Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock(енгл)
страница №6
...d havebroken on Kates' head if it hadn't been for the brim of his hat.
I didn't even stop to find out if he was dead. I ran like hell.
Afoot, of course. The ignition key of my car was still in my pocket,
but driving off with two corpses was just about the last thing in the world
I wanted to do.
I ran a block and winded myself before I realized I hadn't the faintest
idea where I was going. I slowed down and got off Oak Street. I cut back
into the first alley. I fell over a garbage can and then sat down on it to
get my wind back and to think out what I was going to do. But I had to move
on because a dog started barking.
I found myself behind the courthouse.
I wanted, of course, to know who had killed Ralph Bonney and Miles
Harrison and put their bodies in my car, but there was something that seemed
of even more immediate interest; I wanted to know if I'd killed Rance Kates
or seriously injured him. If I had, I was in a hell of a jam because in
addition to everything else against me it would be my word against his
that I'd done it in self-defense, to save my own life. My word against his,
that is, if he were only injured. My word against nothing at all if I'd
killed him.
And my word wouldn't mean a damn thing to anybody until and unless I
could account for two corpses in my car.
The first window I tried was unlocked. I guess they're careless about
locking windows of the courthouse because, for one reason, there's nothing
kept there that any ordinary burglar would want to steal, and for another
reason because the sheriff's office is in the building, and somebody's on
duty there all night long.
I slid the window up very slowly and it didn't make much noise, not
enough, anyway, to have been heard in the sheriffs office, which is on the
second floor and near the front. I pat it down again, just as quietly, so it
wouldn't be an open giveaway if the search for me went through the alley.
I groped in the dark till I found a chair and sat down to collect what
wits I had left and figure what to do next. I was fairly safe for the
moment. The room I'd entered was one of the small anterooms off the court
room; nobody would look for me here, as long as I kept quiet.
They'd found the sheriff, all right, or the sheriff had come around and
found himself. There were footsteps on the front stairs, footsteps of more
than one person. But back here I was too far away to hear what was being
said, if any talking was going on.
But that could wait for a minute or two.
I wished to hell that I had a drink; I'd never wanted one worse in my
life. I cussed myself for having dropped and broken that bottle and after
it had saved my life, at that. If I hadn't happened to have it in my hand,
I'd have been dead.
I don't know how long I sat there, but it probably wasn't over a few
minutes because I was still breathing a little hard when I decided I'd
better move. If I'd had a bottle to keep me company, I'd have gladly sat
there the rest of the night, I think.
But I had to find out what happened to Kates. If I'd killed him or if
he'd been taken to the hospital and was out of the picture then I'd better
give myself up and get it over with. If he was all right, and was still
running things, that wouldn't be a very smart thing to do. If he'd wanted to
kill me before I'd knocked him out with that bottle, he'd want to do it so
badly now that he would do it, maybe without even bothering to find an
excuse, right in front of Hank or any of the other deputies who were
undoubtedly being waked up to join the manhunt, in front of the coroner or
anybody else who happened to be around.
I bent down and took my shoes off before I got up. I put one in each of
the side pockets of my coat and then tiptoed out through the court room to
the back stairs. I'd been in the building so many thousand times that I knew
the layout almost as well as that of my own home or the Clarion office, and
I didn't run into anything or fall over anything.
I guided myself up the dark back staircase with a hand on the banister
and avoiding the middle of the steps, where they'd be most likely to creak.
Luckily there is an el in the upstairs hallway that runs from the front
stairs to the back ones so there wasn't any danger of my being seen, when
I'd reached the top of the stairs, by anyone entering or leaving the
sheriff's office. And I had dim light now, from the light in the front
hallway near the sheriff's office door.
I tiptoed along almost to the turn of the hall and then tried the door
of the county surveyor's office, which is next to the sheriff's office and
with only an ordinary door with a ground glass pane between them. The door
was unlocked.
I got it open very quietly. It slipped out of my hand when I started to
close it from the inside and almost slammed, but I caught it in time and
eased it shut. I would have liked to lock it, but I didn't know whether the
lock would click or not, so I didn't take a chance on that.
I had plenty of light, comparatively, in the surveyor's office; the
ground glass pane of the door to the sheriff's office was a bright yellow
rectangle through which came enough light to let me see the office furniture
clearly. I avoided it carefully and tiptoed my way toward that yellow
rectangle.
I could hear voices now and as I neared the door I could hear them even
better, but I couldn't quite make out whose they were or what they were
saying until I put my ear against the glass. I could hear perfectly well,
then.
Hank Ganzer was saying, "It still throws me, Rance. A gentle little old
guy like Doc. Two murders and"
"Gentle, hell!" It was Kates' voice. "Maybe when he was sane he was,
but he's crazier than a bedbug now. Ow! Go easy with that tape, will you?"
Dr. Heil's voice was soft, harder to understand. He seemed to be urging
that Kates should let himself be taken to the hospital to be sure there
wasn't any concussion.
"The hell with that," Kates said. "Not till we get Stoeger before he
kills anybody else. Like he killed Miles and Bonney and damn near killed me.
Hank, what's about the bodies?"
"I made a quick preliminary examination." Heil's voice was clearer now.
