Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock(енгл)
страница №5
...ound that my knees were shaking. This was thesecond man I'd seen die tonight. But I hadn't so much minded about George.
He'd had it coming, for one thing, and for another his body had been inside
the crumpled-up car; I'd not actually seen him die. Nor had I been alone
then; Smiley had been with me. I'd have given my whole bank account, all
three hundred and twelve dollars of it, to have Smiley with me there in the
attic.
I wanted to get out of there, fast, and I was too scared to move. I
thought I'd be less scared if I could figure out what it was all about, but
it was sheerly mad. It didn't make sense that even a madman would have
brought me out here under so weird a pretext so that I could be an audience
of one to his suicide.
In fact, if I was sure of anything, I was sure that Smith hadn't killed
himself. But who had, and why? The Vorpal Blades? Was there such a group?
Where were they? Why hadn't they come?
A sudden thought put shivers down my spine. Maybe they had. I'd thought
I heard a car come and go, while we'd waited. Why couldn't it have dropped
off passengers? Waiting for me downstairs or even now creeping up the
attic steps toward me.
I looked that way. The candle flickered and the shadows danced. I
strained my ears, but there wasn't any sound. No sound anywhere.
I was afraid to move, and then gradually I found that I was afraid not
to move. I had to get out of here before I went crazy. If anything was
downstairs I'd rather go down and meet it than wait till it decided to come
up here after me.
I wished to hell and back that I hadn't given Smiley that revolver, but
wishing didn't get me the revolver back.
Well, the whisky bottle was a weapon of sorts. I shifted the flashlight
to my left hand and picked up the whisky bottle, by its neck, in my right.
It was still more than half full and heavy enough for a bludgeon.
I tiptoed to the head of the steps. I don't know why I tiptoed unless
it was to avoid scaring myself worse by making noise; we hadn't been quiet
up here before and Smith's fall had shaken the whole house. If anyone was
downstairs, he knew he wasn't alone in the building.
I looked at the square post at the top of the railing and the short,
thick candle still burning on top of it. I didn't want to touch it; I wanted
to be able to say that I hadn't touched anything at all, except to feel for
a heartbeat that wasn't there. Yet I couldn't leave the candle burning,
either; it might set the house afire if it fell over, as Smith hadn't
anchored it down with molten wax, but had merely stood it on its base.
I compromised by blowing it out but not touching it otherwise.
My flashlight showed me there was nothing or no one on the stairs
leading down to the second floor and that the door at the bottom of them was
still closed, as we had left it. Before I started down them I took one last
look around the attic with my flash. The shadows jumped as the beam swept
around the walls, and then, for some reason, I brought the circle of light
to rest on Yehudi Smith's body lying sprawled there on the floor, eyes wide
open and still staring unseeingly at the rafters overhead, his face still
frozen in the grimace of that horrible, if brief, pain in which he'd died.
I hated to leave him alone there in the dark. Silly and sentimental as
the thought was, I couldn't help feeling that way. He'd been such a nice
little guy. Who the hell had killed him, and why, and why in such a bizarre
manner, and what was it all about? And he'd said it was dangerous to come
here tonight, and he was dead right, as far as he himself was concerned. And
I?
With that thought, I was afraid again. I wasn't out of here yet. Was
someone or something waiting downstairs?
The attic stairs were uncarpeted and they squeaked so loudly that I
gave up trying to walk quietly and hurried. The attic door creaked, too, but
nothing was waiting for me on the other side of it. Or downstairs. I flashed
my light into the big living room as I passed the doorway and got a
momentary fright as I thought something white was coming toward me but it
was only the sheeted table and it had only seemed to move.
The porch and down the porch steps.
The car was still there on the driveway beside the house. It was a
coupe, I noticed now, and the same make and model as mine. My feet crunched
gravel as I walked to it; I was still scared but I didn't dare let myself
run. I wondered if Smith had left the key in the car, and hoped frantically
that he had. I should have thought of it while I was still in the attic and
could have felt in his pockets. I wouldn't go back up there now, I realized,
for anything in the world. I'd walk back to town first.
At least the car door wasn't locked. I slid in under the wheel, and,
flashed my light on the dashboard. Yes, the ignition key was in the lock. I
slammed the door behind me and felt a little more secure inside the closed
car.
I fumed the key and stepped on the starter and the engine started the
first try. I shifted into low gear and then, before I let out the clutch, I
carefully shifted back into neutral again and sat there with the motor
idling.
This wasn't the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The gear
shift knob was hard rubber with a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball
I'd noticed on the gear shift lever of his car. It was like the one on my
car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tires that I hadn't got
around to fixing.
I turned on the dome light, although by then I didn't really have to. I
knew already from the feel of the controls in starting and in shifting, from
the sound of the engine, from a dozen little things.
This was my car.
It was so impossible that I forgot to be afraid, that I was in such a
hurry to get away from the house. Oh, there was a little logic in my lack of
fear, too; if anybody had been laying for me, the house would have been the
place. He wouldn't have let me get this far and he wouldn't have left the
ignition key in the car so I could get away in it.
