believe her. Not her words. He believed them, all right. He didn’t quite believe her. That she existed. That she was sitting this instant in the chair across from him with her knees together and her skirt tucked in. He was, in fact, more than a little confused by what seemed at once perfectly logical and utterly insane. That was it, he decided. It was logical, but nuts. There was not necessarily any contradiction in that.

“You said this relationship had existed for a long time,” he said. “How long?”

“Oh, years and years. Ages. Since we were very young.”

“You all knew each other then?”

“Isn’t that what I said? Went through school together and have remained close to each other since.”

“It’s strange, to say the least, that two men should remain such friends in such circumstances.”

“Well, they were very sweet and tolerant and understanding, and they kept thinking something could be worked out, but, as I said, there was no way to work it satisfactorily.”

“Now, however, the problem has resolved itself.”

“You mean, because Alex is dead, that there is nothing to keep me from marrying Rufe? That may be true, but I’ll have to think about it. It doesn’t seem quite fair to Alex. A kind of unfair advantage for Rufe, you know. I may be compelled by fairness to give him up also.”

Marcus slapped a knee sharply and stood up and walked around his chair and sat down again. He closed his eyes and opened them, and she was still there.

“There was a pair of target pistols in the apartment,” he said. “The superintendent told me they were bugs about target shooting. Is that so?”

“Oh, yes, and so am I. I have a pistol like the ones you saw. It all started when we were quite young. In the beginning, we used bb pistols. We lived in a small town, only a short walk into the country, and we used to go out together frequently, the three of us, and have matches. Would you like to see my pistol?”

“It would be kind of you to show it to me.”

“Not at all.”

She got up and went to a desk and returned in a minute with the pistol, which was, as she had said, apparently identical with the two he had appropriated. Clean, recently oiled. He took it and examined it and handed it back to her. She sat in her chair again, the pistol lying in her lap beneath her hands.

“Do you happen to have a photograph of Mr. Fleming?” he asked.

“Of Rufe? No. I’m sorry.”

“Not even a snapshot?”

“Not even that. It’s rather strange, isn’t it, when you come to think about it? Neither Alex nor Rufe were much for having their pictures taken.”

“Perhaps you could describe him to me.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just in case I happen to see him or something. It might save me some time and trouble.”

“Well, he’s quite tall. About six-three, I’d say. Rather thin, but quite strong. He has a long face with thick eyebrows that grow across the bridge of his nose and black hair that’s wiry and doesn’t stay brushed very well. His shoulders are somewhat stooped, and I keep telling him to pull them back, but it doesn’t do any good. I think he stoops deliberately to avoid appearing as tall as he is, especially when he’s with me. As you can see, I’m rather small.”

“Yes. I see.” Marcus stood up, holding his hat, and looked around the room. An open entrance to a small kitchen. A door closed upon what must be a bedroom. Off the bedroom, certainly, a bath. No different, basically, from the place shared by Gray and Fleming. “Tell me,” he said. “Can you think of anyone at all who might have wanted to kill Alexander Gray?”

“No. No one. Surely it must have been some kind of accident.”

“He was in no trouble that you knew of?”

“None. If Alex had any trouble, it must have been minor.”

“I see. Well, thank you very much, Miss Shore. If you see Mr. Fleming, please have him contact me at police headquarters.”

She followed him to the door and showed him out; the last thing he saw was her grave face and darkened eyes as the door closed between them. It was now well past time for lunch, and so he went on and had a steak sandwich at a small restaurant and went on from there to headquarters, where he read a brief report from the coroner as to the estimated time of Alexander Gray’s death, which estimate was, as Marcus had predicted, not much different from Marcus’s guess. The coroner thought that Gray had been killed by a .22 caliber bullet, but there had been no time as yet to recover it from the body, due to an accumulation of work, and an autopsy was promised as soon as possible.

Marcus carried the pair of matched pistols to ballistics and left them with instructions for tests, and then returned to his desk and began to clear up some paper work, including his own report of the Gray case. He tried three times without success, during the rest of the afternoon, to reach Fleming at his apartment, and he kept thinking that Fleming might call in, but he didn’t. Late in the afternoon, Fuller came in and reported on what had happened at the golf course after Marcus had left, but it didn’t amount to much.

Alone, Marcus rocked back in his chair and closed his eyes and tried to think. He thought mostly about Sandra Shore. He still had difficulty in convincing himself that she was real, and he wondered if she was truly so remarkably self-contained as she had appeared, or if she had only found it impossible to express more effectively her shock and surprise at news that was really no news at all. Had she in fact known that Alexander Gray was dead before Marcus had arrived to tell her so? Marcus wondered, but he didn’t know.

He sat there thinking for a long time, not really getting anywhere, and then he tried Fleming’s apartment again without any luck. He decided to go out and eat and go home, and that’s what he did. In his bachelor’s apartment, he read for a while and had three highballs, bourbon and branch, and listened, the last thing before going to bed, to a Toscanini recording of Beethoven’s Sixth. The next morning, which was the morning of Sunday, he got up early and drank two cups of coffee and went back to headquarters, and he was at his desk there when Fuller, reluctantly on duty, brought in a young man to see him. The young man, according to Fuller, had something to say about the Gray case, now public knowledge, that might or might not be significant. The young man’s name, said Fuller, was Herbert Richards.

“Sit down and tell me what you know,” Marcus said.

“Well,” said Herbert Richards, sitting, “I was driving out there yesterday morning on the street just east of the Golf Club where this guy was killed, and my old clunker quit running all of a sudden. I’ve been working on a construction job, and I was on my way to meet some of the crew at a place in town. We were going on together in one of the trucks, you see. Anyhow, my clunker quit, and I had to hurry terribly to make it on time, walking, and so I cut across the corner of the golf course, walking in a kind of gully that runs diagonally across the corner, and all of a sudden I heard shots.”

“Wait a minute,” Marcus said. “Did you say shots?”

“Yes, sir. Two of them. I read about the murder in the paper last night, and it said this guy was only shot once, so I wondered if I could have been mistaken, but I’ve thought about it, and I’m sure I’m not. They came so close together that they did sound almost like one shot, but I’m sure there were two.”

“What did you do when you heard the shots?”

“Nothing. Just kept on going down the gully.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that something might be wrong?”

“Why should it? I’ve heard lots of shots in my life, or sounds like shots. This is the first time it ever turned out to be someone getting murdered.”

Marcus conceded the validity of the point. Honest folk going about their business just didn’t jump to the conclusion of murder at every unusual sight or sound, even the sound of shots.

“What time was this?” he said.

“That’s mostly what I wanted to tell you. It was just daylight. Just after dawn. I know it’s important to know the time something like this happens, and that’s why I came down here.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“You think it may help?”

“I think so. Thanks. If you don’t have anything else to tell me, you can go now.”