"Cause of death is pretty obviously repeated blows on their heads with what
seems to have been that rusty pistol on your desk. And with the stains on
the pistol butt, I don't think there's any reason to doubt it."
"They still out front?"
Hank said, "No, they're at Dorberg's or on their way there. He and
one of has boys came around with his meat wagon."
"Doc." It was Kates' voice and it made me jump a little until I
realized that he was talking to Dr. Heil and not to me. "You about through?
With that God damn bandage, I mean. I got to get going on this. Hank, how
many of the boys did you get on the phone? How many are coming down?"
"Three, Rance. I got Watkins, Ehlers and Bill Dean. They're all on
their way down. Be here in a few minutes. That'll make five of us."
"Guess that fixes up things as well as I can here, Rance," Dr. Heil's
voice said. "I still suggest you go around to the hospital for an X-ray and
a check-up as soon as you can."
"Sure, Doc. Soon as I catch Stoeger. And he can't get out of town with
the state police watching the roads for us, even if he steals a car. You go
on around to Dorberg's and take care of things there, huh?"
Heil's voice, soft again, said something I couldn't hear, and there
were footsteps toward the outer hall. I could hear other footsteps coming up
the stairs. One or more of the day-shift deputies were arriving.
Kates said, "Hi, Bill, Walt. Ehlers with you?"
"Didn't see him. Probably be here in a minute." It sounded like Bill
Dean's voice.
"That's all right. We'll leave him here, anyway. You both got your
guns? Good. Listen, you two are going together and Hank and I are going
together. We'll work in pairs. Don't worry about the roads leading out; the
state boys are watching them for us. And there's no train or bus out till
late tomorrow morning. We just comb the town."
"Divide it between us, Rance?"
"No. You, Walt, and Bill cover the whole town. Drive through every
street and alley. Hank and I will take places he might have holed in to
hide. We'll search his house and the Clarion office, whether there are
lights on or not, and we'll try any place else that's indoors where he
might've holed in. He might pick an empty house, for instance. Anybody got
any other suggestions where he might think of holing in?"
Bill Dean's voice said, "He's pretty thick with Carl Trenholm. He might
go to Carl."
"Good idea, Bill. Anybody else?"
Hank said, "He looked pretty drunk to me. And he broke that bottle he
had. Might get into his head he wants another drink and break into a tavern.
Probably Smiley's; that's where he hangs out, mostly."
"Okay, Hank. We'll check That must be Dick coming. Any more ideas,
anybody, before we split up?"
Ehlers was coming in now. Hank said, "Sometimes a guy doubles back
where he figures nobody'll figure where he is. I mean, Rance, maybe he
doubled back here and got in the back way or something, thinking the safest
place to hide's right under our noses. Right here in the building."
Kates said, "You heard that, Dick. And you're staying here to watch the
office, so that's your job. Search the building here first before you settle
down."
"Right, Rance."
Kates said, "One more thing. He's dangerous. He's probably armed by
now. So don't take any chances. When you see him, start shooting."
"At Doc Stoeger?" Someone's voice sounded surprised and a little
shocked. I couldn't tell which of the deputies it was.
"At Doc Stoeger," Kates said. "Maybe you think of him as a harmless
little guy but that's the kind that generally makes homicidal maniacs.
He's killed two men tonight and tried to kill me, probably thought he did
kill me, or he'd stayed and finished the job. And don't forget who one of
the men he did kill was. Miles."
Somebody muttered something.
Bill Dean I think it was Bill Dean said, "I don't get it, though. A
guy like Doc. He isn't broke; he's got a paper that makes money and he's not
a crook. Why'd he suddenly want to kill two men for a couple of thousand
lousy bucks?"
Kates swore. He said, "He's nuts, went off the beam. The money probably
didn't have much to do with it, although he took it all right. It was in
that brief case under Miles' body. Now listen, this is the last time I tell
you; he's a homicidal maniac and you better remember Miles the minute you
spot him and shoot quick. He's crazy as a bedbug. Came in here with a cock
and bull story about a guy being croaked out at the Wentworth place a guy
named Yehudi Smith, of all names. And Doc had a card to prove it, only he
printed the card himself. Crazy enough to put his own bug number union
label number on it. Gives me a key that he says opens a fifteen-inch-high
door to a beautiful garden. Well, that was the key to the luggage
compartment of his own car, see? With Miles' and Bonney's bodies, and the
pay roll money, in it. Parked right in front. He'd driven it here. Comes up
and gives me the key. And tries to get me to go to a haunted house with
him."
"Did anybody look there?" Dean asked.
Hank said, "Sure, Bill. On my way back from Neilsville. Went through
the whole dump. Nothing. And listen, Rance is right about him being crazy. I
heard some of the I stuff he said, myself. And if you don't think he's
dangerous, look at Rance. I'm sorry about it, I liked Doc. But damn it, I'm
with Rance on shooting first and catching him afterwards."
Somebody: "God damn it, if he killed Miles"
"If he's that crazy" I think it was Dick Ehlers. "we'd be doing him a
favor, the way I figure it. If I ever go that far off the beam, homicidal,
damn if I wouldn't rather be shot than spend the rest of my life in a padded
cell. But what made him go off that way? All of a sudden, I mean?"
"Alcohol. Softens the brain, and then all of a sudden, whang."