I got out of the car and looked, with the flashlight, at the two tires
which had been flat this morning. They weren't flat now. Either someone had
fixed them, or someone had simply let the air out of them last night and had
subsequently pumped them up again with the hand pump I keep in my luggage
compartment. The second idea seemed more likely; now that I thought of it,
it was strange that two tires both in good shape and with good tubes in
them should have gone flat, completely flat, at the same time and while
the car was standing in my garage.
I walked all the way around the car, looking at it, and there wasn't
anything wrong with it that I could see. I got back in under the wheel and
sat there a minute with the engine running, wondering if it was even
remotely possible that Yehudi Smith had driven me here in my own car.
No, I decided, not remotely. I hadn't noticed his car at all except for
three things, but those three things were plenty to make me sure. Besides
the gear shift knob, I remembered that push button radio with the button for
WBBM pushed in and my car has no radio at all and there was the fact
that his engine was noisy and mine is quiet. Right then, with it idling, I
could barely hear it.
Unless I was crazy
Could I have imagined that other car? For that matter, could I have
imagined Yehudi Smith? Could I have driven out here by myself in my own car,
gone up to the attic alone ?
It's a horrible thing to suspect yourself suddenly of complete
insanity, equipped with hallucinations.
I realized I'd better quit thinking along those lines, here alone in a
car, alone in the night, parked beside a haunted house. I might drive myself
nutty, if I wasn't already.
I took a long drink out of the bottle that was now on the seat beside
me, and then drove out to the highway and back to town. I didn't drive fast,
partly because I was a little drunk physically anyway. The horrible thing
that had happened up in the attic, the fantastic, incredible death of Yehudi
Smith, had shocked me sober, mentally.
I couldn't have imagined
But at the edge of town the doubts came back, then the answer to them.
I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the dome light. I had the
card and the key and the flashlight, those three souvenirs of my experience.
I took the flashlight out of my coat pocket and looked at it. Just a dime
store flashlight; it meant nothing except that it wasn't mine. The card was
the thing. I hunted in several pockets, getting worried as hell; before I
found it in the pocket of my shirt. Yes, J had it, and it still read Yehudi
Smith. I felt a little better as I put it back in my pocket. While I was at
it, I looked at the key, too. The key that had been with the "DRINK ME"
bottle on the glass-topped table.
It was still there in the pocket Smith had dropped it into; I'd not
touched it or looked at it closely. It was, of course, the wrong kind of
key, but I'd noticed that at first glance when I'd seen it on the table in
the attic; that had been part of my source of amusement when I'd laughed. It
was a Yale key, and it should have been a small gold key, the one Alice used
to open the fifteen-inch-high door into the lovely garden.
Come to think of it, all three of those props in the attic had been
wrong, one way or another. The table had been a glass-topped one, but it
should have been an all-glass table; the wooden legs were wrong. The key
shouldn't have been a nickel-plated Yale, and the "DRINK ME" should not have
contained poison. (It had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart,
custard, pine apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast.)
according to Alice. It couldn't have tasted anything like that to Smith.
I started driving again, slowly. Now that I was back in town I had to
make up my mind whether I was going to the sheriff's office or going to call
the state police. Reluctantly I decided I'd better go right to the sheriff.
Definitely this case was in his department, unless he called on the state
police for help. They'd dump it in his lap anyway, even if I called them.
And he hated my guts enough as it was, without my making it any worse by
by-passing him in reporting a major crime. Not that I didn't hate his guts
just as much, but tonight he was in a better position to make trouble for me
than I for him.
So I parked my coupe across the street from the courthouse and took one
more swig from the bottle to give me courage to tell Kates the story I was
going to have to tell him. Then I marched myself across the street and up
the courthouse stairs to the sheriff's office on the second floor. If I was
lucky, I thought, Kates might be out and his deputy, Hank Ganzer, might be
there.
I wasn't lucky. Hank wasn't there at all; and Kates was talking on the
phone. He glared at me when I came in and then went back to his call.
"Hell, I could have done it on the phone from here. Go see the guy.
Wake him up and be sure he's awake enough to remember any little thing that
might have been said. Yeah, then call me again before you start back."
He put the receiver down and his swivel chair squeaked shrilly as he
swung about to face me. He yelled, "There isn't any story on it yet." Rance
Kates always yells; I've never heard him say anything in a quiet tone, or
even a normal one. His voice matches his red face, which always looks angry.
I've often wondered if he looks like that even when he's in bed. Wondered,
but had no inclination to find out.
What he'd just yelled at me, though, made so little sense that I just
looked at him.
I said, "I've come to report a murder, Kates."
"Huh?" He looked interested. "You mean you found either Miles or
Bonney?"
For a minute neither name registered at all. I said, "The man's name is
Smith." I thought I'd better sneak up on the Yehudi part gradually, maybe
let Kates read it himself off the card. "The body is in the attic of the old
Wentworth place out on the pike."
"Stoeger, are you drunk?"
"I've been drinking," I told him. "I'm not drunk." At least I hoped I
wasn't. Maybe that last one I'd taken in the car just before I'd left it had
been one too many. My voice sounded thick, even to me, and I had a hunch my
eyes were looking a trifle bleary from the outside; they were beginning to
feel that way from my side of them.
"What were you doing in the attic of the Wentworth place? You mean you
were there tonight?"
I wished again that Hank Ganzer had been there instead of Kates. Hank
would have taken my word for it and gone out for the body; then my story
wouldn't have sounded so incredible when I'd have got around to telling it.
