The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

  “I brought you some eggs again, Mr. Tim. I saw the light in the kitchen, and I thought you and Ruthie might like something fresh right out of my own chicken yard.”

  She appeared to notice me for the first time and said:

  “Who is this young man?”

  Tim took the basket and said:

  “Thanks, Katie. I don’t know what we would do without you to look after us. This is a lawyer Ruth brought down from the city to help with Dad’s affairs.”

  The eye looked at me and got bright again, and she stared at me longer than I thought was necessary. I put in:

  “Everything seems to be in order. Just routine stuff.”

  Katie kept on looking at me, but she said to Tim:

  “Doesn’t look like much. Why do you want to mess with lawyers? What’s wrong with what you can get in Harpersville? I thought Mr. Harper was going to take all that off your hands and do something right nice about the stock, too.”

  Tim did not seem to be surprised at how much she knew, nor at the air of assurance with which she spoke.

  “Just an idea of Ruth’s, Miss Katie. Happened to be up in the city, I guess, and got to talking about something else and next thing she knew she had a lawyer.”

  “Better let Mr. Harper handle it,” said Miss Katie sourly, but with an insistence that I did not miss. “If you don’t look out Mr. Harper won’t pay you a good price for your stock.”

  “Don’t you worry about us, Miss Katie. Thanks a lot for the eggs. We just finished the last ones you brought us, and they are always nice.”

  Miss Katie transferred her attention to him, and that soft look came over her face again. She patted the hand that was holding the basket and then turned around and left without another word.

  When she was gone Tim evidently had no inclination to explain away my obvious perplexity, but Ruth was more accommodating:

  “She lives across the street and about two houses down. Keeps a few chickens and is over here every day or two with eggs or with something she has cooked, or something from the garden. I don’t know why she takes such a shine to us, but we have always been nice to her, especially Dad and Tim.”

  I said: “What happened to her?”

  “She has never mentioned it, and no one has ever had the heart to ask. Most people think she is tough as nails, and from some of the stories we’ve heard, I guess maybe she is, although she’s certainly never been that way toward us.”

  13

  It was seven-thirty when we finished breakfast. I asked about when the stores would be open, and Ruth said there was a men’s store on the main street that opened pretty early. Tim had an office job at Harper Products Company. When Ruth had cleared the table, she took him to work and then ran me downtown in his car. We parked in front of Silverstein’s, waiting for someone to show up. Several doors away, behind us, a grocery store was already open and a Negro boy was washing the window with a rubber squeegee while the clerk was arranging oranges and stacks of cans in the window. I watched them idly in the rear-vision mirror, and then noticed Miss Katie coming down the walk with another basket on her arm. She turned into the grocery store. Ruth and I sat and smoked a cigarette and after a while I looked in the mirror again and saw Miss Katie come out with the basket looking rather heavy. Something sticking up out of the basket caught my attention. It was just a glimpse, and I guess it was five or ten seconds before it registered. I did not explain anything to Ruth, but just asked her to wait a minute. I climbed out and went back into the grocery store. There was only one clerk at that time of the morning, and he was straightening cans on the shelf and dusting officiously. Now that I was there I didn’t know how to go about it.

  I said: “I just saw Miss Katie. If you have any of her eggs, I’ll take them all.”

  He evidently didn’t have the foggiest notion what I was talking about.

  “I haven’t got her eggs. She took them with her. A regular carton. A dozen of them. I remember distinctly—they were right on top of the basket when she paid the bill.”

  I turned away and said:

  “Do you carry Camels? Give me two packs. You mean she didn’t forget the eggs she bought?”

  He handed me the cigarettes, made change noisily, and said:

  “Tell her to look right on top of the basket. She couldn’t miss them, unless she dropped them somewhere.”

  I wished to hell I was just simply lost in the woods in a blizzard or something else simple I could understand.

  14

  Every person has some cross to bear. Mine is that I am not shaped like people who are intended to get their clothes in ready-to-wear shops. If clothes are to fit me in the middle, they have to be too long at the ends and if they are to fit me at the ends, they hurt me in the middle.

  This dilemma confronted me, as usual, in Silverstein’s Men’s Shop. I didn’t want to take the time to wait while alterations were made so I took a suit which hurt when I buttoned it at the waist. Mr. Silverstein had on a black skull cap and a measuring tape hung around his neck. He patted and smoothed and pulled at things to make them hang right and appeared to approve in every particular although he finally said that maybe it was a little snug. I thought snug was hardly the appropriate word since my belt was almost out of sight and I could tell that I would not want to sit down very often.

  He did not much want to take my check but I brought Ruth in from the car and after she endorsed the check he took it with obvious misgivings. He kept insisting that all transactions in his establishment were “positively kesh” but he would not have missed a sale if his grandmother had been dying of convulsions in the next room.12

  I regretted my decision when I crawled in under the wheel of the car. They say when you cut earthworms in two, the halves go about their own business and supply whatever it takes to carry on, but I am no earthworm and I had no faith in my ability to do the same.