"Doc didn't drink that much. He'd get drunk, a little, a night or two a
week, but he wasn't an alcoholic. And he was such a nice"
A fist hit a desk. It would have been Kates' fist and Kates' desk. It
was Kates' swivel chair that squealed and his voice said, "What the hell are
we having a sewing circle for. Come on, let's go out and get him. And about
shooting first, that's orders. I've lost one deputy tonight already. Come
on."
Footsteps, lots of them, toward the door.
Kates' voice calling back from it. "And don't forget to search this
building, Dick. Cellar to roof, before you settle down here."
"Right, Rance."
Footsteps, lots of heavy footsteps, going down the steps.
And one set of them turning back along the hallway.
Toward the County Surveyor's office.
Toward me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
And he was very proud and stiff;
He said "I'd go and wake them, if"
I took a corkscrew from the shelf;
I went to wake them up myself.
I hoped he'd take Rance Kates' orders literally and search the place
from cellar to attic, in that order. If he did, I could get out either the
front or back way while he was in the basement. But he might start on this
floor, with this room.
So I tiptoed to the door, pulling one of my shoes out of my pocket as I
went. I stood flat against the wall by the door, gripping the shoe, ready to
swing the heel of it if Ehlers' head came in.
It didn't. The footsteps went on past and started down the back
staircase. I breathed again.
I opened the door and stepped out into the hall as soon as the
footsteps were at the bottom of the back steps. Out there in the hall, in
the quiet of the night, I could hear him moving about down there. He didn't
go to the basement; he was taking the main floor first. That wasn't good.
With him on the first floor I couldn't risk either the front or the back
stairs; I was stuck up here.
Outside I heard first one car start and then another. At least the
front entrance was clear if I had to try to leave that way, if Ehlers
started upstairs by the back staircase.
I took a spot in the middle of the hallway, equidistant from both
flights of steps. I could still hear him walking around down on the floor
below, but it was difficult to tell just where he was. I had to be ready to
make a break in either direction.
I swore to myself at the thoroughness of Kates' plans for finding me.
My house, my office, Carl's place, Smiley's or another tavern every place
I'd actually be likely to go. Even here, the courthouse, where I really was.
But luckily, instead of all of them pitching in for a quick once-over here,
he'd left only one man to do the job, and as long as I could hear him and he
couldn't hear me and probably didn't believe I was really here at all I
had an edge.
Only, damn it, why didn't Ehlers hurry? I wanted a drink, and if I
could get out of here, I could get one somewhere, somehow. I was shaking
like a leaf, and my thoughts were, too. Even one drink would steady me
enough to think straight.
Maybe Kates kept a bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk.
The way I felt just then, it was worth trying. I listened hard to the
sounds below me and decided Ehlers was probably at the back of the building
and I tiptoed to the front and into Kates' office.
I went back to his desk and pulled the drawer open very quietly and
slowly. There was a whisky bottle there. It was empty.
I cussed Kates under my breath. It wasn't bad enough that he'd tried to
kill me; on top of that, he'd had to finish off that bottle without leaving
a single drink in it. And it had been a good brand, too.
I closed the drawer again as carefully as I'd opened it, so there'd be
no sign of my having been there.
Lying on the blotter on Kates' desk was a revolver. I looked at it,
wondering whether I should take it along with me. For a second the fact that
it was rusty didn't register and then I remembered Hank's description of the
gun that had been used as a bludgeon to kill Miles and Bonney, and I bent
closer. Yes, it was an Iver-Johnson, nickel-plated where the plating wasn't
worn or knocked off. This was the death weapon, then.
Exhibit A.
I reached out to pick it up, and then jerked my hand back. Hadn't I
been framed well enough without helping the framer by putting my
fingerprints on that gun? That was all I needed, to have my fingerprints on
the weapon that had done the killing. Or were they there already?
Considering everything else, I wouldn't have been too surprised if they
were.
Then I almost went through the ceiling. The phone rang.
I could hear, in the silence between the first ring and the second,
Ehlers' footsteps starting upstairs. But back here in the office, I couldn't
tell whether he was coming up the front way or the back, and I might not
have time to make it anyway, even if I knew.
I looked around frantically and saw a closet, the door ajar. I grabbed
up the Iver-Johnson and ducked into the closet, behind the door. And I stood
there, trying not to breathe, while Ehlers came in and picked up the phone.
He said, "Sheriff's office," and then, "Oh, you Rance," and then he
listened a while.
"You're phoning from the Clarion? Not at Smiley's or there, huh?... No,
no calls have come in... Yeah, I'm almost through looking around here.
Searched the first floor and the basement. Just got to go over this floor
yet."
I swore at myself. He'd been down in the basement, then, and I could
have got away. But the building had been so quiet that his walking around
down there had sounded to me as though it had been on the main floor.
"Don't worry, I'm not taking any chances, Rance. Gun in one hand and a
flashlight in the other."
There was a gun in my hand too, and suddenly I realized what a damned
foolish thing I'd done to pick it up off Kates' desk. Ehlers must have known
it was there. If he missed it, if he happened to glance down at the desk
while he was talking on the phone
God must have loved me. He didn't. He said, "Okay, Rance," and then he
put the phone down and walked out.
