But I’d like to try, I thought. And I’d sure try to take it.
“It’s been such a mess, Carl. For months I couldn’t open a door without a cop or a reporter popping out at me, and then just when I think it’s finished and I’m going to have a little peace, it starts all over again. I don’t like to complain, Carl—I really don’t—but—”
She did like to, naturally. Everyone does. But a dame who’d lived on the soft money so long was too smart to do it.
She let her hair down just far enough to be friendly.
“That’s certainly tough,” I said. “How long do you plan on staying here?”
“How long?” She laughed shortly. “The rest of my life it looks like.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “A woman like you.”
“Why don’t I mean it? What else can I do? I let everything slide when I married Jake. Gave up my singing—you knew I was a singer?—well, I gave that up. I haven’t been in a night club in years except to buy a drink. I just let everything slide, my voice, my contacts; everything. Now, I’m not a kid any more.”
“Now stop that,” I said. “You stop that right now.”
“Oh, I’m not complaining, Carl. Really I’m not…How about another drink?”
I let her buy it.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know too much about the case, and it’s easy for me to talk. But—”
“Yes?”
“I think Mr. Winroy should have stayed in jail. That’s what I’d have done.”
“Of course, you would! Any man would.”
“But maybe he knows best,” I said. “He’ll probably work out some big deal that’ll put you higher on the heap than you were before.”
She turned her head sharply, her eyes blazing fire. But I was all wide-eyed and innocent.
The fire died, and she smiled and squeezed my hand again.
“It’s sweet of you to say that, Carl, but I’m afraid…I get so damned burned up I—well, what’s the use talking when I can’t do anything?”
I sighed and started to buy another drink.
“Let’s not,” she said. “I know you can’t afford it—and I’ve had enough. I’m kind of funny that way, I guess. If there’s anything that gets me, it’s to see a person keep pouring it down after they’ve had enough.”
“You know,” I said, “it’s funny that you should mention that. It’s exactly the way I feel. I can take a drink or even three or four, but then I’m ready to give it a rest. With me it’s the companionship and company that counts.”
“Of course. Certainly,” she nodded. “That’s the way it should be.”
I picked up my change, and we left the place. We crossed the street, and I got my bags off the porch and followed her to my room. She was acting a little thoughtful.
“This looks fine,” I said. “I’m sure I’m going to like it here.”
“Carl—” She was looking at me, curiously, friendly enough but curious.
“Yes?” I said. “Is there something wrong?”
“You’re a lot older than you look, aren’t you?”
“Now, how old would that be?” And, then, I nodded soberly. “I must have tipped you off,” I said. “You’d never have known it from looking at me.”
“Why do you say it that way? You don’t like—”
I shrugged. “What’s the use not liking it? Sure, I love it. Who wouldn’t like being a man and looking like a kid? Having people laugh every time you act like a man.”
“I haven’t laughed at you, Carl.”
“I haven’t given you the chance,” I said. “Suppose things had been different. Suppose, say, I’d met you at a party and I’d tried to kiss you like any man in his right mind would. Why, you’d have laughed your head off! And don’t tell me you wouldn’t, because I know you would!”
I jammed my hands into my pockets and turned my back on her. I stood there, head bowed, shoulders slumped, staring down at the threadbare carpet…It was raw, corny as hell—but it had almost always worked before, and I was pretty sure it would with her.
She crossed the room and came around in front of me. She put a hand under my chin and tilted it up.
“You know what you are?” she said, huskily. “You’re a slicker.”
She kissed me on the mouth. “A slicker,” she repeated, smiling at me slant-eyed. “What’s a fast guy like you doing at a tank-town teacher’s college?”
“I don’t really know,” I said. “It’s hard to put into words. It’s—well, maybe you know how it is. You’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, and you don’t think you’re getting ahead fast enough. So you look around for some way of changing things. And you’re probably so fed up with what you’ve been doing that anything that comes along looks good to you.”
She nodded. She knew how that was.
“I’ve never made much money,” I said, “and I figured a little education might help. This was cheap, and it sounded good in the catalogues. At that, I almost got right back on the train when I saw what it looked like.”
“Yes,” she said, grimly, “I know what you mean. But—you are going to give it a try, aren’t you?”
“I kind of think I will,” I said. “Now, will you tell me something?”
“If I can.”
“Are those real?”
“Those? What—Oh,” she said, and laughed softly. “Boy, are we slick!…Wouldn’t you like to know, though?”
“Well?”
“Well—” She leaned forward, suddenly. Eyes dancing, watching my face, she moved her shoulders from side to side, up and down. And then she stepped back quickly, laughing, holding me away with her hands.
“Huh-uh. No, sir, Carl! I don’t know why—I must be losing my mind to let you get away with that much.”
“Just so you don’t lose anything else,” I said, and she laughed again.
It was louder and huskier than any of the others. It was like those laughs you hear late at night in a certain type of saloon. You know. The people are all in a huddle at one end of the bar, and they’re all looking at this one guy, their lips pulled back a little from their teeth, their eyes kind of glassy; and all at once his voice rises, and he slaps his hand down on the counter. And you hear the laughter.