I said, "Yes, I just came from there. I went there with Smith, at his
request."
"Who is this Smith? You know him?"
"I met him tonight for the first time. He came to see me.
"What for? What were you doing out there? A haunted house!"
I sighed. There wasn't anything I could do but answer his damn
questions and they were getting tougher all the time. Let's see, how could I
put it so it wouldn't sound too crazy?
I said, "We were there because it is supposed to be a haunted house,
Kates. This Smith was interested in the occult in psychic phenomena. He
asked me to go out there with him to perform an experiment. I gathered that
some other people were coming, but they didn't."
"What kind of an experiment?"
"I don't know. He was killed before we got around to it."
"You and him were there alone?"
"Yes," I said, but I saw where that was leading so I added, "But I
didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. He was poisoned."
"Poisoned how?"
Part of my brain wanted to tell him, "Out of a little bottle labeled
`DRINK ME' on a glass table, as in Alice in Wonderland." The sensible part
of my brain told me to let him find that out for himself. I said, "Out of a
bottle that was planted there for him to drink. By whom, I don't know. But
you sound like you don't believe me. Why don't you go out and see for
yourself, Kates? Damn it, man, I'm reporting a murder." And then it occurred
to me there wasn't really any proof of that so I amended it a little: "Or at
least a death by violence."
He stared at me and I think he was becoming convinced, a little. His
phone rang and his swivel chair screamed again as he swung around. He barked
"Hello. Sheriff Kates," into it.
Then his voice tamed down a little. He said, "No, Mrs. Harrison,
haven't heard a thing. Hank's over at Neilsville, checking up at that end,
and he's going to watch the road again on his way back. I'll call you the
minute I learn anything at all. But don't worry; it can't be anything
serious."
He turned back. "Stoeger, if this is a gag, I'm going to take you
apart." He meant it, and he could do it, too. Kates is only a medium-sized
man, not too much bigger than I, but he's tough and hard as a rock
physically. He can handle men weighing half again as much as he does. And
he's got enough of a sadistic streak to enjoy doing it whenever he has a
good excuse for it.
"It's no gag," I said. "What's this about Miles Harrison and Ralph
Bonney?"
"Missing. They left Neilsville with the Bonney pay roll a little after
half past eleven and should have been back here around midnight. It's almost
two o'clock and nobody knows where they are. Look, if I thought you were
sober and there was a stiff out on the pike, I'd call the state cops. I got
to stay here till we find what happened to Miles and Bonney."
The state cops were fine, as far as I was concerned. I'd reported it
where it should have been reported, and Kates would have no kickback if he
himself called the state police. I was just opening my mouth to say that
might be a good idea when the phone rang again.
Kates yelled into it, and then, "As far as the teller knew, they were
heading right back, Hank? Nothing unusual happened at that end, huh? Okay,
come back, and watch both sides of the road all the way in case they ran off
it or something... Yeah, the pike. That's the only way they could've come.
Oh, and listen, stop at the Wentworth place on your way and take a look in
the attic... Yeah. I said the attic. Doc Stoeger's here, drunk as a coot,
and he says there's a stiff in the attic there. If there is one, I'll worry
about it."
He slammed the receiver down and started shuffling papers on his desk,
trying to look busy. Finally he thought of something to do and phoned the
Bonney Fireworks Company to see if Bonney had showed up there yet, or called
them. Apparently, from what I could hear of the conversation, he hadn't done
either.
I realized that I was still standing up and that now, since Kates had
given that order to his deputy, nothing was going to happen until Hank got
back at least half an hour if he drove slowly to watch both sides of the
road. So I found myself a chair and sat down. Kates shuffled papers again
and paid no attention to me.
I got to wondering about Bonney and Miles, and hoped they hadn't had an
accident. If they had had one, and were two hours overdue, it must have been
a bad one. Unless both were seriously hurt, one of them would have reached a
phone long before this. Of course they could have stopped somewhere for a
drink, but it didn't seem likely, not for two hours at least. And, come to
think of it, they couldn't have; the closing hour for taverns applied to the
whole county, not just to Carmel City. Twelve o'clock had been almost two
hours ago.
I wished that it wasn't. Not that I either needed or wanted a drink
particularly at that moment, but it would have been much more pleasant to do
my waiting at Smiley's instead of here in the sheriff's office.
Kates suddenly swiveled his chair at me. "You don't know anything about
Bonney and Harrison, do you?"
"Not a thing," I told him.
"Where were you at midnight?"
With Yehudi. Who's Yehudi? The little man who wasn't there.
I said, "Home, talking to Smith. We stayed there until I half past
twelve."
"Anybody else there?"
I shook my head. Come to think of it, nobody but myself had, as far as
I knew, even seen Yehudi Smith. If his body wasn't in the attic at the
Wentworth place, I was going to have a hell of a time proving he'd ever
existed. A card and a key and a flashlight.
"Where'd this Smith guy come from?"
"I don't know. He didn't say."
"What was his first name?"
I stalled on that one. I said, "I don't remember. I've got his card
somewhere. He gave me one." Let him think the card was probably out at the
house. I wasn't ready to show it to him yet.