I heard him go back along the hallway and around the el and start
opening doors back there. I had to get out quick, down the front steps,
before he worked his way back here. As a matter of routine, he'd probably
open this closet door too when he'd searched his way back to the office he'd
started from.
I let myself out and tiptoed down the steps. Out into the night again,
onto Oak Street. And I had to get off it quick, because either of the two
cars looking for me might cruise by at any moment. Carmel City isn't large;
a car can cruise all of its streets and alleys in pretty short order.
Besides I still had my shoes in my pockets and I realized now I still
had a gun in my hand.
Hoping Ehlers wouldn't happen to be looking out of any of the windows,
I ran around the corner and into the mouth of the alley behind the
courthouse. As soon as I was comparatively safe in the friendly darkness, I
sat down on the alley curbstone and put my shoes back on, and put the gun
into my pocket. I hadn't meant to bring it along at all, but as long as I
had I couldn't throw it away now.
Anyway, it was going to get Dick Ehlers in trouble with Kates. When
Kates looked for that gun and found it was missing, he'd know that I'd been
in the courthouse and that Ehlers had missed me. He'd know that I'd been
right in his own office while he'd been out searching for me.
And so there I was in the dark, in safety for a few minutes until a car
full of deputies decided to cruise down that particular alley looking for
me. And I had a gun in my pocket that might or might not shoot I hadn't
checked that and I had my shoes on and my hands were shaking again.
I didn't even have to ask myself, Little man, what now. The little man
not only wanted a drink; he really needed one.
And Kates had already been to Smiley's looking for me and had found
that I wasn't there.
So I started down the alley toward Smiley's.
Funny, but I was getting over being scared. A little, anyway. You can
get only just so scared, and then something happens to your adrenal glands
or something. I can't remember offhand whether your adrenals make you
frightened or whether they get going and operate against it, but mine were
getting either into or out of action, as the case might be. I'd been scared
so much that night that I or my glands was getting tired of it.
I was getting brave, almost. And it wasn't Dutch courage, either; it
had been so long since I'd had a drink that I'd forgotten what one tasted
like. I was cold damn sober. About three times during the course of the long
evening and the long night I'd been on the borderline of intoxication, but
always something had happened to keep me from drinking for a while and then
something had sobered me up. Some foolish little thing like being taken for
a ride by gangsters or watching a man die suddenly or horribly by quaffing a
bottle labeled "Drink Me" or finding murdered men in the back of my own car
or discovering that a sheriff intended to shoot me down in cold grue. Little
things like that.
So I kept going down the alley toward Smiley's. The dog that had barked
at me before barked again. But I didn't waste time barking back. I kept on
going down the alley toward Smiley's.
There was the street to cross. I took a quick look both ways but didn't
worry about it beyond that. If the sheriff's car or the deputies' car
suddenly turned the corner and started spraying me with headlights and then
bullets, well, then that was that. You can only get so worried; then you
quit worrying. When things can't get any worse, outside of your getting
killed, then either you get killed or things start getting better.
Things started to get better; the window into the back room of Smiley's
was open. I didn't bother taking off my shoes this time. Smiley would be
asleep upstairs, but alone, and Smiley's so sound a sleeper that a bazooka
shell exploding in the next room wouldn't wake him. I remember times I'd
dropped into the tavern on a dull afternoon and found him asleep; it was
almost hopeless to try to wake him, and I'd generally help myself and leave
the money on the ledge of the register. And he dropped asleep so quickly and
easily that even if Kates and Hank had wakened him when they'd looked for me
here, he'd be asleep again by now.
In fact yes, I could hear a faint rumbling sound overhead, like very
distant thunder. Smiley snoring.
I groped my way through the dark back room and opened the door to the
tavern. There was a dim light in there that burned all night long, and the
shades were left up. But Kates had already been here and the chances of
anyone else happening to pass and look in at half past three of a Friday
morning were negligible.
I took a bottle of the best bonded Bourbon Smiley had from the back bar
and because it looked as though there were still at least a fair chance that
this might be the last drink I ever had, I took a bottle of seltzer from the
case under the bar. I took them to the table around the el, the one that's
out of sight of the windows, the table at which Bat and George had sat early
this evening.
Bat and George seemed, now, to have sat there along time ago, years
maybe, and seemed not a tenth as frightening as they'd been at the time.
Almost, they seemed a little funny, somehow.
I left the two bottles on the table and went back for a glass, a
swizzle stick, and some ice cubes from the refrigerator. This drink I'd
waited a long time for, and it was going to be a good one.
I'd even pay a good price for it, I decided, especially after I looked
in my wallet and found I had several tens but nothing smaller. I put a ten
dollar bill on the ledge of the register, and I wondered if I'd ever get my
change out of it.
I went back to the table and made myself a drink, a good one.
I lighted up a cigar, too. That was a bit risky because if Kates came
by here again for another check, he might see cigar smoke in the dim light,
even though I was out of his range of vision. But I decided the risk was
worth it. You can, I was finding, get into such a Godawful jam that a little
more risk doesn't seem to matter at all.
I took a good long swig of the drink and then a deep drag from the
cigar, and I felt pretty good. I held out my hands and they weren't shaking.
Very silly of them not to be, but they weren't.
Now, I thought, is my first chance to think for a long time. My first
real chance since Yehudi Smith had died.
Little man, what now?
The pattern. Could I make any sense out of the pattern?