Herbert Richards left, visibly pleased, and Marcus closed his eyes and thought for a moment about the scene of Alexander Gray’s murder. Opening them again, he looked for Fuller, who was waiting.

“Fuller,” he said, “you remember that high bank we went down about twenty yards or so from where Gray was lying? You take a couple of men and go out there and dig around in it and see if you can find a bullet.”

Fuller, who resented the assignment, betrayed his feelings. Marcus, who marked the resentment, did not.

“Who cares if one bullet missed?” Fuller said. “We got the one in Gray, soon as the coroner digs it out this morning, and that’s all we need. Besides, from the position of his body, Gray was facing the bank; the killer wasn’t. Any bullet that missed him would have gone in the opposite direction.”

“Go dig around anyhow,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t do any harm to be thorough.”

Fuller gone, Marcus assumed his favorite position for thinking, chair rocked back, eyes closed, fingers laced above his belly. He thought this time about several things in a rather fantastic pattern. He thought about Alexander Gray and Rufus Fleming and Sandra Shore in an emotional triangle so crazy that it could certainly have been sustained only by a trio who were themselves a little crazy. He thought about Alexander Gray lying on a golf course. He thought about a brown worsted jacket lying on the grass about five paces from Gray’s body. He thought about Herbert Richards, a construction worker in the act of trespassing, hearing two shots fired so closely together that they were barely distinguishable from one. He thought about a matched pair of target pistols placed in accidental symbolism below a reproduction of Daumier’s Don Quixote. He thought about a cabinet above a lavatory in which there was only one razor and one toothbrush.

I don’t believe it, he thought. By God, I simply don’t believe it.

After a while, he went to ballistics and got a report, but still lacked the specific comparison he needed, which waited upon the coroner. In his car, he drove slowly, with an odd feeling of reluctance, to Sandra Shore’s apartment building. He rang her bell and waited and was about to ring it again when she opened the door. Her eyes widened a little in the faintest expression of surprise, recovering almost immediately their grave, characteristic composure.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said. “Do you want to come in again?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I do mind, rather, to tell the truth, but I suppose I must let you.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to be brief.”

They sat as they had yesterday, in the same chairs, and he was silent for a while, looking down at the hat in his hands and wondering how to begin. Then he looked up at Sandra Shore, at the grave eyes in the serene heart, and let his own eyes slip away and fix themselves deliberately on the door closed upon her bedroom.

“May I go into your bedroom, Miss Shore?” he said.

“No. Certainly not.” She sat very still, watching him until his eyes returned to her, and then her small breasts rose and fell slowly on a drawn breath and a sigh. “Well,” she said, “I see you have been as clever as I was afraid you would be, but I’m glad, really, quite glad, because he seems to be getting worse instead of better, and I have been afraid he would die in spite of everything I could do. It was impossible to get a doctor, you see, and so I took out the bullet myself, but he seems to be getting worse, as I said, and I’ve been wondering what I should do.”

“Did you also return the pistols to the apartment and pick up a razor and toothbrush while you were there?”

“Yes. How very clever you are! Alex and Rufe simply decided between them what they must finally do, the way to settle matters for good and all, and so they walked out there to the golf course together, which was the handiest place where it could be done, and it might have turned out all right for Rufe, although not for Alex, except that he got hit, too, in the shoulder, and that made everything much more difficult. He had to go somewhere, of course, and so he came here, and I helped him. He had the pistols, and I thought the best thing to do was to clean them and oil them and take them back to the apartment, and that’s what I did.”

“It was a mistake. Surely you know we can match the bullet in Alexander Gray with one of those pistols.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? I suppose I didn’t think of it at the time because I was upset and not thinking clearly about anything. It’s odd, isn’t it? I wanted so much to help Rufe, and I tried, but I guess I only did him harm instead.”

“The fools! The crazy fools!” Marcus spoke with low-key intensity, slapping a knee. “Why the hell couldn’t they have drawn high card for you or something?”

“Oh, no!” She stared at him with scorn, as if he had betrayed himself as a sordid sort of fellow with no discernible sense of honor. “Alex and Rufe would never have treated me so cheaply.”

“Excuse me,” he said bitterly. “I concede that you’ve done your best for Rufe, whom you love, but what about dear Alex, whom you loved equally and who is unfortunately dead as a rather irrational consequence?”

“If it had turned out the other way around,” she said, “I’d have done as much for Alex.”

“I see.” He stood up, his bitterness a taste on his tongue that he wanted to spit out on the floor. “I’ll call an ambulance, and then you and I can go downtown together.”

He was at his desk, doing nothing, when Fuller came in that afternoon.

“We dug all over that bank,” Fuller said, “and there’s no bullet in it.”

“That’s all right,” Marcus said. “I know where it is. Or, at least, was.”

“The hell you do! Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me.”

“Not at all. It was in the shoulder of a fellow named Rufus Fleming. He and Gray had a duel out there yesterday morning. That’s how Gray got killed.”

“A duel!” Fuller’s eyes bulged, and he was so certain that Marcus had gone off the deep end that he felt safe in saying so. “You’re always talking about someone being nuts,” he said, “but in my opinion you’re the biggest nut of all.”

Marcus was not offended. He closed his eyes and smiled bleakly.

Well, he thought, it takes one to catch one.

IQ–184

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1962

Rena Holly was in the living room with the policeman when Charles Holly went downstairs to join them. Rena was sitting in a high-backed chair of polished walnut upholstered in dark red velvet. She was sitting there quietly, very erect, her knees together and her feet flat upon the floor and her hands folded in her lap. Her face was pale and still, perfectly composed, and she was even now, even in the violation of her grief by police procedure, so incredibly lovely that Charles felt in his heart the familiar sweet anguish that was his normal response to her. Only her eyes moved ever so slightly in his direction when he entered the room.

“Charles,” she said, “this is Lieutenant Casey of the police. He is inquiring about Richard’s death.”

Lieutenant Casey arose from the chair in which he had been sitting opposite Rena. He was a stocky man with broad shoulders and a deep chest and thin gray hair brushed neatly across his skull from a low side part. His face was deeply lined and weathered-looking, as if he spent much time in the wind and sun, and the hand he extended toward Charles had pads of callus on fingers and palm, although its touch was surprisingly gentle. He seemed awkward in his gray suit, which was actually of good cut and quality, and the impression he gave generally was one of regret, almost of apology, that he had been forced by his position to intrude.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Charles said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Sorry,” Casey said. “It’s a routine matter, of course. I regret that I’m compelled to disturb you at this time.”

“Not at all. We must tell you whatever is necessary.”

Charles sat down and placed his hands on his knees in an attitude of attention, while Casey resumed his place in the chair from which he had risen. “Please ask me anything you wish.”

“I think that Lieutenant Casey wishes you to tell him exactly how Richard died,” Rena said.