“Sweet”—she gave me another quick pat on the cheek—“just as sweet as he can be. Now, I’ve got to get downstairs and throw something together for dinner. It’ll be about an hour from now in case you’d like to take a nap.”
I said I might do that, after I’d unpacked, and she gave me a smile and left. I started stowing my things away.
I was pretty well satisfied with the way things were going. For a minute or two, I’d thought I was moving too fast, but it seemed to have worked out okay. With a dame like her, if she really liked you, you could practically throw away the brakes.
I finished unpacking, and stretched out on the bed with a true-detective story magazine.
I turned through the pages, locating the place I’d left off:
…thus the story of Charlie (Little) Bigger, the deadliest, most elusive killer in criminal history. The total number of his slayings-for-hire will probably never be known, but he has been officially charged with sixteen. He is wanted for murder in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit.
Little Bigger vanished as from the face of the earth in 1943, immediately following the gangland slaying of his brother and contact-man, “Big Luke” Bigger. Exactly what became of him is still a topic for heated discussion in police and underworld circles. According to some rumors, he died years ago of tuberculosis. Others would have it that he was a victim of a revenge murder, like his brother, “Big.” Still others maintain that he is alive. The truth, of course, is simply this: No one knows what happened to Little Bigger, because no one knew him. No one, that is, who survived the acquaintance.
All his contacts were made through his brother. He was never arrested, never fingerprinted, never photographed. No man, naturally, who was as murderously acti
ve as he could remain completely anonymous, and Little Bigger did not. But the picture we get, pieced from various sources, is more tantalizing than satisfying.
Assuming that he is still alive and unchanged, Little Bigger is a mild-looking little man, slightly over five feet tall and weighing approximately one hundred pounds. His eyes are weak, and he wears thick-lensed glasses. He is believed to be suffering from tuberculosis. His teeth are in very bad condition, and many of them are missing. He is quick-tempered, studious, a moderate smoker and drinker. He looks younger than the thirty to thirty-five years which, according to estimates, he is now.
Despite his appearance, Little bigger can be very ingratiating, particularly in the case of women…
I tossed the magazine aside. I sat up and kicked off the elevator shoes. I walked to the high-topped dresser, tilted the mirror down and opened my mouth. I took out my upper and lower plate. I pulled my eyelids back—first one, then the other—and removed the contact lenses.
I stood looking at myself a moment, liking the tan, liking the weight I’d put on. I coughed and looked into my handkerchief, and I didn’t like that much.
I lay back down on the bed, thinking I was sure going to have to watch my health, wondering if it would do me much damage when I started making love to her.
I closed my eyes, thinking…about her…and him…and The Man…and Fruit Jar…and this crappy-puke looking house and the bare front yard and the squeaking steps and—and that gate.
My eyes snapped opened, then drooped shut again. I’d have to do something about that gate. Someone was liable to walk by the place and snag their clothes on it.
3
I met Mr. Kendall, the other boarder, on the way down to dinner. He was a dignified, little old guy—the kind who’d remain dignified if he got locked in a nickel toilet and had to crawl under the door. He said he was very happy to meet me, and that he would consider it a privilege to help me get settled in Peardale. I said that was nice of him.
“I was thinking about work,” he said, as we went into the dining room. “Coming in late this way, it may be a little difficult. The part-time jobs are pretty well sewed up, by now. But I’ll keep my eyes open at the bakery—we employ more student help than any place in town, I believe—and it’s just possible that something can be worked out.”
“I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble,” I said.
“No trouble. After all, we’re all living here together, and—ah, that looks very good, Mrs. Winroy.”
“Thanks.” She made a little face, brushing a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “We may as well see how it tastes. Heaven only knows when Jake will get here.”
We all sat down. Mr. Kendall more or less took over the job of passing things, while she slumped in her chair, fanning her face with her hand. She hadn’t been just kidding about throwing dinner together. Apparently she’d dashed out to the store for an armload of canned goods.
It wasn’t bad, you understand. She’d bought a lot of everything, and it was all topgrade. But she could have done twice as well with half the money and a little more effort.
Mr. Kendall sampled his asparagus and said it was very good. He sampled the anchovies, the imported sardines and the potted tongue and said they were very good. He tapped his mouth with his napkin, and I was expecting him to say that it was very good. Or maybe he’d give her a nice juicy compliment on her can opener. Instead he turned and glanced toward the door, his head cocked a little to one side.
“That must be Ruth,” he said, after a moment. “Don’t you think so, Mrs. Winroy?”
Mrs. Winroy listened. She nodded. “Thank God,” she sighed, and began to brighten up. “I was afraid she might stay away another day.”
“Ruth is the young lady who works here,” Mr. Kendall told me. “She’s a student at the college, too. A very fine young woman, very deserving.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say so, but it sounds to me like she’s got a broken piston.”
He gave me a blank look. Mrs. Winroy let out with the guffaw again.
“Silly!” she said. “That’s her father’s car, her Pa, she calls him. He drives her back and forth from their farm whenever she goes home for a visit.”
There was a slight mimicking note to her voice, a tone that wasn’t so much nasty as amused and contemptuous.