Yehudi Smith only that undoubtedly wasn't his real name, else the
card he gave me wouldn't have been printed in my own shop had called to
see me and had told me
Skip what he told you, I told myself. That was gobbledegook, just the
kind of gobbledegook that would entice you to go to such a crazy place at
such a crazy time. He knew you that is, I corrected myself he knew a lot
about you. Your hobby and your weakness and what you were and what would
interest you.
His coming there was planned. Planned well in advance; the card proved
that.
According to a plan, then, he called on you at a time when no one else
would be there. Probably, sitting in his car, he'd watched you come home,
knowing Mrs. Carr was there in all probability he or someone had been
watching the house all evening and waiting until she'd left to present
himself.
No one had seen him, no one besides yourself.
He'd led you on a wild-goose chase. There weren't any Vorpal Blades;
that was gobbledegook, too.
Connect that with the fact that Miles Harrison and Ralph Bonney had
been killed while Yehudi Smith was keeping you entertained and busy, and
that their bodies had been put in the back compartment of your car.
Easy. Smith was an accomplice of the murderer, hired to keep you away
from anybody else who might alibi you while the crime was going on. Also to
give you such an incredible story to account for where you really were that
your own mother, if she were still alive, would have a hard time believing
it.
But connect that with the fact that Smith had been killed, too. And
with the fact that the pay roll money had been left in your car along with
the bodies.
It added up to gibberish.
I took another sip of my drink and it tasted weak. I looked at it and
saw I'd been sitting there so long between sips that most of the ice had
melted. I put more of the bonded Bourbon in it and it tasted all right
again.
I remembered about the gun I'd grabbed up from Kates' desk, the rusty
one with which the two murders had been committed. I took it out of my
pocket and looked at it. I handled it so I wouldn't have to touch those
dried stains on the butt.
I broke it to see if any shots had been fired from it and found there
weren't any cartridges in it, empty or otherwise. I clicked it back into
position and tried the trigger. It was rusted shut. It hadn't, then, been
used as a gun at all. Just as a hammer to bash out the brains of two men.
And I'd certainly made a fool of myself by bringing it along. I played
right into the killer's hands by doing that. I put it back into my pocket.
I wished that I had someone to talk to. I felt that I might figure out
things aloud better than I could this way. I wished that Smiley was awake,
and for a moment I was tempted to go upstairs to get him. No, I decided,
once already tonight I'd put Smiley into danger danger out of which he'd
got both of us and without any help from me whatsoever.
And this was my problem. It wouldn't be fair to Smiley to tangle him in
it.
Besides, this wasn't a matter for Smiley's brawn and guts. This was
like playing chess, and Smiley didn't play chess. Carl might possibly be
able to help me figure it out, but Smiley never. And I didn't want to
tangle Carl in this either.
But I wanted to talk to somebody.
All right, maybe I was a little crazy not drunk, definitely not drunk
but a little crazy. I wanted to talk to somebody, so I did.
The little man who wasn't there.
I imagined him sitting across the table from me, sitting there with an
imaginary drink in his hand. Gladly, right gladly, would I have poured him a
real one if he'd been really there. He was looking at me strangely.
"Smitty," I said.
"Yes, Doc?"
"What's your real name, Smitty? I know it isn't Yehudi Smith. That was
part of the gag. The card you gave me proves that."
It wasn't the right question to ask. He wavered a little, as though he
was going to disappear on me. I shouldn't have asked him a question that I
myself couldn't answer, because he was there only because my mind was
putting him there. He couldn't tell me anything I didn't know myself or
couldn't figure out.
He wavered a little, but he rallied. He said, "Doc, I can't tell you
that. Any more than I can tell you whom I was working for. You know that."
Get it; he said "whom I was working for" not "who I was working for." I
felt proud of him and of myself.
I said, "Sure, Smitty. I shouldn't have asked. And listen, I'm sorry
I'm sorry as hell that you died."
"That's all right, Doc. We all die sometime. And well, it was a nice
evening up to then."
"I'm glad I fed you," I said. "I'm glad I gave you all you wanted to
drink. And listen, Smitty, I'm sorry I laughed out loud when I saw that
bottle and key on the glass-topped table. I just couldn't help it. It was
funny."
"Sure, Doc. But I had to play it straight. It was part of the act. But
it was corny; I don't blame you for acting amused. And Doc, I'm sorry I did
it. I didn't know the whole score you've got proof of that. If I had, I
wouldn't have drunk what was in that bottle. I didn't look like a man who
wanted to die, did I, Doc?"
I shook my head slowly, looking at the laughter-lines around his eyes
and his mouth. He didn't look like a man who wanted to die.
But he had died, suddenly and horribly.
"I'm sorry, Smitty," I told him. "I'm sorry as hell. I'd give a hell of
a lot to bring you back, to have you really sitting there."
He chuckled. "Don't get maudlin, Doc. It'll spoil your thinking. You're
trying to think, you know."
"I know," I said. "But I had to get it out of my system. All right,
Smitty. You're dead and I can't do anything about it. You're the little man
who isn't there. And I can't ask you any questions I can't answer myself, so
really you can't help me."
"Are you sure, Doc? Even if you ask the right questions?"
"What do you mean? That my subconscious mind might know the answers
even if I don't?"