She spoke softly, with a kind of deficiency of inflection. Charles was aware of the terrible and almost terrifying quality of her composure, and he wondered if Casey was also aware of this. He doubted it. Her horror and grief were not apparent, although the latter could be assumed, and Casey was not familiar, as Charles was, with the wonderful complexity of her character.

“I’d be grateful if you would,” Casey said. “Just as it happened from the beginning, if you don’t mind.”

“Well.” Charles paused, seeming to gather his thoughts, but he knew, in fact, what he was going to say, and his mind was functioning, as it always did, with precision and clarity. “Richard was a guest in this house for the weekend. Perhaps Rena has told you that. In any event, he asked me this morning to take a walk with him. I did not wish to walk with him, and I told him so, but he asked me to humor him as a special favor. I did not really feel that I owed him a favor, special or otherwise, but he was so urgent that I agreed to go.”

“What was the reason for his urgency?”

“The answer to that would involve Rena. I’d rather that she answered, if she wants the question answered at all.”

“Oh?” Casey looked vaguely astonished and somewhat distressed that he had been led so quickly by his own question into an area of intimacy that he would have preferred to avoid. “Mrs. Holly?”

“Certainly, Lieutenant. As Charles has said, we must tell you whatever is necessary.” Rena’s hands moved, smoothing the skirt over her knees, and then sought and held each other again in her lap. “Richard was in love with me. And I with him. It was not an emotional attachment that either of us particularly wanted in the beginning, but it happened, and there was no help for it. We wanted to marry. I spoke with Charles about it and was, I thought, candid and reasonable. But it was an unfortunate effort on my part, I’m afraid. Charles was very angry. He refused even to discuss the matter. Then, of course, Richard wanted to approach him. I agreed rather reluctantly, and it was for that purpose specifically that I invited Richard here for the weekend. And that was why Richard urged Charles to take the walk with him.”

She stopped abruptly, resuming the perfect posture and expression of composure that speaking had barely disturbed, and Casey, after waiting a few seconds until it was clear that she was finished, turned back to Charles.

“That is true,” Charles said. “I suppose he felt that a brisk walk in the open air would be propitious to his purpose. The manly approach. Two gentlemen settling amicably between themselves a rather delicate matter. Richard was remarkably naive.” His voice took on the faintest color of irony, as if he were mildly amused in retrospect by something which had been irritating at the time. “I must confess, however, that I was not impressed. Richard’s effort to win me over was no more successful than Rena’s, although I listened courteously and gave him every chance. All this time, while he was talking, we were walking among the trees in the direction of the river, and we came out upon a high bluff just where the river bends. There is a wooden bench on the bluff there, for it’s a rather scenic spot, and we sat on the bench until he had quite finished what he wanted to say. Then I told him that my feelings were unchanged, and that I should never be reconciled to any kind of intimate relationship between him and Rena. It made me sick to think about it.”

He paused again, ordering details precisely and accurately in his mind, and Casey waited in silence for him to continue. Rena did not seem to have heard him at all, or even to be aware at the moment that he or Casey was in the room. She had been staring at her folded hands, but now she raised her eyes to a focus beyond the walls and perhaps beyond the time. If she had listened to anything, or was now waiting for anything, it was a private sound and a private expectation.

Now, Charles was thinking, / have come upon dangerous ground. Up to this point I have adhered strictly to the truth, because the truth served, but now it is time for the essential deviation, the necessary lie.

“Please go on,” Casey prompted.

“Richard was very angry with me,” Charles said. “As for me, I wanted only to leave him, to terminate an unpleasant episode as quickly as possible, and I stood up and walked away to the edge of the bluff. Richard followed me, still very angry, and began to shake me by the arm. I do not like to be touched, even without violence, and I tried to jerk away, but he held on to my arm firmly. I struggled, finally breaking free, and the action caused him to lose his balance. We were standing right at the edge of the bluff, much nearer than either of us, I think, quite realized in our emotional state, and, to put it simply and briefly, he fell over the edge. The bluff, as you know, is high and almost perpendicular at that place. At the foot, the bank of the river at the bend is wide and littered with great rocks. Richard fell among the rocks, where you found him, and was, I believe, killed instantly. He was certainly dead when I reached him, after finding a way down the bluff farther along. When I saw that he was falling, I tried to catch hold of him, but he was gone too quickly.”

And there it is done, and done well, he thought. The essential deviation. The necessary lie. So slight a deviation and so small a lie. The difference between holding and pushing. Between life and death. Between innocence and guilt. Casey believes me, certainly, but Rena doesn’t. Rena, lovely Rena, sits and says nothing and knows everything. She knows how Richard died, and why, but that is unimportant. What is important is that she submits to a deeper commitment than any she could have felt to Richard or feels now to justice. She is mine so long as she lives. She will never belong to anyone else.

“I see.” Casey slapped his knees suddenly with both hands, the sound startling in the still room. It even startled Casey, who had made it, and he clenched one of the hands and stared reproachfully at the big knuckles under taut and whitened skin. “You were wise to leave the body where it fell until we had seen it. You have been very helpful altogether, I must say. Thank you very much.”

“There is so little that one can do, really.” Charles stood up. “Now if I may be excused, I’d like to return to my room.”

“Of course. You’ve had a bad experience, I know. I appreciate your cooperation in such trying circumstances.”

Having been excused by Casey, Charles turned toward Rena. She seemed unaware of this, still abstracted, but after a few seconds she turned her head and stared at him with her dark expressive eyes which were now so carefully empty of all expression. She nodded without speaking, the merest motion of her head, and he turned and went out of the room into the hall. He stopped there, out of sight but not of sound, his head half-turned and tilted, as he stood and listened.

“There’s a clever young fellow,” Casey said in the room behind him.

“Yes,” Rena said.

“I must say, however, that I’d find him a bit disturbing after a while. He’d make me feel inferior. Besides, I confess that I’m always a bit shocked to hear a child call his mother by her Christian name. I suppose I’m hopelessly old-fashioned.”

“Charles is not really a child, Lieutenant, although he’s only twelve. He’s exceptional. His intelligence quotient, I am told, is one hundred eighty-four.”

It would have been natural if her voice had assumed a lilt of pride, but it did not. It still retained its odd deficiency of inflection. To Charles, who began moving silently away, it was a voice that had no choice of expression between a monotone and a scream.

The Seasons Come, the Seasons Go

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1966

It’s April again. The frail fine blossoms of the crab apple tree shower to earth in the slightest stirring of the languid air, to lie like pastel snow among the clustered headstones of the Canning dead. Already the fruit is forming where the blossoms hung, and in a little while, after the swift passing of spring, toward the end of summer’s indolent amble, the small red apples will fall in turn, to lie where the blossoms lie. The seasons come, and the seasons go...

The nicest thing about Connie was that she was, so to speak, sort of in and out of the family at the same time. What I mean is, she wasn’t really a Canning at all, although she used the name for the lack of another.