  Ruth said: “Where now?” I took my mind off my anatomical difficulties and asked if she knew what time of day Mr. William Jasper Harper presented himself at the offices of Harper Products Company. She said about nine o’clock so I took her home, borrowed the car, and drove out there.

  Mr. Harper’s secretary looked as if she might have personally laid the cornerstone in 1863, and who was I and what did I want. I handed her a card of Mead, Opdyke, Smallwood, Garrison & Henry and she said: “Oh, I see you are from Mr. Mead’s office. Wait a minute and I’ll see if Mr. Harper will talk to you.” She did and he did. It was a big office paneled in dark wood with one side all windows that overlooked a decorative piece of lawn between the office and the factory itself that had ivy growing over it. Mr. Harper sat behind an immense desk with his back to the windows. Even sitting down you could tell he was a very big man and although his hair was practically white, his face was not a very old face and I judged he was not over sixty. He did not get up but waved toward a chair and said heartily: “Well, well, I see you are from Jim Mead’s office.”

  I said I was and that I was here to see him on behalf of Miss Ruth McClure.

  He didn’t know whether he liked that or not and was a little less hearty. I could see him drawing in his horns and making up his mind what he ought to say. He looked at the card again and said: “Mr. Henry, isn’t it?” He knew very well it was Mr. Henry because the card said so. I didn’t see any reason to stall around so I said: “Why do you want to pay her four and one-half times what her stock is supposed to be worth?”

  I could see him putting himself at ease and his smile was almost genial. “Very cautious girl, Mr. Henry. Very intelligent. Quite right that she should wonder. But I can assure you my motives are purely charitable and I can be plainer to you than I would care to be with her. Her father, Mr. Henry, was one of our oldest employees. I try to look after my own. I don’t imagine he left very much, and his son and daughter seem to have been accustomed to live rather comfortably. I couldn’t offer to gi
ve them anything but I thought it would look natural enough for me to buy my company’s stock and the price would be my own business. Sort of family affair, you know. The stock was worth more when McClure bought it and I didn’t like to see them take the loss.”

  “Very interesting, Mr. Harper. How much did you say Mr. McClure paid for his stock?”

  He smiled again. “Really, Mr. Henry. I don’t know that I could say. The stock always sold for par or better until well into the depression and I assume he bought it at the market.”

  I could see that he did not think it was any of my business and he did not know where we were going. I said: “Thirty-five dollars a week does not seem awfully liberal to me.”

  A big vein began to throb in his neck and his face began to get a little red: “Really, Mr. Henry! Just what have you got on your mind?”

  I went over and put my hands on the desk: “I don’t think, Mr. Harper, that John McClure bought any stock for ten thousand dollars when he never made over thirty-five dollars a week in his life. I don’t think Tim went to Princeton on thirty-five dollars a week. I don’t think that Ruth McClure went to Sweetwater on thirty-five dollars a week. I don’t think John McClure bought a new automobile every year on thirty-five dollars a week. What do you think?”

  He did not let himself get any madder. He said: “You’re doing the thinking. Suppose you tell me.”

  “Give me time and I will tell you before I get through finding out some things. Right now I would like to have your permission to go through the books of Harper Products Company and all the records of stock transfers and your personal bank statements. What do you say we begin about 1915?” The blood was coming back up in his neck again and he half rose out of his chair.

  “You what?” He fairly shouted it at me.

  I said: “All right, so you refuse?”

  “I certainly do. I never heard such poppycock in my life. You little pip-squeak, you’ve got a nerve about you, haven’t you? We’ll see what Jim Mead has to say about this.”

  “Mr. Mead,” I said evenly, “won’t have anything to say about this. I am employed by Ruth McClure and so far this is between me and my client—and you. It can be between us and anybody else you say. There is the telephone. The number in the city is Main 8247.”

  He was almost beside himself. There was a gurgling sort of roar and he snatched the phone and then suddenly put it down again. “Jim Mead can wait,” he said, “you and I can start by you getting out of here. Now!”

  “I think I will, Mr. Harper. I think I will go out and look for some very interesting facts. I think I will start at about the month of May, 1915, and I think I will keep in mind that Timothy McClure is not the son of John H. McClure. I think I will recommend to Miss Ruth McClure that she decline your charitable offer which happens to be coupled with a condition that you are to take over all of her father’s affairs and shall we say—records, if any. Do you think that would be a good idea, Mr. Harper?”

  His face was about as soft as Stone Mountain, Georgia, and his voice was brittle and cold: “What’s your game?” he asked, “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “Should I?”

  “Blackmail is a serious business, Mr. Henry, even in Harpersville. How would you like to be slapped in jail in about thirty minutes?”

  I got up and put my hat on my head. “Suit yourself, Mr. William Jasper Harper. I assume you know what you’re doing.”

  The buzzer on the interoffice communicating system went off at that point and he pressed the lever without taking his eyes off me. A hollow distorted voice which I could dimly recognize as the ancient secretary outside said: “Miss Katie is here, Mr. Harper.”