He laughed. "Let's not get Freudian. Let's stick to Lewis Carroll. I
really was a Carroll enthusiast, you know. I was a fast study, but not that
fast. I couldn't have memorized all that about him just for one occasion."
The phrase struck me, "a fast study." I repeated it and went on where
it led me, "You were an actor, Smitty? Hell, don't answer it. You must have
been. I should have guessed that. An actor hired to play a part."
He grinned a bit wryly. "Not too good an actor, then, or you wouldn't
have guessed it. And pretty much of a sucker, Doc, to have accepted the
role. I should have guessed that there was more in it than what he told me."
He shrugged. "Well, I played you a dirty trick, but I played a worse one on
myself. Didn't I?"
"I'm sorry you're dead, Smitty. God damn it, I liked you."
"I'm glad, Doc. I haven't liked myself too well these last few years.
You've figured it out by now so I can tell you I was pretty down and out
to take a booking like that, and at the price he offered me for it. And damn
him, he didn't pay me in advance except my expenses, so what did I gain by
it? I got killed. Wait, don't get maudlin about that again. Let's drink to
it."
We drank to it. There are worse things than getting killed. And there
are worse ways of dying than suddenly when you aren't expecting it, when
you're slightly tight and
But that subject wasn't getting us anywhere.
"You were a character actor," I said.
"Doc, you disappoint me by belaboring the obvious. And that doesn't
help you to figure out who Anybody is."
"Anybody?"
"That's what you were calling him to yourself when you were thinking
things out, in a half-witted sort of way, not so long ago. Remember thinking
that Anybody could have got into your printing shop and Anybody could have
set up one line of type and figured out how to print one good card on that
little hand press, but why would Anybody"
"Unfair," I said. "You can get inside my mind, because because, hell,
that's where you are. But I can't get into yours. You know who Anybody is.
But I don't."
"Even I, Doc, might not know his real name. In case something went
wrong, he wouldn't have told me that. Something like well, suppose you'd
grabbed that `Drink Me' bottle when you first found the table and tossed it
off before I could tell you that it was my prerogative to do so. Yes, there
were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in so complicated a deal as
that one was."
I nodded. "Yes, suppose Al Grainger had come around for that game of
chess and we'd taken him along. Suppose suppose I hadn't lived to get home
at all. I had a narrow squeak earlier in the evening, you know."
"In that case, Doc, it never would have happened. You ought to be able
to figure that out without my telling you.. If you'd been killed, you and
Smiley, earlier in the evening, then at least if Anybody had learned about
it, as he probably would have Ralph Bonney and Miles Harrison wouldn't
have been killed later. At least not tonight. A wheel would have come off
the plans and I'd have gone back to wherever I came from. And everything
would have been off."
I said, "But suppose I'd stayed at the office far into the night
working on one of those big stories I thought I had and was so happy
about. How would Anybody have known?"
"Can't tell you that, Doc. But you might guess. Suppose I had orders to
keep Anybody posted on your movements, if they went off schedule. When you
left the house, saying you'd be back shortly, I'd have used your phone and
told him that. And when you phoned that you were on your way back I'd have
let him know, while you were walking home, wouldn't I?"
"But that was pretty late."
"Not too late for him to have intercepted Miles Harrison and Ralph
Bonney on their way back from Neilsville under certain circumstances if
his plans had been held in abeyance until he was sure you'd be home and out
of circulation before midnight."
I said, "Under certain circumstances," and wondered just what I meant
by it.
Yehudi Smith smiled. He lifted his glass and looked at me mockingly
over the rim of it before he drank. He said, "Go on, Doc. You're only in the
second square, but your next move will be a good one. You go to the fourth
square by train, you know."
"And the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff."
"And that's the answer, Doc," he said, quietly.
I stared at him. A prickle went down my back.
Outside, in the night, a clock struck four times.
"What do you mean, Smitty?" I asked him, slowly.
The little man who wasn't there poured more whisky from an imaginary
bottle into his imaginary glass. He said, "Doc, you've been letting the
glass-topped table and the bottle and the key fool you. They're from Alice
in Wonderland. Originally, of course, called Alice's Adventures Underground.
Wonderful book. But you're in the second."
"The second square? You just said that."
"The second book. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found
There. And, Doc, you know as well as I what Alice found there."
I poured myself another drink, a short one this time, to match his. I
didn't bother with ice or seltzer.
He raised his glass. "You've got it now, Doc," he said. "Not all of it,
but enough to start on. You might still see the dawn come up."
"Don't be so God damn dramatic," I said; "certainly I'm going to see
the dawn come up."
"Even if Kates comes here again looking for you? Don't forget when he
misses that rusty gun in your pocket, he'll know you were at the courthouse
when he was looking for you here. He might recheck all his previous stops.
And you're awfully damned careless in filling the place with cigar smoke,
you know."
"You mean it's worth a thousand pounds a puff?"
He put back his head and laughed and then he quit laughing and he
wasn't there any more, even in my imagination, because a sudden slight sound
made me look toward the door that led upstairs, to Smiley's rooms. The door
opened and Smiley was standing there.
In a nightshirt. I hadn't known anybody wore nightshirts any more, but
Smiley wore one. His eyes looked sleepy and his hair what was left of it
was tousled and he was barefoot. He had a gun in his hand, the little
short-barreled thirty-eight Banker's Special I'd given him some hours ago.