"How'd he happen to come to you to go to a haunted house with him if he
didn't even know you?"
I said, "He knew of me, as a Lewis Carroll fan."
"A what?"
"Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass,"
And a "DRINK ME" bottle on a glass table, and a key, and Bandersnatches and
Jabberwocks. But let Kates find that out for himself, after he'd found a
body and knew that I wasn't either drunk or crazy.
He said, "Alice in Wonderland!" and sniffed. He glared at me a full ten
seconds and then decided, apparently, that he was wasting his time on me and
swiveled back to his paper shuffling.
I felt in my pockets to make sure that the card and the key were still
there. They were. The flashlight was still in the car, but the flashlight
didn't mean anything anyway. Maybe the key didn't either. But that card was
my contact with reality, in a sense. As long as it still said Yehudi Smith,
I knew I wasn't stark raving mad. I knew that there'd really been such a
person and that he wasn't a figment of my imagination.
I slipped it out of my pocket to look at it again. Yes, it still said
"Yehudi Smith," although my eyes had a bit of trouble focusing on it
clearly. The printing looked fuzzy, which meant I needed either one more
drink or several less.
Yehudi Smith, in fuzzy-edged type. Yehudi, the little man who wasn't
there.
And suddenly don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. I didn't see the
pattern, but I saw that much of it. The little man who wasn't there.
Wouldn't be there.
Hank was going to come in and say, "What's this about a stiff in the
Wentworth attic? I couldn't find one."
Yehudi. The little man who wasn't there. I saw a man upon the stair, A
little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; Gee, I wish he'd
go away.
It was preordained; it had to be. That much of the pattern I saw. The
name Yehudi hadn't been an accident. I think that almost, just then, I had a
flash of insight that would have shown me most of the pattern, if not all of
it. You know how it is sometimes when you're drunk, but not too drunk, you
think you're trembling on the verge of understanding something important and
cosmic that has eluded you all your life? And just barely possible you
really are. I think I was, at that moment.
Then I looked up from the card and the thread of my thought was lost
because Kates was staring at me. He'd turned just his head this time instead
of the squeaking swivel chair he was sitting on. He was looking at me
speculatively, suspiciously.
I tried to ignore it; I was trying to recapture my thoughts and let
them lead me. I was close to something. I saw a man upon the stair. Yehudi
Smith's plump posterior ascending the attic stairs, just ahead of me.
No, the dead body with the contorted face the poor piece of cold clay
that had been a nice little guy with laughter lines around his eyes and the
corners of his mouth wouldn't be there in the attic when Hank Ganzer
looked for it. It couldn't be there; its presence there wouldn't fit the
pattern that I still couldn't see or understand.
Squeal of the swivel chair as Rance Kates turned his body to match the
position of his head. "Is that the card that guy gave you?"
I nodded.
"What's his full name?"
The hell with Kates. "Yehudi," I said. "Yehudi Smith."
Of course it wasn't really; I knew at least that much now. I got up and
walked to Kates' desk. Unfortunately for my dignity, I weaved a little. But
I made it without falling. I put the card down in front of him and went back
and sat down again, managing to walk straight this time.
He looked at the card and then at me and then at the card and then at
me.
And then I knew I must be crazy.
"Doc," he asked and his voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it
before "What's your bug number?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant runt
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none
I just stared at him. Either he was crazy or I was and several times
in the last hour I'd been wondering about myself. What's your bug number?
What a question to ask a man in the spot I was in. What's yours?
Finally I managed to answer. "Huh?" I said.
"Your bug number. Your label number."
I got it then. I wasn't crazy after all. I knew what he meant.
I run a union shop, which means that I've signed a contract with the
International Typographical Union and pay Pete, my only employee, union
wages. In a town as small as Carmel City, you can get by with a non-union
shop, but I happen to believe in unions and to think the typographical union
is a good one. Being a union shop, we put the union label on everything we
print. It's a little oval-shaped dingus, so small you can barely read the
type if you've got good eyesight. And alongside it is an equally tiny number
which is the number of my particular shop among the other union shops in my
area. By the combination of the place name which is part of the label itself
and the number of the shop beside it, you can tell where any given piece of
union printing has been done.
But that little oval logotype is known to non-union printers as "the
bug." It does, I'll admit, look rather like a tiny bug crawling across the
bottom corner of whatever it's put on. And non-union printers call the shop
number alongside the "bug" the "bug number." Kates wasn't a printer, union
or otherwise, but I remember now that two of his brothers, both living in
Neilsville, were non-union printers, and naturally he'd have picked up the
language and the implied prejudice back of it from them.
I said, "My label number is seven."
He slapped the calling card down on the desk in front of him. He
snorted quite literally; you often read about people snorting but seldom
hear them do it. He said, "Stoeger, you printed this damn thing yourself.
The whole thing is a gag. Damn you"
He started to get up and then sat down again and looked at the papers
in front of him. He looked back at me and I think he was going to tell me to
get the hell out, and then apparently he decided he might as well wait till
Hank got back.
He shuffled papers.
I sat there and tried to absorb the fact that apparently, at any rate
that Yehudi Smith calling card had been printed in my own shop. I didn't
get up to look at it. Somehow, I was perfectly willing to take Kates' word
for it.
Why not? It was part of the pattern. I should have guessed, it myself.