The car stopped in front of the house. A door opened and closed—slammed—and someone said, “Now, you take keer o’ yerself, Ruthie,” and that broken piston began to clatter, and the car pulled away.
The gate squeaked. There was a footstep on the walk; just one footstep, and a tap; a kind of thud-tap. It—She—came up the walk, stepping and thud-tapping. She came up the steps—thud-tap, thud-tap—and across the porch.
Mr. Kendall shook his head at me sadly. “Poor girl,” he said, dropping his voice.
Mrs. Winroy excused herself and got up.
She met Ruth at the front door and hustled her right down the hall and into the kitchen. So I didn’t get a good look at her; rather, I should say, one good look was all I did get. But what I saw interested me. Maybe it wouldn’t interest you, but it did me.
She had on an old mucklededung-colored coat—the way it was screaming Sears-Roebuck they should have paid her to wear it—and a kind of rough wool skirt. Her glasses were the kind your grandpa maybe wore, little tiny lenses, steel rims, pinchy across the nose. They made her eyes look like walnuts in a plate of cream fudge. Her hair was black and thick and shiny, but the way it was fixed—murder!
She only had one leg, the right one. The fingers of her left hand, gripping the crosspiece of her crutch, looked a little splayed.
I heard Mrs. Winroy ordering her around in the kitchen, not mean but pretty firm and fussy. I heard water running into the sink and pans clattering, and the thud-tap, thud-tap, thud-tap, moving faster and faster—humble, apologetic, anxious. I could almost hear her heart pounding with it.
Mr. Kendall passed me the sugar, then spooned some into his own coffee. “Tsk, tsk,” he said. I’d been hearing people say that in books for years, but he was the first real-life guy I’d ever heard say it. “Such a sad thing for a fine young woman.”
“Yeah,” I said, “isn’t it?”
“And there’s nothing to be done about it, apparently. She’ll have to go through life that way.”
“You mean she can’t raise the dough for an artificial leg?” I said. “There’s ways of getting around that.”
“We-el”—he looked down at his plate uncomfortably—“of course, the family is impoverished. But it’s—well, it’s not a question of money.”
“What is it a question of?”
“Well—er—uh”—he was actually blushing—“I have no—uh—personal knowledge of the—er—situation, but I understand it’s a—It’s due to a very—uh—peculiar malformation of the—er—”
“Yeah?” I encouraged him.
“—of the left limb!” he finished.
He came out with it like it was a dirty word. I grinned to myself, and said “Yeah?” again. But he wasn’t talking any more about Ruth’s—uh—er—limb, and I didn’t press him any. It made it more interesting not to know.
I could look forward to finding out about it myself.
He stuffed his pipe and lit up. He asked me if I’d ever noticed how so many deserving people—people who did their best to be decent—got so little out of life.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose every picture has its bright side. Ruthie couldn’t get employment in any other household, and Mrs. Winroy couldn’t—uh—Mrs. Winroy was having some difficulty in finding anyone. So it all works out nicely. Mrs. Winroy has a grateful and industrious servant. Ruth has her board and room and spending money. Five dollars a week now, I believe.”
“No kidding!” I said. “Five dollars a week! That must put an awful strain on Mrs. Winroy.”
“I suppose it does,” he nodded seriously, “things being as they are. But Ruth’s an
unusually good worker.”
“I should think she would be for that kind of money.”
He took his pipe out of his mouth, and looked into the bowl. He glanced up at me, and he chuckled.
“I’m not much of a man to recite personal history, Mr. Bigelow, but—well, I was a teacher for a great many years. English literature. Yes, I taught here at the college for a time. My parents were living then, and I couldn’t stretch my salary over the needs of the three of us; so I entered and remained in a more remunerative trade. But I’ve never lost my interest in literature, particularly in the satirists—”
“I see,” I said, and it was my turn to blush a little.
“It’s always seemed to me that satire cannot exist outside the rarefied atmosphere of excellence. It is either excellent or it is nothing…I should be very glad to lend you my Gulliver’s Travels, Mr. Bigelow. Also the collected works of Lucilius, Juvenal, Butler—”
“That’s enough. That’s more than enough.” I held up a hand, grinning. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kendall.”
“Quite all right,” he nodded placidly. “You had no way of knowing, of course, but a student who earns five dollars a week and her board and room in a college town—this town, at least—is doing very well for herself.”
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t doubt it a bit.”
All at once I’d had a crazy idea about him, one that kind of gave me the whimwhams. Because maybe everyone doesn’t have a price, but if this dull, dignified old guy did have one…Well, he’d be worth almost anything he asked as an ace in the hole. He could throw in with me, in case of a showdown: back me up in a story, or actually give me a hand if there was no other way out. Otherwise, he’d just keep tabs on me, see that I didn’t try a runout…
But that was crazy. I’ve already said so. The Man knew I couldn’t run. He knew I wouldn’t fluff the job. I shoved the idea out of my mind, shoved it damned good and hard. You just can’t play around with notions like that.
Mrs. Winroy came in from the kitchen, picking up her purse from the sideboard. She paused at the table.
“I don’t want to rush you gentlemen, but I think Ruth would like to clear up here whenever you’re through.”