In his huge hand it looked tiny, a toy. It didn't look like something that
had knocked a Buick off the road, killing one man and badly injuring
another, that very evening.
There wasn't any expression on his face, none at all.
I wonder what mine looked like. But through a looking- glass or not, I
didn't have one to look into.
Had I been talking to myself aloud? Or had my conversation with Yehudi
Smith been imaginary, within my own mind? I honestly didn't know.
If I'd really been talking to myself, it was going to be a hell of a
thing to have to explain. Especially if Kates had, on his stop here,
awakened Smiley and told him that I was crazy.
In any case, what the hell could I possibly say right now but "Hello,
Smiley?"
I opened my mouth to say "Hello, Smiley," but I didn't.
Someone was pounding on the glass of the front door. Someone who
yelled, "Hey, open up here!" in the voice of Sheriff Rance Kates.
I did the only reasonable thing to do. I poured myself another drink.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose
What made you so awfully clever?"
Kates hammered again and tried the knob.
Smiley stared at me and I stared back at him. I couldn't say anything
even if I could have thought of anything to say to him at that distance
without the probability of Kates hearing my voice.
Kates hammered again. I heard him say something to Hank about breaking
in the glass. Smiley bent down and placed the gun on the step behind him and
then came out of the door into the tavern. Without looking at me he walked
toward the front door and, at sight of him, Kates stopped the racket there.
Smiley didn't walk quite straight toward the door; he made a slight
curve that took him past my table. As he passed, he reached out and jerked
the cigar out of my hand. He stuck it in his mouth and then went to the door
and opened it.
I couldn't see in that direction, of course, and I didn't stick my head
around the corner of the el. I sat there and sweated.
"What you want? Why such a hell of a racket?" I heard Smiley demand.
Kates' voice: "Thought Stoeger was here. That smoke"
"Left my cigar down here," Smiley said. "Remembered it when I got back
up and came down to get it. Why all the racket?"
"It was damn near half an hour ago when I was here," Kates said
belligerently. "Cigar doesn't burn that long."
Smiley said patiently, "I couldn't sleep after you were here. I came
down and got myself a drink five minutes ago. I left my cigar down here."
His voice got soft, very soft. "Now get the hell out of here. You've spoiled
my night already. Didn't get to sleep till two and you wake me at half past
three and come around again at four. What's the big idea, Kates?"
"You're sure Stoeger isn't"
"I told you I'd call you if I saw him. Now, you bastard, get out of
here."
I could imagine Kates turning purple. I could imagine him looking at
Smiley and realizing that Smiley was half again as strong as he was.
The door slammed so hard it must have come very near to breaking the
glass.
Smiley came back. Without looking back at me he said quietly, "Don't
move, Doc. He might look back in a minute or two." He went on around behind
the bar, got himself a glass and poured a drink. He sat down on the stool he
keeps for himself back there, facing slightly to the back so his lip
movement wouldn't show to anyone looking in the front window. He took a sip
of the drink and a puff of my cigar.
I kept my voice as low as he'd kept his. I said, "Smiley, you ought to
have your mouth washed out with soap. You told a lie."
He grinned. "Not that I know of, Doc. I told him I'd call him if I saw
you. I did call him. Didn't you hear what I called him?"
"Smiley," I said, "this is the screwiest night I've ever been through
but the screwiest thing about it is that you're developing a sense of humor.
I didn't think you had it in you."
"How bad trouble are you in, Doc? What can I do?"
I said, "Nothing. Except what you just did do, and thanks to hell and
back for that. It's something I've got to think out; and work out for
myself, Smiley. Nobody can help me."
"Kates said, when he was here the first time, you were a ho homi
what the hell was it?"
"Homicidal maniac," I said. "He thinks I killed two men tonight. Miles
Harrison and Ralph Bonney."
"Yeah. Don't bother telling me you didn't."
I said, "Thanks, Smiley." And then it occurred to me that "Don't bother
telling me you didn't" could be taken either one of two ways. And I wondered
again if I had been talking to myself aloud or only in my imagination while
Smiley had been walking down those stairs and opening the door. I asked him,
"Smiley, do you think I'm crazy?"
"I've always thought you were crazy, Doc. But crazy in a nice way."
I thought how wonderful it is to have friends. Even if I was crazy,
there were two people in Carmel City that I could count on to go to bat for,
me. There was Smiley and there was Carl.
But, damn it, friendship should work both ways. This was my danger and
my problem and I had no business dragging Smiley into it any farther than
he'd already stuck his neck. If I told Smiley that Kates had tried to kill
me and still intended to, then Smiley who hates Kates' guts already
would go out looking for Kates and like as not kill him with his bare hands,
or get shot trying it. I couldn't do that to Smiley.
I said, "Smiley, finish your drink and go up to bed again. I've got to
think."
"Sure there's no way I can help you, Doc?"
"Positive."
He tossed off the rest of his drink and tamped out the cigar in an ash
tray. He said, "Okay, Doc, I know you're smarter than I am, and if it's
brains you need for help, I'm just in the way. Good luck to you."
He walked back to the door of the staircase. He looked carefully at the
front windows to be sure nobody was looking in and then he reached inside
and picked up the revolver from the step on which he'd placed it.