As a matter of fact, she was someone Uncle Wish (a happy compromise for Aloysius) had picked up in Italy after the late great war and managed, by hook or crook, to appropriate and spirit home. She was, Uncle Wish had explained with tears in his voice, a homeless waif foraging among the rubble of an ancient world, her poor little body emaciated and filthy, her cute little nose chronically running.

Anyhow, Uncle Wish brought her home and left her with Grandfather, after which, having euphemistically borrowed a substantial sum of money, he was off again to some other place to see what else he could find.

Grandfather saw to it that Connie’s body was washed and her nose wiped. He believed, I think, that Uncle Wish’s bootleg adoption of Connie was a good sign. He took it as an indication that Uncle Wish was developing a sense of commitment to the serious problems of life.

Nothing, of course, could have been more absurd. Uncle Wish was simply a compassionate scoundrel who was always prepared to indulge his humanity if there was someone else at hand to pay the price over the long haul. Most of the girls he picked up in the places he went were well washed and well fed and, after Uncle Wish was finished with them, well paid. It should be said, moreover, that they were invariably older than Connie. And much less permanent. Uncle Wish may have been willing to be an absentee father, but he had absolutely no intention of becoming a husband, absent or present.

So, over the long haul, Grandfather paid for Uncle Wish’s grand gesture. But don’t shed any tears in your beer because of that. Having accumulated most of the money in an area approximately a hundred miles wide running roughly from Chicago to Denver, Grandfather was adequately equipped for it. And Connie blossomed in his tender care.

I saw her for the first time in the summer of 1949, when I made my annual visit to Grandfather’s country estate. He was a great family man, Grandfather was, and I was invited every summer for a visit of three months’ duration. The invitation was, in fact, by implication a command, and in view of the high price of disfavor I appeared faithfully near the first of every June, bearing the fulsome greetings of my father, Grandfather’s son and Uncle Wish’s brother; and I was mindful of my father’s fierce admonitions, delivered in private just before my departure, to for God’s sake be very careful not to say or do anything that would jeopardize our position in Grandfather’s will.

My father, you realize, was extremely sensitive about our position in Grandfather’s will, but I never blamed him for that. Inasmuch as he never earned a dime in his life, living quite richly on an allowance that Grandfather made him, it was perfectly understandable.

It was, as I said, nice to have Connie in and out of the family at the same time. Being in, she was, so to speak, handy; being out, she was, as it were, available. What I mean is, there were none of the messy complications and taboos ordinarily imposed on blood relationships.

That very first summer, in 1949, I was introduced to the advantages of our anomalous connection. While foraging among the rubble of an ancient civilization, it became quickly apparent, Connie had acquired a seamy sort of intelligence far beyond her years in matters that would have, if he had known it, set Grandfather’s few remaining hairs on end.

She was only ten at the time, and I was twelve, but in effect she was ages older. She was as old as Nero, and she spoke a language older than Latin. Her English was hardly more than a few key words and phrases, but the eyes and the hands have a vocabulary and a grammar of their own. She had much to teach me, and I must say that I was an apt pupil. I anticipated eagerly my annual pilgrimage to Grandfather’s house.

Cleaned up, Connie was a pretty little girl. Grown up, she was a beauty. She grew along lovely lines to intriguing dimensions, and when she reached the intriguing dimensions, she simply quit growing. As she mastered English she forgot Italian, but she never forgot her other ancient language.

She lived with Grandfather until she was ready for college, and after college she established herself in an apartment in Chicago, where she was, she claimed, working seriously at painting. I never visited her apartment and never saw any of her work, and I suspect that the reason I never saw any was that there never was any. As with me and Father and Mother and Uncle Wish — as with us all — Grandfather paid the freight over the long haul. But I was happy to learn, the first summer after her establishment in the Chicago apartment, that her command appearance at Grandfather’s was to run, for the most part, concurrently with my own.

In the summer of 1964 I was 27 and Connie was 25. Grandfather was 86. Father and Mother and Uncle Wish were dead. All dead. Father had died suddenly under Grandfather’s roof of what was diagnosed by Grandfather’s doctor, also an octogenarian, as a coronary. Mother, remaining in Grandfather’s house after Father’s death, had soon followed him to heaven as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills, which sad event was popularly supposed to have been incited by grief. I was present on both occasions, as was Connie, and I remember expressing to her a proper astonishment at discovering, on the first occasion, that Father had any heart at all, let alone a weak one, and, on the second, that Mother was capable of grief for anyone, let alone for Father.

But small matter. Every loss has its compensatory gain. Uncle Wish having previously come a fatal cropper in a distant land, from which his mortal remains were shipped home for burial, Connie and I were now the only heirs in Grandfather’s last will and testament. His estate, I believe, amounted to something like $70,000,000, which is, you must agree, a tidy sum.

And so, when I arrived at Grandfather’s house last June, there was Connie to meet me. As I tooled up the long drive from the road between tall and lithesome poplars, she came out of the house and across the veranda and down into the drive, and by the time I had brought my black Jag to a halt, she was in position to lean across the passenger bucket and give me a kiss. Contact, minimum. Effort, below standard.

“Hello, Buster,” she said. “Crawl out of that thing and get kissed properly.”

I crawled out and was kissed properly. Or improperly, depending on your point of view.

“Very stimulating,” I said. “I believe your technique has improved, if possible.”

“Do you think so? It’s sweet of you to say it.”

“No doubt you’ve been practicing. I must remember to call on you in that apartment of yours sometime.”

“No chance. The summer is sufficient, darling. I don’t believe I’d care for you in off seasons. You might become tiresome.”

“That’s true. There’s nothing to be gained from too much of a good thing. Where’s Grandfather?”

“He’s on his daily pilgrimage to the Happy Hunting Ground. He’s communing with Canning ghosts.”

“A dreary ritual, surely. It was, all in all, a dreary ritual even when the ghosts were alive and kicking. I refer especially to Father.”

“Well, you know Grandfather. He’s very devoted to his little family, dead, or alive. Fortunately, I might add, for you and me.”

“True again. Darling, you have the most devastating knack of getting directly to the crux. I suppose I had better go up there and check in immediately.”

“I was about to suggest it. I’ll just go along for company, if you don’t mind.”

“I’d be delighted. Perhaps, along the way, we can trifle for a while in some leafy glade.”

“It’s entirely possible. I have no special preference for leafy glades, but I am, as you know, addicted to occasional trifling.”

Leaving the Jag in the drive, and my bag in the Jag, we went around the big Colonial house, past the garages in the rear, and so onto a path that ran up a gentle slope among maples and oaks and sycamores to the crest of the rise; then down again among more of the same into a hollow where, under the flowering crab apple tree Grandfather had gathered in a private plot the deceased members of the Canning clan.