Not from the typeface; almost every shop has eight-point Garamond. But from
the fact that the "DRINK ME" bottle had contained poison and Yehudi wasn't
going to be there when Hank looked for him. It followed the pattern, and I
knew now what the pattern was. It was the pattern of madness.
Mine or whose? I was getting scared. I'd been scared several times
already that night, but this was a different variety of scaredness. I was
getting scared of the night itself, of the pattern of the night.
I needed a drink, and I needed it bad. I stood up and started for the
door. The swivel chair screamed and Kates said, "Where the hell you think
you're going?"
"Down to my car. Going to get something. I'll be back." I didn't want
to get into an argument with him.
"Sit down. You're not going out of here."
I did want to get into an argument with him. "Am I under arrest? And on
what charge?"
"Material witness in a murder case, Stoeger. If there's a corpse where
you say there's one. If there isn't, we can switch it to drunk and
disorderly. Take your choice."
I took my choice. I sat down again.
He had me over a barrel and I could see that he loved it. I wished that
I'd gone to my office and phoned the state police, regardless of
repercussions.
I waited. That "bug number" angle of Kates' had thrown me off thinking
about how it could be and why it would be that Yehudi Smith's calling card
had been printed in my own print shop. Not that, come to thick of it, the
"how" had been difficult. I lock the door when I leave, but I lock it with a
dime-store skeleton key. They come two on a card for a dime. Yes, Anybody
could have got in. And Anybody, whoever he was, could have printed that card
without knowing a damn thing about printing. You have to know the printer's
case to set type in quantity, but anybody could pick out a dozen letters,
more or less, to spell out Yehudi Smith simply by trial and error. The
little hand press I print cards on is so simple that a child well, anyway,
a high school kid could figure out how to operate it. True, he'd get lousy
impressions and waste a lot of cards trying to get one good one. But
Anybody, if he tried long enough, could have printed one good card that said
Yehudi Smith and carried my union label in the bottom corner.
But why would Anybody have done something like that?
The more I thought about it the less sense it made, although one thing
did emerge that made even less sense than the rest of it. It would have been
easier to print that card without the union label than with it, so Anybody
had gone to a little additional trouble to bring out the fact that the card
had been printed at the Clarion. Except for the death of Yehudi Smith the
whole thing might have been the pattern of a monstrous practical joke. But
practical jokes don't include sudden death. Not even such a fantastic death
as Yehudi Smith had met.
Why had Yehudi Smith died?
Somewhere there had to be a key.
And that reminded me of the key in my pocket and I took it out and
stared at it, wondering what I could open with it. Somewhere there was a
lock that it fitted.
It didn't look either familiar or unfamiliar. Yale keys don't. Could it
be mine? I thought about all the keys I owned. The key to the front door of
my house was a Yale type key, but not actually a Yale. Besides
I took the keytainer from my pocket and opened it. My front door key is
on the left and I compared it with the key I'd brought away from the attic.
The notches didn't match; it wasn't a duplicate of that one. And it was
still more different from my back door key, the one on the other side of the
row. In between were two other keys but both were quite different types. One
was the key to the door at the Clarion office and the other was for the
garage behind my house. I never use the garage key; I keep nothing of value
in the garage except the car itself and I always leave it locked.
It seemed to me that I'd had five keys instead of four, there on the
keytainer, but I couldn't remember for sure and I couldn't figure out what
the missing one was, if one really was missing.
Not the key to my car; I didn't keep that on the keytainer (I hate a
keytainer dangling and swinging from my ignition lock, so I carry the car
key loose in my vest pocket).
I put the keytainer back in my pocket and stared at the single key
again. I wondered suddenly if it could be a duplicate of my car key. But I
couldn't compare it to see because, this time, I'd left the key in the lock
when I'd got out of the car, thinking I was going to be up here in the
sheriffs office only a minute or two and that then he'd be heading out to
the Wentworth place with me.
Kates must have turned his head not his swivel chair, for it didn't
squeak and seen me staring at the key. He asked, "What's that?"
"A key," I said. "A key to unlock a riddle. A key to murder."
The chair did squeak then. "Stoeger, what the hell? Are you just drunk,
or are you crazy?"
"I don't know," I said. "Which do you think?"
He snorted. "Let's see that key." I handed it to him.
"What's it open?"
"I don't know." I was getting mad again not particularly at Kates
this time; at everything. "I know what it's supposed to open."
"What?"
"A little door fifteen inches high off a room at the bottom of a rabbit
hole. It leads to a beautiful garden."
He looked at me a long time. I looked back. I didn't give a damn.
I heard a car outside. That would be Hank Ganzer, probably. He wouldn't
have found the body of Yehudi Smith in the attic out on the pike. I knew
that, somehow.
And how Kates was going to react to that, I could guess. Even though,
obviously, he didn't believe a damn word of it to begin with. I'd have given
a lot, just then, to be inside Rance Kates' mind, or what he uses for one,
to see just what he was thinking. I'd have given a lot more, though, to be
inside the mind of Anybody, the person who'd printed Yehudi Smith's card on
my hand press and who'd put the poison in the "DRINK ME" bottle.
Hank's steps coming up the stairs.