  “Tell her to wait. I am just getting through. If Mr. Henry ever comes back, I will not see him. He is just leaving.” He was all smiles again. “Another of my charities, Mr. Henry. I am really a very kindhearted man, Mr. Henry. You will find evidences of it all over this town. A most unfortunate woman, Miss Katie. Very excellent eggs she brings me once a week, and cheaper than the ones you get in the store. But she has had a hard time, Mr. Henry, hideously disfigured and no way to make a living. I have a little envelope for her every week and it has nothing to do with the price of eggs. I suppose your distorted mind will want to make something of that too. Now get out of my sight and if Jim can divert your imagination from the realm of the absurd into more productive channels, perhaps it will not be necessary for me to have you arrested for attempted blackmail.”

  I said: “I may have some thoughts about the price of eggs at that. You’ll remember that I haven’t asked you for a cent. If you have an impulse to make childish threats, I hope you will be resourceful enough to make them stick.”

  12 The anti-Semitism of this paragraph is subtle but includes all the stereotypes of the era as regards a “Silverstein.”

  15

  I stopped at a drugstore and looked in the telephone directory to see if there was a phone listed in the name of Miss Katie Byrnes. There was, and I made a note of the street and number just to make sure I was going to the right place.

  I parked the car in front of her house, rang the doorbell once or twice, and then knocked several times. At first I thought there might have been a slight movement discernible somewhere in the shadows, but nothing happened, and I came to the conclusion that there was nobody at home.

  I went down the steps, around the corner, and along the cement walk to the back yard. There was a fence there and an unhappy hen who looked up with an air of hope almost as if there was just an outside chance I might be the worm she was looking for. I closed the wire gate behind me and looked around. The yard was small and over in one corner behind a ragged chicken-wire fence there was what might have been called a garden, about the size of a tablecloth. In the other corner was a shed with the door ajar, and I walked over and looked in to see where the rest of the chickens were. I did not see but two. There was a small packing box on its side with the opening nearest the wall, and I strolled over and looked in, on the theory that there might be another hen or two loafing around somewhere. I didn’t see anything, but a voice said:

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I whirled around, startled, and there was Miss Katie with a gun in her hand. I said:

  “Oh, hello there. I was hungry and thought maybe you would sell me an egg.”

  “I’ll just bet you did. I suppose one of the hens was going to make change for you. Talk fast.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Miss Katie, I wasn’t hungry, but I got to wondering all about your eggs and everything.”

  The gun was wavering about as much as if it had been set in concrete. She said coldly:

  “You’ve got a lot more curiosity than you are entitled to. I could shoot you as a chicken thief and never see the inside of a jail, but I would have to clean the gun afterward, and I’m not sure it’s worth it. A boy called me from the grocery store a while ago and wanted to know if I had found my eggs. He said a nutty little guy with a bruise on his face, wearing clothes about ten sizes too big for him, was asking about it. Maybe cleaning the gun wouldn’t be too much of a job after all.”

  It didn’t seem to me that cleaning a gun would be such a hard job, and I wished she wouldn’t talk like that. There wasn’t any place I could go, and taking a chance she would miss me wasn’t my idea of what you would want to do on your afternoon off.

  “Look here, Miss Katie,” I said, standing just exactly where I was and not moving even the toes inside my shoes, “you do the damnedest things until the questions come over me like pimples when it’s cold. You give away eggs and then you buy eggs, and you sell eggs for less than they cost you. You give away vegetables that you grow in your garden, but you don’t grow enough vegetables in your garden to make the chickens even bother to jump the fence. You don’t make any money, and yet you have a home and a telephone and everything. How much does Mr. Harper give you?”<
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  The hand with the gun began to tremble, but it was from anger and not from fear.

  “What makes it any of your business?” she asked bitterly. “If you’ve got a job to do for Ruthie, why don’t you do it instead of wondering what kind of charity I live on?”

  “I think you’re right. In fact, I know it. I think I’ll just go and do that job right now.” I walked past her so close our clothes brushed together. I walked right on through the back yard without hurrying, opened the gate, stepped through it, and turned around to hook it behind me. Miss Katie was looking after me and the gun was still in her hand. I walked on around to the front of the house, got in the car, and drove away. I went right past the McClure home and then pulled over to the curb a couple of blocks beyond and wiped my face to keep the sweat from running down into my eyes. By and by I turned around and went back to the McClures’ again. I had not thought about how tight my pants were and how much they hurt my stomach since I walked into Harper’s office a long time ago.

  16

  Ruth was washing the breakfast dishes, and the morning was half gone. She looked up and said:

  “Long distance has been trying to get you. It’s your office. Mr. Mead is in an awful hotbox to talk to you, but he couldn’t wait. Left a message for you to call his secretary and that he was on his way down here.”

  I had a cold, heavy feeling down in me somewhere. I called the operator and pretty soon Myrtle was on the other end of the wire. I said:

  “Gil. Mr. Mead want me?”

  “I’ll say he does.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Does it take much imagination?”

  I didn’t think it did, so I said something and hung up. I asked Ruth how long it had been since the call first came in, and she said around thirty minutes, which would be just about right from the time I left the office of Harper Products Company. I must have looked nervous, because Ruth was watching me closely.