There, side by side, or end to end, lay Grandmother and Uncle Wish and Father and Mother. There, in good time, Grandfather would also lie, a patriarch among them. There also was room reserved for me, and for Connie by my side. An unpleasant prospect, surely, but hopefully remote. What was pleasant and immediate was the fact that Connie and I were side by side and hand in hand, very much alive and with a prospect of trifling.

Unfortunately for the prospect, however, we met Grandfather on his way back. As we reached the crest of the rise, we could see him on the slope below us, ascending briskly among the trees. I must say candidly that Grandfather, for an octogenarian, was depressingly spry. He lifted his knees high when walking, and in fact his gait was a kind of prance that seemed about to break any second into a trot. Now, seeing us above him, he gave out with a shrill cackle of greeting and lifted an arm in salute. A soft warm breeze stirred the white fuzz on his head.

“Good to see you again, Buster,” he said, approaching. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you, Grandfather. You’re certainly looking fit.”

“Feel fit. Am fit. You were coming at once to say hello to your old Grandfather, hey? Good boy.”

“As you see, Connie and I came looking for you first thing.”

“Good girl, Connie. Considerate. I’ve been to visit my children. Pay them a visit every decent day. Just on my way back. Got a project in hand that I must get to work on. Work on it two hours every day, decent or not.”

“Is that so? What are you doing?”

“Writing a history of this county. Many fascinating things have happened here. Know many of them first-hand. Consulting sources for the rest.”

“It sounds like quite a project. How long do you think it will take to finish it?”

“Five years. Got it worked out on a schedule. Two hours a day for five years.”

“Five years!”

If my dismay was apparent in my voice, Grandfather didn’t seem to notice it. My exclamation was literally wrenched out of me, of course, and small wonder. After all, I mean, 5 and 86 are 91!

“That’s right,” he said. “Five years will see it done. Must keep at it, though. Must get at it now. You’ll excuse me, I hope.”

“We’ll walk back to the house with you.”

“Wouldn’t hear of it. Since you’ve come this far, you’ll want to go on and pay your respects to your father and mother. Connie will go with you.”

“Thanks, Grandfather. It’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Not at all, not at all. Make yourself at home, my boy, as usual. The place is yours. I’ll expect to have you here until September at least. You and Connie both.”

He pranced over the crest and out of sight down the far slope. I sighed and groped for Connie’s hand, which I had released to shake Grandfather’s.

“To tell the truth,” I said, “I am singularly uninterested in paying my respects to Father and Mother.”

“Grandfather expects it, and you mustn’t disappoint him.”

“Nevertheless, I find the idea uninviting.”

“Perhaps I can make things a little more interesting for you. When you stop to consider it, the Happy Hunting Ground is as nearly a leafy glade as any other spot we are likely to find.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I am more interested already.”

The blossoms were gone — gone a month or more — and the crab apple tree was hung along the boughs with little red apples. The small headstones sought and achieved a neat and charming simplicity, enclosed and isolated from unkempt indigenous growth by iron pickets painted green. The grass within the enclosure had been clipped, and the mower was at rest with spade and hoe and rake and shears in the tool shed, also painted green, that stood aside from the assembled dead outside the iron pickets.

Sunshine filtered through apple leaves to fashion a random pattern of light and shade. Light lay lightly on Connie’s eyes, which were closed. Shade made a mystery of her lips, which were smiling.

“Do you know the trouble with Grandfather?” she said.

“I wasn’t aware that he had any,” I said.

“The trouble with Grandfather,” she said, “is that he won’t die.”

The warm air was filled, if one bothered to listen, with a thousand sleepy sounds. Among the leaves of the crab apple tree there was a flash of yellow wings.

“It’s true,” I said, “that he’s taking his time about it.”

“He’s absolutely interminable, that’s what. You heard what he said about the dreary book he’s writing about things that are surely of no consequence to anyone. Five years, he said.”

“I heard.”

“Do you think he can possibly live five years longer?”

“It’s my opinion that he can.”

“It’s positively obscene. Here are Uncle Wish and your mother and father, all dead and decently buried, and all years and years younger than Grandfather. Damn it, Buster, there ought to be some kind of decent order in dying.”

“Death is often disorderly. It’s peculiar that way.”

“It doesn’t seem fair for things to be so badly managed.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You must admit, my lovely waif, that you and I have profited from the disorder. A split two ways has obvious advantages over a split five ways.”

“It does, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Thinking is bad for you. As someone said about metaphysics, it befuddles you methodically.”

“Just the same, it was odd how your mother and father died.”

“Odd?”

“Well, how your father just up and died all at once of something that was diagnosed by a senile doctor as a heart condition. I never dreamed that there was anything wrong with his heart. Did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And then how your mother presumably committed suicide in her presumed grief. I never saw any evidence that your mother was inordinately fond of your father. Did you?”

“Not a shred.”

“I’ve also been thinking about something else that was odd.”

“What else?”

“You were here at the time of both deaths, darling. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

I raised myself on an elbow and looked at her. She lay on her back and did not move. Her eyes were still closed in the light. Her lips still smiled in the shade. The shade moved as the leaves that cast it moved.

“As odd,” I said, “as your own presence at those unhappy events.”

She laughed instantly in some strange, contained delight. Opening her eyes she sat up. Her laughter was more motion than sound, hardly louder than a whisper. In her voice, when she spoke, was a kind of mock wonder.

“Darling,” she said, “I do believe we suspect each other.”

“Impossible. One of us suspects; the other knows.”

“That’s so, isn’t it? You’re very logical, darling.”

“Logical enough to know that the quotient increases as the divisor decreases.”

“Of course. That’s elementary.”

“As you say, elementary. Even a child could see it. Even you.”

“Thank you. I’m really quite clever at arithmetic when you come right down to it. I understand clearly, for instance, that this all remains purely academic, a kind of textbook exercise, until the dividend is available for division.”

“In good time. Five years will pass in five years. Meanwhile, let us enjoy our summers.”

“I’m sick of our summers. At this instant, if I weren’t on orders and rations, I might be in Rio or Mexico City or some other exciting place.”

“If you were, I’d be desolate.”

“No, you wouldn’t, darling. You’re a summer habit. We’d make arrangements.”

“I’m reassured. However, you must admit that Grandfather, for all his irritating devotion and familial despotism, is exceedingly generous with his money. He has always cheerfully supported us all, and in the style to which we’ve become accustomed. Some fair day, after the detestable county history is finished, you and I shall have what he leaves behind.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“There’s nothing deceptive about Grandfather. He’s fanatically devoted to his family, even though they neither sow nor reap. You know that.”

“For all his generosity, however, he’s a strait-laced and sensitive old moralist in his way. Suppose we did something to offend him and got cut out of the will?”

“Don’t even think of such a horrible contingency. We must take care to avoid such a thing.”

“That’s easily said, but I know you, and you know me, and we both know that either of us could be found out anytime. All I can say is, it’s a good thing Grandfather doesn’t have access to our detailed case histories this minute.”