He came in the door and his eyes happened to be looking in my direction
first. He said, "Hi, Doc," casually and then turned to Kates. "No sign of an
accident, Rance. I drove slow, watched both sides of the road. No sign of a
car going off. But look, maybe we should both do it. If one of us could keep
moving the spotlight back and forth while the other drove, we could see back
farther." He looked at his wrist watch. "It's only two-thirty. Won't get
light until six, and in that long a time"
Kates nodded. "Okay, Hank. But listen, I'm going to get the state boys
in on this case well, in case Bonney's car turns up somewhere else. We
know when they left Neilsville, but we can't be positive they started for
Carmel City."
"Why wouldn't they?"
"How would I know?" Kates said. "But if they did start here, they
didn't get here."
I might as well not have been there at all.
I cut in. "Hank, did you go to the Wentworth place?"
He looked at me. "Sure, Doc. Listen, what kind of a gag was that?"
"Did you look in the attic?"
"Sure. Looked all around it with my flashlight."
I'd known it, but I closed my eyes.
Kates surprised me, after all. His voice was almost gentle. "Stoeger,
get the hell out of here. Go home and sleep it off."
I opened my eyes again and looked at Hank. "All right," I said, "I'm
drunk or crazy. But listen, Hank, was there a candle stub standing on top of
the post at the top of the attic steps?"
He shook his head slowly.
"A glass-topped table, standing in one corner it'd be the northwest
corner of the attic?"
"I didn't see it, Doc. I wasn't looking for tables. But I'd have
noticed a candle stub, if it had been on the stair post. I remember putting
my hand on it when I started down."
"And you don't recall seeing a dead body on the floor?"
Hank didn't even answer me. He looked back at Kates. "Rance, maybe I'd
better drive Doc home while you're making those calls. Where's your car,
Doc?"
"Across the street."
"Okay, we won't give you a parking ticket. I'll drive you home in
mine." He looked at Kates for corroboration.
Kates gave it. I hated Kates for it. He was grinning at me. He had me
in such a nasty spot that, damn him, he could afford to be generous. If he
threw me in the can overnight, I could fight back. If he sent me home to
sleep it off and even gave me a chauffeur to take me there
Hank Ganzer said, "Come on, Doc." He was going through the door.
I got to my feet. I didn't want to go home. If I went home now, the
murderer of Yehudi Smith would have the rest of the night, to finish to
finish what? And what was it to me, except that I'd liked Yehudi Smith? And
who the hell was Yehudi Smith?
I said, "Listen, Kates"
Kates looked past me at the doorway. He said, "Go on, Hank. See if his
car is parked straight or out in the middle of the street. I want to tell
him something and then I'll send him down. I think he can make it."
He probably hoped I'd break my neck going down the steps.
"Sure, Rance." Hank's footsteps going down the stairs. Diminuendo.
Kates looked up at me. I was standing in front of his desk, trying not
to look like a boy caught cheating in an examination standing in front of
his teacher's desk.
I caught his eyes, and almost took a step backward: I hated Kates and
knew that he hated me, but I hated him as one hates a man in office whom one
knows to be a stupid oaf and a crook. He hated me, I thought, as someone
who, as an editor, had power and used it against men like him.
But the look in his eyes wasn't that. It was sheer personal hatred and
malevolence. It was something I hadn't suspected, and it shocked me. I
don't, after fifty-three years, shock easily.
And then that look was gone, as suddenly as when you turn out a light.
He was looking at me impersonally. His voice was impersonal, almost flat,
not nearly as loud as usual. He said, "Stoeger, you know what I could do to
you on something like this, don't you?"
I didn't answer; he didn't expect me to. Yes, I knew some of the
things. The can overnight on a drunk and disorderly charge was a starting
point. And if, in the morning, I persisted in my illusions, he could call in
Dr. Buchan for a psychiatric once-over.
He said, "I'm not doing it. But I want you out of my hair from now on.
Understand?"
I didn't answer that, either. If he wanted to think silence was
consent, all right. Apparently he did. He said, "Now get the hell out of
here."
I got the hell out of there. I'd got off easy. Except for that look
he'd given me.
No, I didn't feel like a conquering hero about it. I should have faced
up to it, and I should have insisted that there had been a murder in that
attic, whether there was a corpus delicti there now or not. But I was too
mixed up myself. I wanted time to think things out, to figure what the hell
had really happened.
I went down the stairs and out into the night again.
Hank Ganzer's car was parked right in front, but he was just getting
out of my car, across the street. I walked over toward him.
He said, "You were a little far out from the curb, Doc. I moved it in
for you. Here's your key."
He handed me the key and I stuck it in my pocket and then reopened the
door he'd just closed to get the bottle of whisky that was lying on the
seat. No use leaving that, even if I had to leave the car here.
I stepped back, then, to the back of the car to take another look at
those back tires. I still couldn't believe them; this morning they'd been
completely flat. That was part of the puzzle, too.
Hank came back and stood by me. "What's the matter, Doc?" he asked. "If
you're looking at your tires, they're okay." He kicked the one nearest to
him and then walked around and kicked the other. He started back, and
stopped. He said, "Say, Doc, something you got in your luggage compartment
must've spilled over. Did you have a can of paint or something in there?"
I shook my head and came around to see what he was looking at. It did
look as though something had run out from under the bottom edge of the
luggage compartment door. Something thick and blackish.