He came walking over to my table. He said, "Doe, if you are a ho homi
what you said, you might want to kill somebody else tonight. That's
loaded. I even replaced the two bullets I shot out of it, earlier."
He put it down on the table in front of me, turned his back to me and
went back to the stairs. I watched him go, marveling. I'd never yet seen a
man in a nightshirt who hadn't looked ridiculous. Until then. What more can
a man do to prove he doesn't think you're insane than give you a loaded gun
and then turn his back and walk away. And when I thought of all the times
I'd razzed Smiley and ridden him, all the cracks I'd made at him, I wanted
Well, I couldn't answer when he said "Goodnight, Doc," just before he
closed the door behind him. Something felt a little wrong with my throat,
and if I'd tried to say anything, I might have bawled.
My hand shook a little as I poured myself another drink, a short one. I
was beginning to feel them and this had better be my last one, I knew.
I had to think more clearly than I'd ever thought before. I couldn't
get drunk, I didn't dare.
I tried to get my mind back to what I'd been thinking about what I'd
been talking about to the little man who wasn't there before Smiley's
coming downstairs and Kates' knocking had interrupted me.
I looked across the table where Yehudi Smith, in my mind, had been
sitting. But he wasn't there. I couldn't bring him back. He was dead, and he
wouldn't come back. The quiet room in the quiet night. The dim light of the
single twenty-watt bulb over the cash register. The creaking of my thoughts
as I tried to turn them back into the groove. Connect facts.
Lewis Carroll and bloody murder.
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
What had Alice found there?
Chessmen, and a game of chess. And Alice herself had been a pawn. That
was why, of course, she'd crossed the third square by railroad. With the
smoke alone worth a thousand pounds a puff almost as expensive as the
smoke from my cigar might have been had not Smiley taken it out of my hand
and claimed it as his own.
Chessmen, and a game of chess.
But who was the player?
And suddenly I knew. Illogically, because he didn't have a shadow of a
motive. The Why I did not see, but Yehudi Smith had told me the How, and now
I saw the Who.
The pattern. Whoever had arranged tonight's little chess problem played
chess all right, and played it well. Looking- glass chess and real chess,
both. And he knew me well which meant I knew him, too. He knew my
weaknesses, the things I'd fall for. He knew I'd go with Yehudi Smith on the
strength of that mad, weird story Smith had told me.
But why? What had he to gain? He'd killed Miles Harrison, Ralph Bonney
and Yehudi Smith. And he'd left the money Miles and Ralph had been carrying
in that brief case and put it in the back of my car, with the two bodies.
Then money hadn't been the motive. Either that, or the motive had been
money in such large quantity that the couple of thousand dollars Bonney had
been carrying didn't matter.
But wasn't a man concerned who was one of the richest men in Carmel
City? Ralph Bonney. His fireworks factory, his other investments, his real
estate must have added up to well, maybe half a million dollars. A man
shooting for half a million dollars can well abandon the proceeds of a two
thousand dollar holdup and leave them with the bodies of the men he has
killed, to help pin the crime on the pawn he has selected to divert
suspicion from himself.
Connect facts.
Ralph Bonney was divorced today. He was murdered tonight.
Then Miles Harrison's death was incidental. Yehudi Smith had been
another pawn.
A warped mind, but a brilliant mind. A cold, cruel mind. And yet,
paradoxically, a mind that loved fantasy, as I did, that loved Lewis
Carroll, as I did.
I started to pour myself another drink and then remembered that I still
had only part of the answer, and that even if I had it all, I hadn't the
slightest idea what I could do with it, without a shred of evidence, or an
iota of proof.
Without even an idea, in my own mind, of the reason, the motive. But
there must be one; the rest of it was too well planned, too logical.
There was one possibility that I could see.
I sat there listening a while to be sure there was no car approaching;
the night was so quiet that, I could have heard one at least a block away.
I looked at the gun Smiley had given me back, hesitated, and finally
put it in my pocket. Then I went into the back room and let myself out of
the window into the dark alley.
Carl Trenholm's house was three blocks away. Luckily, it was on the
street next to Oak Street and parallel to it. I could make all of the
distance through the alley except for the streets I'd have to cross.
I heard a car coming as I approached the second street and I ducked
down and hid behind a garbage can until it had gone by. It was going slowly
and it was probably either Hank and the sheriff or the two deputies. I
didn't look out to see for fear they might flash a spotlight down the alley.
I waited until the sound of it died away completely before I crossed
the street.
I let myself in the back gate of Carl's place. With his wife away, I
wasn't positive which bedroom he'd be sleeping in, but I found pebbles and
tossed them at the most likely window and it was the right one.
It went up and Carl's head came out. I stepped close to the house so I
wouldn't have to yell. I said, "It's Doc, Carl. Don't light a light anywhere
in the house. But come down to the back door."
"Coming, Doc." He closed the window. I went up on the back porch and
waited until the door opened and I went in. I closed the door behind me and
the kitchen was as black as the inside of a tomb.
Carl said, "Damned if I know where a flashlight is, Doc. Can't we put
on a light? I feel like hell."
"No, leave it off," I told him. I struck a match, though, to find my
way to a chair and it showed me Carl in rumpled pajamas, hi...