She lay down again on the neat green grass, and I lay down beside her. The grass, lately cut, smelled sweet and good. Closing my eyes, I listened to the thousand summer sounds. Beside me, Connie’s voice was drugged with drowsy dreams.

“It isn’t remarkable when a very old man dies,” she said.

“If he has seventy million dollars and dies in the company of his two remaining heirs,” I said, “it may attract remarkable notice.”

“Nonsense. One only needs to be clever and careful.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

While I was thinking, June passed. In July, the first two weeks of it, it was too hot to think. Then, the third week, we began to get thunderstorms every day, and the temperature became tolerable, and it actually began to seem as if it might be almost possible to reach a decision and to accomplish something exceptional.

I must admit that I greatly admired Connie during this trying period. She never pushed; she never nagged; she never even mentioned, not once, Grandfather’s distressing longevity. She left me strictly to my lonely thoughts regarding that critical matter, and it was only now and then that I caught her looking at me with a wary watchful expression in her ancient Florentine eyes. Otherwise, we played tennis, we lay in the sun, we took walks, we drank gin and tonic, we trifled when we chose. It was, all in all, a pleasant summer, although dull in spots.

Even the rains, when they came, were rather pleasant. They broke the heat and cleared the mind and stimulated the imagination. Some days of that third July week broke bright and clear, but always in the morning the thunderheads would begin to pile up in the southwest and in the afternoon they would come boiling over with the wind roaring and the thunder crashing and great jagged bolts of lightning splitting the sky.

Connie responded intensely to these gaudy displays of elemental pyrotechnics. She would stand or sit very erect, her nostrils flaring, her eyes dilated and shining, and I could see her small alert breasts rise and fall in a cadence of contained excitement. We always watched from the front veranda of the house. Sometimes the rain blew in and wet us down. That’s where we were one afternoon when the week had nearly passed, and the rains with the week. The clouds had just rolled over, and the deluge had stopped. The sun, breaking through scattered remnants, transformed the shadowed earth to an Eden of shimmering green and gold.

“Let’s take a walk,” Connie said.

“Now?” I said.

“Yes, now.”

“We’ll get our shoes wet.”

“We’ll take our shoes off.”

She was wearing loafers on bare feet, and she kicked the loafers off and went down off the veranda and across the yard. I took oft my tennis shoes and socks and followed. She was walking swiftly, and she was around the house and past the garages and onto the path beyond them before I caught up.

She took my hand and held it tightly, as if she were trying by the pressure to transmit a message, and we walked on up the slope and over the crest and down the slope on the other side. Skirting the Happy Hunting Ground, we walked on through thicker trees and denser growth until we came to the far side of the estate where a narrow creek ran between deep banks. Ordinarily, the creek bed carried little water, but the heavy rains had drained into it from the slopes, and now it was nearly full.

We walked along the creek until we reached a place where the banks were lower and the water spread and became shallower and rushed in a rapids over worn rocks. A chain of large stepping stones had been strung across the creekbed here, but now they were submerged, and the water boiled around them. We sat down together on the trunk of a fallen tree.

“How could we do it?” I said.

“It would be easy.” She picked up my thoughts as if there had been a pause of only minutes instead of weeks in our conversation. “He’s an old man. It’s time for him to die. Who would suspect?”

“It would have to be done just so. At best, it would be a terrible risk.”

“Hardly any risk at all. I have a plan.”

“I confess that I feel a certain reluctance, quite aside from the risk, to do Grandfather in. It’s true, however, that his unreasonable tenacity incites it.”

“There would be no pain, no violence. In the end, he wouldn’t even know. He would simply die in his sleep.”

“Neat enough, if it could be arranged. How could it?”

“Surely you have thought of it a hundred times yourself, Buster. You couldn’t have helped yourself.”

“The nightcap?”

“You see? I knew you’d thought of it.”

The reference was to an old habit and a minor family ritual. The old quack who had been Grandfather’s doctor for ages had recommended years ago that he take a nightcap of bourbon and water every night upon retiring. This was supposed to calm his nerves, pep up his circulation, and act upon him generally as a salubrious tonic. Grandfather was by no means addicted to the bottle, but his nightcap became a habit entrenched, and a minor ritual, as I said, developed around it.

I don’t know what adjustments were made when I was not in the house, but when I was there I was expected at Grandfather’s bedtime to make the highball and deliver it to him in his room, where I usually found him waiting on the edge of his bed in his nightgown. I made the highball in the kitchen from 100 proof stuff that he kept tucked away in the cabinet for his private consumption.

In the beginning, the highball had been a mild thing, mostly water; but it grew stronger as time passed, and currently it was quite the other way round, mostly bourbon in a water tumbler with one small ice cube and a quick pass under the tap. It was enough, indeed, to blow the top off an ordinary man’s head, but Grandfather had approached it slowly for a long time, and I suppose he had sort of immunized himself to it by small and regular increases of the dosage, as Mithridates is said to have done with poisons.

“The thought has crossed my mind,” I said. “As you remarked, it affords altogether such a beautiful opportunity that I could hardly fail being tempted.”

“Why have you never done it?”

“Poison is so treacherous. It has a way of getting found in the innards.”

“Only if there’s an autopsy.”

“Poison has a nasty way of leaving various signs that arouse suspicions and make autopsies inevitable.”

“Not always. Buster, you simply haven’t taken the trouble to inform yourself sufficiently, that’s all.”

“Perhaps you would care to inform me sufficiently now.”

“I’d be delighted. You simply lace his nightcap with chloral hydrate. In brief, you slip him a gigantic Mickey Finn. A large dose would be fatal, I assure you, and it would have definite advantages from our point of view. He would merely pass out and die without recovering consciousness, which would have the virtue of making him appear to have died in his sleep — surely not an uncommon occurrence with men so old. Moreover, besides being merciful, the drug disappears from the system quickly and is extremely difficult to detect.”

“That last point is particularly important. You are well informed, aren’t you, darling? I’m happy, I must say, that you aren’t devising a scheme for murdering me. Or are you?”

“Don’t be absurd, Buster. How could I dream for an instant of murdering someone I’ve been so friendly with? You must think I’m a perfect monster.”

“Haven’t you been friendly with Grandfather?”

“That’s different. Grandfather and I have hardly been friendly in the same way.”

“I should hope not. Returning to your plan, however, it seems to me that it would be difficult, as well as risky, to acquire a lethal dose of chloral hydrate.”

“You needn’t concern yourself with that. My contacts in Chicago are rather diversified, to say the least. I’m always getting interested in all sorts of odd people who have access to lots of things. I happen to have some chloral hydrate in my possession.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Never mind that. If you decide sensibly to put it in Grandfather’s nightcap, I’ll get it for you at once.”

“Your service is excellent, darling. I’ll have to give you that.”