Hank turned the handle and tried to lift.
"It's not locked," I said. "I never bother to lock it. Nothing in there
but a worn-out tire without a tube in it."
He tried again. "The hell it's not locked. Where's the key?"
Another piece of the pattern fell into place. I knew now what the fifth
key, the middle one, on my keytainer should have been. I never lock the
luggage compartment of my car except on the rare occasions when I take a
trip and really have luggage in it. But I carry the key on my keytainer. And
it was a Yale key and it hadn't been there when I'd looked a few minutes
ago.
I said, "Kates has got it." It had to be. One Yale key looks like
another, but the card, Yehudi Smith's card, had been printed in my own shop.
The key would be mine, too.
Hank said, "Huh?"
I said again, "Kates has got it."
Hank looked at me strangely. He said, "Wait just a minute, Doc," and
walked across to his own car. Twice, on the way, he looked back as though to
be sure I wasn't going to get in and drive away.
He got a flashlight out of his glove compartment and came back. He bent
down with it and took a close look at those streaks.
I stepped closer to look, too. Hank stepped back, as though he was
suddenly afraid to have me behind him and peering over his shoulder.
So I didn't have to look. I knew what those streaks were, or what Hank
thought they were.
He said, "Seriously, Doc, where's the key?"
"I'm serious," I told him. "I gave it to Rance Kates. I didn't know
what key it was then. I'm pretty sure I do, now."
I thought I knew what was in that luggage compartment now, too.
He looked at me uncertainly and then walked part way across the street,
angling so he could watch me. He cupped his hands around his lips and called
out, "Rance! Hey, Rance!" And then looked quickly back to see that I was
neither sneaking up on him nor trying to get into the car to drive away.
Nothing happened and he did it again.
A window opened and Kates was silhouetted against the light back of it.
He called back, "What the hell, Hank, if you want me come up here. Don't
wake up the whole God damned town."
Hank looked back over his shoulder at me again. Then he called, "Did
Doc give you a key?"
"Yes. Why? What kind of a yarn is he feeding you?"
"Bring down the key, Rance. Quick."
He looked back over his shoulder again, started toward, me, and then
hesitated. He compromised by staying where he was, but watching me.
The window slammed down.
I walked back around the car and I almost decided to light a match and
look at those stains myself. And then I decided, what the hell.
Hank came a few steps closer. He said, "Where you going, Doc?"
I was at the curb by then. I said, "Nowhere," and sat down.
To wait.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times three!
The courthouse door opened and closed. Kates crossed the street. He
looked at me and asked Hank, "What's wrong?"
"Don't know, Rance. Looks like blood has dripped from the luggage
compartment of Doc's car. It's locked. He says he gave you the key. I didn't
want to uh leave him to come up and get it. So I yelled for you."
Kates nodded. His face was toward me and Hank Ganzer couldn't see it. I
could. It looked happy, very happy.
His hand went inside his coat and came out with a pistol. He asked,
"Did you frisk him, Hank?"
"No."
"Go ahead."
Hank came around Kates and came up to me from the side. I stood up and
held out my hands to make it easy for him. The bottle of whisky was in one
of them. He found nothing more deadly than that.
"Clean," Hank said.
Kates didn't put his pistol away. He reached into a pocket with his
free hand and took out the key I'd given him. He tossed it to Hank. "Open
the compartment," he said.
The key fitted. The handle turned. Hank lifted the door.
I heard the sudden intake of his breath and I turned and looked. Two
bodies; I could see that much. I couldn't tell who they were from where I
stood. Hank leaned farther in, using his flashlight.
He said, "Miles Harrison, Rance. And Ralph Bonney. Both dead."
"How'd he kill 'em?"
"Hit over the head with something. Hard. Must've been several blows
apiece. There's lots of blood."
"Weapon there?"
"What looks like it. There's a revolver an old one with blood on
the butt. Nickel-plated Iver-Johnson, rusty where the plating's off.
Thirty-eight, I think."
"The money there? The pay roll?"
"There's what looks like a brief case under Miles." Hank turned around.
His face was as pale as the starlight. "Do I got to uh move him, Rance?"
Kates thought a minute. "Maybe we better not. Maybe we better take a
photo first. Listen, Hank, you go upstairs and get that camera and
flash-gun. And while you're there, phone Dr. Heil to get here right away. Uh
you're sure they're both dead?"
"Christ, yes, Rance. Their heads are beaten in. Shall I call Dorberg,
too?" Dorberg is the local mortician who gets whatever business the
sheriff's office can throw his way; he's Kates' brother-in-law, which may
have a bearing on the fact.
Kates said, "Sure, tell him to bring the wagon. But tell him no hurry;
we want the coroner to have a look before we move 'em. And we want the pix
even before that."
Hank started for the courthouse door and then turned again. "Uh
Rance, how about calling Miles' wife and Bonney's factory?"
