The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “On the long hill north…” She broke off with her eyes wide open and I found that I was standing up. She was on her feet at the same time and her hands were clasped tight in front of her.

  “Was he alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the car now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it was brought in with a wrecker or something. It was not there the next day.”

  The coat was of rough material and I didn’t have anything on under it except a cotton undershirt. My shoulders began to itch and I scratched first one and then the other by squirming around inside.

  “I guess there is someone at the police station all night, isn’t there?”

  She said: “I suppose so.”

  I looked around and saw the telephone on a table by the door to what I assumed was the kitchen. I jerked my head toward it and said: “Call ’em. Tell them who you are and you want to know where your father’s car is.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Won’t it look funny at this time of night?”

  “What I’m thinking isn’t funny at all.”

  Without another word she went over and picked up the phone. She had some difficulty getting what she wanted but she finally came back and stood in front of me. “He was taking a nap and was slightly profane but the car was taken, he thinks, to the lot outside of Harbison’s Garage. He said it was beyond repair.”

  I went to the door and looked out. The rain had practically stopped but there was a faint misty drizzle and the damp air made me shiver. Someone was coming up the walk and I waited to see who it was. Before he came into the light, I thought it might be Primo Carnera.9 He was enormous and he was looking at me intently with an expression I could have done without. I wasn’t afraid, you understand, but the damp air was quite chilly and I thought it best to back into the room so I wouldn’t catch pneumonia. I had been exposed once before that evening and I didn’t want to get sick. I was glad that Miss McClure went to the door so Gargantua10 could see I was not a housebreaker.

  I could almost swear that he had to turn sideways to come in the door but maybe that was an optical illusion. He took his eyes off of me and said to Ruth: “Who’s Dopey?”

  I drew myself up to my full five feet seven inches, but I cannot truthfully say that I did so with dignity because after all who can be dignified in the kind of getup I had on?

  Even at odd moments I am not unobservant and I saw an expression in the eyes of Miss McClure that did not look to me like the way a sister looks at a brother.

  She said: “Tim, this is Mr. Henry, a lawyer I asked to come down from the city. Someone searched the house and you weren’t here and I didn’t know what to do.”

  He didn’t change expression and if even his eyelids moved I didn’t see it and I was watching. He looked at me and his face did not change but he was laughing inside himself. You could tell that. “What do you want with a lawyer?” I gathered lawyers did not rate very high with him. He might have been referring to Pekingese dogs. “My suit?”

  I thought it was about time for me to assert myself although I had to clear my throat after the first start and try again. I finally managed: “I was in a wreck and got rained on. You can bet I didn’t pick this outfit at Marshall Field’s.”11 Then I said: “Where’s your gun?”

  He looked from me to Ruth. “What’s his angle?”

  “He’s here because I asked him and he nearly got killed. Someone shot out a tire. He’s got more curiosity than an old maid and his mind is so sharp it’s about to cut his ears off.”

  He looked at me with new interest but rather skeptically if I may say so. The description of my mind was a new idea to me and I think I put my hand up and touched one ear with nothing particular in mind of course. I said: “You are Tim McClure. I think you had better take me on credit for the time being. Right now I am in a hurry and you can get your explanation later. I want to go to Harbison’s Garage and I would rather not get wet again. What would you suggest?”

  He shifted his mental gears right in front of my eyes and I could see that the questioning was temporarily postponed. “Car’s outside. You can tell me about it on the way.” He looked at Ruth: “You coming?”

  She looked at me. I said no one would be likely to search the house twice in the same evening and the next thing she and I were crowded into what was left of the front seat. Mr. Tim McClure either changed his mind or expected me to start talking which I didn’t do. I had the flashlight with me and we had no trouble finding the remains of the Buick on the lot behind Harbison’s. Someone had jacked up the rear axle and the left rear wheel was gone, tire, tube and all.

  6 Popular with young men in Latino, African American, Italian American, and Filipino American communities in the 1940s, the zoot suit featured high-waisted trousers and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. Wearing a suit much too large for himself could have made Gil Henry look like he was wearing a zoot suit. A “drape shape” was a slang description of the jacket style.

  7 For perspective, the U.S. minimum wage in 1941 was $0.30 per hour, or $12.00 per week. The relative wage for a production worker like Mr. McClure earning $35 per week in 1941 is $1,878 per week in 2019. Using the relative price index, $10,000 would be the equivalent of over $135,000 in 2019. Samuel H. Williamson, “Purchasing Power Today of a US Dollar Transaction in the Past,” MeasuringWorth, 2019, https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppowerus/.

  8 Presumably Sweetwater College, in Sweetwater, TN, now defunct.

  9 Primo Carnera (1906–1967) was 6’6’’ tall and weighed nearly 300 pounds; he was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from 1933 to 1934.