“I try to be helpful.”

“Your plan, so far as I can see, is flawless. Simple and direct. No fancy complications.”

“Will you do it?”

“Maybe.”

“Tonight?”

“Maybe.”

“Darling, it would be so easy.”

“Damn it,” I said, “I’ve got mud between my toes.”

When the time came, it wasn’t. Easy, that is.

We were in the library, Grandfather and Connie and I. Grandfather was dozing in his chair. Connie was listening to muted jazz. I was playing solitaire. The library clock struck ten, and Grandfather stood up.

“I’ll say good night, children,” he said. “Buster, my boy, will you bring my nightcap?”

He pranced out. I looked at Connie, and Connie looked at me. Turning away, I went out to the kitchen and made Grandfather’s nightcap according to recipe. When I turned around, Connie was in the doorway watching me. We stood there looking at each other for a long minute. She was excited. She was filled with the strange, contained excitement she had felt on the veranda when the thunderheads rolled over.

“Now?” she said.

I didn’t answer. Carrying the nightcap, I went upstairs to Grandfather’s room.

When I came down, Connie had disappeared.

The next day there was another thunderstorm. It came early in the afternoon, just after lunch. Grandfather had withdrawn to the library to put in his daily labor on the county history, and I was on the veranda to watch the black roistering masses roll overhead to the deafening detonations of the thunder and the forked flashes of lightning and the great rush of wind-blown rain.

The storm, this day, was brief. Fifteen minutes after the rain began it was all over. I kept waiting for Connie to join me on the veranda, but she never did. Not, that is, while the storm lasted.

She came out afterward and down the steps into the yard. She was wearing a pair of white shorts and a white cotton blouse, and her feet were bare. She didn’t look at me or speak, and I went over to the steps and down into the yard after her.

“Where have you been?” I said.

“Upstairs in my room,” she said.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Poor boy. Waiting is a tedious business, isn’t it? One gets so sick of it after a while.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Not at all. A little disappointed in you, perhaps. It is perfectly clear that nothing extraordinary can be expected of you.”

“You must give me a little more time, that’s all.”

“Take all the time you want. Take forever.”

She had turned to face me, and now she turned away again and started across the yard. I followed a few steps behind.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, thanks. I don’t care to have you.”

“Why not?”

“Life is dull enough around here at best. You’d only make it worse.”

“You never seemed to find me so dull before.”

“I thought you were better than nothing, darling. Now I’m not so sure.”

I stopped where I was and watched her go. She had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and long golden legs. For a moment, watching her, I had a hard and hurting sense of intolerable loss. Then I turned back to the house and went inside and upstairs to my room.

I opened my windows and lay down on the bed, and the cool wet air blew in across me. I could hear the dripping of rain and the chittering of birds and the rustling of leaves in what was left of the wind. After a while I sank into a strange sort of lassitude, a passive submission to fragmentary dreams between waking and sleeping, and then, some time later, I went to sleep soundly and slept through the afternoon, and when I woke it was after five o’clock. I washed my face and went downstairs and found Grandfather, after a brief search, standing behind the house looking off in the direction of the slope beyond the garages.

“There you are, Buster,” he said. “I’ve hardly set eyes on you all day long. Where have you been keeping yourself, my boy?”

“I went upstairs after lunch and fell asleep. I slept longer than I intended.”

“Where’s Connie?”

“She went for a walk right after the storm. Isn’t she back yet?”

“Can’t find her. Can’t find her anywhere.”

“Maybe she’s in her room.”

“Knocked. Got no answer.”

“Well, she wasn’t in a very good humor. Probably she’s off sitting somewhere until she recovers. She’ll be along in good time.”

“I walked to the cemetery. Didn’t see her along the way.”

“Perhaps she’s over by the creek.”

“I’m a bit concerned, my boy. Can’t deny it. She may have hurt herself. Sprained an ankle or something. May be out there waiting for help.”

“If it will make you feel better, Grandfather, I’ll go look for her.”

“Do that, my boy. Relieve your old grandfather’s anxiety.”

“All right. I’m sure I’ll be back with her shortly, if she doesn’t get back ahead of me.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll go in and change my shoes. Soaking wet. Hurry back, my boy.”

He turned toward the house, and I walked up the slope and over the crest and down into the hollow and past the cemetery and on through grass among the trees toward the creek. The sky had cleared, and the sun was out, and the light of the sun lanced through the trees. The earth was scrubbed and rinsed and sparkling clean. I could hear ahead of me the rushing sound of the swollen creek. My canvas shoes were soon soaked. At the creek’s bank I turned toward the rapids...

That was the last day of the thunderstorms. The next morning broke clear, and the clouds never formed, and every day thereafter for a long time was bright and dry.

It was like that over in the hollow, bright and dry and still in sunshine and shade, the day we buried Connie.

The funeral service was private. Only a handful of people were there. Grandfather and I were the only mourners, and after the sad and definitive ceremony was finished beside the grave, we walked back alone to the house. The house without Connie seemed vast and empty and filled with whispered echoes. I had not yet got used to her being gone, and I truly missed her, although I knew my loneliness wouldn’t last. Add to $35,000,000 an equal amount, and you have what may be called an antidote to lasting sorrow.

In the house I went upstairs to my room and lay down on the bed and tried to think of certain things in order to avoid thinking of certain others. This was not very successful, and I began to wish that Connie were there to distract me, which was no more at most than half an ambivalence.

So I got up and went downstairs again after an hour or so, and there was Grandfather in the library with a visitor. The visitor was a short thin man with pale limp hair, a furrowed face, and a vaguely deferential manner. I had met him once before, which was once too often, and I knew him already as well as I ever wanted to. His name was Drake, and he was a captain of county detectives.

“There you are, my boy,” Grandfather said. “Come in, come in.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” I said.

“No intrusion. None at all. I was just about to send for you. In fact, Captain Drake wants to talk with you.”

“I don’t know why,” I said. “I’ve already told Captain Drake all I know.”

“I know you have, my boy. I know that well enough. He merely wants to clarify some points and get his report in order. Isn’t that so, Captain?”

“That’s so,” Drake said. “I’m sorry to intrude again on a day so sad as this one. Won’t you please come in and sit down, Mr. Canning? This will take only a few minutes.”

I went in and sat down on the edge of a chair.

“What do you want to know?” I said.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d go over your account again. Just one more time.”

“Why? I’ve already gone over it and over it.”

“I know. I’m sorry. If you will just indulge me, please.”

“Well, as I’ve said, it was the day of the last thunderstorm. When the storm was over, Connie went out for a walk. I offered to go along, but she didn’t want me to. I guess she just wanted to be alone. Anyhow, I went upstairs and took a nap. When I woke up, it was late, and Connie wasn’t back, and Grandfather was worried. So I went out to look for her.