I sat down on the curb again. I wanted a drink more badly than before,
and the bottle was in my hand. But it didn't seem right, just at that
moment, to take one. Miles' wife, I thought, and Bonney's factory. What a
hell of a difference that was. But Bonney had been divorced that very day;
he had no children, no relatives at all at least in Carmel City that I
knew of. But then I didn't have either. If I was murdered, who'd be
notified? The Carmel City Clarion, and maybe Carl Trenholm, if whoever did
the notifying knew that Trenholm was my closest friend. Yes, maybe on the
whole it was better that I'd never married. I thought of Bonney's divorce
and the facts behind it that Carl through Smiley had told me. And I
thought of how Miles Harrison's wife would be feeling tonight as soon as she
got the news. But that was different; I didn't know whether it was good or
bad that nobody would feel that way about me if I died suddenly.
Just the same I felt lonely as hell. Well, they'd arrest me now and
that would mean I could call Carl as my attorney. I was going to be in a
hell of a spot, but Carl would believe me and believe that I was sane if
anybody would.
Kates had been thinking. He said, "Not yet either of them, Hank.
Milly especially; she might rush down here and get here before we got the
bodies to Dorberg's. And we might as well be able to tell the factory
whether the pay roll's there when we phone them. Maybe Stoeger hid it
somewhere else and we won't get it back tonight."
Hank said, "That's right, about Milly. We wouldn't want her to see
Miles that way. Okay, so I'll call Heil and Dorberg and then come back
with the camera."
"Quit talking. Get going."
Hank went on into the courthouse.
It wasn't any use, but I had to say it. I said, "Listen, Kates, I
didn't do that. I didn't kill them."
Kates said, "You son of a bitch. Miles was a good guy."
"He was. I didn't kill him." I thought, I wish Miles had let me buy him
that drink early in the evening. I wish I'd known; I'd have insisted and
talked him into it. But that was silly, of course; you can't know things in
advance. If you could, you could stop them from happening. Except of course
in the Looking-Glass country where people sometimes lived backwards, where
the White Queen had screamed first and then later stuck the needle into her
finger. But even then except, of course, that the Alice books were merely
delightful nonsense, why hadn't she simply not picked up the needle she
knew she was going to stick herself with?
Delightful nonsense, that is, until tonight. Tonight somebody was
making gibbering horror out of Lewis Carroll's most amusing episodes. "Drink
Me" and die suddenly and horribly. That key it had been supposed to open
a fifteen-inch-high door into a beautiful garden. What it had opened the
door to well, I didn't care to look.
I sighed and thought, what the hell, it's over with now. I'm going to
be arrested and Kates thinks I killed Miles and Bonney, but I can't blame
him for thinking it. I've got to wait till Carl can get me out of this.
Kates said, "Stand up, Stoeger."
I didn't. Why should I? I'd just thought, why would Miles or Ralph mind
if I took a drink out of this bottle in my hand? I started to unscrew the
top.
"Stand up, Stoeger. Or I'll shoot you right there."
He meant it. I stood up. His face, as he stood then, was in the shadow,
but I remembered that look of malevolence he'd given me in his office, the
look that said, "I'd like to kill you."
He was going to shoot me. Here and now.
It was safe as houses for him to do so. He could claim if I turned
and ran and he shot me in the back that he'd shot because I was trying to
escape. And if from the front that I a homicidal maniac who had already
killed Miles and Bonney was coming toward him to attack him.
That was why he'd sent Hank away and given him two phone calls to make
so he wouldn't be back for minutes.
I said, "Kates, you're not serious. You wouldn't shoot a man down in
cold blood."
"A man who'd killed a deputy of mine, yes. If I don't, Stoeger, you
might beat the rap. You might get certified as a looney and get away with
it. I'll make sure." That wasn't all of it, of course, but it gave him an
excuse to help his own conscience. I'd killed a deputy of his, he'd thought.
But he'd hated me enough to want to kill me even before he'd thought that.
Hatred and sadism given a perfect excuse.
What could I do? Yell? It wouldn't help. Probably nobody awake it was
well after three o'clock by now would hear me in time to see what
happened. Hank would be phoning in the back office; he wouldn't get to the
window in time.
And Kates would claim that I yelled as I jumped him; yelling would just
trigger the gun.
He stepped closer; if he shot me in the front there'd have to be powder
marks to show that he'd shot while I was coming at him. The gun muzzle
centered on my chest, barely a foot away. I could live seconds longer if I
turned and ran; he'd probably wait until I was a dozen steps away in that
case.
His face was still in the shadow, but I could see that he was grinning.
I couldn't see his eyes or most of the rest of his face, just that grin. A
disembodied grin, like that of the Cheshire cat in Alice. But unlike the
Cheshire cat, he wasn't going to fade away.
I was. Unless something unexpected happened. Like maybe a witness
coming along, over there on the opposite sidewalk. He wouldn't shoot me in
cold blood before a witness. Carl Trenholm, Al Grainger, anybody.
I looked over Kates' shoulder and called out, "Hi, Al!"
Kates turned. He had to; he couldn't take a chance on the possibility
that there was really someone coming.
He turned his head just for a quick glance, to be sure.
I swung the whisky bottle. Maybe I should say my hand swung it; I
hadn't even remembered that I still held it. It hit Kates alongside the head
and like as not the brim of his hat saved his life. I think I swung hard
enough to have killed him if he'd been bare headed.
Kates and the revolver he'd been holding hit the street, separately.
The whisky bottle slid out of my hand and hit the paving; it broke. The
paving must have been harder than Kates' head or maybe it woul...