  10 A giant, the subject of François Rabelais’s sixteenth-century comic novels Gargantua and Pantagruel.

  11 A popular Chicago-based chain of department stores.

  8

  I said: “Come on,” and started back toward Tim’s car on the run. They didn’t ask me any questions but were close behind me. I tripped on a pants leg again but I never hit the ground because a tremendous paw got me by the back of the neck just in time. I was practically paralyzed and would much rather have fallen on my face in the mud. He swung me up with that grip on the back of my neck like a mother dog carries a pup and when I found that there were no bones broken, I was wedged between them and the motor was running. I did not feel in any mood to talk and I am not sure I was physically able to do so, but I managed to point and we went through the dark streets taking corners on two wheels. In about five minutes I indicated he was to slow down and presently I could see the place where my car had left the road. I scrambled down the bank with the flashlight feeling its way in front of me and when I saw the front cushion out on the ground I knew exactly what I was going to find. The jack was under the rear axle and the wheel with the flat tire was missing.

  I looked up and found that Tim was watching me intently. How he kept from breaking out in a rash of questions I don’t know but when I started back up the bank toward the road he and Ruth were right with me. This time I held up the trouser legs at the knees so I wouldn’t fall. I crawled in under the wheel and we put Ruth between us. As we started slowly up the hill I told Tim to keep a watch on his side for tracks where a car might have turned off the road. There wasn’t a thing all the way to the top, but about fifty yards farther there was a gravel road on my side and I turned into it. Almost at once I could see tracks that turned off down the hill parallel to the highway behind the thick underbrush.

  There was no doubt about it. This was the place. A car had been in there and then back again. Up in the fringe of bushes by the road, someone had knelt on one knee. We looked around with the flashlight and found a footprint and in the middle of it an indentation where someone had stepped on an emp
ty cartridge. The cartridge was not there but we found a couple of gouge marks where a finger and thumb had evidently dug it out.

  I went back to the tire marks and it was clear that either two cars had been in ahead of us or one car had been in and had come back again.

  We walked back to Tim’s car and I walked around it, turning the flashlight on each wheel in turn, then looking back at the tracks in the mud. He was watching me with his hands on his hips and Ruth McClure had the back of her hand against her mouth and she was as tense as I was.

  “Satisfied?” said Tim.

  I shrugged my shoulders and we got back into the car again. I was tired and sore and I didn’t want to think for awhile. I heard Ruth start explaining and then I guess I went to sleep because I didn’t hear any more of it. Tim shook me when we pulled up in front of the house again. He looked pretty grim. It was four o’clock in the morning.

  9

  As soon as we were back in the living room I went straight to the black box and dumped the contents out on the table. There was nothing much to look at. Bill of sale for an automobile, cancelled checks, bank statements, and a little batch of papers surrounded by a rubber band that came to pieces when I touched it. The batch of papers consisted of a deed which evidently related to the home itself, a cancelled mortgage note and a mortgage with a notation that it had been released. Birth certificate of one Ruth Ellington McClure showing that she was born June 21, 1913, adoption proceedings showing that a foundling, true name unknown, parents unknown, was adopted by John H. McClure and Ruth McClure, his wife, in May, 1915, in Louisville, Kentucky. The child had been in the custody of a Mrs. Phoebe Murdoch and had been called Timothy Washington for lack of any other name. The child’s birthday was given as August 7, 1909. There was nothing to explain how this date could be known if nothing else was known.

  I put this paper beside the stock certificate and pointed to the two dates which were less than a week apart. Timothy McClure was watching over my shoulder and he didn’t say anything at all.

  I picked up the bank deposit book with considerable interest but there were no unusual entries—nothing except periodic deposits of $35.00 each for a few years back, then $30.00 a week for a while and then $27.50.

  I leafed through a few packages of cancelled checks but there was nothing unusual there either. Checks to tradespeople, small checks marked cash. Nothing else.

  The bill of sale was for a ’41 Buick in February, 1941, but there was no check to the automobile dealer.

  I faced the two of them. “How did you get your money when you were off at school?” I asked.

  Tim said: “Postal money order.” I looked inquiringly at Ruth and she nodded.

  “Always?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Remember what post office?”

  They looked at each other blankly.

  Ruth said: “That was years ago. I don’t know that I ever noticed. It didn’t seem important. We got the money and that was all there was to it.”

  Tim was thinking with a puckered frown on his face but he shook his head slowly.

  10

  I guess I jumped four inches when the telephone rang. Six eyes looked at it and it rang again. Ruth went over and picked up the receiver, and after a minute she came back and looked at me and said, “For you.”

  There was no doubt that she meant me, but it was so hard to believe that I said, “Me?” even while I was on the way.

  The voice sounded like it might be talking through a sea shell.

  “Mr. Gilmore Henry?”

  I wished it was not me but it was and I said so.

  “A little nosey, aren’t you?”

  It was beginning to be fairly evident, but I said, “Think so?” and tried to concentrate on discovering something that would let me recognize the speaker if I ever heard him again, sea shell or no.