“I walked to the creek and along the creek to the place we’ve always called the riffles. There the water spreads out and becomes shallow and flows through a lot of rocks. Stepping stones have been placed across the bed, and Connie was there in the water, face down, and her body had lodged between two of the stepping stones. She was barefooted, wearing shorts, and I suppose she’d tried to wade the creek. It wasn’t very deep there, even after all the rains, but the current was very swift, and it must have swept her feet out from under her. She struck her head on a boulder and drowned, that’s all. I can’t tell you any more.”

He was leaning forward in his chair in a posture of intent listening, but his eyes were abstracted, remote, and he seemed to be hearing, if he heard anything, some private voice subliminal to all but him. Aware after a moment that I had finished, he sighed and stirred.

“Quite so. The story as before. Well, it’s reasonable. It’s even possible. There’s only one thing that disturbs me.”

“What’s that?”

“She struck her head, you say, and she must have done so. But still it’s puzzling. There was only one contusion on her head, and it was high up, near the crown. It could have caused unconsciousness, certainly, but it’s difficult, all factors considered, to see how it could have been acquired in falling. It looks very much, in fact, as if she’d been struck deliberately by a rock in someone’s hand.”

He fell silent and seemed to be listening again to his private subliminal voice. Then he added, almost casually, “It would help if the blow had killed her — if she had been dead when she entered the water, I mean. But that’s no good. There was water in her lungs.”

“You’re distorting things,” I said. “You’ve got too much imagination.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’ve been told that it’s a fault of mine.” He turned abruptly to Grandfather. “The young lady who drowned was not your natural granddaughter, I understand. Would you mind telling me if she was one of your heirs?”

“She was. She was to share equally with my other heir.”

“And the other heir is young Mr. Canning here?”

“Naturally.”

“And now he will become your sole heir. Is that correct?”

Grandfather rose from his chair, and the white fuzz seemed to bristle on his head. The old boy, when he chose, could be as hard as diamond and as cold as ice.

“Captain,” he said, “I consider that question an intrusion on my personal affairs. It requires me to commit myself, and is therefore unwarranted. Moreover, sir, it is impertinent and offensive.”

Captain Drake sighed again and stood up. His vaguely deferential manner was suddenly more pronounced, but his voice remained, somehow, impersonal and invulnerable.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Sorry.” He crossed to the library door, his wilted cord suit hanging limply on his thin frame, and paused with his hand on the knob to look back at us. “I hope that young Mr. Canning is not planning to leave this house in the immediate future.”

“Buster will be my guest until September at least,” Grandfather said coldly.

“Let us hope so,” Drake said. “Let us earnestly hope so.”

There was a knock on my door, and immediately afterward, before I could answer, the door was pushed open and Grandfather entered the room carrying a tray with two glasses on it. The glasses were filled with dark amber liquid, and a small ice cube floated in each. I had been negligent, clearly, of what I thought of lightly as my $35,000,000 duty. Now, with luck, $70,000,000.

“Grandfather,” I said, “I’ve forgotten your nightcap. I’m sorry.”

“Think nothing of it, my boy. It has been a trying day for you, what with Drake’s impertinence on top of poor Connie’s funeral, and I’m more than happy to serve you for a change.”

“It’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Not at all, my boy, not at all. As you see, I’ve brought along my own nightcap. We shall have our drinks together tonight.”

“Thank you, Grandfather. I’ll enjoy that.”

I cleared a place on my bedside table, and Grandfather set the tray there. He picked up one of the glasses and handed it to me, keeping the other for himself.

“Grandfather,” I said, “I don’t like that detective. He worries me.”

“Drake? He’s a clever man, but he forgets his proper place. He is sometimes, as I said, impertinent.”

“Impertinence is a mild word for what was practically an accusation of murder.”

“Oh, he didn’t actually accuse you of murder, my boy. His suspicions have been aroused by a seeming incongruity in conjunction with what appears to be a powerful motive and ample opportunity. That’s all there is to it.”

“All! Isn’t that enough?”

“Don’t worry about it, my boy. I shall see that no harm comes to you. I shall care for you and keep you secure, just as I have always cared for the members of my family.”

Grandfather had pulled a chair near the bed, and now he sat down in the chair and sipped his nightcap. I sat on the edge of the bed and took a long drink of my own. It was, as its color indicated, very strong.

“I must say that you’ve made me feel better, Grandfather,” I said.

“Trust me, my boy. Trust your old Grandfather, just as all the others trusted me. Haven’t I brought them all home? Haven’t I given them all peace and lasting security? They were charming children, all charming children, but not one who was not helpless. Not one who didn’t need my constant loving care. The tragic end of your Uncle Wish convinced me finally of that. Could I leave the others to comparable ends or worse? Could I trust life to those who couldn’t even be trusted with a dollar? Could I go away, when my time comes to go, and leave them all behind to their own frail and futile devices? Well, they are all secure now. All secure in the hollow beyond the crest. All at rest beneath the flowering crab apple tree.”

Grandfather leaned forward and patted me on the knee, watching me closely with his inexhaustible loving kindness. I started to say something, but it was so much easier to say nothing at all.

“How do you feel, my boy? It will be over quickly, I promise you, as it was with dear little Connie, and soon you will be safe forever. Let Captain Drake think what he pleases. If he thinks, as he surely will, that in fear you took the easy way to evade him, what matter? He will quietly close his case on all the wrong assumptions, and we shall just as quietly have the last laugh. Leave it to me, my boy. Leave it all to your old Grandfather.”

He patted my knee again, tenderly, and I was dimly aware that my hands were empty and that I must have carelessly dropped my glass. I started to rise, but it was so much easier simply to lie down.

It’s April again. The frail pink blossoms of the crab apple tree shower to earth in the slightest stirring of the languid air, to lie like pastel snow among the clustered headstones of the Canning dead. Already the fruit is forming where the blossoms hung, and in a little while, after the swift passing of spring, toward the end of summer’s indolent amble, the small red apples will fall in turn, to lie where the blossoms lie.

The seasons come, and the seasons go...

But Grandfather, it seems, goes on forever.

Content

The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Copyright info

A note from the publisher

The Two-Faced Corpse

As I Lie Dead

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

I’ll Kill for You

A Long Way To K.C.

Heels Are for Hating

Murder of a Mouse

Points South

Two Little Hands

Handy Man

Loose Ends

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

The Witness Was a Lady

She Asked for It

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Tune Me In

The Spent Days

Bonus Boy

Mrs. Dearly’s Special Day

Six Reasons for Murder

How? When? Who?

The Satin-Quilted Box

My Father Died Young

Wait and See

Obituary

The Happenstance Snatch

Cousin Kelly

Refuge

Something Priceless

Additionally six additional stories

The Collector Comes After Payday

Insurance (The Long Wait)

May I Come In?

Homicide and Gentlemen

IQ–184

The Seasons Come, the Seasons Go