  The voice went on, “Why don’t you take a little vacation or something and mind your own damn business?”

  “Maybe I will. Any suggestions?”

  “Only that you take a little vacation or something and mind your own damn business. Should I draw you a picture?”

  I said, “Who is this?”

  There was no answer to that one and the receiver went on the hook at the other end of the line.

  I hung up and scratched my shoulders inside the coat again by squirming around. Then I picked up the receiver and jingled the hook, and when the operator said “What number, please?” I said: “This is 1872. I want to talk again to the party I was just talking to. Can you tell me what number that call came from?”

  “You mean just now?”

  “Not over one minute ago.”

  “That call was from the hotel.”

  “Will you give me the hotel, please?”

  When I got the hotel operator, I said again: “This is 1872. I want to talk to the party I was just talking to.”

  “The call was made from a booth.”

  “If the man’s still around, take a good look at him and remember everything you see.”

  “He just walked out. Hung up the receiver and walked right on out without saying a word.”

  “Big? Little? Dark? Light? Or what?”

  “Who is this talking?”

  “Never mind, sweetheart, I’m in a hurry and this is important. Did you notice anything about that man?”

  She was silent for a minute, thinking it over, and then she said, “There wasn’t much to notice. Just medium and nothing peculiar.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Just plain clothes.”

  “Big nose? Squint eyes? Scars or anything?”

  “Just a plain man. You see them every day. Personally I got a good home life and I don’t care if they are Clark Gable.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere so I said, “Oh yeah,” and hung up. I turned around to Tim and Ruth and said, “Just a medium guy that doesn’t look like anything wants me to take a vacation somewhere else and mind my own business. I’m all happy to know that the hotel operator has no sex troubles at home.”

  11

  I took the room formerly occupied by the late John H. McClure, Ruth took the living room, and the big ox took the basement. Between us we searched those rooms and then the rest of the house down to everything except the backside of the wall paper. In the dresser drawer I found the only thing that looked interesting at all—a flat key, down in the bottom of a plush-lined box full of collar buttons, paper clips, old theater stubs and other trash. It was not a bright new key, but it was brass looking and hadn’t turned green and wasn’t dusty, so I judged it had not remained as neglected as the surroundings would indicate.

  I found Ruth and held the thing out to her.

  “What does that open?”

  “It doesn’t look like any lock we have around the house. Maybe Tim knows.”

  Tim turned it over once or twice and shook his head. “Never saw it before.”

  I turned it over and over myself, while something revolved in the back of my head very slowly. I said: “Could be a lockbox. Know if he had one?”

  They looked at each other and Tim said: “Never mentioned it if he did.”

  “Did he leave a will?”

  “Just a short thing, made years ago, leaving everything to Tim and me in equal shares.”

  “Probated yet?”

  “No. We planned to probate it day after tomorrow.”

  “Name an executor?”

  Tim said: “Ruth.”

  I thought that over for a while. “Look,” I said, “as soon as the will is probated we are going to qualify you in an awful hurry, and then you as executor are going to start looking for lockboxes. Maybe with this key we’ll find what somebody wanted awfully bad to find here tonight.”

  We had wasted a good deal of time and it was nearly six o’clock. Ruth said didn’t w
e think we ought to eat, and suddenly I thought about how hungry I was and sat down with a faint feeling and little red flecks in front of my eyes. I said I thought it was a swell idea.

  12

  I shaved while breakfast was cooking. On my way to the kitchen to see how things were getting along I passed through the living room and happened to glance at the front door. I stopped in my tracks. The most hideous face I have ever seen was up close to the glass and one bright eye was looking at me. I thought at first the face was disfigured by a giant birthmark, but almost at once I realized that I was looking at scar tissue which covered roughly one whole side of the face which sagged downward, pulling the lower eyelid with it so that the red lining showed. That side of the mouth was also pulled down and partially open, with the lip permanently twisted out. The eye on that side of the face was milky.

  I heard Ruth moving around in the kitchen and I said:

  “What am I looking at?”

  She appeared in the doorway and immediately saw the ghastly thing at the door. To my surprise she did not bat an eye, but sang out with:

  “Tim! Where’s Tim? Let Katie in. She’s at the front door?”

  Tim came in from his room and opened the door and said:

  “Hello, Miss Katie. Up early this morning, aren’t you?”

  It was a woman. She wore a bonnet that was almost as tight around her skull as a skull cap would be, and from the way the scar tissue ran out of sight under it, I guessed the burn or whatever it was must have taken all of her hair off with it. She had a basket on her arm and the good half of her face looked at big Tim McClure with a tenderness that would have been appealing if I could have separated that side from the other, where the permanent leering mask did not change. I do not know what I expected her voice to be like, but I suppose I was waiting for a cackle like witches have in books you read when you’re a kid. There was nothing wrong with her voice at all. She looked down and took a cloth from over the basket with a hand that was as horribly misshapen as her face: